The Fort Bragg Fires, Part I: The Money Trail
by Mark Heimann and Bruce Anderson for the Anderson Valley Advertiser February 3rd, 1999 Edited by Peter J. Mello, December 29th, 2017 The Fort Bragg Fires Part I: The Money Trail Publisher’s Note: Early in the morning of September 20 th , 1987, in a remote Northern California logging/fishing hamlet, three brazen arson fires destroyed the Ten Mile Justice Court , the adjacent Fort Bragg Library and, just down Main Street, the venerable Piedmont Hotel and restaurant. (seen right) No one was ever prosecuted. And these three blazes, spectacular and as disheartening as they were, were just smaller pieces of a much larger, puzzling series of arsons-for-profit that plagued the small coastal community in the 1980s. This first installment of the series can be confusing. Essentially, it describes the startling financial schemes and other related misdeeds orchestrated by a rogue loan officer employ...