Three of the Five Corral Fire Suspects Arraigned Friday

• Judge Says ‘All the Sorries in the World’ Fall Short•

BY HANS LAETZ

In an unusual bail hearing that ended with the judge calling their acts “careless and callous,” two of the five Corral Canyon arson suspects were unsuccessful in getting any substantive reduction in their bail amounts, meaning at least one will face Christmas in jail.
Instead of a routine bail hearing on whether the two men were risks to the community if released on bail, Judge Michael Kellogg laid out the prosecution’s case against all five men charged with setting the Nov. 24 fire that destroyed 53 houses and severely damaged another 34.
“There is nothing to show me that there wasn’t this callousness,” Kellogg said, “and a high level of carelessness. And all the sorries in the world don’t change that.”
Kellogg rejected requests by attorneys for William Thomas Coppock, 23, and Brian David Franks, 27, that the two men be released on their own recognizance. The judge said Coppock, according to sheriff’s reports, had tried to at least put out some of the fire, and lowered his bond to $100,000.
Coppock’s attorney said his client was an indigent and would have to stay in jail over the Christmas holidays.
Franks’ bail was reduced by $10,000 due to an earlier math error, to $230,000. His attorney said he would bail out of the county jail today.
Already released on bail is Brian Alan Anderson, 23, as well as two Culver City teenagers who were part of a different group of partiers who went to the mountaintop cave overlooking Malibu and the San Fernando Valley to drink beer with girls and light a campfire at a notorious party location on State Parks lands.
The judge told attorneys he had spent a great deal of time reviewing the police reports, and noted that the accusation of causing an arson fire during a state of emergency requires a sentence of state prison time.
He said the sheriff’s department believes that Anderson, Coppock and Franks stole 3-4 packages of precut firewood from the Ralph’s Supermarket in Malibu, and then added that wood to a small campfire already set in the cave by the two Culver City teenage codefendants, Dean Allan Lavorante, 19, and Eric Matthew Ullman, 18.
Those two men apparently left the cave after the older men from Los Angeles arrived and drank between 18-30 cans of beer and other liquor. Anderson reportedly kicked burning logs out of the cave and into surrounding brush, and then allegedly ordered Coppock out of the cave to put it out, according to a sheriff’s report read by one of the attorneys.
Franks’ public defender, Douglas Jay Goldstein, said his client not only did not start the fire, “but seemed to be a good Samaritan.”
“Anderson kicked a burning log out of the cave and said, ‘Here, put this out,’” Goldstein said. “Guys were laughing.”
Anderson next allegedly tossed a burning pillow outside the cave and told Franks to put it out.
Anderson has already been released on $240,000 bail.
The three Los Angeles men will next face a preliminary hearing Jan. 7 in Van Nuys. The two Culver City men will be arraigned there Feb. 14.