Dispute arises over arson suspect

Conflicting reports about when state fire officials first identified accused serial arsonist Raymond Lee Oyler -- before or after he allegedly set a wildfire near Palm Springs that killed five firefighters -- have escalated tension between the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Underlying the dispute is the question of whether Oyler could have been arrested earlier, possibly preventing the deaths of the firefighters.

Shortly after Oyler’s arrest in October, Undersheriff Neil Lingle said state arson experts had identified Oyler as one of several suspects during an investigation that began in mid-May into a rash of arson fires in the San Gorgonio Pass area. Sheriff Bob Doyle made similar statements at the time.

“Sheriff Doyle and Undersheriff Lingle are standing by their original statements and have absolutely no intention of changing their statements,” Tom Freeman, executive officer of the Sheriff’s Department, said Thursday.

Officials at the state fire agency, which is contracted to serve as Riverside County’s fire department, on Thursday declined to comment on when they began focusing on Oyler as a possible arson suspect or whether he had been questioned about the earlier fires. They say revealing that information could interfere with prosecution of the case.

But the day after Oyler was charged with setting the fatal wildfire, CDF Capt. Julie Hutchinson said emphatically that Oyler had not become an arson suspect until after the Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains.

The tension between the two agencies stems from comments made during a Nov. 2 press conference when Dist. Atty.-elect Rod Pacheco announced that his office was charging Oyler with five counts of murder, along with 11 counts of arson.

Asked when Oyler’s name first surfaced, Lingle said that “since about mid-May,” CDF investigators “had been looking at a number of suspects or persons of interest, and he was one of those.”

Freeman, the sheriff’s executive officer, said Thursday that his department did not get involved in the investigation of the fires allegedly set in the spring and summer because of a long-standing agreement with the state fire agency that its investigators would handle arson cases.

“We did not engage in an arson investigation. That is a responsibility of CDF in Riverside County,” Freeman said. “We had no involvement in any arson investigations, period, until the 26th, when Sheriff Doyle learned from CDF that this was now a multiple homicide.”

Oyler, 36, of Beaumont, was brought to the Cabazon sheriff’s station for questioning Oct. 27 and voluntarily gave a DNA sample. His lawyer, Mark McDonald, has said his client emphatically denies any involvement in the Esperanza fire or any others.

DNA evidence from the site of the two suspected arson fires in the San Gorgonio Pass area on June 9 and 10 resembled Oyler’s DNA profile, according to a court affidavit submitted by a CDF investigator.

Those fires had been set in the same general area as the Esperanza fire. And all three fires were started with a similar device: a cigarette and six or seven wooden matches, the affidavit said.

Hutchinson, the CDF captain, told the Press-Enterprise of Riverside this week that the sheriff’s officials should correct the “misstatements” about how long CDF had been investigating Oyler.

Hutchinson said she could not elaborate on her earlier comments or discuss the fire department’s protocol in arson investigations.

CDF’s Riverside County fire chief, John R. Hawkins, was not available for comment Thursday.

maeve.reston@latimes.com