Half Of Esperanza Fire Reward Money Given To Key Witness
Half of a $100,000 reward offered by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors for the capture of the person responsible for setting the deadly 2006 Esperanza wildfire was released today to a key witness against the man convicted of igniting the monster blaze.
The board voted unanimously to withdraw $50,000 from county reserves and disburse it to the witness, who testified for the prosecution in the trial of former Beaumont mechanic Raymond Lee Oyler.
“An attorney for the witness — who has reported being harassed and ostracized for testifying in the case — has asked that his client be identified publicly only as Claimant Doe,” county spokesman Ray Smith wrote in a report.
He said shielding her identity was intended to protect her “privacy and safety.”
Oyler lit the 41,000-acre Esperanza blaze south of Cabazon in the predawn hours of Oct. 26, 2006. Fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, the fire spread throughout the Banning Pass, raging into the mountain hamlet of Twin Pines, where the crew of U.S. Forest Service Engine 57 — comprised of Capt. Mark Allen Loutzenhiser, 43, and firefighters Pablo Cerda, 24, Daniel Hoover- Najera, 20, Jason Robert McKay, 27, and Jess Edward McLean, 27 — died.
Oyler, 40, was convicted in March 2009 of five counts of first-degree murder and more than three dozen counts of arson and possessing destructive devices. He had set multiple fires in the Pass area throughout 2006, according to trial testimony.
A few days after the firefighters’ deaths, the board approved a $100,000 reward, which ballooned to more than $500,000 after a number of private donors put up similar offers.
At Oyler’s March 2007 preliminary hearing, his attorney, Mark McDonald, questioned the defendant’s second cousin about her desire to collect the reward. She admitted that she had put in a claim.
The woman testified at the hearing that Oyler had boasted about planning to set a “mountain on fire” and had sought a ride from her one night to light a blaze in a remote location. She gave the same account during Oyler’s trial.
According to the Executive Office, after a meeting last December with the lead prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Mike Hestrin, and investigators with the fire and sheriff’s departments, it was decided that Claimant Doe’s testimony and cooperation were critical and she deserved a portion of the reward.
