Retiring sometime::


[www.timesheraldonline.com]



When it comes to fire forensics, 33-year Vallejo resident John DeHaan, literally wrote the book — the textbook that is most used nationwide by those going into the field of arson investigations.

Basically, DeHaan is a real Sherlock Holmes, surrounded by books, pamphlets and plaques, in his unassuming offices on Georgia Street downtown Vallejo.

DeHaan, whose name is followed by an alphabet soup-full of letters designating achievements and certifications, co-authored several editions of Forensic Fire Scene Reconstruction, as well as Kirk’s Fire Investigation, “the leading textbook in the field of fire and arson investigation,” according to bradybooks.com. He is also a former principal member of the NFPA 921 Technical Committee of fire Investigations, holds a BS in Physics from the University of Illinois-Chicago, and a PhD in Pure and Applied Chemistry (Forensic Science) from Strathclyde University, Scotland, it says.

He’s a Fellow of the American Board of Criminalists, and of the UK’s Forensic Fire Society. He holds diplomas in Fire Investigation from the Forensic Fire Society and the Institution of Fire Engineers and a Fire Investigator certification from the International Association of Arson Investigators. He is also a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator from the National Association of Fire Investigators and a trace evidence expert — a discipline he said is losing status due to new regulations.

Now 68, DeHaan is hanging up his magnifying glass and retiring after 44 years — but not until the 10 big cases he’s involved with nationwide are resolved, he said.

One of those is the $80 million Los Angeles area Da Vinci apartment fire and another is the gas pipeline explosion that happened in Fresno two years ago, he said.

Once he’s finished working, DeHaan said he plans to repair to his garage to work on his 17 cars built between 1923 and 1969, including three Bentleys and four “Hudson products.” It’s with these, along with dogs and toy trains that he said he plans to fill his retirement days.

He’s been in the forensic investigation game a long time.

His first job out of school was at the AFT forensic lab at Treasure Island, in 1983, which is how he wound up living here, he said.

“Vallejo was as close to Treasure Island I could afford to live,” he said.

He said he went into criminology because, “as a child of the 60s, I wanted to contribute to the greater good.”

His background in physics and chemistry lent itself to this particular line of work, he said.

“It was interesting,” he said of the early days in his field. “We did everything; trace, firearms, shoe impressions...”

Crime scene investigations is like solving a puzzle, he said.

“It’s like a lot of people have pieces of the puzzle, but no one has the top of the box,” he said.

Through the years, he began to notice, though, that some of the accepted truths in arson investigations, actually weren’t true, and he helped prove this and changed the way such investigations are done, he said.

This was not an easy process, as it called the conventional wisdom into question, not to mention countless arson and murder convictions, he said.

Being as he specializes in fire death investigations, DeHaan’s work often takes him to horribly gruesome crime scenes, but, he said, he may have been destined for this work.

“I grew up in Chicago ... the scene of one of the biggest fires in U.S. history,” and one he believes he’s helped solve – and it wasn’t Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

DeHaan and the team he worked with on that puzzle, concluded the Great Chicago Fire was started accidentally by a spark from a pipe smoked by an O’Leary neighbor named “Pegleg” Sullivan, whose story at the time, of having seen the blaze from his house, is debunked by its location behind walls that would have blocked his view.

DeHaan also worked on solving the 1913 fire at Jack London’s Wolf House, as one of six experts asked to look into the case by the American Academy of Forensic Scientists. The investigation’s results – that the fire was caused by the self-heating of the linseed oil-based stain used on the cabinets – were presented at the Spring 2000 Forensic Science Society meeting in Napa.
DeHaan said he was involved with the Mormon Church bomber case of 1986, in which 26 people were killed; and in the civil aftermath of the San Bruno pipeline explosion of 2010.

Retired Vallejo Fire Department investigator Bill Tweedy said he’s familiar with DeHaan’s work.

“Dr. DeHaan is the person that fire investigators go to when you need an expert in the field of fire investigations,” Tweedy said. “Dr. DeHaan has been a great mentor to me over my career as a fire investigator. He is highly respected in our field and is known around the world. His retiring will leave a great hole to fill.”
DeHaan said he gets the most satisfaction out of helping free people wrongly convicted of arson/murder based on the faulty forensic presumptions his work helped debunk. Cases like that of Kristine Bunch, who spent 16 years in an Indiana prison after being convicted of starting a fire that killed her 3-year-old son. She was released in 2012 based in part on DeHaan’s testimony, that proved the fire was caused by a faulty electrical fitting.

Last February, Bunch sued for $1 million for every year she was imprisoned – a total of $17 million.

The case of Sonia Cacy is another, whose conviction for starting the fire that killed her elderly uncle was overturned in 2016, after more than 20 years, also based in part on DeHaan’s work, he said.

“I have to say, at this point, I get more of a rush when the evidence clears someone whose already been convicted,” he said. “But, I like to find the answer, whatever it is.”

Contact Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824.