Prosecutors said the man they charged with starting the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles was upset about a failed relationship and not having New Year’s Eve plans just before he set a small blaze which rekindled six days later.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, who is set to go to trial June 8, “exhibited extreme anger, indignation, and frustration about being unable to find companionship on New Year’s Eve,” prosecutors in the office of Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a court filing. They said he tried and failed to make plans for that night with two other people.
“On New Year’s Eve 2024, defendant was alone again,” according to the filing. Rinderknecht, who worked as an Uber driver, dropped off passengers in the Palisades area that night, then hiked up a hillside where evidence shows he set a fire with a BIC barbecue lighter later found in his car, the government alleges.
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The Palisades Fire that broke out on Jan. 7 ultimately killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in one of the wealthiest parts of Los Angeles. That conflagration plus another that started on the same day on the other side of Los Angeles County rank among the costliest in the insurance-industry’s history, with combined estimated economic losses of $65 billion, according to insurer Gallagher Re.
If convicted, Rinderknecht would be responsible for one of the nation’s most expensive wildfire arsons. The U.S. has said he faces as long as 45 years in prison if found guilty.
Prosecutors submitted a 25-page memo to the court Wednesday outlining the evidence they seek to use at trial, including statements Rinderknecht made to investigators and expert testimony about the fire’s cause.
“I maintain my client’s innocence,” Steven Haney, Rinderknecht’s lawyer, said in an email. “No misguided theory from the government will change the lack of evidence showing my client started or was responsible for either of the fires for which he is charged. We look forward to proving it at trial.”
Rinderknecht “became increasingly angry with his life and society at large,” according to prosecutors who said he also became “fixated on Luigi Mangione,” the Ivy League graduate charged with gunning down a UnitedHealth Group Inc. executive in Manhattan in December 2024.
A forensic review of Rinderknecht’s computer showed his searched for “Mangione-related news” using terms like “free Luigi Mangione,” “lets take down all the billionaires,” and “reddit lets kill all the billionaires,” according to the filing.
When Rinderknecht was questioned by investigators days after the fire about why someone would commit arson in the Palisades neighborhood, prosecutors said, he “responded it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them’ and compared such an act of ‘desperation’ to the murder for which Mangione was charged.”
Rinderknecht, who had lived in the Pacific Palisades area, dropped off an Uber passenger near where the fire started, the US said. A federal investigator determined the fire started shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 2025, and Rinderknecht called 911 while standing about 30 feet away, prosecutors said.
The government says the small “holdover” fire allegedly ignited by Rinderknecht along a trail in Topanga State Park smoldered underground after firefighters said they’d extinguished it and morphed into a major conflagration during high winds.
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Haney seeks to present evidence that Los Angeles fire officials “negligently abandoned an active, smoldering burn scar for six days — despite active hot spots, red-hot coals, and audible crackling observed and documented by LAFD’s own firefighters” that allowed the Jan. 1 fire to “rekindle into the Palisades Fire,” according to a defense filing.
The U.S. is seeking to call expert witnesses to refute theories that the Palisades Fire was started by fireworks or by downed power lines.
The fire, one of the most destructive in California history, has also led to a flurry of lawsuits against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Water, the biggest municipal utility in the U.S. Some residents who lost homes, businesses and loved ones alleged the utility failed to take appropriate safety measures in an area highly vulnerable to wildfires.
Top photo: A few homes remain intact after the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, in January 2025. Photographer: Jill Connelly/Bloomberg.
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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