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Chapter 1: What is the main premise of the arson investigation?
By this point, it's safe to say that James Hibbard is really feeling the heat. I'll never forget a column in the Arizona Republic slamming the interview, which said, the next time this guy burns down a house, it's Hibbard's fault.
Other reporters in town, probably a little bit more law enforcement friendly, were now starting to bash him.
Rival newspaper, the Arizona Republic, published an editorial that said, quote, if you meet with an egocentric fire starter, you become part of his gang. You not only spread his message for him, you let him walk away, Zippo in hand. In the face of all this, the pressure on James begins to take a toll.
Every morning I would wake up with this pit in my stomach, this dread of wondering if he burned down another house, if he hurt someone during the night. Because if that happened, look, I would still be able to defend what I did professionally, but privately as a human being, you know, I would have felt horrible.
This experience had a lasting impact on James. He was blamed from all sides for prolonging the arson investigation. But looking back on it now, it's clear that that's not really what happened. Because back at the task force HQ, investigators are starting to see a silver lining in James's interview. Was there anything in that article that helped you guys?
Oh yeah. There were things in there that we felt were probably truthful.
The more information you have, the better off you probably are.
We dissected every word of that article.
And there is a lot to dissect. The arsonist told James that he's a management professional with an advanced degree. He has a healthy income and works in downtown Phoenix. Plus, the whole piece is littered with James' impressions of the guy.
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Chapter 2: How does James Hibbard's interview affect the investigation?
I don't know who came up with that concept.
But whoever did, it was a great idea. We started penciling it out on a whiteboard. How does this look? What can we do? All of us felt like this has got a good chance of working.
The idea is this. stage a fake construction site and see if they can get the arsonist to come to them.
Let's rent some heavy equipment. Let's get a sign going. We need a property, we need fencing, we need this, we need that. Let's make this thing look like a construction site.
— In the aftermath of James Hibbard's interview, with CSP's line about that second Lee Benson fire being personal, they know exactly where to set this thing up. Just around the corner from Lee Benson's house, one of the neighbors has offered to help. He owns an undeveloped lot just around the corner from Lee.
This neighbor agrees to let the task force stage the beginnings of a construction site on his property.
— While we were doing that, the tech people at the FBI were setting up surveillance cameras in the desert for us.
They also set up a big metal shipping container in the desert close by with monitors to watch the surveillance footage live.
Cameras that were transmitted over the cell frequency then were very new and they weren't real advanced. So we had to have people sit in these connex boxes and watch cameras all night, every night.
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Chapter 3: What ethical dilemmas does James face as a journalist?
After all those false leads, countless dead ends, and who knows how many sleepless nights, Rob feels like things are really starting to fall apart.
We were missing important things. And in hindsight, that was my fault. At the time, I didn't realize that. I was mad at everybody else. I just said, how many more ways can we fuck this thing up?
And I said, hey, it's only 9.30, Rob.
And I said, what? And he said, there's infinite ways we can F this thing up. And then everybody laughed, and the whole temperature came down.
The team takes a couple days to recover, and then they regroup. They're hopeful that with a few adjustments, they can lure the arsonist back to the construction site again. So the cameras stay up, and now they're pointing in the direction of the fake construction site.
Several weeks went by, no activity on the cameras.
After monitoring the cameras for weeks, at considerable expense, Rob and his team are beginning to lose hope. They're just about ready to take the whole operation down and try something else. But before they move on, they've got one last idea up their sleeve.
We decided to come up with a sign to try to entice him again.
a sign with a big colorful drawing of a gaudy mansion, just to make it super clear exactly what type of house would be going up on this property.
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