Arson suspect stands trial over most destructive fire in LA history

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A 30-year-old man went on trial Wednesday on charges he started a brush fire in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2025, that a week later morphed into the Palisades Fire — the most destructive firestorm in the history of the city of Los Angeles.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew O’Brien told the jury in downtown LA during his opening statement that the Palisades Fire was a so-called holdover fire of the one Jonathan Rinderknecht started shortly after midnight on Jan. 1.

Security camera footage and Rinderknecht’s cellphone data showed he had parked his rental car near a trailhead late at night and hiked up a hillside overlooking the affluent neighborhood near the Pacific Ocean, the prosecutor said. He watched a video of a French rap song in which the artist sets things on fire, which he had been watching numerous times during the preceding days, O’Brien told the jury.

Shortly thereafter, the fire erupted, and Rinderknecht, standing nearby, began calling 911 to report it. Since there was no cellphone reception where he was standing, he didn’t get through to the emergency services until he had gone down the hillside. At that point, others had already called in the fire, and responders were on their way.

Rinderknecht, O’Brien argued, had been angry because he had failed to get a date or an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party and was driving for Uber instead. Several passengers who had ridden with him that night told investigators that Rinderknecht appeared angry and was ranting about the wealthy and about society being unfair.

“He wanted revenge against society because he blamed society for his problems,” O’Brien said.

Years earlier, Rinderknecht had been living with his then-boyfriend in the Pacific Palisades, in a house not far from where he’s accused of starting the fire. However, at the time, he was living by himself in an apartment in North Hollywood — a far less prosperous neighborhood.

O’Brien told the jury Rinderknecht had been preoccupied with destructive fires and, in the months before, had asked ChatGPT to create apocalyptic images of forest fires with poor people fleeing and rich ones from a distance enjoying themselves.

Rinderknecht drove away from where he had parked after calling 911, but when firetrucks passed him going up the road, he turned around and followed them. He then watched the fire and firefighters while taking videos with his phone, the prosecutors said.

While the fire department extinguished the so-called Lachman Fire quickly, it continued to smolder underground among the roots of the trees.

Six days later, on Jan. 7, extremely powerful Santa Ana winds hit Southern California, the smoldering embers reignited the hillside, and a firestorm quickly spread through the Pacific Palisades and neighboring Malibu.

Rinderknecht’s attorney, Steven Haney, told the jury in his opening statement that the Lachman Fire and the Palisades Fire were two distinct events. While the Lachman Fire was investigated as being caused by fireworks — since neighbors reported having heard fireworks that night — the Palisades Fire was investigated as caused by arson.

As a result, Haney argued, the site of the Lachman was never investigated as a crime scene until days later, when water and firefighting activities had altered the terrain.

“This case is not about whether or not you like Jonathan or how he used his computer,” Haney said. “The evidence shows that he didn’t start the Jan. 1 fire.”

Rinderknecht, a dual French and U.S. citizen, has been in jail since he was arrested on Oct. 7 in Florida, where he was living in his sister’s house. He has pleaded not guilty to the arson charges that carry a maximum sentence of 45 years in federal prison.

A few weeks after the fire, investigators questioned Rinderknecht and asked him why someone might start a fire in the Pacific Palisades. He purportedly told them that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as “we’re basically being enslaved by them” and compared such an act of “desperation” to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, with which Luigi Mangione has been charged.

More than 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes because of the fire, and 12 people lost their lives. It took more than 6,000 firefighters from the U.S., Canada and Mexico to finally contain the fire on Jan. 31. By then, about 6,800 structures had been destroyed. Property damage from the fire has been estimated to range from $25 billion to $51 billion.

At the same time that Palisades Fire was burning on the western side of LA County, east of downtown LA, the equally devastating Eaton Fire raged through the Altadena community at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The UCLA Anderson Forecast said last year that the total impact of the two fires may have been as high as $95 to $164 billion in property and capital losses.

U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang, a Joe Biden appointee, has largely precluded Rinderknecht’s defense bid to try to shift the blame for the Palisades Fire to the LA Fire Department because of their apparent failure to fully extinguish the Lachman Fire.

It will be up to the government, however, to convince the jury that Palisades Fire was a holdover fire from the Lachman Fire and that, as such, the arson they accuse Rinderknecht of is the “but for” cause of the Palisades Fire. That is, if he hadn’t set the initial fire, the Palisades wouldn’t have burned down.

After the fire, Rinderknecht moved to Florida, where one of his sisters lives with her husband and two small children. The sister had invited him to stay with her and her family because of Rinderknecht’s financial difficulties at the time.

However, after five months, the sister and her family were forced to move out of their own house because of Rinderknecht’s volatile behavior, which included threatening to burn their house down and threatening to kill his brother-in-law. While Rinderknecht refused to move out, his sister feared for the safety of her family while he was there.

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