COMMENT: A case that raises more questions than it answers continues to unfold in Los Angeles. A German citizen of Chechnyan extraction was arrested for setting numerous fires in the L.A. area.
He allegedly performed the acts to protest his mother’s impending extradition to Germany. Following the arrest, his mother had some interesting things to say. (His mother appears to have been involved in the sex business and there may have been other criminal money-making enterprises in which both engaged.)
Dorothee Burkhart expressed fears that German Nazis may have been after her son and her conviction that Germany was secretly run by Nazis operating out of public view, not an altogether reasonable view.
Among the considerations to be weighed in this puzzling story:
- After their flight from Chechnya, did the Burkharts become involved with neo-Nazi elements?
- Was there any relationship between some of the organized vice activities Dorothee Burkhart engaged in and Nazi elements, some of which draw income from such pursuits?
- Is Harry Burkhart actually suffering from psychological disorder or is this media misdirection to cover-up a deeper, more significant story?
- Might the Burkharts’ activities be connected to an organized crime milieu, perhaps one based in Europe?
- Is there any significance to the fact that the tip leading to Harry Burkhart’s arrest came from the State Department?
- Was this article edited to obscure information about Ms. Burkhart’s Nazi allegations?
EXCERPT: . . . Indeed, as investigators have begun to unravel the Burkharts’ tightly intertwined lives, they have happened upon a story perhaps more incredible than the fires themselves. It’s a tale of massage parlors, small-time con games, neo-Nazi conspiracies, and investigations into mysterious fires set in three countries.
With much of the details coming from Dorothee and Harry themselves — in volumes of convoluted testimony filed in a failed attempt to gain political asylum in Canada — it is harder yet to know where truth blurs into fiction. . . .
.. and what better way to rob the nazi story of plausibility than have it come from the mouth of a ‘sex worker’ or her ‘mentally ill’ son?
Here’s a series of articles that provide more questions than answers.
First, here’s an article that establishes that Harry Burkhart was in the US legally on a non-immigrant travel visa but his mother Dorothee’s status wasn’t legal when she was arrested on a German warrant on December 28th, 2011 in LA (the fires started later that evening). The German arrest warrant was originally issued on Sept, 24th, 2007:
According to this article, at some point Harry returned to Germany to burn down the family home on October 14th, 2011. He returned to the US twelve days later and Dorothee went with him to the German consulate to renew his passport. Contradicting some articles below, it also says there is reported no active investigation of Harry in Germany regarding the presumed arson of their family home according to German Authorities:
Now, according to this article Burkhart is a suspect in the German arson case. The article states “the case is still open” although its unclear if that’s referring to the US or German investigation. In addition, it appears the Dorothee was with Harry in Frankfurt, Germany. According to a State Department spokesperson, it is unclear how Dorothee was able to gain entry to the US, but travel papers indicate that she return from Frankfurt with Harry to Las Vegas. Other immigration officials say those documents are mistaken and her last entry into the US was in January 2007:
And according to this article, the two arrived in Las Vegas, six days after the Frankfurt fire(presumably October 20th, 2011). Harry is also now being investigated in connection with a series of suspicious fires in Vancouver. In addition, German prosecutors have, indeed, confirmed that Harry is indeed under investigation there for arson (note that this article and the above article that stated that there’s no active German investigation were both published on January 6th, so there is some conflicting reporting on that point from the same day):
Here’s an article that establishes that German authorities “quickly” determined that Harry was a suspect in the fire in Germany, and that US immigration officials opened up their case file on Harry shortly after their return from Germany(presumably in relation to Harry’s application for a visa renewal, although with an arson case opening in Germany, it’s unclear if that was a factor). It also provides some more info on Dorothee’s daring escape from German custody in 2007 and mentions that the two arrived in LA from Canada in “late 2010” (following the refusal of their asylum request by Canada). They blended into the West Hollywood ethnic Russian community and Dorothee began working in the illegal sex trade:
And now here’s a piece that gives us a sense of how much info the pair gave to Canadian officials regarding their Sept. 2007 escape from Germany to Canada:
So here’s a summary of some facts that we’ve learned so far:
1. Dorothee and Harry arrive in LA in “late 2010”.
2. At some point, the two return to the Frankurt, Germany area in October 2011.
3. Harry is suspected of burning down the family home on October 14th.
4. Harry and Dorothee returned to Las Vegas six days later, although immigration officials contest whether Dorothee actually left and re-entered the US.
5. The two were at the German consulate in LA twelve days after the fire to start renewing Harry’s visa.
6. Dorothee was living in the US illegally and had a German arrest warrant out for her since September 24th, 2007.
7. It was unclear why Dorothee became such a high-profile international dragnet target that led up to her arrest in late December 2011 from the 2007 German arrest warrant.
8. Dorothee was arrested on December 28th, with the first suspicious fires taking place on the 29th (although some reports indicate the first suspicious fires were on the evening of Dorothee’s arrest).
And here’s where things get really weird:
First, here’s article from today that talks about Harry leaving a fire-starting device in the Hallway of the German consulate in LA when he visited his mother there following her arrest. The article also notes that Harry is charged with 13 of the 51 fires and is suspected of starting the LA arson spree on December 30, while noting that there were several suspicious fires started in his neighborhood the night before. The first fire on the 29th was right next to the pair’s apartment, with a few more fires later started nearby. Authorities don’t suspect Harry was involved with those, or at least not all of them. Instead, it’s suspected that 22 yr-old Samuel Arrington caused at least some of those fires near the Burkhart’s apartment on the 29th:
And here’s a December 29th, 2011 article with more on the mysterious Samuel Arrington that is rarely mentioned in this story. It appears an eye-witness saw Arrington explicitely attempt to set two fuel tanks on fire, detained him, and flagged down police:
And then theres...
And finally, here’s another article that mentions the mystery pair’s arrest. The article is a reminder of how the arrest announcement of Harry Burkhart and Arrington/Pineta overlapped, leading to much confusion. It also appears that Arrington/Pineta are not suspected of involvement in the car fires that Burkhart is suspected of starting, but they were suspected of the fires next to Burkart’s apartment at Poinsetta Place on Sunset Blvd. At least that was the official line when this angle of the story broke. There has been pretty sparse coverage the Arington/Pineta arrests since the initial reports.
Yeah, this is definitely a story to watch.
from Canada’s Chronicle Herald:
Harry Burkhart was taken into custody after authorities received a tip from federal officials who recognized him in a security video that showed a ponytailed man emerging from a garage where a car was set ablaze.
“When they saw the security footage, they recognized him and they contacted the arson task force,” a State Department official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigations are ongoing.
:end quote
I’d venture that there’s nothing to this story but the histrionics of a seasoned con-woman grasping at straws, except for the oddities the reportage reveals. If some of the details are accurate, the flow of events seems senseless.
Why were ‘federal officials’ who were already familiar with Harry Burkhart perusing security videos of the arson fires?
Why was Burkhart allowed to retrieve the fire-starting device without arrest after it had been photographed by a security guard? Why was the device left in place during the interim?
There’s a lot of smoke here.
@Dwight: I had a very similar take on this story. There’s nothing particularly compelling in their backgrounds that suggest the Burkharts are anything other than a troubled mother/son pair with a history of mental illness and petty crime. And yet there is just so much left unexplained in the emerging story. How was the pair able to fly in and out of Germany in October when Dorothee had an arrest warrant out for her issued in 2007?
How was the eye-witness that saw Samuel Arrington start the fires able to detain Arrington and call the police? Was there any resistance? And why so little follow up with the Arrington angle when a story from just yesterday contains assertions that Burkhart didn’t start any fires until December 30th and it was Arrington that was responsible for at least some of the initial fires right next to the Burkhart’s LA apartment? Such a sequence of events isn’t impossible, but it’s hard not to be somewhat suspicious of the emerging storyline when the story has so many unexplained holes.
Harry Burkhart is due to be arraigned today if they can get his drug dosage right. From CNN:
Burkhart was present during a preliminary hearing earlier this month.
During that hearing Burkhart appeared unable to stand on his own. Three deputies tried to steady him as he appeared to be leaning back with his eyes closed. Burkhart was wearing a special “suicide gown” designed to prevent him from harming himself, according to one of the deputies who escorted him.
“In 2007, German police finally caught up with Burkhart. While in prison, she would later tell Canadian authorities, she was tortured. “At the beginning, the prison guards came at night and took me from my cell to a basement. They would undress me and use electric shock on me. They demanded that I sign a confession to everything I was accused of,” according to a statement in the asylum file.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tracing+arson+suspect+path+from+Germany+Vancouver/5959779/story.html#ixzz1kQ3q1OZj
ALL VERY STRANGE...
“One day, she said, a man showed up at her home saying that he was coming for an “erotic massage” in response to an advertisement in a local paper. “I was shocked and asked to see the ad,” she wrote in her asylum claim. “I phoned the number, and a woman’s voice on an answering machine directed me to my address. These advertisements must have been placed by the fascists, as part of their campaign against me.”
In May 2005, Burkhart said German police broke down her door and searched her home, and discovered neo-Nazi fliers containing threats to her neighbors. She told Canadian immigration authorities that she was taken to a police station where she was drugged, beaten up, and given electric-shock treatment.
“They humiliated me, making me go on my hands and knees and bark like a dog before they would give me water,” she said. “They demanded that I acknowledge that I am crazy, and for that reason I had distributed statements against my neighbor. They told me I had to agree to undergo a psychological assessment.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/mother-of-los-angeles-alleged-arsonist-had-a-wild-life.html