Episode 614: Pyromania

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left – Episode 614: Pyromania

Release Date: April 4, 2025

In Episode 614 of Last Podcast on the Left, the hosts delve deep into the unsettling world of pyromania, exploring its definitions, motivations, and infamous cases that highlight the dark side of fire obsession. This comprehensive discussion offers listeners a thorough understanding of what drives individuals to set fires repeatedly and the broader implications of such behavior.

Understanding Pyromania

The episode begins with Ed Larson providing a formal definition of pyromania, aligning it with the DSM-5 criteria. Pyromania is characterized by the deliberate act of setting fires on multiple occasions, fueled by a fascination with fire, experiencing tension before the act, and deriving pleasure or relief from the act itself or its aftermath.

Ed Larson [05:23]: "Pyromania has a fair amount of markers with the most obvious being the deliberate act of setting a fire on more than one occasion."

Motivations Behind Pyromania

Contrary to common misconceptions, pyromaniacs typically do not set fires for monetary gain, ideological reasons, or sexual gratification. In fact, Ed cites a study revealing that only 5% of pyromaniacs reported deriving sexual thrill from starting fires.

Ed Larson [07:38]: "Unlike a crooked landlord who is adept at burning down buildings for insurance payouts... only 5% reported a sexual thrill when starting fires."

The primary motivations revolve around the intrinsic pleasure and the alleviation of internal tensions, often seeking attention or expressing control.

Neurodivergence and Pyromania

A significant portion of pyromaniacs exhibit neurodivergent traits, particularly Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The hosts discuss how childhood abuse and bullying interplay with these conditions to potentially foster pyromaniac tendencies.

Ed Larson [18:03]: "A lot of pyromaniacs share two things: childhood abuse and/or bullying along with neurodivergence."

Marcus Parks emphasizes the complexity of diagnoses like ADHD, noting that it's often misunderstood and trivialized in social discourse, yet it can lead to severe behavioral issues if unmanaged.

Marcus Parks [20:41]: "ADHD can lead to full dissociative episodes, like total... if you're not taking care of it correctly... you can turn into a bit of a firebug."

Infamous Pyromaniac Case Studies

Brendan Sokolak and the Black Saturday Bushfires

Brendan Sokolak, an Australian pyromaniac, played a pivotal role in the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, which resulted in the deaths of 11 people and the destruction of over 3,500 buildings. Despite his initial good standing as a groundskeeper, his peculiar behaviors and obsession with fire raised suspicions leading to his arrest.

Ed Larson [27:34]: "Brendan Sokolak was a perfectly capable person, but he was known to play up his disabilities if it suited his needs."

Sokolak's case underscores how pyromaniacs often blend into society, making their destructive tendencies harder to detect until significant harm is done.

Paul Keller's Arson Spree in Seattle

In the early 1990s, Paul Keller, a 27-year-old advertising professional, embarked on an arson spree in Seattle, setting 76 fires and causing approximately $30 million in property damage. Keller's obsession with firefighting technology led him to target areas where fires would test the city's response capabilities.

Ed Larson [72:50]: "Keller would set these fires because people were stupid for leaving the flammable material available."

Keller's motivation was twofold: satisfying his fascination with fire and critiquing the preparedness of firefighting services.

Peter Dinsdale: Yorkshire's Fiery Nightmare

One of Britain's most prolific pyromaniacs, Peter Dinsdale, also known as Bruce George Peter Lee, terrorized the Yorkshire port town of Hull in the 1970s. Over six years, Dinsdale set multiple fires that resulted in the deaths of 26 people, including elderly residents and children.

Marcus Parks [86:01]: "He set him on fire. And it's really disturbing and weird, but with Peter Sutcliffe..."

Dinsdale's actions were driven by a combination of personal vendettas, manipulative behaviors, and an inherent desire to cause chaos, making him a particularly dangerous individual.

Historical Context: The O'Leary Cow and the Great Chicago Fire

The podcast also revisits the infamous legend of Mrs. O'Leary's cow, blamed for igniting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. While folklore attributes the disaster to the cow, the hosts discuss environmental factors such as drought and flammable eucalyptus trees that contributed to the fire's devastating spread.

Ed Larson [13:23]: "Upholding the cow story, it's still widely believed to be the cause of the fire."

This historical anecdote serves to illustrate how scapegoating can obscure the complex causes behind catastrophic events.

Challenges in Detection and Prosecution

Detecting pyromaniacs poses significant challenges due to the nature of their crimes and the motivations behind them. Fires can be easily attributed to accidents, especially in areas with prevalent flammable materials or minimal enforcement of fire codes. Additionally, pyromaniacs often manipulate perceptions by playing up disabilities or presenting themselves as misunderstood individuals seeking attention.

Ed Larson [61:03]: "Pyromaniacs often have ASD paired with childhood abuse or extreme bullying, making their actions more complex."

Legal proceedings are further complicated by the need to differentiate pyromania from other forms of arson, such as those driven by financial gain or ideological motives. This differentiation is crucial for appropriate sentencing and rehabilitation efforts.

Research Findings and Insights

The hosts reference studies indicating that while pyromania is not as extensively researched as other disorders, key patterns emerge linking neurodivergent conditions with a history of abuse. These factors collectively contribute to the impulsive and destructive behaviors observed in pyromaniacs.

Ed Larson [44:24]: "ASD is not a monolithic diagnosis... there are good people, bad people, and everything in between."

The discussion highlights the importance of nuanced understanding and targeted interventions to address the underlying causes of pyromania, potentially preventing future tragedies.

Concluding Thoughts

Episode 614 of Last Podcast on the Left offers a sobering exploration of pyromania, blending psychological insights with gripping real-life cases. By examining the intricate relationship between mental health, environmental factors, and personal histories, the hosts illuminate the multifaceted nature of pyromania. The episode serves as both an informative resource and a cautionary tale about the destructive potential lurking within obsessive fire-setting behaviors.

Marcus Parks [112:35]: "But he did it. Isn't that nice?"

Through engaging storytelling and critical analysis, the podcast encourages listeners to seek a deeper understanding of the factors that drive individuals to commit such heinous acts, emphasizing the need for empathy, awareness, and effective mental health support systems.

Transcript

[Marcus Parks]

Last podcast on the left is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. At Amica, you'll receive coverage with compassion. When you choose Amica, they'll take the time to explain your options for auto, home and life insurance. You can feel confident knowing that they'll protect what matters most to you. Amico will provide you with peace of mind. Go to amica.com and get a quote. Today. Halloween in April. You heard right. Shudder is bringing you halfway to Halloween because you shouldn't wait until October to feel the joy of horror. So get ready for a terrifying lineup, from cult classics like Evil Dead to new releases like the Rule of Jenny Penn starring John Lithgow, which Stephen King hails as the best movie of the year. Shudder on AMC is your streaming home for horror with spine chilling movies and series all year long. Learn [e-mail] there's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Natalie and I relax every night by watching our true crime shows. Right. You know, and then one we're watching right now is called Evil Lives Here. And it's about like, bad, evil family members that you grew up with. Yeah, but what I love about this.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Show, was it a home movie?

[Marcus Parks]

Wait a second. Is this live feed for my living room? But I. They do a thing on the show where they always ask a question to, like, these devastated people. Like this show. I kind of like it because it's really intense. But they show these devastated people and they always go like, huh, take a look at this picture of this other dead person. What do you think of that? And then they go like, cry. They get upset and stuff. But then eventually they always ask the question, so if you could go back, would you do it all different? And it's like at some point, it's like, yeah, yeah. Like no one's gonna be like, no, I'm glad I married the serial murderer.

[Ed Larson]

Well, but the thing is, they always have to say, if there's kids involved, they'll say like, well, I wouldn't, because otherwise I wouldn't have little Darlene.

[Marcus Parks]

But the problem is that sometimes little Darlene turns into angry Darlene. He's gonna burn down the mall.

[Ed Larson]

Just a net negative on the world.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, it's hard sometimes. Little Darlene didn't get all the good D. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And if little Darlene didn't exist, maybe you'd have a nice little Timmy, you know, it's someone else. And that Timmy's going to be a lawyer.

[Ed Larson]

You know, instead of a.

[Marcus Parks]

A good lawyer. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Who knows?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, yeah, yeah. For a bear. A lawyer for a bear, please. In forest Court.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, my God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now I have a new career trajectory.

[Marcus Parks]

You just got to go to school.

[Ed Larson]

Welcome to the last podcast on the left. Ladies and gentlemen, before we get too far into bear law, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm actually just a part of the otter constituency. And we just said we're live and covered in hands.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm just saying the picnic basket was asking for it.

[Ed Larson]

Probable cause. Probable cause. Ed Larson here with the picnic basket defense.

[Marcus Parks]

The ham goes in the back, the left.

[Ed Larson]

How is your picnic basket defense these days?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, my God. It's going well, dude. Yeah, it's been wonderful. I've been getting some blankets. I've been put out. You know what? Ants.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pro bear. Anti ant.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Anti. Oh, I guess anti is already. It's already in the word.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You've already done it yourself, haven't you? But I'm gonna just say right here at the very top of this pyromania episode, I think that it's super important for me to say, I think picnics are. Whoa. Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Who wants to bring a bunch of cold ass food in the middle of some feces filled, like, patch of ass like you're going out to. There's no place in LA that I want to have a picnic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, I got to tell this is a good warning for everyone. As a dog owner, don't picnic directly under the tree, because that's where the dogs pee. They pee against the tree and under the tree. So if you're. You're just eating on a big pile of piss.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Welcome to the pyromania episode, ladies and gentlemen, as we just went through. Bear law.

[Marcus Parks]

Picnic law.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Picnic law. You know where to avoid the piss at the park.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. This is our exploration on pyromania.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Fire.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hell, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I am the God of hellfire, and.

[Marcus Parks]

I bring you fire. I bring you to burn. God. Can we play that?

[Ed Larson]

No, absolutely not. You just say, just go yourself and go listen to the crazy world of Arthur Brown.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, the best song ever.

[Ed Larson]

Now, the simplest definition of pyromania, or at least the one most people probably use when they think of the subject, is the habitual setting of fires as an of pleasure. But after dipping into the research, we found that the reasons behind pyromania are complicated and varied. Although there are some unifying factors. According to the DSM 5, Pyromania has a fair amount of markers with the most obvious being the deliberate act of setting a fire on more than one occasion. A fascination or attraction to fire, tension or arousal before the act and pleasure, gratification or relief when setting the fire or witnessing the aftermath.

[Marcus Parks]

This is also a type of crime that has some of my like the funniest old timey looks at true crime. Like I watched an old documentary called Portrait of an Arsonist that was like, it was actually a very expensive rental for some reason. And they kind of talk about the term, they always throw around the term firebug. Yeah, like the term firebug, which like. Because I guess that's like fairly common within the fire like fighter community. Yeah, they like bugs the wannabes. Like they call them firebugs. They're gu. That show up around the firehouse, that are obsessed with the, the tray. They're obsessed with the ladders and the hoses and all the mechanics and stuff. I don't know why.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they then go and they essentially then start becoming like fire fans and hanging out. But they, they very sillily sort of like refer to them as fire bugs.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

But they are worse than that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You ever set fire to an anthill? It's wild, you know. Yeah, you put a bunch of, you put some lighter fluid in the middle of it, then you light it and it goes out. And then when you hit it with a rake, it goes off again. It' they just pop like little popcorn guys. Ants.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. This is more anti.

[Ed Larson]

Well, really big, really against ants here.

[Marcus Parks]

But Eddie brings up a very good like point accidentally because they Show Something like 10% of young men specifically experiment with fire setting. Right. Like there's a difference between there apparently that was.

[Ed Larson]

I raised my hand on that one. Got got a story coming up later on that one.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yes. It's very different than pyromania.

[Ed Larson]

Very different. And there's also a massive differ difference between a pyromaniac and your garden variety arsonist. While many arsonists have antisocial personality disorders, one study found that only a quarter of arsonists qualify as pyromaniacs. See, unlike a crooked landlord who is adept at burning down buildings for insurance payouts.

[Marcus Parks]

That's arson.

[Ed Larson]

That's arson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Pyromaniacs don't set fire for monetary gain, nor do they do it for sociopolitical ideology, the concealment of criminal activity to express anger or vengeance to improve one's living, living circumstances or as a result of impaired judgment. Interestingly, Though neither do most of them do it for sexual purposes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Which I honestly thought was the main motivation before we got into all this research, rather. In one study that interviewed 1100 pyromaniacs, only 5% reported a sexual thrill when starting fires.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, I would probably lie about that part.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I'm not. So when the orphanage was burning, did you masturbate? No. What kind of sicko who would do that? Oh, he's thinking about it. Oh, he can't even do him go.

[Ed Larson]

To the bathroom real quick. People who develop pyromania usually begin as fire watchers, fans if you will. And much like a serial killer who gets a job in authority for the power it gives them over other people, pyromaniacs will often get jobs in the firefighting field so they can be closer to fire and so they can see the consequences of their actions.

[Marcus Parks]

They definitely try.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Reportedly, about a hundred firefighters are convicted of arson every year. But not surprisingly, the governing bodies in charge of tracking the causes of fires nationwide, they intentionally refrain from tracking firefighter arson. Instead, these are treated as so called isolated incidents.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's kind of like in our necrophilia episode. A lot of the people involved were EMTs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, but also I find it interesting that they don't. They obviously they can't always investigate it because then they'd be looking into themselves. It's very difficult for them. But it's very similar to what the postal service did when all those guys were popping off in the 90s. They kept saying like no, no, no, no. It's not about how we handle the mail. No, no, no, no, no, no. They are just mad about traffic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's all the goddamn paper cuts.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, those are the worst.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But I'm glad you brought that up, Marcus, because these firefighters have had a two good since 9 11.

[Marcus Parks]

Tell me about it.

[Ed Larson]

I mean.

[Marcus Parks]

25, 25 years.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's over, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Check time is done. Firefighters, you need to do something else. They did though. Yeah, they take naps and eat spaghetti. Hey, the LAFD did extremely good work here. Just kidding.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I like to make fun of people who are obviously good.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you to all of our LAFD people here in the city who saved us just a couple of months ago.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just that for when they sneak.

[Marcus Parks]

In your house, try to your wife. That's different. Turns out she's been texting them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You always think it's a breakin cuz they've told you it's a Breakin. And they use an axe.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And there's all kinds of people sneaking in your house to try to your wife. It's not just firefighters.

[Marcus Parks]

They all do it. They all do it. Six out of ten.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Six out of ten firefighters.

[Ed Larson]

I'll tell you that much.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I got to get rid of her cell phone.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, why is she hanging out by the fire station?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, so much fun. What's so beautiful? Dangerous.

[Marcus Parks]

A fireman. Oh, no, he's only gay.

[Ed Larson]

For men in uniform, typically, firefighter arsonists are white guys with one of two problems. One, they might have a hero syndrome in which they intentionally create situations in which they can be the savior. Fighter. Fighter arsonists, however, can also be in that small percentage of pyromaniacs who get sexual gratification from starting and or containing fires. But while most firefighter pyros are men, one of the most consequential in recent history was a woman that was in the firefighting game. In 2002, a Forest Service worker and fire spotter named Terry Barton admitted to intentionally starting a fire at a campground in Colorado solely for the attention. As a consequence, 138,000 acres of land were burned, 113 homes were destroyed, and five firefighters died during what became the largest wildfire in Colorado history. For her part, Terry Barton was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was released after just six.

[Marcus Parks]

Getting people for murder and arson is actually extremely difficult. Really, it's. It's interesting because most of them beg off. They all go like, well, it's an impulse problem. It was an accident. It went out of my control, and that's what happened.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So what is it manslaughter, then?

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, not even less than. Because this is all like 18 years in prisons less than manslaughter.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's not like a drunk driver means to kill a family.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, sometimes it's a happy accident, but yeah, it's mostly what you're shooting to do because you hate families. But this is. It's interesting that the attention, like, factor.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Is the most important of all.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. That she was doing it for attention.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Do you think they were. Let her become, like, one of those prison firefighters?

[Marcus Parks]

I actually doubt that she's ever allowed to do it ever again. I doubt she's ever allowed anywhere near a hose except to suck it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. That's why firemen become firemen. For the hose.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. That's worth it.

[Ed Larson]

E d D I E T U n e s.com he will suck dick for money. But before we get into the Very human pyromaniacs. Henry has requested that we cover one of history's only alleged bovine fire starters.

[Marcus Parks]

We've got to give it the death penalty. Yo. I want to see it dead. I want to see it dead by firing. Squ lot.

[Ed Larson]

This, briefly is the story of the infamous cow owned by Katherine o. Leary, the cow that supposedly started the great Chicago Fire of 1871.

[Marcus Parks]

I heard my mama cry the night you pray the n go die.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So many great fire songs, right?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, the legend is that Mrs. O's cow kicked over a kerosene lantern, which set her barn on fire. And that fire spread across Chicago, where it destroyed over 17, 000 structures and killed somewhere around 300 people. Records are spotty. The cow, however, may not be at fault here.

[Marcus Parks]

What the.

[Ed Larson]

While the cow very well may have been involved, Chicago was going to burn eventually no matter what. The weather was hot that October. The area was going through a drought. Fire codes were very loosely enforced, and Chicago was a city built almost entirely out of wood.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's a windy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Truly a city of white soldiers as well.

[Ed Larson]

Well, you know, the windy city, that's actually a myth.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Really.

[Ed Larson]

The name windy city comes from their politicians who blew a lot of hot air. Yeah, blowhards.

[Marcus Parks]

I liked it better the other way. Do you think that the cow got sexual gratification?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, cows are known to do that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did the cow live?

[Ed Larson]

God, no. No, no. The cow burned. Now, the fire did indeed start at the o'leary small dairy business, but it's equally likely that the fire began when embers from a chimney settled on a stack of hay. It's also equally likely that the fire was started by a border at the o'leary home. Dennis peg leg Sullivan, who may have accidentally lit the hay on fire with a cigarette while drinking and smok smoking with his friends in the barn. Luckily for the Irish, the cow story won out. And to this day, it's still widely believed to be the cause of the fire.

[Marcus Parks]

No. I'll be the one of the new brave men here in 2025 to blame the Irish. Fuck you, Irish. Destroying the beloved first city of Chicago and putting the blame on a cow.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, you know. And not a single Irishman in the room.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Or Rob.

[Ed Larson]

Rob o'connor. Oh, Okonowitz.

[Marcus Parks]

Sounds polish. He is polish. It's a hybrid. Name one of those.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I understand. I always thought, like. Yeah, polish. Not like all kunowitz. Like, it's.

[Marcus Parks]

It is, huh. Interesting. Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, get out of here.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you Think crazy that the last thing the Chicago heard that night was this guy going, God damn it. Ah. Ah. Trying to put it out with his peg leg. Damn wood leg. Catch. It's catching up now.

[Ed Larson]

The female fire watcher who started the Colorado fires, she was a rare bird in the pyromania community. The aforementioned study of 11.

[Marcus Parks]

Community. Sounds like a rough group. What meetings are going to be like.

[Ed Larson]

The aforementioned study of 1100 pyromaniacs found that most were male and 70% were of below average intelligence. Legends.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Even Frankenstein's monster knew fire badge.

[Marcus Parks]

And as we know, canonically homosexual.

[Ed Larson]

What about the bride of Frankenstein?

[Marcus Parks]

Again, he. She couldn't be with her. Like, she obviously didn't choose him. But Frankenstein's monster was also. He could make the choice to be with her.

[Ed Larson]

Interesting.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And she's not even in the movie.

[Marcus Parks]

She's in the end of the film.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She's barely in the movie.

[Marcus Parks]

I made him watch him. He's so mad about it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm so mad about that. I couldn't believe it. What the. Why call it that? That.

[Marcus Parks]

But it is nice because then it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Everyone dresses up like her. Like, who gives a. She's not in the movie.

[Marcus Parks]

But Natalie and I then do have an inside joke from that movie because she always goes, Henry. Because that's what the lady says to Dr. Frankenstein. Because his name's Henry. Oh, Henry.

[Ed Larson]

It's very cute.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that great?

[Ed Larson]

There are, however, some interesting through lines when it comes to pyromania. While the study of pyromania is not as deep as we'd like it because some in the mental health field refused to accept it as a diagnosis, what we do see is that a lot of pyromaniacs share two things. Childhood abuse and or bullying along with neurodivergence. Now, this through line was noticed by our head researcher, Joel, who is himself proudly autistic. It's also probably not going to surprise you when I say that lpn, as a company is chock full of neurodivergent people. As many people. Yeah, many people are in our employee have been diagnosed as having Autism spectrum disorder, or asd.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. I thought we did the blood purity test.

[Ed Larson]

Unfortunately, we're all vaccinated.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's been hard.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. In fact, I'm gonna go ahead and take this opportunity to come out myself as neurodivergent.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

Albeit in a different way. See, last fall, my mental disorder was re diagnosed and I was told, much to my surprise and bewilderment, that I do not have nor Have I ever had bipolar disorder?

[Marcus Parks]

Whoa.

[Ed Larson]

I spent 20 years treating the wrong condition because one psychiatrist in Lubbock, Texas, fucked up way back in 2006. And all my subsequent mental health professionals just took his word for it until my new guy here in LA finally questioned the original diagnosis. After a lot of testing, I was correctly diagnosed as having severe adhd, which can sometimes mimic the symptoms of bipolar disorder. The wild emotional dysregulation that comes with severe ADHD can cause anxiety and depression. That would be the depressive side, manic depressive, While the hyperfocus aspect of ADHD can be confused for manic behavior. As such, I've totally changed my treatment, transformed my life for the better in ways that I'm still discovering every day. But I do want all my bipolar people out there to know that I see you, I still support you, and I still believe in you. More importantly, though, you should still believe in yourself because you do have the ability to do anything you set your mind to. There are people in my family who definitely have bipolar disorder who have done great things throughout their life with treatment, people who are my own inspiration for making my mental health my responsibility. But when it comes to pyromania, I can say from personal experience that neurodivergent disorders can cause far greater problems than just not being able to focus. As a lot of children who develop pyromania also tested positive for adhd, there has.

[Marcus Parks]

There has been quite a bit of. People talk about ADHD and that word gets thrown around a lot. I think the same thing with all of these various diagnoses, they're thrown around on social media and nobody. We've kind of losing some of the sense of the. The heaviness of some of these diagnoses, very much so. The ADHD is not just paying attention. I'm sorry, you just don't have a fucking attention span. Like, there's some of you that different don't have an attention span. That's fine, it's been destroyed by media, but the rest of it, ADHD can lead to full dissociative, like, episodes, like total. Like all of the same bad stuff that bipolar does. If you're not taking care of it correctly and if you're actually diagnosed with it, you can turn into a bit of a firebug.

[Ed Larson]

And that's the thing is ADHD is. It can be severe enough where it is confused with bipolar disorder. I mean, there's a reason why it took 20 years for this diagnosis to get switched over.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it was. Beautiful statement, Marcus. And I too would like to take this moment to come out as part human, part picky.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you're just bad, Eddie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It took years and many surgeries to turn my hooves into human feet. We've transition still enjoy rolling around in my own. He does solving puzzles meant for toddlers. But you know, I. I think I'm on the path to becoming full human.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that why you chew apples with your hands tied behind your back? Yes, I can.

[Ed Larson]

Speaking of which, Eddie, I gotta talk to you. Our Apple budget at the network is getting out of fucking control.

[Marcus Parks]

We are gonna need to talk with you about this.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I can't afford it myself.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my sweet, sweet Ed Larson. He loves his quints. He loves to go on vacation in his quints. And this year you can be like Ed Larson. You can treat yourself to the lux upgrades you deserve with Quince's high quality travel essentials at a fair. Dresses like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30, pants for any occasion, even a wedding, horribly a funeral. You can pair it with premium luggage options and durable duffel bags to carry it all. And the best part, all Quinn's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And that's why Ed likes it because of his need to thrift. He also loves the Mongolian cashmere over his thick torso though it's the only thing that makes him feel like not just a normal water buffalo, but a water buffalo on his way to the Emmys. Be like Ed Larson and feel like a prince in your Quince. For your next trip, treat yourself to the lux upgrades you deserve from quince. Go to quince.com last for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U I n c e.com last to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/last. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. Seems amazing, right? It's because it is. From consultations to events and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Which is good because let's just say I need it. You know, as you may or may not know, I lost horse picks.com in a very, very public and embarrassing auction to a young man by the name of Charlie Bucket, who has decided to take my horse picks and drive it towards the right. Some of the incendiary horse picks that I've seen, including Steve Bannon on a Clydesdale, one of the Worst I saw was Ivanka Trump inside of a mare. And I know that like this is not the direction that I saw horsepix.com and, and that little boy, I didn't know that he'd become a full fledged Nazi and, and grow his hair into broccoli shapes and do all sorts of things I don't understand. Which is why I've started Emu Paintings.com thank you Squarespace, because Emu Paintings.com are these really, it's an exceptional way for me to get you paintings of emus in various positions that emus would normally be. And in a way, I find it both amusing and inspiring to see what emus can do using the painter's brush and imagination. And if it wasn't for Squarespace, I would be absolutely effed to the gills. That's the term for being absolutely sick out of luck. Squarespace, thank you for streamlining your workflow with built in tools because I would not have been able to get this website up fast enough due to the legal fees I've received and the personal heartache and my own health deteriorating. I just want to say thank you Squarespace, for all your help and emu paintings.com is going to be just as good and just as funny and relevant, I promise. Head to squarespace.com left for a free trial when you're ready to launch. Use offer code left to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Do you plan your vacation locations based on the local language? With Babel, language no longer has to be the barrier. Yes, I can see German now without flipping out. I could see Spanish without me wondering where I am in a carousel of of delusion and neglect. See? Babbles, babbles. Quick 10 minute lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. I want it now. Babble's tips and tools are inspired by the real life stuff you actually need when communicating. Like, how do I get out of this tube? Tube? Where is the bathroom? Where's the bathroom inside of this tube? Are you the man that's going to get me out of this tube? Are you the woman that's going to get me out of this tube? It's so important to know how to say that in so many different languages because one of the things that you find when you travel in different countries, they delineate what are construction sites differently. And it's always different. You never know. Sometimes you think it's oh wow, what a Cool Speakeasy. Oh, no. I'm in a cement mix, sir. That's what Babel's going to clear up for you. All right. Learn to read in many languages. Let's get more of you talking in new languages. Babel is gifting our listeners 60 off subscriptions at babel.com left get up to 60 off at babel.com left spelled B A B-B-E-L.com left babel.com left rules and restrictions may apply.

[Ed Larson]

Now, while ADHD certainly shows up in pyromaniacs, the neurodivergent disorder that occurs most most is Autism Spectrum disorder, or asd. And that brings us to our first big story today. Let's begin with the Australian pyromaniac Brendan Sokolak, whose part in the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 resulted in the deaths of 11 people. And yes, the name appears, the name Brendan Sokolak appears as if it should be pronounced Sokolok or Soccer Luke. Whatever. We watch some old news reports and they all say sockalak. So if you have any complaints about pronunciation, direct them to the past.

[Marcus Parks]

I also listened to Brendan Sokolak talk and he was, he even says it wrong. He goes like Shashalak. Like, he does this, like, weird thing. He seemed to be under pressure.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, the Black Saturday bushfires were somewhat similar to what we just went through here in Los Angeles and that it wasn't just one large fire that devastated the region. But unlike our recent troubles in which we had four, sometimes five fires going on all at once, the Australians on Black Saturday had to contend with 400 individual fires.

[Marcus Parks]

I had no idea how bad wildfires were in Australia.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My God, that town, that whole continent's made for burning.

[Ed Larson]

It is. During These fires, over 1700 square miles of the Australian state of Victoria burned, resulting in 173 deaths, in addition to the destruction of over, over 3,500 buildings and homes. When the sheer destructive power of all 400 fires were calculated, it was said they gave off the equivalent heat of 500 atomic bombs.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeez. Christ. You know, it's crazy too, the way they talk about it. It really is like they, they have a budget. I had no idea it would be like this outside of the United States.

[Ed Larson]

Of America that wildfires could be as bad elsewhere as they are here.

[Marcus Parks]

Because also, I, I, let's just say I'm an East coaster New Yorker. I've never dealt with anything like this before. And it wasn't until those LA fires hit that you start to, when you were Watching the footage of it, I guess I never really took it to heart. This shit just jumps.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, it goes explode. Like, things just explode and then they go fat. Like, you would not be. You would be incredibly surprised how fast that wall of flame will overwhelm you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. The Australian fire right before COVID that everyone kind of forgot about because of COVID was like, way worse than fire.

[Ed Larson]

So much worse. Yeah. And here how it happened was we had two seasons of like, like, unseasonable rain, which caused all these plants to grow. And then we went back in a drought which caused all those same plants to die. And that's what caught fire. Yeah. Now, when survivors later recalled Black Saturday, they said that after the air turned blood red from the heat, every breath felt like sucking on a hair dryer. And some could even feel their skin melting from the heat. Even if actively being burnt, the flames were hundreds of feet high, moving across the ground within seconds and surrounding everything. Once the fire reached a house, the windows cracked, fabric burst into flames. The flames would slide underneath doors where they caught clothing and shoes on fire. Those who survived did so by breathing into wet fabric, laying in shallow creeks or ponds. In one case, a family covered themselves in lily pads and pond slime, all while kangaroos tried to survive by laying down in the water with them.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, cute.

[Ed Larson]

It's got a kid.

[Marcus Parks]

That's where you get the first ever kangaroo man wedding. Yeah. Which is nice, but it's illegal. They got their love was considered illegal. She was just plowing the hell out of that kangaroo.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, she was.

[Marcus Parks]

And they got crazy. They got like a bigger than a lady.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Kangaroos.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's the pouch. It's not their vagina.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's a problem. That's right.

[Ed Larson]

No, I mean, I find this shit fascinating. Australia is actually made to be set on fire on a near constant basis. That's its ecosystem. Due to the frequent wildfire started by lightning strikes that have been going on for millennia, the fauna of Australia has evolved specifically to not only survive fires, but depend on them. Some plant species, for example, won't open their seed pods until the plant is set on fire. But since some plants need fire to propagate, they've also evolved to be highly flammable. And it's just Australia's luck that one of their most common plants, the eucalyptus tree, is also one of the most flammable in the world.

[Marcus Parks]

Really?

[Ed Larson]

Yes. They're called gasoline trees.

[Marcus Parks]

No shit. I didn't know that. I mean, I bet it smells good.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. They create dense Carpets of flammable material that create the fast burning and fast spreading fires that make Australian wildfire so dangerous. The oil of the eucalyptus tree also works as an accelerant once the fire has sparked, creating literal fireballs. When the flames reach the trees, the seed pods then open and fall where they thrive in the freshly burned soil. But because Australia burns so easily and is in fact a land that is specifically made for burning, Australia has a fairly large arson problem. And when a pyromaniac gets involved, the results can indeed be deadly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, interestingly enough, this is exactly why we have such problems with fire in Los Angeles. Because back in the day, in the late 1800s, they planted eucalyptus trees all over Los Angeles.

[Ed Larson]

No shit.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So Los Angeles is actually covered in eucalyptus trees. And there was several different times when they were used. Used to like. Because they like the way they, they, you know, the way they look.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And so they were planted all over Los Angeles. And now that's kind of what's been us.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, it's all the old eucalyptus trees.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That are everywhere and they just catch so easily. I learned that from some gardener.

[Ed Larson]

That's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

I didn't know that. Dude. Every single time when we went to Hawaii and they did, you know, you just learned that everything that you like there is invasive and he's like destroying everything there. And then it seems like it's really rough to kind of just mess with the. The planet.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. Just throw around and see what happens.

[Marcus Parks]

It seems to just react in wild ways that you really can't predict.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they thought it was a good idea because it's really good at absorbing wind. Cuz they're real bushy. And so like the wind was like, you know, it would hit that and it wouldn't hit you that hard, but you know, obviously the wind.

[Marcus Parks]

That's why I fire. Yeah. That's why I travel faster when my pants are down.

[Ed Larson]

You know, cows don't exist in nature. Nature, really? We created cows.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What about that?

[Marcus Parks]

Before.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

What were the first cows?

[Ed Larson]

Oro.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What? That's not real.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, they're extinct now.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, really?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they're extinct. We bred them. Like, I learned this on the blind boy podcast. We actually bred orocs, the all the best orocs. The ones that were most docile, the ones that had like the best meat. We bred them into the cows that we have today. Cows as we know them don't exist in nature at all. That's partly why they're so destructive to the environment.

[Marcus Parks]

Marcus, stop it. This is. You're. You're driving people crazy. People are having orgasm. People are. They can't focus on the road. They are literally pissing and shitting and coming so much with this information that it's just. We have to really be careful what we do here. It's an infohazard. It's very hard. I am now looking at. Now because now I'm looking at aurochs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Just thinking about. I'd like to eat one. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Back to Australia now. Australian arson squad investigators have found that fires in Australia are started mostly in areas of extreme poverty, areas between urban and rural locations, places of high unemployment and areas with high child abuse and neglect. Here in America, we've seen much the same thing. Some of our worst rashes of arson say, like how The Bronx burned, 1970s New York. They were perpetrated in some of our nation's poorest and most disadvantaged areas. The pyromaniac in the New York City fires, by the way, that was David Berkowitz when he was still calling himself.

[Marcus Parks]

The Phantom of the Bronx. It's me, the thickest ghost you've ever seen. A ghost with the 38 waist. That's what you like. Subtle, sexy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There's nothing wrong with a 38 waist.

[Marcus Parks]

There's nothing wrong with it. Absolutely not. It's a governor's waist. A mania's pant.

[Ed Larson]

But concerning the Black Saturday bushfires, the Australian arson squad fanned out to determine how many of those 400 fires were natural and how many were man made. One of the fires the arson squad focused upon was in central Gippsland, where a man named Brendan Sokolak had called the Australian equivalent of 911 to inform authorities about his local bushfire. Now, the central Gippsland bushfire was no small event. While it had been just one of 400 fires, it had still killed 11 people. As such, this bushfire was of particular interest to investigators, and they certainly wanted to talk to the man who'd first called it in.

[Marcus Parks]

Arson's another one of those crimes that's extremely difficult to investigate. Yes, it's because.

[Ed Larson]

And even harder to prove.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, because fire destroys everything. And there's so many reasons to burn something, you know, like we see fine like. And there's so many ways up they can burn down. It's very difficult.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Sokolak had no criminal record, but upon questioning, police immediately found his demeanor to be strange and suspicious. And their suspicion only increased when they began asking around the neighborhood for more information on Brendan. Sokolak had been seen driving around the area slowly watching the Fires burn on Black Saturday. Which didn't really surprise anyone because smoke and flames tended to follow Brendan Sokolak wherever he went.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's not like he was David Lee Roth. This is what set up. It wasn't rehearsed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was hot for teacher.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I don't know if he. His teacher.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was more of the hot, hot.

[Marcus Parks]

Teachers, I think about teachers.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, if we're going Van Halen, I would say it's more like, you know, he caused an eruption.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You really got me, you piece of.

[Ed Larson]

Locals also said that Brendan was known to have problems with skulking around town.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey there, skulking. I want you walking. All right? You stand up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That is an Australian thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

And there's nothing wrong with a little light skulking.

[Marcus Parks]

I skulk up to 25 minutes a day just to keep me going. Life, skull, life skulking.

[Ed Larson]

But Brendan was indeed the worst type of skulker, as Brendan was a bit of a pedophile.

[Marcus Parks]

Just a pinch.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, just a pinch is still a pedophile. Yeah, just a pinch is the gateway to pedophilia.

[Marcus Parks]

Just a little pinch.

[Ed Larson]

And I'd say not all skulkers are pedophiles, but pedophiles are skulkers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I like that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, Brendan was known to stand and stare at children in public and would duck and hide when people noticed him, you know? Brendan also collected junk and broken cars and would work for hours in his shed dismantling pieces of wreckage where he would listen very loudly to episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine or Bob the Builder while making, again, very loud commentary on the shows to no one in particular.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, Bob.

[Marcus Parks]

Full of shit here.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Ain't gonna pass any sort of inspection, you know, Builder, I think you're a cartoon.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you think you're gonna climb that train? Thomas, you fucking idiot.

[Marcus Parks]

You can't do that. You're just trained. I think you can't. You can't. You know what, Thomas? I'm thinking you're believing in yourself too much. You gotta stop it. You're attached to a Trek, all right? You can't go anywhere. Yeah, Helicopter. Oh, my God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That train is a face.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I'd give my lesson thought if you could convince me that train ain't smiling. Oh, well, back to fix this old baby carriage because let's just say he wasn't an expert mechanic.

[Ed Larson]

No, he was not. No, no, no. He was mostly dismantling things for the scrap metal so he could sell the scrap metal.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Now, by the time of the Black Saturday fires in 2009. Brendan Sakala Black, was 39 years old, single and unemployed, on disability pension after losing his job as a groundskeeper at Monash University. Brendan, like many pyromaniacs, had a hard time keeping a job due to his poor impulse control and behavioral problems. Brendan, however, was reportedly quite good at his job in the sense that he could keep the grounds.

[Marcus Parks]

These grounds are right here.

[Ed Larson]

Nowhere.

[Marcus Parks]

They're right here under my feet.

[Ed Larson]

But people found him irritating.

[Marcus Parks]

You see the new episode of Tom and Tran?

[Ed Larson]

Getting it.

[Marcus Parks]

That shit's jumped to shock. I'm sick of this fucking shit. That I was breaking some bullshit orange. Whatever. It's like an orange caboose. What's that shit?

[Ed Larson]

They found him irritating for a myriad of reasons, like Brendan's habit of hiding in the bushes so he could jump out to scare his co workers like spaghetti.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey. Oh, hey, Smitty. Worse. Bob bought an engine tank. Engine. It scares you from 100ft away. I do. Right, close.

[Ed Larson]

The bad pranks, however, were not the only reasons why Brendan was fired. He would also follow people and tell them to watch out because he knew where they lived. He would pass notes to women co workers challenging their boyfriends or spouses to duels. And he would express joy at the pain of others, like when a co worker's loved one died.

[Marcus Parks]

That's you. That's. Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was wondering why you were laughing so hard at my movie.

[Marcus Parks]

It was hilarious. Here we go. Got flowers there, Dinah. Good. Oh, fuck your ma then, right? Hey, glad she's dead too, right? You got free food at the funeral.

[Ed Larson]

Additionally, Brendan would mow over trash instead of picking it up. He would stuff food in his pockets at work functions. He would hide things in hard to reach places to infuriate his co workers. He would make cat noises at people and would mow over golf balls so they would shoot out at just the right trajectory to hit bystanders.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm good at this job. This is my job. Fuck you. Yeah, the littles. I like the triangle cases because you can't get them at home. You can only get them at work.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I really wish I didn't find them so, so funny.

[Ed Larson]

I know, I know. There is some. I mean, there's something funny about the. The golf balls. There's something funny about challenging your boyfriend to a duel.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Just be like, hey, you want me to stop, right? Meow. You piece of. You know, too. Is that it's. It's just if you have to work with them. Yeah, I could see that. If this is a funny guy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, no, no, it. He would also do shit. Like he would when he had to dig holes. He would, like, make sure that he was upwind of his co workers so the dust would blow in their face. You know, it's just. It's just the most infuriating things, like he's trying to make people angry. And that's all to say that Brendan was more than a bit of a prick. But Brendan also had skills that kept him on the job. He had a photographic memory of the campus. He knew exactly where all the pipes and cables were buried underground, and he was quite capable with computers. But that's all to say that Brendan Sokolak, like many pyromaniacs, most definitely had Autism Spectrum disorder or asd. Now, that's definitely not to say that all people with ASD are at risk of becoming pyromaniacs or at risk of becoming destructive in any way, but it's.

[Marcus Parks]

A cool thing to maybe hold over your family.

[Ed Larson]

But there are definite reasons why ASD and other neurodivergent disorders like ADHD are so prevalent amongst this section of the population. As many of you probably already know, ASD is not a simple, straightforward disorder. ASD manifests itself in a myriad of ways, both positive and negative. Like how someone with ASD might be able to draw a perfect map of an area just by walking it, but they might not have the ability to understand tone and inflection when others speak. The problem here is that the symptoms of ASD can be confused with people who are just run of the mill preference tricks. And conversely, people with ASD can also be massive who take pleasure in doing things that hurt or annoy people.

[Marcus Parks]

So can a lot of people, though.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, so can a lot just asd.

[Marcus Parks]

I think a lot of people sometimes just like being jerks.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's pretty much all of Iceland looking at you.

[Marcus Parks]

Q A. Still the rudest, but so much fun. We had so much fun in Iceland, but man, you guys roasted us for no reason. Wow.

[Ed Larson]

They're a very blunt people. It's partly why I enjoy them so much. I enjoy the bluntness of it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they're not there to talk to people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know. Yeah, they're gonna get away from it.

[Marcus Parks]

You live on a rock that has ice on the top of it and lava directly underneath it.

[Ed Larson]

It's the only place in the world where I can go and people aren't like, marcus, why don't you have any tact? And it's like, no, in Iceland, nobody has it and nobody cares and everyone's just saying whatever they want to say and it's great.

[Marcus Parks]

You are fatter now. It's like stuff like that. It's just a fact. You are fatter now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know I saw you yesterday, but you're fatter now.

[Ed Larson]

Thanks. But that's all to say that ASD is not a monolithic diagnosis in which the same principles can be applied to every person. And really they're just like any other group with good people, bad people and everything in between contained therein.

[Marcus Parks]

Is it maybe fair to say that his acting like a prick?

[Ed Larson]

Brandon Sokolak, you mean Brendan Sokolak was.

[Marcus Parks]

His inability to emotionally connect with others and that you find that the connection is you. All humans must connect to others on some way. Right. We are social beast. And so on some level when we are kind of dealing with others, I wonder if sometimes it's just any reaction then becomes a connection if you can't figure out it out.

[Ed Larson]

Well, actually I can answer that question. I mean, when it comes to pyromaniacs, it was very rare, if not non existent in our research to find a pyromaniac with just asd. Instead, what we found is that amongst pyromaniacs, ASD is almost always paired with childhood abuse or extreme bullying. Statistically, autistic people overall are far more likely to be bullied or abused. But because of the nature of the disorder, some people with ASD don't understand why they're being bullied. In some cases, when people with ASD don't understand why they're hated, they give people reasons to hate them. And our subject Brendan Sokolak is a prime example.

[Marcus Parks]

That's very interesting.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whenever I meet someone who like obviously has severe autism, I just try to find out what their thing is, whether it's like 80s rock or just rocks, you know, and you just. And you just drill them on that.

[Marcus Parks]

And you learn a lot.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you really do. Yeah, yeah. And then they feel great and you've learned a lot and you've had a. You've had a nice day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, exactly.

[Marcus Parks]

But also the key to pyromania on the whole is the attention that you get from the action. I feel like that is still like.

[Ed Larson]

I think for some, not for all.

[Marcus Parks]

But all the ones you talk to, you start to find out like there's quite a bit of similarities from of the way they talk between Brendan Sack and I was listening to Paul Keller. They actually do have very similar attitudes.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

About it.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Brendan grew up with poor and limited speech he'd often skip words and sentences. Even worse, he would regularly himself well into his teenage years, his mother put him in a kid's soccer club to help him make friends.

[Marcus Parks]

It always helps.

[Ed Larson]

Always helps. Yeah. When a kid's having a hard time making friends.

[Marcus Parks]

Right into competitive sports.

[Ed Larson]

Sports, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That's usually what kids who have a hard time making friends. Sports is always the best thing for him.

[Marcus Parks]

It definitely doesn't heighten all of those issues.

[Ed Larson]

You definitely don't put them right in the middle of all the kids who are most likely to bully others.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. And they're all on a track of trying to do shit. And never mind if you're just some fat idiot who's arrived to be the catcher of the team and you think it's because Goldberg was the fucking, like, the funny guy in the team and that your function. And then all these kids are now starting to take the sport super seriously, and now they're turning on you when you were the fucking mascot.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually the kids on the team really hate you when you're the one that's making them bad.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

It tends to make things worse.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. It flipped, like, over a summer.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It was, like, one summer I was the most popular kid on the team. And then the next summer, they were like, oh, you're bad at baseball.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. No, no. I was bad at football in my senior year. And, like, my entire. I ended up. The entire town, like, could barely disguise their contempt for me, like, just because, like, I was. I was like, I want. Like, I. I'm a writer.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm a broadcaster.

[Ed Larson]

I broke my leg last year. I. I missed my junior year. I'm behind. Why are you putting me in at safety? I'm so much a better running back. Put Billy Joe in at safety. Or Jason. I'm so much better running back.

[Marcus Parks]

Running back's political position.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Yeah, I was a very good running back.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Brendan, speaking of someone who's definitely not. Who is a pyromaniac. Unlike Marcus.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, unlike. Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I did great in football. They love me.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean, Brendan, when he was put into soccer, it just meant that kids could kick him without repercussions. All they all. While they called him veggie or spastic. And Brennan's bullying only got worse when he reached high school, when the other kids, in their disgustingly Australian way that we learned about in our Snowtown series, all these kids decided that Brendan was a target for their bodily fluids. One fellow teenager smeared Brendan with human feces, while others wiped snot on his clothes, coughed on him and spat in his hair.

[Marcus Parks]

I read a thing about, I guess Shaq used to do a hazing thing to rookies.

[Ed Larson]

Shaquille O'Neal.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Where he used to in a bucket for like months. And then on some level he dump full of Sha Duke.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a trough.

[Marcus Parks]

And I was just like thinking about that and they all laugh and stuff and I was like watching this thing and I was like, first of all that. So you kept a bucket of your in your house just to pour on some new.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Probably in the locker room, I guess.

[Marcus Parks]

But you kept this just cuz like you're a superstar. You're a multi millionaire leader of the team.

[Ed Larson]

Exactly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This could have been in college.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it was while he was on the like the Lakers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, really?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But that's the thing. If you're that rich, you can have a room in your house.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I guess you can have a guy that could take this to his house and make his house the house.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love Shaq. Sha's a great.

[Marcus Parks]

I just find it weird hanging out with your own all day. Yeah, men are weird. Boys are weird.

[Ed Larson]

Shaq doesn't live in a two bedroom apartment.

[Marcus Parks]

We don't know what he does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He definitely doesn't live in a two.

[Marcus Parks]

No. He has a multi man. He's a very large multiple. I'm just saying men are gross. And a boy. And then horseplay amongst boys is horrible.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Locker rooms are very scary place.

[Marcus Parks]

I very much liked being with the girls.

[Ed Larson]

Now eventually you shouldn't be in the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Girls locker room though.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, they invited me in my wig and well placed. Oh, Girdle definitely convinces the girls that I ain't ready to give massages.

[Ed Larson]

Eventually, Brendan Sokolak's parents just gave up and pulled him out of school in the 11th grade. The intense bullying he endured, however, left lasting scars that contributed to his pyromania. Because from what Joel found, there is the possibility of creating a monster when extreme bullying and childhood abuse meets asd. Additionally, after Brendan was fired from his groundskeeping job, he may have been in the throes of a neurodivergent symptom called rejection. Sensory dysphoria, in which a person is emotionally or psychically affected to an excessive degree after being left out or told that they aren't allowed in a place where they feel like they belong.

[Marcus Parks]

And pyromaniac episodes very often happen after a giant emotional change and shift very much so.

[Ed Larson]

Sometimes people with RSD become people pleasers or perfectionists to avoid being excluded or Treated badly for fucking up in any way whatsoever. But others, like Brendan, go in the entirely opposite direction by acting out destructively. See, in the months before the Black Saturday bushfire, neighbors noticed that Brendan had been setting larger and larger fires in his yard. And when a neighbor expressed concern over a gigantic bonfire that Brendan had lit by himself on New Year's Eve, Brendan didn't even acknowledge that the neighbor was talking to him. This all came in the year after Brendan had been fired from his job, which was very much a situation in which Brendan was told he wasn't allowed in a place where he thought he belonged.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll keep the ground. The ground's there. And you're gonna tell me you're gonna keep the ground for me. The man who keeps ground, I will set on fire.

[Ed Larson]

Now, one of the activities that those with ASD and ADHD engage in is something called stemming, which is a physical action that helps the individual deal with sensory overload. For me, I now recognize that chain smoking used to be my main stem. These days, I play with plasticine clay if I'm at home. I play with coins in my pockets if I'm in public, or I obsessively chew nicotine gum no matter what's going on.

[Marcus Parks]

You sure that's not just your crippling addiction to nicotine?

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's the thing. It's actually connected. Oh, yeah. People with ADHD are actually far more likely to be addicted to nicotine. It's the. The stage stimulant.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, I like playing with this rat.

[Ed Larson]

That. There you go. You're stimming.

[Marcus Parks]

I just. Honestly, I mostly clean my guns. Every time I'm nervous. I just clean my guns.

[Ed Larson]

For others, though, stimming can be far more harmful, manifesting as hair pulling, skin picking, or in the case of pyromaniacs, starting fires. See, stimming is a way to calm yourself down. And many pyromaniacs describe the act of starting a fire as something that alleviates a buildup of internal tendencies. Attention. I also loved setting fires when I was a kid and was, in fact, almost arrested when I was 13 for lighting a dumpster on fire at my brother's track meet on the campus of South Plains College in leveland Texas, because I was so incredibly, mind numbingly bored and that boredom was causing anxiety.

[Marcus Parks]

You're also calling out for attention. It's about like, I know my brother's bigger, stronger, more handsome than me. He's more loved than me. I'm gonna set this fire because then you're all Gonna come look at Marcus because Marcus needs some attention.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, no, it wasn't at all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love to watch a bird.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I loved being left alone. No, it was. Yeah, Me and a friend of mine, we were just wandering around. We saw a dumpster, and I was like, hey, why don't we light it on fire? That could be, like, a lot of fun if we just lit that thing on fire. Let's light that thing on fire. And then we decided to light it on fire, and the fire didn't really work out. And so, like, we went across the street to this tennis court where there were some tennis balls. We started throwing tennis balls at each other, and then we heard a big boom, which was an aerosol can exploding because the dumpster had very much lit on fire. And then while we were staring at it, that's when we got caught.

[Henry Zabrowski]

A buddy of mine lit a tennis ball on fire, threw it in the yard across the street, and the whole yard caught fire. That was awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

That very frightening. Rob is sitting there being like, I can't believe these men. I am not. I never set a public fire.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm very lucky that Florida is as moist as it is.

[Marcus Parks]

I never set a fire.

[Ed Larson]

I'm very lucky. I grew up in, like, a wet period in west Texas, like, where it was raining all the time. But if I would have grown up in the last 20 years, wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You really could have killed some people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We used to go behind Publix and steal all the pallets of wood that, you know, that they would just leave outside. Then we bring them in the middle of the woods and have giant bonfires.

[Marcus Parks]

Different. I went to many bonfires.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Bonfires are different than just like, hey, I want to set that thing on fire, and let's go set that thing on fire.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We would put, like, random in it.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, of course.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, my God. Right after Christmas, we love. Oh, lighting up everyone's trees. That was always the best bonfire of the year. Like January, when we all lit our Christmas trees on fire, but one wouldn't take the ornaments off. And so it was a lot of smoke.

[Ed Larson]

A lot of weird plastic. Plastic. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

My God, our lives are just so weird.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're very lucky.

[Marcus Parks]

From your grave on April 18, sinners are coming. From Oscar nominated filmmaker Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther and Creed, starring Michael B. Jordan, comes the motion picture event of the year. Twin brothers smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, return to their hometown for a fresh start, only to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Discover that an unspeakable evil is waiting.

[Marcus Parks]

To welcome them back. Don't miss the genre bending thrill ride. Shot with IMAX film cameras, Sinners arrives only in theaters on April 18th. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the U.S. u.S. With thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. Trees everywhere and Trees for the Fast Growing Trees has all the plants your yard needs. From fruit trees to shrubs. I do want some shrubs. Fast Growing Trees. They get those shrubs to me. Go online and I buy these trees and Fast Growing Trees send these shrubs to me. They make it easy to get your dream yard. So many shrubs. Shrubs. Order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door. Just a few days without ever leaving home. My shrubs are lit right now. You have no idea these shrubs coming in out of the house. They're all just hanging out. Honestly, it's like spring break for shrubs in my backyard right now. Thanks Fast Growing Trees. Because I do want some shrubs. I want some shrubs. Fast Growing Trees will send those shrubs to me. You go this spring. They have the best deals for your yard. Up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using code left at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fast growing trees.com using the code left at checkout fast growing trees.com code left now is the perfect time to plant. Use left to save. Today offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions made apply. Do you say data or data? I don't know. However you say it though, it's time to stop overpaying for your monthly data plan with Mint Mobile. I guess I say data. I never thought about it until this moment. Now I'm locked in and obsessed. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint mobile. It's only 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data. Ah, data. Is that it? Data. Ah man, what do I. How do I data. Anyways, you get unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G. 5G network. That's 5G's or as I like to call them, geese. All right. Mint Mobile is going to save you money. Data. Data. Anything you want. But whatever you it is you need, talking wise, Mint Mobile. It does it. No matter how you say it, don't overpay for it. Shop data [e-mail] lpotl that's mintmobile.com lpotl upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Brendan Sokolak was certainly autistic, but intellectually, Brendan was said to have the mental capacity of an eight year old. Brendan, however, was also more clever than he let on. And he could also be extremely manipulative if he wanted to be. See, as I said earlier, Brynn was a perfectly capable person, but he was known to play up his disabilities if it suited his needs. He would froth at the mouth or he would use a mentally disabled voice so people would underestimate also use it to get out of trouble at work. As such, Brendan began playing up his disability very soon after his arrest for one of the Black Saturday bushfires. Because I think it may have taken him a bit to remember that the fire he'd started had killed 11 people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And the way they talked about it too is that he really, it's just because he does not. He truly did not grasp that there was consequences like, and there, that's what they kind of try to get him on legally. All these guys, they all just kind of be like, I never thought the fire would consume half the city. And it's like because you, you weren't doing that, you were following an extreme lack of impulse control.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That just caused you to set a bunch of fires.

[Ed Larson]

Now, after investigators spoke with his neighbors and discovered Brendan's penchant for fires and skulking, it was decided that there was enough circumstantial evidence to arrest Brendan for starting the fatal bushfire that he himself had called into emergency services services. Now, Brendan didn't get nervous or anxious like most people do when they get arrested, nor did he react when he was read his rights. But outside of his non reaction, Brendan was reportedly carrying relatively normal conversations with the police who arrested him.

[Marcus Parks]

He actively tried to negotiate with the police officer to say, hey, can you just tell people that I found the fire and that I'm a hero?

[Ed Larson]

But during his videotaped intake, when Brendan knew people were watching, he suddenly became more disabled by slurring his speech and pretending like he didn't understand what he was being told. Once the camera was off, however, Brendan would drop the slur, stop drooling and return to the relatively normal way of conversating that he'd engaged in before.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a great move.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. I just want to say to all you husbands out there, they know now every single time you try to do something that I've tried to do that just act comatose.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You know, in the hopes that maybe she just go away and. Yeah, forget about it.

[Marcus Parks]

But guess what? That wife, she's there.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And she knows that you know how to do better. Especially if you run like a business. Because then she's just like, well, then your business should be taken from you and your life should end. And you should not, in terms of your career should ended. You should just become a simpleton that lives as a drifter. If you are incapable of doing this.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And you could use that again. Because I'm. When I used to have to ride the Greyhound bus all the time, I would like, while they're loading on the bus, I'd get in, you know, and I grab a seat and then I, you know, if there was a seat open next to me, I would just like, tend to like, chew on my lips and.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And like be all weird and crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

You also taught me the skill that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Nobody would sit next to me. And then it worked.

[Marcus Parks]

You taught me the skill of acting sick.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

The key on a bus, if you want to sit by yourself, you go.

[Henry Zabrowski]

As soon as the bus takes off, you're normal.

[Ed Larson]

Now, eventually, Brendan did take credit for starting the fire, but he maintained that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. Understanding, he said that he'd been smoking a cigarette while driving down a gravel road and the bumpiness was causing his car to shake. The ember of his cigarette popped off amidst the bumps. So Brendan, still driving, used a piece of paper to gather up the ember, which he then threw out the window. The paper then ignited and when Brendan looked in his rear view, he saw the massive bushfire and called emergency services.

[Marcus Parks]

Never use a piece of paper to pick up a cherry from a cigarette. Yes. You don't do. Yeah, right. I'll always be haunted by. One time we were shooting late for A to Z back in the day.

[Ed Larson]

A to M. A to M and please.

[Marcus Parks]

And we were coming through Topanga Canyon and they have these signs everywhere that say, don't smoke. Don't throw cigarettes out because it's dry land. And I was half asleep. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. This is when I was smoking cigarettes. I was driving and I was smoking. Didn't even think about it. I threw the cigarette out the window and I was. I know. Oh, fuck. And I pull the car all the way around and I go. And I'm walking through the brush. This like 2:30 in the morning looking for the cigarette, trying to make sure I didn't set anything on. I'm, like, walking around, I was like, oh, God. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. And then I remember having to go to a hotel room, because that's where we're staying. We were staying on this side of town. And I went into the hotel room just, like, watching the news all night.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Being like, please don't.

[Marcus Parks]

Please don't let me have burnt down the entire Pacific Palaces.

[Ed Larson]

Turns out, no, it was just some dickhead with an open fire pit.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Remember when we almost lit Adam's apartment building on fire during Doll Maker?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I remember, yeah. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We put, like, four candles in the same cup, and then they all just, like, IGN together and produce this giant flame. And then we hit it.

[Marcus Parks]

Ceiling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was a mess. It was real close one.

[Marcus Parks]

It really was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone would have died in that house. Wow. A lot of near misses today, you know. Really is amazing. That's the thing.

[Ed Larson]

Life's full of near misses until it's not.

[Marcus Parks]

It kind of just makes my, like, skin both crawl and tingle thinking about it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, to me, Brendan's excuse sounds like utter horseshit. But Brendan's lawyer, a woman with the incredibly Australian name of Selena McCrickard, thought differently. Selena McCracken, attorney at law See, we know that the intellectually disabled and people with mental disorders, they get framed for crimes they didn't commit quite frequently. And they often confess to those crimes because they think if they just admit to it, the cops will leave them alone and they'll be sent home. And the cops actually lie to people and tell them this. That's what happened with Jesse Misskeli, West Memphis 3. You just tell us what you did, and you can go home and we'll.

[Marcus Parks]

Get you out of here.

[Ed Larson]

Now, I could be wrong here, but in the many false confession stories I've read, people who falsely confess to crimes usually confess to the crimes instead of trying to make up an excuse, like Brendan did. But Brendan's lawyer, Selena McCreckerd, believed that Brendan had been pressured into taking the blame for the brush fire, because, admittedly, the only pieces of evidence were his call to emergency services, his reputation as a firebug, and his half confession to being the Mr. Bean of Australian wilderness fires.

[Marcus Parks]

He also lived right next to the ex that what was. I think it's called the. I forget what it's called. The term of where the fire starts. There's a good term where he lived close to the. One of the starting points of the fire. And then he also was the first person to report the fire.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So I don't know. I'm not going to say that he did it, but he did it. Isn't that nice?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that is nice.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm not a judge.

[Ed Larson]

There was, however, one more piece to this story. Story.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

See, as I said earlier, Brendan was the worst kind of skulker. And when police searched his home computer, they found not only lots of photos of firefighters fighting fires, which is great.

[Marcus Parks]

We. I remember when you were researching 911, that must have been your whole computer. Just.

[Ed Larson]

You thought. You think I just saved. You know, there really weren't that many fires.

[Marcus Parks]

There was one big one, two and third.

[Ed Larson]

The third one or many pictures of the firefighters fighting fires.

[Marcus Parks]

I see. I'm squirting it.

[Ed Larson]

Not really. Not really.

[Marcus Parks]

They had to. Right?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, it was so high up. How are they going to squirt it?

[Marcus Parks]

They shoot it up.

[Ed Larson]

They were. They were inside.

[Marcus Parks]

Aim it up.

[Ed Larson]

They were inside squirting it.

[Marcus Parks]

Someone do better. Someone should have worked harder. Someone should have made it wetter. Where was the water?

[Ed Larson]

They found copious amounts of child pornography on. On Brendan's computer.

[Marcus Parks]

A bit of a smoking gun.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Not necessarily for pyromania, but for pedophilia.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. For child pornography? Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Doesn't make you look innocent.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm not a pyromaniac. I just want to have sex with this baby, that's all.

[Ed Larson]

Additionally, when investigators looked deeper into Brendan's past, they found that he had been a volunteer firefighter in the late 80s. He had, however, been kicked out for dishonest conduct, meaning he'd started several fires that he and his fellow volunteers would then have to put out.

[Marcus Parks]

He's job creating.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. But once Brendan's trial came around, it didn't seem like he was all that worried about prison. He would often fake falling asleep, then startle himself awake because he thought it was funny.

[Marcus Parks]

It is, objectively.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

My favorite bit.

[Ed Larson]

And that was in addition to the times he'd take loud sips of water in court and let out an audible after each one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know he's a bad guy. The trolling is.

[Ed Larson]

It is great.

[Marcus Parks]

You don't do that. I do that at home sometimes for fun.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I know you do it. No, you've done it in my presence, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And ever since I was a kid, every time I bend down or sit down, I just go, ah, yeah. Now I just do.

[Ed Larson]

It naturally happens. Yeah. Now, Brendan went on the stand himself and repeated his story about starting the fire with a cigarette. But the fire experts who also testified said that the blaze in Brendan's neighborhood, the one that killed 11 people, did not start with a cigarette. So either Brendan was lying about how the fire started or had falsely confessed. And al. But also, I mean, when you do look at his story, technically it wasn't a cigarette that started it. It was a piece of paper that was lit on fire by a cigarette. But in the end, I think it was probably the child pornography on Brendan's computer that pushed this whole caper over the edge. No way.

[Marcus Parks]

Ye seemed to seem to color the defense.

[Ed Larson]

That's, you know, as far as like whether he started the fire or not, it's just. Yeah, the child pornography, yes, definitely has an effect. But in the end, because of his disabilities, he was given a lenient sentence of 17 years and nine months in a maximum security prison for intellectually disabled prisoners. He was, however, released just last year after serving only 14 years on the condition that he lived live at least 80 km from the town where he was convicted of starting a fire that killed 11 people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now he's got to take a highway and you'll never do that. He'll never set a fire again.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They should have banished him to Batavia's graveyard.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You now live in SeaWorld. No, he's a, he's an interesting character because I will see, see how it like rolls out because it seems like pyromania is a fairly impulse driven crime.

[Ed Larson]

So we'll see what happens. Oh, it's. I think it's a very much an impulse driven crime.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Brendan Sokolak didn't have his life together at all. But that's not the case for all pyromaniacs. For example, one of the most prolific pyromaniacs in American history, held a job in advertising, but began a six month arson spree while going through a particularly rough divorce. Divorce. That man was Paul Keller, who was 27 years old at the time.

[Marcus Parks]

Paul Keller is one of those guys when he's one of those like early 90s, 27 going on 49.

[Ed Larson]

Oh yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

He looks like a full on, like adult. And let's just say I'm just gonna clear up a couple things. He got the job in advertising because his dad, that was his dad's company and he gave him something to do.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Because Paul Keller was an absolute utter baby maniac. He showed up at the house, he tortured the entire family throughout his entire childhood. He was violent, uncontrollable. They couldn't know what. He would beat everyone he Beat his mother, he beat his father.

[Ed Larson]

I had a feeling.

[Marcus Parks]

And they. And Paul Keller, though, but he'd always be like, you know, people don't understand me.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you know, yeah, that's what he sees. He'd say, you know, like, I'm. I'm. Like, I'm not a bad. Well, I'm kind of a bad guy, but I'm not a criminal.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm not a criminal. I just set fires. What he was doing is he says that he was checking the firefighters abilities to do their jobs, and he was also checking to see if their new abilities, equipment was up to par.

[Ed Larson]

So in late 1992 and early 1993, Keller set 76 fires, causing $30 million in property damage. This was all in Seattle, Washington. Somewhat of a purist, Keller would only start fires on the outside of buildings without using accelerants. Keller would drive around aimlessly until he would see cardboard or other flammable material near a building. Then he would say to himself, setting this fire, that's a no brainer. He set these fires because people were stupid for leaving the flammable material available.

[Marcus Parks]

If they didn't want. If that house didn't want me to set fire to it, why was it dressed that way? You know, he was a. He was a unrepentant. Like, he was very impulsive. But his thing really was his fascination with firefighter technology and firefighters in general. What he would say all the time was, he's like, yeah, I just kind of like, I said that on fire. So a piece of fiberglass there and I set it on fire because I wanted to see if their new C19 flow system really can come around and really zip, zap, zap this whole thing. I'm not a pyromaniac. I am a stress tester for the Seattle fire department. That's what his whole shtick was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he figured Seattle with the rain would be fine.

[Marcus Parks]

No fires go, yeah, and Seattle, it's.

[Ed Larson]

More of a drizzle than a constant rain.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I view it like a. Like a. Like a drip.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's like a.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like a moist. Like a drip. It's like a condensation. It's.

[Ed Larson]

It's a moist town. Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I hate when you say the word drip.

[Marcus Parks]

Drip.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And when you say moist.

[Ed Larson]

Moist. Now, the portrait that Keller presented to the world was one of a devout Lutheran who loved singing in the choir, loved listening to gospel music. But in private, Keller was an alcoholic pothead who actually burned. Burned down several Lutheran churches. The church burning however, was not even close to Keller's biggest crime. On September 22, 1992, Paul Keller set a retirement home on fire and killed three little old ladies named Mary, Adeline and Bertha. After a composite. I mean, it's just the most little old lady names you can get.

[Marcus Parks]

You could just see it with their babushkas just refusing to move when the fires come. Just. Just being like, no, I wait for puddings. I will not. I die here.

[Ed Larson]

After a composite sketch was released of the perpetrator, Keller's own father recognized him and turned him into the police. From what it sounds like from what you were saying, seems like he was waiting for an excuse.

[Marcus Parks]

If you look at the. Honestly, there was a. There's two documentaries. One was in that Evil Lives here show that covered this guy. Another one was. It was called Portrait of an Arsonist. His father is the most sad man you've ever met. He's cry, he's crying. He's so upset that it was his son. And also, you very rarely see it too, with the father giving up the son. Cuz largely they would come and try to cover up the crimes, as we've seen with every other criminal family that we've seen. But he, like Paul Keller, was just such a. He was filled with rage and he set fires. He also did really believe he was correct. Correct. Yeah, he believed he was correct. And he was. He did not. He still does not understand why he was in jail.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Keller was soon after found guilty of 32 counts of arson and was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his crimes and is eligible for parole in the far flung year of 2079.

[Marcus Parks]

And they tried to diagnose him with ASD and he wouldn't do the testing because again, his whole thing is I'm not autistic. I am just a devoted fan of cataloging firefighting equipment, firefighting techniques, firefighter locations and fire. And he knew each station.

[Ed Larson]

I only have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything firefighting.

[Marcus Parks]

And so he's like that where it was all about this, like fantasy. But I believe that Paul Keller needs to stay in jail.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I think that Paul Keller is one of those where he's not a Brendan Sackalock, where he's. I think Brendan Sack was quite disabled.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I think he was halfway there.

[Marcus Parks]

He knew he had a foot outside, but he kind of. He still was jacked up.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Where it's like this dude is. He knows way more.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Than what he's showing because he'd always be like I blacked out. I was getting drunk. I, you know, I blame all this in the pot and the booze. But then he'd show up at one of the scene of the fires and he'd tell them every single moment of the night. And he knew every single thing. And then he did the same thing. I don't remember until he showed up at the building. He's like, oh, yeah. Went up to this side and went like this. The flames are about this high. He was just like, well, he loved it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That music video he made was amazing. The reverse Mohawk. He's dancing in the sewers and stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

Get away, get away, get away, get away now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I'm the. No, no, I'm the fire starter.

[Ed Larson]

Twisted fire starter.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's right.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Prodigy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was a prodigy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. That guy died?

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. Really?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Fire.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

No, actually, suicide. Actually. Suicide by fire.

[Marcus Parks]

No, actually, by ice.

[Ed Larson]

So now for our last pyromaniac today.

[Marcus Parks]

Yay.

[Ed Larson]

And this guy fucking terrifies me. We're gonna go all the way back to the 1970s, when a teenager named Peter Dinsdale terrorized the Yorkshire port town of Hull over the course of six years with fires that killed 26 people. Now, Peter Dinsdale was dealt a bad hand for from the beginning. Born with a defect that caused him to limp and hold his right arm across his chest, he was literally dealt a bad hand. You know, I actually didn't. I like that one. I didn't think about the pun when I wrote that. That pun was unintentional. I want everyone to know that the pun, the pun was unintentional. 100% no intention behind that pun. You gotta believe me. You gotta believe me.

[Marcus Parks]

There's something wrong with the hand. The hand's not. Not bad.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's just.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not at the. It's not like the other hand.

[Ed Larson]

It's unintentional. Dinsdale was referred to as the freak by his own mother, who sent him to live with his grandmother at the age of three. Now, the children of Yorkshire were no kinder than Dinsdale's mother.

[Marcus Parks]

Definitely not. I can't imagine a child from Yorkshire having anything but cruel thoughts.

[Ed Larson]

See, yeah, this is the bland of Fred and Rose West. This is the land of Peter Sutcliffe. Like, it's, it's. It's. Is a. It's a cruel land.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's like they tried to name it hell, but their horrible accents made it whole.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Yorkshire is the reason, like, that, that's the reason why, like, England loses all rights to, like, make fun of America.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, you got one, too.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you have one, too. You have your own little America right in the middle of your country. Now, because of Peter's low self esteem and quiet demeanor, he quickly earned the nickname of Daffodil, left Peter, and was bullied mercilessly for his disabilities. But unlike Brendan Sokolak, who waited until his 30s to act out, Peter Dinsdale's pyromania started at a young age. Before Dinsdale even reached his teenage years, he'd started a fire in a timber yard and had confessed to setting a shopping mall on fire. A fire that caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages. By the time Peter was a teenager, he was bouncing between jobs, working on construction sites, worked at the local pig market.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oink, oink.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just a pig acts like a man.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And incredibly, he got. I will never understand why people give guys like this jobs as babysitters.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what?

[Ed Larson]

Gan also was a babysitter.

[Marcus Parks]

From what I've heard from people with kids, is that like you get so desperate to leave the house.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

At some point you couldn't even care less who's there.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I think that you just leave them with anyone.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, you know what? The regular Nancy canceled. I'm sorry. This is a guy that I met. His name is Cyclone. He. That's all. I know him. He seems like a nice guy. We got to go to dinner. All right, we're going out. We're gonna have one night out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My babysitter was Mel Brooks.

[Marcus Parks]

Whoa. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not in real life.

[Ed Larson]

The vhs mine was Evil Dead. They didn't know that was my babysitter, but, yeah, he was.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey.

[Ed Larson]

Now, partly, Peter gained the daft nickname because he would do things that seemed very odd. Like the time he brought a child home that he was supposed to be babysitting. He told people that the child was his son, even though the child was obviously of a different race.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just that real different chains come to the top.

[Ed Larson]

But some people thought that Peter's daphness may have been an act, something that Dinsdale turned on and off when it suited him, just like Brendan saw Sokolak did. Reportedly, Dinsdale would tell people that they would never guess what he'd been up to. Which to me meant that he was very aware of the power of his pyromania.

[Marcus Parks]

If you ever say those terms to me, Marcus, I know for a fact it's that you're setting fires. And you ever be like, you would never guess what I've been up to, that's Never gonna be good.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's never gonna be good. Yeah, it's always going to be starting and not always going to be starting fires, but it's.

[Marcus Parks]

You'd never guess what I've been getting into now.

[Ed Larson]

Even though Peter Dinsdale wasn't the brightest person in general, he was able to get away with arson and murder for six years for three simple reasons. Firstly, he only set fires in poor neighborhoods. And those fires only killed poor people, which, as we know, results in cursory investigations at best.

[Marcus Parks]

Marcus, please. Roasted persons.

[Ed Larson]

But the other side of that coin is that the people in Dinsdale's neighborhood knew that he was, at the very least, setting fires, even if they didn't know he was setting the deadly ones. But Densdale was not reported for the longest time because the locals distrusted and hated the police.

[Marcus Parks]

And again, fire starting and firebug activity was kind of seen as harmless boy stuff.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But mostly, Dinsdale evaded capture because he was one of those people who are really, really good at one thing. And when it comes to arson, Dinsdale knew how to make the fires look accidental, at least at first glance. As such, the only fire he set that was ruled arson at the time was the one that got him caught.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like Ed with Connect 4.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I hear you're like, incredible at Connect 4.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can't be beat.

[Marcus Parks]

He's the only. I don't know, understand, like, that's the closest I'd say to that you'd be on the spectrum is the fact that you see everything in just four circles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Fours, fours and lines. And yeah, I don't know why I'm so good at it, but I really so good@connect4. I once beat this guy 45 times in a row and it made him insane.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it was like, wild. I remember when used to bring it out. Used to bring it out at the creek and used to just play people all night, collect Connect Four. And people just go, like, I don't understand. And you just sat there like a silent prodigy. Just like, click, click, click, click.

[Ed Larson]

You ever do it for money?

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I don't gamble.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Marcus Parks]

That's not gambling, dude. That's sport.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If there was like a prize and like a contest, I would do that.

[Marcus Parks]

We should set it up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure. But then you'd have to beat me.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And if you win, you get the money and then you bring it. Put it back in the company.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, great. Set it up.

[Ed Larson]

All right, sounds good. Beat ed at Connect 4. Coming 20, 26.

[Marcus Parks]

That'd be awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Now Dinsdale had always been a truly dangerous individual as his first murder by arson was committed when he was just 12 years old. And it's important to remember that all of the arsons I'm going to talk about, he did before he was the age of 20, like he was a teenager during all of this.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a young man's game.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I suppose so.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You don't see any like 75 year olds, like pyromaniacs.

[Marcus Parks]

New ones?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, new ones, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They, they always end up catching themselves on fire by at least 40, you.

[Marcus Parks]

Know what is suspenders?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Super flammable.

[Ed Larson]

In 1973, Dinsdale set fire to a house belonging to a family called the Elleringtons, who had a disabled 6 year old boy who rode the bus to school with Peter. By the time the Ellerington smelled smoke shortly before 7am the flames were already too powerful and their child died in his room. When Dinsdale confessed to the crime after his arrest and was asked for his motivation, he said he done it for no real reason at all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now do you think he was trying to kill the people or do you think he was just trying to set fires?

[Ed Larson]

It's unclear. It's very, actually very unclear with Dinsdale, but he did almost. He mostly focused on setting fires when people were at home. So I think he loved the fires and I think he also liked the fact that people died in the fires.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's interesting, interesting because they all, every one of them have said vaguely the same thing, that the impulse, they swear that the impulse to start the fire has nothing to do with the outcome of the fire. They're all just like, I just had fires.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But Densdale also tended to set fires at homes when people are home and specifically families.

[Marcus Parks]

That's just because it's fun to hear him everybody screaming. And so I understand that. I get that, like the idea of watching a whole neighborhood burn. It's. I get it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If you know everyone's home film though, that is, that is murder.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's definitely murder. And as we'll go through it, there's definitely, there's absolute definite murders here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, good.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So that the ambiguity, the ambiguity will disappear soon enough.

[Marcus Parks]

Great. No child porn in this one.

[Ed Larson]

No. Now, a few months after his first fatal fire, Peter went out one night and spent the evening walking around with a can of his favorite accelerant parents paraffin oil, which is a highly flammable substance used in cosmetics. See, like some pyromaniacs Peter had a physical feeling associated with his urges. And he claimed that when his fingers began to tingle, that was his sign that the location he come upon was the one where setting a fire would give him the most pleasure.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a sign of diabetes.

[Ed Larson]

Tingling fingers.

[Marcus Parks]

You gotta be careful take on toes. I feel like also just losing the fingers.

[Ed Larson]

If he just. You. So you're saying if he would have cut off all his fingers, he wouldn't be setting any more fires?

[Marcus Parks]

Wait a second. Does this come from the hand, the bad hand?

[Ed Larson]

I think it just twistes all of his fingers.

[Marcus Parks]

But what if all of this came.

[Ed Larson]

It wasn't. And he didn't have a bad hand, is just that his arm was like he had that.

[Marcus Parks]

What if it's evil? What if that was where it all started? It's the bad hand.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, it definitely explains the tingles.

[Marcus Parks]

Every time he went to the hand, it was like, sh. Another fire. Shut another fire. Don't you want to shoot another fire?

[Ed Larson]

So you believe that his hand was possessed?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Do you never do that? I that with Natalie, she gets really concerned. I've been doing this kind of funny thing where sometimes if I say something really upsetting, she gets upset in the car if I say like an angry thing. So what I've been doing is I say it through my hand instead of saying it out loud and then it kind of cuts some of the heat.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, you mean when you're. When you're yelling at like other drivers? Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Natalie says she's super scared. I literally do it because I think it's funny. And she like, it just makes it more real.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, because it says there's like a lot of intention behind it.

[Marcus Parks]

She said something like legitimately like, please stop with the hand talking. And I was just like, but why? It's funny. And she's like, I just feel like you're. You're gonna escape into it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

By the way, looking this up right now, Paraffin oil is only 16.99 a gallon on Amazon.

[Ed Larson]

It's not bad. It's really not bad.

[Marcus Parks]

You can start your Pyromania journey in 48 hours thanks to Jeff Bezos. Wow.

[Ed Larson]

And this wonderful world we live in.

[Marcus Parks]

Today, it's a great big beautiful tomorrow.

[Ed Larson]

Now, as it happened on the night of his second murder by fire, Peter's pre teen fingers began to tingle as he walked by the house of a 72 year old hermit with gangrenous legs named Arch Arthur Smith, who had no relation whatsoever to Peter Dinsdale.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Are we sure that's not Smythe.

[Ed Larson]

I think it's Smith.

[Marcus Parks]

It's British Smith.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, British Smith. Yeah, it's the old British spelling, not smelling. Spelling. Old British smelling is an entirely different show.

[Marcus Parks]

Man was old British smelling.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Who's the gangrene?

[Ed Larson]

Yep. Well, even so, Dinsdale climbed in through the window, covered the room where Arthur was sleeping in peril and oil, and set the old man on fire before leaving through the front door. The investigation, however, deemed a faulty oil heater as the cause of the fatal fire. About two weeks after the Smith fire, Peter broke into the home of a man named David Brewer and lit his house on fire while Brewer was in the bathroom.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, no, not. Well, don't kill me while I'm taking.

[Ed Larson]

A. Yeah, what would you prefer?

[Marcus Parks]

On my knees with a gun in my mouth. Because I have led the revolution to this point.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that sounds nice. That's not gonna happen though.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no. It's gonna be diabetes.

[Ed Larson]

When Brewer returned to his living room, the flames were already large enough to catch his clothes on fire. He ran outside screaming and subsequently died from his burns. But the fire was blamed on Brewer drying his clothes too close to the fireplace. Had to have been in this case. However, Brewer and Dinsdale did have a connection. Prior to the fire. Dinsdale, who was just 13 at the time, he had put himself in the middle of an argument between Brewer and a neighborhood boy who kept pet pigeons. For some reason, Peter offered to kill the boy's pigeons. I suppose to end the argument, I.

[Marcus Parks]

Could always just kill all the pigeons.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, all right.

[Marcus Parks]

That'd be fun.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But for this comment, Brewer threatened to punch Dinsdale if he. He did so, couple of days later, Dinsdale set the fire that killed Brewer, then strangled the boys pigeons to death a couple of weeks after that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Finally, a pyromaniac I don't relate to.

[Marcus Parks]

Pigeons. Got to be. I mean, like, I guess they're easy to kill, but it's got to be a rough afternoon.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Just killing a bunch of pigeons. Strangling the pigeons. Yeah. No, it's going to be a rough afternoon.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a bad guy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They should have sick Mike Tyson on this.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, wow. It would have if. If Mike Tyson punched a little British boy, he'd explod like his skin would just separate from his bones.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Peter Dinsdale settled down on killing people with fire for a while after the Brewer murder. But after staying quiet for a year, Dinsdale's fingers began tingling as he walked by the home of an 82 year old widow named Elizabeth Rokar. Peter later admitted that he'd snuck into the widow's house through the cat door and set the old lady's bed on fire while she she was sleeping, causing eventual death by smoke inhalation. Upon discovering that the fire started in the bed, though, investigators chalked up the incident to the widow falling asleep while smoking, despite the fact that the widow's family told them that the widow did not smoke.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but she's smoking now, right? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everybody. Sorry. Firefighter.

[Ed Larson]

Firefighter humor.

[Marcus Parks]

It just gallows humor.

[Ed Larson]

But since the widow wasn't important enough, no further investigation was done and Peter was free to continue killing. Now, like a lot of killers, Dinsdale started off strong, but tried to tamp down his urges. After the initial spree, two and a half years went by without a fatal house fire started by Dinsdale. But eventually the desire won out. On June 3, 1976, Peter, now aged 16, snuck into a house where an old lady was babysitting her grandchildren. The woman had just put her infant grandson to bed upstairs when Peter doused the cupboard under the stairs with paraffin oil and set it on fire. The baby was trapped and died in the flames. Now, Peter set another fire about six months later that killed another baby. But his most murderous fire came just three days after the murder of that same second baby when Dendale set fire to a retirement home. Peter later said that he was riding his bike around Hull while carrying a bottle of paraffin oil. Looking specifically for a large house to burn. He came across Winsley Lodge, the retirement home where he broke a window, poured oil on the floor, set it on fire, and rode away. Eleven old men burned to death in the this fire. But again, arson was not suspected. Instead, the fire was blamed on a plumber who was working with a blowtorch in the boiler room. This fire, however, is the one that Dinsdale may have just confessed to without actually doing it, as his disabled arm would have made carrying a bottle of paraffin oil while riding his bike quite difficult. But for me, that's a little infantilizing, cuz disabled people find ways to make it work every single day.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, backpack.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he sent multiple. He's done many fires.

[Ed Larson]

Many, many fires.

[Marcus Parks]

And he's traveled on his bike before. There's no way that that's the one that he just couldn't do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, you see someone riding around a bike with a big gallon of oil.

[Ed Larson]

Ask him some questions.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Hey, what are you doing? Hey, stop covering my grandmother in oil unless you're going to fuck the hell out of her. And honestly, I hope that you do, because she deserves it. Grandma hasn't been lubed up. She hasn't had one of those big booty like, lube days in a long time. So please, have your way with her.

[Ed Larson]

Keep going with us.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just saying, sometimes you got to get. Especially the wider the butt, the more oil you slap on there and you slapping it back and forth like blue puddles. Oil on there. It's fun to do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Is paraffin oil a good lubricant?

[Marcus Parks]

Only if you're looking to set her on fire afterwards, and I'm not. I'm looking to move on.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you're just looking to make sure that your grandmother is sexually satisfied.

[Marcus Parks]

All I want is for some man to dig up my grandmother and have sex with her bones, so. So that maybe that cunt could smile. Marcus.

[Ed Larson]

From there, Dinsdale set fire after fire, burning a swath of murderous destruction across the Yorkshire town of Hull. The targets were chosen randomly. Anytime Peter got the tingling in his fingers, and all the fires were blamed on anything but arson. While he certainly started many fires by breaking into homes, Dinsdale also took to squirting paraffin through the mail slots before shoving in pieces of paper that he'd lit on fire to ignite the flame. In one case, a mail slot fire resulted in an explosion that killed four people. A mother and her three children. But the fire was blamed on the kids playing with the container of lighter fluid that had been on a shelf near the front door.

[Henry Zabrowski]

These fucking hull cops suck.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like, I mean, like, how many? They're like, oh, we just live in the most flammable town ever, you know?

[Marcus Parks]

Like what?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, because there was at one point, there was like, four within, like, two months. Yeah. Where, like, all these people were dying in these horrible fires, and it's like.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, yeah, they can't figure it out. It's hard to figure out of arson. And also, I think it just comes to truly once, if you look too hard and it found out you missed this throughout all of these crimes, then you are even more as a police officer. So they legitimately just decided to kind of be like, maybe this will end. Yeah, I feel like there's a little bit of, like, you know, these firebugs, they go in and out, they. They kill 20, 30 people and then they stop.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This kid's, like, one of the most prolific serial killers we've ever covered.

[Marcus Parks]

Right. This man's like a terrorist.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he's. He's up there. He's actually one of the most Prolific killers in British history.

[Marcus Parks]

Crazy that crazy and did it by. And I. I honestly can see why pyromania works for people that have these issues and where the way works for like people that have this style of personality disorders where they are legitimately like A small little action leads to a lot of attention.

[Ed Larson]

Now, the first time arson was ever suspected in a fire started by Peter Dinsdale was when he burned down his 10th house by again using the mail slot. This fire resulted in the deaths of three young siblings by the surname of Hasty, and all of them took about two weeks in the burn unit to die. But because the Hasty fire was a lot more chaotic and couldn't be blamed on anything else other than arson, a detective superintendent named Ronald Sager decided that a full investigation was finally warranted. Now, upon arriving at the scene, DS Sager noticed matches near the front door's mail slot and he smelled the distinctive scent of paint. Paraffin oil. Later it was discovered that Dinsdale had poured several liters of paraffin oil throughout the Hasty house and had started the fire through the mail slot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You could say that it was hastily set.

[Marcus Parks]

Correct? You would be correct.

[Ed Larson]

You would be very, very correct in that. The light bulb moment, however, came when Sager discovered, upon questioning neighbors that the Hasties were not a well liked family. The father, Tommy Hastie, was a career petty criminal and the eldest, Hasty Boy, one of the victims in the fire. Fifteen years old, he had also begun a life of crime. Almost worse, though, were the two youngest hasty siblings, aged 12 and 8, who were actually kind of little terrorists in the neighborhood, true agents of chaos. It'd throw rocks at old people, they'd piss through mail slots, they'd shit on doorsteps, they would rob local children of their pocket money.

[Marcus Parks]

I say set them on fire. Liar. That's what I say.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a larrikin.

[Ed Larson]

It's, it's, you know, this is beyond, like, I don't know, because American, that's Australian. Larkins to me seem a little more like, Larkins don't throw rocks at old ladies.

[Marcus Parks]

American's heart still sings a song of freedom.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Isn't it crazy, though? It kills a bunch of nice people, they don't investigate it, but he kills three, you're like, I think this is murder.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Because he started to see, like, oh, there's motive here. Like, everyone hated the Hasty family. DS Sager couldn't find anyone in the neighborhood that didn't have at least like some sort of grudge against at least one member of the family. The Mother had even received a threatening letter about a month before the fire. Written on a piece of cardboard cut from a cereal box, it read, quote.

[Marcus Parks]

A family of fucking rubbish. We all. I hate you. You should all live on an island. Devil's Island. But I'm not kidding. But I promised you a bomb, and by hell, I'm not kidding. So why don't you just flip what you've got the chance. We can't get you out normally, then we'll bastard well bomb you out and it's too good for you.

[Ed Larson]

But when they analyzed the handwriting in the note, it was sent by a little old lady who lived up the street.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I did this. A bomb. This ain't the first time. I've done it a lot and I caught blocking harassment by cardboard.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know it's re. You mean it when you rip open a cereal box and you just start.

[Marcus Parks]

Running on the inside? Rubbish.

[Ed Larson]

And I know all of our Yorkshire listeners right now are just saying, yep, that's. That's Yorkshire.

[Marcus Parks]

It's my grandmother. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

This woman, like everyone else, hated the Hasty family and had shoved the letter into their mailbox herself to save the cost of a stamp.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Rod it. Yeah, I did it. But if all were going to kill him, I'll do with a gun.

[Ed Larson]

Now, since arson was suspected, and since the Hasty family were such characters, their triple funeral was a mass media event. In front of the cameras, their mother addressed the neighborhood and shouted, quote, it.

[Marcus Parks]

Was one of you bastards. One of you in this straight is the murderer.

[Ed Larson]

70S in England. Yeah, but the road to Peter Dinsdale getting caught for the crime is a bit of a winding one and damn near accidental. See, after six months with no leads, police received an anonymous tip from a man who said he saw three young guys running near the Hasty home on the night of the fire. The young men had jumped into a distinctive car, a Rover 2000, which was identified as being similar to a car that was often seen in the part of Hull where the male sex workers plied their trade. As it turned out, Peter Dinsdale had decided to make a little money by giving hand jobs. And he just happened to be in the area when DS Sager decided to round up all the male sex workers to see what he could see.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll just lock the grip and rip. I don't like to set fires. Well, I'd like to do is I'll play a bit with the balls. Play, make. I make the ice cream come out and I move on. All right. I know reason be getting at me by this Point.

[Ed Larson]

However, Peter Dinsdale was no longer going by his given name. His mother had married a man with the surname of Lee. And since Peter was a big fan of Bruce Lee, he legally changed his name to Bruce George Peter Lee. He was now asking people to call him by his legal name, which was Bruce Lee.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the difference if you don't confuse me with the real Bruce Lee. Because he's a movie actor. Me, I'm just a British boy. That's why my full name is Bruce John George Ringo Peter Lee Smythes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If you really love Bruce Lee, we became Wata not fire.

[Ed Larson]

It's a good point. That's a good point.

[Marcus Parks]

Joke. It's a good Bruce Lee joke. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And I also think that this points towards Peter Dinsdale being actually a little more clever than he let on, because it's difficult to legally change your name. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a pain in your ass.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so difficult.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, DS Sager was pretty desperate by this point.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know. I've met a lot of dumbass people with, like, you know, vanity plates and stuff. Like, it's super easy to get sometimes. Sometimes that it's what you put your energy towards.

[Ed Larson]

I guess. So Now, DS Sager was pretty desperate by this point. So his plan was to just bring a bunch of male sex workers and gay kids down to the station where he'd accuse them of being the arsonist in the hopes that one might confess or give information. Really, he's just. It's like, it's.

[Marcus Parks]

It's horrible. It's just throwing. I was like, see what they do? Someone say something. I'll just try to get out of here. Especially when we put the older ones with the younger ones. You know what I'm saying?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Throwing a little spaghetti against the walls.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean, DS Sager didn't even think that Peter Denale, AKA Bruce Lee. Hi, y'all. Was even a suspect when he brought him in. But when DS Sager accused Dinsdale of being the arsonist, just to see what would happen, Dinsdale looked at Sager and saw. Simply told him, didn't mean to kill anybody. Peter went on to say that he had set the fire to get back at the eldest hasty son because he owed Peter money for a hand job.

[Marcus Parks]

That's why, man, you always get that money before they come.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Damn. Get the money up front.

[Marcus Parks]

Up front, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Peter also said he had a crush on the eldest hasty sister and had been rejected, while all the hasty children had mocked Peter for being educationally subnormal and as the British put it, do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You think that she rejected him because he was jerking off her brother?

[Marcus Parks]

I just feel like things are getting complicated.

[Ed Larson]

Jerking off the brother, that was a secret thing.

[Marcus Parks]

That was a job. Yeah, yeah, that was his job.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that was his job.

[Marcus Parks]

That's his just. Just what he does for a living as a child.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. All right.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a lover of women. Yeah. And fire.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Peter was sticking to the story that he was only trying to scare the Hasties. But when the news broke of Dinsdale's arrest, a local came forward and said she recognized Peter as the teenager who started a fire at her house by squirting paraffin oil through her mail slot. She actually survived. She was pregnant at the time.

[Marcus Parks]

Sounds like a British euphemism. All right. You can walk back. A force for the top of my clitoris. Yeah. That the big one? It's the big. No, cover it in oil. That's what I imagine when you were covering the grandma's butt with oil.

[Ed Larson]

I understand. I also got to say, British pornography is horrible.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, what it is about British pornography is that I'm actually very, you know, I'm fine with it. Whatever. It's just the. Oh, I'm giving to you, love. It's the British guys go, oh, oh, oh. Then. Now we're getting in there. Now we're getting in the G. Completion. Now I'm stabbing your muffins.

[Ed Larson]

It's al. It's also businesslike.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Very good then. All right.

[Ed Larson]

Well, we doing every guy's named Tony.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's me, Tony Gribbins. I'm all empty now. Now bugger off. I gotta have my gravy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You're nothing but fruit and cake.

[Ed Larson]

Well, confronted with the accusation that he had squirted paraffin oil through a woman's mail slot.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Just wait to get out the Shakespeare.

[Ed Larson]

Peter confessed, saying he did it because someone he knew didn't like this woman. When DS Sager pressed Peter further, the floodgates opened. And Peter eventually confessed to 30 fires that killed 26 people. Now, DS Sager was a little skeptical, because most cops are skeptical when someone confesses to the murders of over two dozen people. Especially when those murders had never been investigated as murders. So DS Sager took Dinsdale out on a tour of Hull. DS Sager was quite surprised when Denzdale was able to direct the car to each and every fire he started.

[Marcus Parks]

And I find it really interesting again, because they all say they black out. They don't remember. And it's so impulsive. It's this truly impulsive thing, but they. It's each one's. I mean, pardon the. The pun, but it's seared into their memory.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, this really would have been a great, like, finale for the British Office. I just set the paper mill.

[Marcus Parks]

It's really going up, right? Yeah. Really going well.

[Ed Larson]

As it would later come out. Quite a few locals knew that Peter Dinsdale had a habit of starting fires. But their hatred and fear towards the police outweighed their sense of civic duty, and they therefore never reported him until after he was arrested. Once Peter was put on trial, he pled not guilty to 26 counts of murder, but guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. Now, this made Peter Dinsdale, AKA Bruce Lee, one of the most prolific murderers in British history. But he was soon overshadowed by another Yorkshire monster.

[Marcus Parks]

God damn it.

[Ed Larson]

Right around the time Peter Dinsdale put in his plea, another Peter, Peter Sutcliffe, was arrested for the infamous and far more salacious Yorkshire Ripper murders, which pushed Peter Dinsdale off the front page.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Dinsdale had double the numbers.

[Ed Larson]

He did have double the numbers, but.

[Marcus Parks]

It wasn't as flashy.

[Ed Larson]

That's the thing. His victims were really depressing. Yeah, he killed a bunch of old ladies and babies and families and old men.

[Marcus Parks]

He set him on fire.

[Ed Larson]

He set him on fire. And it's really disturbing and weird, but with Peter Sutcliffe, you know, he killed mostly. He killed women.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, sex workers.

[Ed Larson]

Killed a lot of sex workers. Killed a couple of teenagers that weren't sex workers. But for the most part, yeah. People are much more comfortable reading about murders when the victims are people they can't imagine, when they can't picture them, when they can say, even subconsciously, they deserved it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Denzdale was a sex worker.

[Ed Larson]

You know what, he was. Yeah, he was.

[Marcus Parks]

Hi.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's trying to do it all.

[Marcus Parks]

I was sex player. I had a good time.

[Ed Larson]

Now, there was some suspicion around Peter Dinsdale's actual guilt here, as some believed that his intellectual and physical disabilities would have made it impossible for him to be as cat like as he claimed to be during some of these murders. I, however, think that Dendale, like certain serial killers, was just very good at exactly one thing, which was starting fatal house fires that didn't look exactly like arson.

[Marcus Parks]

It doesn't take quite a lot, honestly. It doesn't take that much planning. It's mostly just.

[Ed Larson]

Well, these days it's far. I mean, in the 70s it was pretty easy. These days it's it's very, very difficult.

[Marcus Parks]

It's very, very difficult.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, we figure out, like, we knew who started, like, how the Palisades fire started before the Palisades fire was even out.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, it's entirely different. It's just that it's still just not that difficult to set fire to something.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's because the insurance companies.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, really good.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure. They don't pay people. They really get to the bottom.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, additionally, when DS Sager was criticized in the media for allegedly manipulating Peter's confessions to fit unsolved arson cases, Sager sued for libel and was able to prove in court that he did nothing of the sort and therefore won his case. As a result, Peter Dinsdale, AKA Bruce Lee, was ultimately put in a mental hospital indefinitely. Since the mid-80s, however, Dinsdale has been declaring that he is totally innocent of all arsons and all murders. But during correspondence with DS Sager after his incarceration, Dinsdale made a sinister statement.

[Marcus Parks]

He said, quote, my master is fire. I am devoted to fire, and I despise people.

[Ed Larson]

So while Peter Dinsdale may not have committed all of the murders to which he confessed, it seems fair, fairly certain that he was still one of the most dangerous teenage pyromaniacs to ever exist, and therefore one of the most dangerous teenagers in British history. And that's saying something that really is. British teenagers are awful scared of them.

[Marcus Parks]

Terrifying. Nothing, almost. You know what's even scarier was when we were Dublin, and I remember when Edwin, Marcus and I walked on the street and all these other. These young boys started going yankee, Yankee, like, following us down the street. So fright.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You got to start jerking off at him next time.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's right. They call me the Yanker.

[Ed Larson]

Talk their language.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

What an amazing episode.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's.

[Marcus Parks]

I love this.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's. I mean, that's our short study on pyromaniacs. We've actually. We're actually working on an episode in which we're going to cover a single pyromaniac in detail. A really insane guy. But, yeah, this is just a nice little. Nice little appetizer for you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So there's like a worse one.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, dude, there's the worst one of all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, I don't know. Peter Dinsdale, 26. I. I think.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I know. I believe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Paul Keller. They already don't know exactly how many lives were not. Were attached to him, like how many people he accidentally killed. And so, you know, we never really know. And then who knows? The really Most prolific arsonist might be out there. He might not have even gotten arrested.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Is this a call to action?

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just saying he might be out there. And then if he isn't out there, that means that slot isn't taken yet. We're looking at you teenagers, because you need to make the world the world you want to be in.

[Ed Larson]

You really don't. You really don't. There doesn't need to be. No, no. Absolutely not. No, you cannot do.

[Marcus Parks]

It's $6.99 a gallon for paraffin oil, thanks to Jeff Bezos.

[Ed Larson]

Nope. No, no. Not, not, not. Not. Not encouraging pyromania in any way whatsoever.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just encouraging people to have ambition.

[Ed Larson]

Ambition is fine.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Reach for the stars. Because sometimes if you miss, you set fire to a bunch of old people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And we all know that stars are made of fire.

[Marcus Parks]

We brought it all back around.

[Ed Larson]

Patreon.com Last podcast on the Left is where you can see video episodes of every single podcast we do. You can also watch side stories for free on YouTube. And while you're on the Patreon, you can also catch Last Stream on the Left every single Tuesday live at 6pm PSD, 9pm EST. And you can interact with us on the chat and you can see a lot of shit that we're not allowed to put on YouTube. You can also follow us on the socials at LP on the left, TikTok and Instagram, and come see us on tour.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's right. Detroit is our next one. That's going to be on April 18th on in at the Masonic. That's going to be unbelievable, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

And you haven't been there yet, I believe. It's one of my favorite venues in the country.

[Ed Larson]

The Masonic is insane. Like, it's. It's cool to be. It's cool to just be in the building. The stage is awesome, the room's great, and Detroit is fucking. The Detroit fans are fucking insane.

[Marcus Parks]

I bet.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

You're gonna. We're gonna have a fucking blast.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm very excited to be in Detroit.

[Ed Larson]

I will say this time, though, if you do take acid before the Detroit show, like the guy last time did, remember that there are other people in the room with you and. And that you are not listening to the podcast alone in your house.

[Marcus Parks]

And I know that we're there jiggling in front of you. Just remember that when you're on acid, it's not just you.

[Ed Larson]

So don't try to start having a conversation with Henry in the middle of the show.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I Think it's one of. It's a good advice in general is every time you take a hallucinogen and you start to flip out, just remind yourself I'm on acid.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Cena actually I'll always remember the that lesson Cena taught me that where it's like that's how you avoid all freakouts is just remember I have chosen this. I'm on a drug. It will end.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it might end in 13 hours.

[Marcus Parks]

It will eventually end. And there's always drinking yourself to sleep. So remember that. We also got a whole bunch. That's a little tip from Henry Zabrowski.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We also got a whole bunch of new dates on the website. So make sure you check that out. We're booked for the rest of the year. Coming check us out on tour podcast.

[Ed Larson]

On the left dot com. Check it out. Come see if we're coming to a town near you or your town or not. Yeah, maybe not.

[Marcus Parks]

So get in a car. All right, you lazy piece of. Get on a plane.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, statistically most people listening were not coming to your town. Yes, but you can come at any point.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whatever town we're going to come in.

[Marcus Parks]

On, on and about.

[Ed Larson]

Hail said hell gain.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hail Arthur Brown.

[Marcus Parks]

I want you to burn from the boogie down streets of Queens to a pile of beans. A new cup of piping hot polish. Italian job lover. Last podcast on the left and Spring Hill Jack Coffee are rising from the rubble with the new brew on Butterfly Dudes Blue Eye Blend. Nothing to do with any moth based entity. Don't even think about it. This is a butterfly dude. Don't mind the blue eyes. He's just Caucasian. Our new proprietary roast might seem seem eerily similar, but don't let your tongue deceive you. It's a butterfly dude Rose. This is the butterfly dude's Blue Eye blend. Entirely delicious and not just the same themes. Butterfly Dudes Blue Eye Blend. From the cocoon to your room.

[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

Going on right now through April 20th.

[Ed Larson]

Stop by any of their participating communities and find select red tag homes at incredible pricing. So whether you're buying your first home.

[Marcus Parks]

Or looking for an upgrade, you don't want to miss the red tag sales event going on right now. Discover the Dr. Horton difference at Dr. Horton. That's Dr. Horton dot com. Dr. Horton America's Builder and equal housing opportunity builder.

[Ed Larson]

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