Palisades Arsonist Arrested For Fire That Killed 12 People: Here’s What Gave Him Away

Investigators carefully ruled out accidental causes like downed wires or stray sparks on dry combustibles. The accused firebug is now in custody. And the evidence against him is considerable… including physical and digital.

The privacy he may have thought a hiking trail might afford him while others parties on New Years’ Eve ironically made it easier to identify him. His was the only phone in the area. More than that, his digital activity at the time of the fire is particularly damning.

DOJ Statement

The DOJ laid out key facts of the case against him:

According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, law enforcement determined that the Palisades Fire was a “holdover” fire – a continuation of the Lachman Fire that began early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2025. Although firefighters quickly suppressed the Lachman Fire, unbeknownst to anyone the fire continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation.

On January 7, heavy winds caused the underground fire to surface and spread above ground in what became known as the Palisades Fire, which caused widespread damage in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Law enforcement determined – using witness statements, video surveillance, cellphone data, and analysis of fire dynamics and patterns at the scene, among other things – that Rinderknecht maliciously set the Lachman Fire just after midnight on January 1 on land owned by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), an organization that received federal funding. A week later, the same fire – then known as the Palisades Fire – burned federal property.

On the evening of December 31, 2024, Rinderknecht was working as an Uber driver. Two passengers that he drove on separate trips between 10:15 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. that night later told law enforcement they remembered that Rinderknecht appeared agitated and angry.

After dropping off a passenger in Pacific Palisades, Rinderknecht – who once lived in that neighborhood – drove towards Skull Rock Trailhead, parked his car, attempted to contact a former friend, and walked up the trail. He then used his iPhone to take videos at a nearby hilltop area and listened to a rap song – to which he had listened repeatedly in previous days – whose music video included things being lit on fire.

At 12:12 a.m. on January 1, 2025, environmental sensing platforms indicated the Lachman Fire had begun. During the next five minutes, Rinderknecht called 911 several times, but didn’t get through because his iPhone was out of cellphone range. When he finally connected with 911, he was at the bottom of the hiking trail and reported the fire. By that point, a nearby resident already had reported the fire to authorities.

Rinderknecht then fled in his car, passing fire engines driving in the opposite direction. He then turned around and followed the fire engines to the scene, driving at a high rate of speed. Rinderknecht walked up the same trail from earlier that night to watch the fire and the firefighters. At approximately 1:02 a.m., he used his iPhone to take more videos of the scene.

During an interview with law enforcement on January 24, 2025, Rinderknecht lied about where he was when he first saw the Lachman Fire. He claimed he was near the bottom of a hiking trail when he first saw the fire and called 911, but geolocation data from his iPhone carrier showed that he was standing in a clearing 30 feet from the fire as it rapidly grew.

It didn’t occur to him he’d be the only person with cell signal up there that night, or that there was a time-stamped record of his movements connecting him to the scene and proving his alibi had been falsified.

A green BBQ lighter was found in his car together with his DNA on it… investigators believe that to be the instrument by which he started the fire.

His digital history wasn’t limited to just his movements, either. We’ve got evidence of culpability (where he asked his GPT chatbot whether someone could be held responsible for a fire accidentally set by a cigarette, and we’ve got potential evidence of motive.

In July of 2024 gave his AI a complex prompt to create an image. It was written in great detail (same link will take you to it) but here’s the TL;DR version: ON the far left of the image, a burning forest. Nest to that, people fleeing the fire toward the middle.where poor people struggle to get past an imposing gate with a dollar sign on it, as (on the right) wealthy people are relaxing and enjoying their lives, ignoring the suffering.

Here’s how AI replied to that prompt.

Skipping ahead to November is another instructive post in which he talks about having literally (said twice) burned his Bible, and how he described himself as feeling ‘liberated’.

Not two months later, he stands accused of using his newfound ‘liberty’ to set a fire that snuffed out 12 innocent human lives, and wiped out an entire community in the process.

Bible-hating guy with a class struggle fixation committing a crime that destroyed massive property and killed innocent people?

That’s weird. All this time, the ‘experts’ were telling us with great confidence that this fire was the result of an arsonist who goes by the name of ‘Climate Change’.

Looks like they had the wrong guy all along.