The Deliveryman Arsonist
Charlie Phillips - The Deliveryman Arsonist, aka The Ramona Arsonist
San Diego County, California 1980-1996
This case history is from the archives. A contributor is the late Doug Allen via his serial arsonist files. Ed Nordskog was a historical researcher and the author of this article. Certain portions were previously published in the book Arson Investigation in the Wildlands, by Joe Konefal and Ed Nordskog. Additional information from The San Diego Union-Tribune, published November 10, 1996, by J. Harry Jones.
In the summer of 1980, California Department of Forestry (CDF, now known as Cal FIRE) Investigator Steve Robertson was tracking a string of 10 wildland arson fires that had occurred near “The Swallows” nudist colony in Harbison Canyon, several miles east of San Diego. Inv. Robertson was conducting surveillance of the area around the colony. He observed a white male, later identified as thirty-year-old Charlie Phillips, crawling from bush to bush near the facility in a clandestine manner. Eight minutes after Phillips had left the area, a fire erupted among the bushes he had been crawling through. Because several of the previous fires that summer had been ignited by time delay incendiary devices, Inv. Robertson believed Phillips may have placed a device in the dry vegetation. However, he was unable to locate a device at the scene of the fire.
Despite not being able to locate a device, Robertson was aware of some additional incriminating information. He knew some of the previous devices found in the area were constructed of matchbooks and cigarettes, and some of them bore advertising from the same business where Charlie Phillips’ wife worked and where Phillips frequently visited. Additionally, Phillips was a member of the nudist colony and was acting as their sole volunteer firefighter. Inv. Robertson soon arrested Phillips and charged him with a single count of arson. One year later a jury acquitted Charlie Phillips of the arson charge.
Phillips went on with his life and remained living in the general area. The Purple Heart-awarded, Vietnam Vet stayed out of the crosshairs of law enforcement for years. Inv. Robertson eventually promoted to Battalion Chief and remained in the San Diego area. He kept a close eye on the wildland arson activity in the region, believing he would once again run into Charlie Phillips. Within a year of Phillips’ acquittal on arson charges, Inv. Robertson again began finding delay incendiary devices at wildland fires. This time he noted the unknown arsonist had purposely removed the cover of the matchbook to prevent identification (a simple, but rare anti-forensics gesture). He immediately suspected Charlie Phillips. Robertson began to keep loose tabs on Phillips, frequently checking his whereabouts. Years later Phillips’ daughter would complain to the media Inv. Steve Robertson harrassed and hounded Phillips for years, cruising by their house after every brush fire in the area.
From 1985-1988, in excess of 30 wildland arson fires occurred throughout an area called the “I-8 Corridor”, in the foothills east of San Diego. Numerous devices were located in the form of cigarettes within matchbooks. The San Diego Metro Arson Strike Team (MAST) joined forces with CDF. In 1987, the team set up a surveillance operation targeting Charlie Phillips. Phillips though, was one step ahead of them. He had a scanner and was actively monitoring local fire agency radio traffic. At one point during the mobile surveillance, Phillips pulled over and confronted one of the undercover officers following him, thus “burning the surveillance”. The task force in those years was never able to link him to any fires.
In 1989, Phillips moved to the town of Ramona 30 miles to the north. Years later Phillips’ neighbors would tell the media Charlie used to sit in his yard for hours monitoring fire department frequencies on a police scanner.
The Phillips Device; a Signature?
By the 1990’s the spate of arson fires set with delay incendiary devices had migrated slightly north to the rural areas between the small towns of Ramona and Lakeside, along Highway 67 and Highway 78. By 1996, nearly 100 brush fires would be lit in this area, with cigarette and matchbook delay incendiary devices found at many of these. At least twenty of these devices had the cover of the matchbook torn off. Local investigators gave a name to any device that looked like this: a “Phillips Device”. They later called it his “Signature Device” (Authors Note: The use of the term “Signature Device” by investigators during this investigation and trial is an error. See below for commentary).
In late May of 1996, two arson fires with “Phillips” incendiary delay devices were set in the dry hills east of Ramona, along Hwy 78, burning 120 acres. On June 10th, two more arson fires consuming 50 acres burned along Hwy 67. On June 19th, a brush fire broke out in the dry hills along Hwy 78. The 1,000 acre blaze called the “Egg Fire” was started by a time delay “Phillips Device”. A dozen other arson fires along these two highways burned over the next several weeks.
At the beginning of August, CDF investigators instituted an undercover investigation into these fires. The man in charge was CDF Captain/Investigator John Adkins. Coincidentally, his boss was Battalion Chief Steve Robertson, the same man who had been dogging Charlie Phillips for 16 years. With Robertson’s insight, Phillips became the focus of this latest investgation. Investigators learned Phillips had held a job for the past ten months as a delivery truck driver for a Ramona pharmacy. This enabled him to roam freely for most of the day as he traveled a route in the local area for his deliveries. The team figured out Phillips’ delivery route and times coincided with many of the fires that had occurred during the summer of 1996.
The team started a surveillance operation of Charlie Phillips on August 8th. On August 14th, investigators were following Phillips’ personal van as he drove through rural areas. They noticed a brush fire along the roadway Phillips had passed about twenty minutes earlier. On August 16th, Phillips was cruising in his van in a rural area when another brush fire was detected eight minutes after he passed. On August 23rd a similar incident occurred. Phillips was also followed while traveling along a rural roadway where earlier in the year five different fires had been set by someone using “Phillips Devices”. His travel patterns were now synced up to several arson fires.
Following these events the arson investigators got a court order to surreptitiously install a video camera into Phillips’ delivery truck. On the night of September 9th, CDF investigators accessed Phillips’ work truck and installed a video camera into the passenger side door.
The next day, on September 10th, Phillips started his normal delivery route in his work truck, unaware he was being followed by five investigators in vehicles and two more in a small airplane. Before he left the town of Ramona, investigators saw him toss something out of the window of his truck onto the street. After Phillips drove away, the undercover investigators looked to see what had been thrown, and discovered the cover of a matchbook had been torn away from the rest of the book. This was tangible evidence they had found the maker of the “Phillips Device”.
Shortly after this the aerial team spotted a small roadside fire along Phillips’ delivery route a few minutes after he passed by. Investigators subsequently reviewed the camera footage from his truck and hit the jackpot. The footage, while poor in quality was good enough to capture Phillips taking a drag on a cigarette attached to some matches, and then tossing the lit incendiary device from the window of his truck. The ground team searched the area of the brush fire and found a cigarette and matchbook delay incendiary device.
After the fire was ignited, the surveillance team continued to watch Phillips as he drove to his nearby home. Phillips used binoculars to view the growing fire. He appeared to grow animated and excited. On September 12, 1996, Charlie Phillips was arrested by the CDF task force. During a later search warrant they seized a police scanner from him. The investigators quickly built a case to charge Phillips with all 14 arson fires in the Ramona area during the summer of 1996.
Facing up to 76 years in prison if convicted of all 14 fires, Phillips accepted a plea deal and entered a guilty plea on four of the smallest fires. On April 16th, 1998, Charlie Phillips was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the 1996 series of arson fires. At his sentencing, Phillips was referred to as a “prototypical pyromaniac” by the judge.
The dogged determination of Battalian Chief Steve Robertson as well as his protégé Captain John Adkins along with investigators from CDF and San Diego MAST resulted in the arrest of a relentless, experienced, and savvy wildland serial arsonist, who had operated for at least 16 years and was suspected for starting over 100 wildland fires.
Case Analysis
This is a great case and a nice investigation in the end. Charlie Phillips was truly a dangerous arsonist who set many fires over his lifetime. We put these case histories out in this format so investigators can learn from them and keep refining their craft. While Charlie Phillips, early in his career had a vague connection to the fire service, he is not classified as a true firefighter arsonist. However, he displayed obsessiveness and risk-taking, and continued to light fires even though he was aware he was frequently being watched by local investigators. This puts him in a category of obsessive thrill-seekers. At his trial, his lawyers presented the information Phillips learned incendiary device building while in the military.
Hopefully we do not see a case like this again, where a single guy who is already known to investigators can get away with lighting fires for 16 years. Cases like this have occurred way too often in the arson biz. Based on the analysis, it appears various investigators located no less than 20 delay incendiary devices over the years attributed to Phillips. Most of this was in the era prior to the regular use of DNA by law enforcement. If this happened today, hopefully we would have exploited all forensic evidence off every one of those devices and positively linked at least some of them to Phillips via DNA, fingerprints, hair, fibers, etc. A device, while extremely rare to find, is the single best item of evidence you will ever get in a serial arson case….exploit it to its fullest in a crime lab. If you have a known suspect, then find a way to get his DNA surreptitiously, and compare to any recovered devices. In the modern era we should be able to catch a guy like him before his 10th fire, if we are truly practicing basic criminal investigation techniques. Surveillance ops are nice, but in reality they are expensive, staff heavy, and one of the lesser effective strategies to use. Forensics is generally better.
There was teachable information that can be learned from this case. The use of geo-spatial analysis in serial arson cases is one of the most effective methods of investigative analysis (profiling). It works well in many cases, as it did here. Linking the arson fires to the times and route of Phillips’s deliveries is geo-spatial/temporal analysis at its finest. Later, instructors in serial arson courses adopted portions of this case and added the sub-type of “route” pattern to the list of behavioral and travel patterns of serial arsonists. In this case, Phillips had the mobility, unsupervised time, and a vehicle that allowed him to “troll” all day, selecting spots on his delivery route to eventually toss out an ignition device when the time suited him. Almost all of the fires were along his normal route of travel.
Afterword:
You would think the arrest of a lifetime arsonist like Charlie Phillips would put an end to the wildland arson misery of the region for a while….wouldn’t you? Exactly one year after Phillips’ arrest and a year before his sentencing, another wildland serial arsonist used a time delay incendiary device to set seven large and devastating fires in the foothills and brushland just to the north of Ramona. Phillips was in jail so he was off the suspect list. In October of 1997, the same CDF investigators who had built a case against Phillips arrested former firefighter Steve Robles for this string of arson fires. But wait, there’s more. Just hours after Robles’ arrest, and while he was sitting in jail, another arson fire erupted in the hills near Ramona. CDF said an incendiary device was attributed to this blaze and was similar to other devices found at previous fires, which were different from those attributed to both Robles and Phillips. How is it possible three different serial wildland arsonists were operating on the same piece of real estate, and using somewhat similar incendiary delay devices, all at roughly the same time? This is a story for another article.
Authors Note: The use of the term “Signature Device” by investigators during this investigation and trial is, in the opinion of the authors, an error. “Signature” in the Behavior Analysis (Profiling) world means some action by the offender at the crime scene was unnecessary to commit the crime, but necessary to fulfill a psychological need for the offender, such as spray painting a taunt to investigators at the arson scene. The arson investigation community has, since the 1980’s mistakenly coined the phrase “signature device”, when almost every device ever built was done with tactics and methodology in mind, making it a necessary action to commit the crime. There have been almost no documented “signature” actions in relation to serial arsonists. Analytically, the type of device used by Phillips is the most common type found among serial wildland arsonists, and the removal of the cover can signify one of two tactics: one, anti-forensics to hide the origin of the matchbook, or two to allow the matches, once they ignite, a better chance to ignite the surrounding vegetation, since these devices were thrown from a vehicle and the arsonist could not choose the exact fuel bed in which they landed.
However, much can be learned from this tactic by Phillips. One, is he was aware of the necessity to give his devices a better chance to work, thus making him an experienced arsonist. Two, he is practicing “learned behavior”. He was busted years earlier in part because there was a link between the source of his matches (a business) and himself. By removing information, he was practicing anti-forensics, which is something investigators can consider when attempting to analyze unknown arsonists. The inference can be made by investigators related to this behavior is their unknown arsonist is likely mature, experienced in setting fires, or had some other training in device construction and avoiding detection. This info may help link the offender to other fires and/or help eliminate other potential suspects.