Ventura County – When maintenance workers discovered “large amounts of flammable liquids” on the roof of a Camarillo dental building in June of 2014, according to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Detective Michael Rompal, it was apparent to investigators that those materials had been stored there with the intent to use them in commission of arson.
As it happened, just two months later, another building housing dental offices in nearby Camarillo was set on fire with the use of flammable liquids which provided very few actionable items of evidence or reasonable paths of investigation for law enforcement to follow. Without motives or suspects in the case, arson investigators and teams from the VCSD Arson Unit, the Sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit, and the Ventura County Fire Department Arson Unit could do little but wait for leads to surface.
As so often happens with the passage of time, however, “a concerned citizen” took a photo of a private motor vehicle matching the description of a car reported to have been observed at prior incendiary incidents. That photo led VCSD detectives to identify a local area dentist, Leopold Weinstein, 63, as the possible occupant of the suspect motor vehicle. Lacking any reasonable motive to support their suspicions, however, authorities had no grounds to pursue a warrant search…until January 28th, when the location of the original discovery of flammable materials provided surveillance video of Weinstein caught in the act of “setting fire to the building”.
Weinstein was apprehended at that scene and, while his motives for his actions were initially unclear to detectives, it became apparent that Weinstein’s recent loss of patients to other area dentists supported considerable financial incentive to burn the competition out. Weinstein was arrested and transported to Ventura County Jail where he was booked on multiple charges of arson and possession of a handgun silencer, with his bail set at $250,000.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
Read more:
People: CA dentists arrested for trying to burn
NBC4: Dentist arrested following long arson investigation
