He waited and planned for the perfect time, then set the blaze, officials say. Inside the Spokane arson case

By Alaa Elassar, Cindy Von Quednow, CNN

(CNN) — In a matter of days, three wildfires tore through the Spokane area in eastern Washington state, blackening once-green hillsides, leveling homes and leaving behind skeletal trees and the scorched shells of cars.

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, tens of thousands of people were forced to flee, and as the fires slow, entire communities will be left to sift through ash. Now, authorities say a man is responsible for starting one of those fires — and has admitted to igniting multiple previous blazes in the same area dating back to last year, according to prosecutors.

Aaron Farinacci, 37, of Spokane told investigators he planned the Old Trails blaze for two weeks, using a weather app to research conditions and predict a day with high winds, low humidity and high heat, according to an affidavit prosecutors filed in court.

“He feels fire is powerful, beautiful, and that things that go through fire experience a kind of rebirth,” Spokane County Sheriff’s Detective Michael Drapeau wrote in an affidavit. “He knows arson is an easy crime to get away from if you have time, and he had time.”

Farinacci was charged last week with five counts of first-degree arson, including one count tied to the Old Trails Fire, which officials say has burned more than 3,500 acres since it began August 1, destroyed more than 400 structures, and was 43% contained as of Sunday.

Authorities do not allege he started the two other August 1 Spokane-area wildfires, which are under investigation and, combined with Old Trails, have burned more than 10,300 acres.

But prosecutors do allege he admitted, after his arrest last week, to setting some 25 other wildfires near his Spokane residence since July 2025. Of those others, he was charged with arson in four cases a detective could “corroborate,” prosecutors said in charging documents.

Court documents paint a portrait of someone investigators say obsessed over details — researching a serial arsonist, monitoring fire conditions, studying wildfire behavior and even carrying marijuana and cigarettes as a rehearsed explanation in case deputies questioned why he carried a lighter.

“Words cannot express the level of devastation the Defendant’s deliberate and malicious choice of starting a fire caused,” Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney Preston McCollam said in the state’s memorandum.

The Old Trails Fire displaced many, among them firefighter Alexis DeLeo, whose home burned while she worked to fight the flames.

“One of my good friends, and she’s another firefighter, she’s like, ‘Why are you here? How are you here?’ I was like, ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else,’” DeLeo told CNN. “I’ve spent all week protecting my family. My concern was staying on the front lines and preventing any more damage.”

CNN has sought comment from Farinacci’s attorney about the allegations and asked McCollam’s office for more information about the more than 20 other fires for which prosecutors alleged a confession but filed no charges.

Here’s what we know about the string of fires and the man accused of igniting them.

Authorities say they ‘corroborated’ four earlier fires

Farinacci, who previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Arizona, became a father in May 2025. According to the affidavit, investigators say that afterward, “he began having trouble dealing with life issues.”

He claimed that throughout the next year — starting in July 2025 — he sparked more than two dozen fires, authorities allege, not far from his western Spokane apartment, generally near the Spokane River or the Centennial Trail, a popular path that runs by the river. Nearly all the fires were ignited with a lighter and combustible material, the affidavit reads.

The earliest fire to which authorities allege Farinacci confessed to last week — and investigators were able to corroborate — happened on July 6, 2025, near Centennial Trail. Known as the Aubrey White Fire, it burned more than 1,200 acres and threatened numerous nearby homes. At the time, investigators had no suspect.

Just two days later, on July 8, 2025, several brush fires were ignited near his apartment complex — collectively dubbed the Copper River/Meenach Fires by investigators. Detectives said the fire erupted from separate ignition points, forcing evacuations at apartment complexes and nearby homes.

During that investigation, a Spokane police officer found Farinacci sitting on a rock beside the road near the fire. At the time, he said he carried lighters because he smoked marijuana, court documents read.

More than a year later, investigators say Farinacci now admits he had actually been sitting there because he had fallen and injured his tailbone while starting the flames.

He started those fires “in an attempt to ‘separate,’ ‘divide’ and ‘spread thin’ responding fire suppression efforts, which he knows only respond with 60% of their total response capacity,” and continued to set the fires even after getting hurt, Drapeau wrote in the affidavit.

The third fire to which authorities say Farinacci confessed, the Equestrian Fire, started on August 11, 2025, near the equestrian area of Riverside State Park just outside Spokane. Records from that time indicated state troopers found Farinacci sitting on a park bench, out of breath, the affidavit reads.

Prosecutors say officers photographed him wearing a green T-shirt — one that read “Who needs luck, I have charm.” Investigators later said that garment appeared to be the same shirt he was wearing when deputies contacted him after this month’s Old Trails Fire.

The fourth fire, the Indian Bluff Fire outside Spokane and just south of Riverside State Park, started on July 24, 2026. A Washington Department of Natural Resources investigator saw a man, whom he later identified as Farinacci, walking away from the fire while carrying a backpack, gloves and a walking stick, according to court documents.

All of those fires preceded the Old Trails Fire, which began August 1.

“To date, the Old Trails Fire is still ravaging the community and the extent of damage is not fully known,” McCollam, the Spokane County prosecuting attorney, wrote in the court memo filed Wednesday.

The investigation is ongoing, and more charges could be added as investigators uncover new details, prosecutors said.

A stay hearing is scheduled on September 4. Farinacci appeared in court Thursday, during which the judge ordered him held on a $2 million bond. Farinacci’s defense attorney said in court that day he would be filing an order for competency evaluation.

A history of ‘research’ and ‘planning’

For roughly 90 minutes of police questioning, Farinacci maintained he had nothing to do with the Old Trails Fire — or any other blaze, according to court documents.

“He had a plan, if confronted, to pull a knife from his backpack and try to get the police to shoot him,” Detective Drapeau wrote in his statements. “In this instance (the Old Trails Fire) he decided it best to ‘feign innocence,’ which he did.”

But, piece by piece, authorities say the story unraveled.

Farinacci often spent days and even weeks scouting potential fire locations, monitoring weather and wildfire data, and planning to set multiple fires to stretch firefighting resources thin, according to detectives. He had more than a basic understanding of fire suppression and law enforcement tactics, according to Drapeau’s statement.

After lighting the fires, Farinacci apparently “followed their progress closely on the news and/or social media in the days following,” the detective said in the documents.

Prior to the Old Trails Fire, he purchased materials to build a time-delay ignition device using notebook paper, matches, a cigarette and a rubber band.

Investigators say Farinacci also researched convicted serial arsonist John Leonard Orr and had “extensive knowledge of other arson suspects and their methodology.”

On the day of the fire, Farinacci was aware Spokane County was under a red flag warning and conditions were ideal to start a fire, according to Drapeau.

He told the detective he chose the location of the Old Trails Fire because he “knew it was gonna get bad,” which Drapeau said meant it would be a large fire, though Farinacci said he did not expect it to grow as large as it ultimately did.

“He knew at this location there was grass, then young trees, and then large trees and the wind was also pushing in the proper direction,” according to Drapeau’s written testimony. “He knew what was going to happen, and he stood there for some time ‘arguing’, ‘fighting’ with himself about starting the fire.”

He ultimately placed the makeshift ignition device he’d prepared in some grass near a fence and ran back the way he came, “looking back occasionally at the rising plume of smoke,” the detective wrote in the affidavit.

But authorities say he didn’t get away from that scene unseen. A grandfather’s quick thinking that day led fire investigators to Farinacci — after a fleeting roadside sighting turned into a crucial clue.

Around noon Aug. 1, prosecutors say Paul Child was driving along West Euclid with his grandson when he noticed a bald man standing north of the railroad tracks, staring into the trees. Ten minutes later, he saw the man again, this time bent over with his back to the road. Then, about 10 minutes later, smoke began rising from that very spot.

Child alerted investigators to what he saw, and deputies later stopped Farinacci, who they say matched Child’s given description, about 1.5 miles away. He was carrying a lighter, cigarettes and windproof matches, according to the affidavit, but he denied starting the fire and was released. Investigators later ruled out trains and power lines as possible causes — and traced the fire’s point of origin to the same spot Child witnessed the man’s strange behavior.

The string of wildfires is not the first serious criminal case involving Farinacci.

In 2012, Farinacci was arrested in connection with the 2010 fatal shooting of his father in Arizona during an argument about washing dishes, according to records from the state’s department of corrections and The Associated Press. During that incident, Farinacci also shot himself, the AP reported. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the outlet reported.

As her own home burned, a firefighter stayed on the front lines

Among those who lost their homes was firefighter Alexis DeLeo, who, moments after evacuating her family from the path of the Old Trails Fire, reported to her station, pulled on her gear and joined efforts to stop the fire line from progressing.

DeLeo and her family were spending Saturday at home preparing for their nephew’s 4th birthday party, one day before they were supposed to drive to Uniontown for the funeral of their beloved aunt, when the alert about the fire came.

Within hours, the warning became a heart-wrenching command: Leave, now.

As she packed her car, DeLeo looked back at her family. Her sisters and niece held each other as smoke crept closer, blanketing the sky behind them.

“I saw them in the driveway, and I was just like, I gotta get them out,” DeLeo told CNN, her voice breaking. “I’m making sure everyone gets to safety, and then I’m going to work.”

“I’ll be damned if I let this fire do this to anyone else,” she added.

As she evacuated, DeLeo looked back toward home and saw the fire closing in.

For nine hours, DeLeo set aside the fear of losing her own home. She turned her attention to the fire in front of her — facing walls of heat and the bright red tongues of flame as they reached toward her, then moving toward them.

“I’m fighting fires, but also trying to do like welfare checks for my loved ones, and people are checking on me,” she said. When she finally returned to the fire station, her chief was waiting at the door.

“I’m so sorry,” she says he told her. “Your home’s gone.”

Still, DeLeo says she does not hold anger toward the accused arsonist. She wonders what could have driven someone to set the blaze, but knows no amount of fury can undo what happened.

“We take classes, and we review old scenes and old fires, and we talk about what we could have done differently, we talk about arsonists,” she said. “They all say the same thing. ‘I didn’t expect it to be that big.’ That doesn’t change intent, or what they did want to happen, or the harm that it causes.”

The fire left DeLeo, her two sisters and 4-year-old niece without a home; now, their community is rallying around them, raising money to help them rebuild what the flames took away.

Across Spokane, the Autumn Lane, Old Trails and Fairview fires have left more than 900 structures damaged. Even residents whose homes survived have been warned they may be unable to return for weeks as the fire-damaged areas remain unsafe.

“The situation is dire,” Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson told CNN on August 3. “These are neighborhoods in the city (of Spokane) that in large part have been just wiped out.”

For days, as she battled the blaze with her crew, DeLeo lived in that strange space between the two — firefighter and civilian, protector and person in need of protection.

She was fighting the same fire that had taken so much from her.

“It really made me realize,” she said, “that there’s no amount of training that I could have gone through to prepare me to be on the other side of it.”

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CNN’s Graham Hurley, Holly Yan, Emma Tucker, Alea Motwane and Isa Mudannayake contributed to this report.