Week after week, he played hide-and-seek with the Cleveland Heights Fire Department…catch me, he taunted, before the next fire.  The dangerous game ended in an arrest and confession in the summer of 1982, but a new search is just beginning, a search into the complex personality of Arthur Tramer Deitz, the man who called himself

It was past midnight, and Arthur Deitz had walked more than two miles before stepping into the phone booth at the rapid transit station at Coventry Road and Shaker Boulevard.  Unaware he was being watched, Deitz dialed the number of the Cleveland Heights Fire Department.  And then he assumed a new identity….

“This is Frank’s Boy,” he said into the phone.  “How did you like that garage?  Spectacular wasn’t it?”  His voice was a taunt.  He was referring to a garage he had set on fire earlier in the evening.  To those on the line, Frank’s Boy seemed to be gloating that he had again beaten the fire department and had slipped through the fingers of the police.

For three years, Deitz--as Frank’s Boy- had played his game of hide-and-seek against the fire and police departments and had enjoyed winning.  Seeing himself as a clever and heroic comic-book character, he was suspected of setting perhaps 100 fires.  And always he concluded his telephone calls to the fire department with the same eerie challenge: “You won’t be able to catch me before I do the next one.”

But on this sticky summer night, Deitz was captured.  With the fire department still on the line, four policemen cornered him.  His initial reaction was to try to run.  But then he raised his hands, turned to his captors and said only one word: “Congratulations.”

So ended a nearly four-month-long pursuit of Frank’s Boy by the police-the most intensive and expensive investigation ever conducted in Cleveland Heights.  The manhunt for the arsonist was literally a race against death.  Police believed it was simply a matter of time before someone would perish in one of his fires.

For the previous three years, arson had been the leading cause of fires in Cleveland Heights, an older East Side suburb lined with dozens of half-century –old apartment buildings, many of them occupied by elderly residents.  The goal of Frank’s Boy, according to a letter he wrote in April to Fire Chief Vincent Brice, was to make 1982 a “banner year” for arson.  The typed letter said he would cause $1 million in fire losses.

Based on fire department statistics, the 32-year-old landscaper was halfway toward accomplishing his goal.  Between last December and this past June 26th, the day he was captured, Deitz was suspected of setting fires which resulted in $500,000 in damages.

Initially, his targets were nothing more than trash bins.  Then he turned to cars, apartment buildings and houses.  The bulk of the fires were set late Friday or Saturday nights; he later told police he had been too tired from his landscaping job to engage in arson during the work week.

There was another pattern to the fires-every three months there was a resurgence of larger fires.

Once the police were brought into the investigation last March, $15,000 had been offered in rewards for the capture of the phantom arsonist.  Many of the suburb’s residents began spending their weekends at home, fearing their dwellings and belongings might go up in flames.

As the weeks passed, Police Chief Martin Lentz deployed officers to the rooftops and basements of the apartment buildings where most of the fire attacks were concentrated.  Suspecting that Frank’s Boy might be equipped with a police radio monitor, investigators refrained from over-the-air communication

As a result, serving on the surveillance detail was lonely and frightening.  “You realized,” said John Coco, a detective who spent a number of weekends in a dark basement with a meowing stray cat, “that if you dozed off, you could end up dead.”

Coco and 30 officers involved in the stake-outs saw the seasons change as the torchings steadily grew in number and intensity.  By late spring Frank’s Boy, police said, had begun to set as many as four or five diversionary fires in addition to his major weekend hit.  By the end of June the investigation had cost at least $100,000.  Even then there was no guarantee Frank’s Boy would be caught.

At one point the police had 200 arson suspects, but the officers worked on only one strong lead.  A motorist had spotted a man with a radio monitor in a phone booth on Lee Road.  Based on that tip, a police department employee checked thousands of invoices at a local radio shop, hoping to produce some suspects.

Because arson is the most difficult of crimes to solve-usually the evidence is destroyed in the fire-Chief Lentz estimated his chances of catching Frank’s Boy at 10,000 to one.  In this case, the odds may have been even longer.

For one thing, the fires were targeted at no one in particular, which ruled out revenge as a motive.  Arson-for-profit also was ruled out, particularly after the letter and a number of phone calls were received from the man who called himself Frank’s Boy.  Frustrating to the police was that the arsonist took a great deal of pride in-and seemed to be perfecting-his work.

“He got better with each one,” said Detective Larry Shaffer.  Frank’s Boy became so proficient that Sergeant Albert Kaminski, chief of detectives, became convinced the arsonist was studying fire science in his spare time-and perhaps even police manuals.

In his letter to the fire chief, for example, Deitz wrote that he was “refining his modus operandi, to use new tricks.”  So far, he wrote, the fires were only appetizers.  He hungered for bigger fires.

He also knew the police would be looking for suspects at the fire scenes.  “I see unmarked cop cars, but time is on my side,” he wrote.  “You won’t smell gasoline or see me in the crowd.”  It was in this letter that he revealed his code name, Frank’s Boy, and that his plan was to set fires until 1990.

Not only did he hope his success would be an inspiration for other arsonists, he wrote, but he also wanted the proper credit for his efforts.  He craved more publicity.  He even wanted his work reported on the Crime-Stopper segment of the Channel 8 news.

“The Lone Ranger leaves a silver bullet.  Maybe I should leave my Cricket lighter,” he wrote.

Authorities believe the letter revealed only one side of Deitz’s apparently conflicting personality.  While the arrest of Arthur Tramer Deitz made the front page of the morning newspaper, there was yet another dramatic story left untouched.  It involved such diverse elements as drugs, rock music, reggae, a strange religion…and even the adventures of a comic book anti-hero whose “thing” was arson.

In short, it was a story that revealed a troubled man, a man apparently unaffected emotionally by his crimes (as of this writing Deitz has confessed to setting 53 fires between January 1979 and this past June; a dozen of those blazes involved apartment buildings and houses).

Could Deitz be a pyromaniac?  Emphasizing he was speaking only of pyromaniacs in general, Dr. Meir Gross, a Cleveland Clinic psychiatrist, said such persons exhibit common characteristics.  The majority, said Dr. Gross, are withdrawn individuals who have poor social skills, and setting fires is their way of bolstering self-esteem.

The motivation for setting a fire may vary from a simple release of tension or sexual excitement to an attempt to feel important.  Pyromaniacs usually find employment in simple jobs and tend to be of average or low intelligence, Dr. Gross said.  While pyromaniacs may have enough of a sense of reality to feel shame about what they have done, many have difficulty defining their own personalities.

Quite often, a pyromaniac will say he has heard voices urging him to set fires; or he is carrying out the orders of another person or even God.  Pyromaniacs usually do not have compassion for those they have harmed or the havoc and destruction they have caused.  “To a pyromaniac, setting a fire is just a game,” said Dr. Gross.  “Its just like pushing a button on a video game.”

In Deitz’s case, the police believe there are two distinct facets of his personality.  Outwardly, they say, he appears to be rebel in the mold of a sixties’ hippie.  The arsonist side of Deitz, however, seems to be highly intelligent, creative and detail-oriented.  These elements of Deitz’s personality did not become evident to the police until they had arrested him and searched the flat he shared with his mother at the Drake Apartments, on Van Aken Boulevard in Shaker Heights.

LET INTO THE apartment by Alice Deitz, a widow in her seventies, police were impressed by the tidiness of the place.  The officers were also struck by how polite and caring Mrs. Deitz seemed in light of the circumstances of their visit-a search for incriminating evidence.  Although armed with a warrant, the police asked permission to see her son’s room.  She quickly acknowledged they would find marijuana there, but other things they discovered upon opening the door revealed a great deal more about Deitz.

The room was littered with stacks of books, most of them about various drugs and marijuana, and record albums, some of them from the sixties, still sealed in their original jackets.  In fact, the room was so crammed that officers had a difficult time making their way along the tiny pathway between the door and the bed, itself blanketed with soiled T-shirts and trousers.

But the most dominant factor of the room was a large poster of Haile Selassie, the late emperor of Ethiopia.  In scanning the room, Detective Coco noted an electric guitar and small practice amplifier, telephone numbers scrawled on a wall, and finely detailed drawings of guitars and marijuana leaves.

“Imagine walking into an immaculate apartment on Van Aken and then opening the door to his room, which was a mess,” said Lieutenant Michael Cannon.  “It was another world.  It was his world.  It was like Alice in Wonderland.”

In this inner sanctum, Deitz tended to a number of plants.   Several near one window seemed hastily planted, with soil overflowing the pots and littering the floor, but others-his cherished plants-were kept in his closet.

Here the police found the interior completely lined with aluminum foil and illuminated by plant lights.  Three or four marijuana plants, including one mammoth specimen, were growing.   Searching elsewhere, detectives found dozens of clippings from newspapers and magazines, some yellowed, about Jamaicans being arrested.  They also uncovered photographs-some of marijuana plants, crowds and the local reggae music group, I-tal, of which Deitz was a fan.

The police also located a picture book of the career of Bob Marley and the Wailers, a Jamaican reggae band.  And they found a small-caliber handgun.

As the police searched through dresser drawers, they perspired freely.  The temperature of the room was in the nineties; it was as if Deitz had attempted to duplicate the tropical conditions of Jamaica.

Still digging into his things, the police also found some slides.  One was of Coventryard Mall in ruins from a fire.  Another showed bags of trash apparently piled inside an apartment garage.  There was also a shot of police and rescue equipment and the inside of the cab of an old Shaker Heights fire truck.  The truck had been used by Shaker Heights in Fire Prevention Week parades through the late sixties.

But perhaps the most interesting find was a comic strip entitled Front Line Comics Presents Frank’s Boy.

The comic strip, according to sources, opens in downtown San Francisco and depicts Frank’s Boy setting a trash fire.  While the arson is reported to police, Frank’s Boy escapes on foot through back alleys.  Midway through the episode, it appears that Frank’s Boy awakens from a dream.  Snapping back to reality, he is seen having a beer with a black man whose hair is in long, curly dread locks.

The importance of the comic strip as evidence is obvious, but the strip also serves as an example of the complexity of Deitz’s personality.  Within the room, it appears, parts of his personality converged.  Frank’s Boy, in addition to being the arsonist, was also an artist and musician.  “Frank is the thinker, the creative person-highly organized and very proud of his work-and Artie is the other guy-a mess,” said Lieutenant Cannon.  The room also revealed the nature of Deitz’s deeper fascinations.

In Coco’s opinion, Deitz is a worshipper of marijuana.  It is also possible that he is a follower or sympathizer of a religious group known as the Rastafarians.  Predominately black men from Jamaica and Ethiopia, the Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie, who died in 1975, was their only true god.

Marijuana, or “ganja” (as the weed is referred to by the Rastafarians), is smoked in great quantities and is considered a religious sacrament.  Using marijuana, the cult believes, brings the worshipper closer to Jah (God).  Reggae music, popularized in Jamaica and elsewhere because of Bob Marley and the Wailers, is used by the Rastafarians to express their religious and political beliefs.

Three bands play reggae in the Cleveland area: I-tal, Kaya and Jah Messinger.  Deitz was familiar to all of them, but apparently only as a spectator.  A member of Kaya (who claimed he and several others in the reggae groups are Rastafarians) said there is no organized church in the area.  Praying and chanting to God, he said, is done simply, without the need for formal worship.

If Deitz was a Rastafarian, the religion was probably the only part of his life which made him feel a part of something, or at least in touch spiritually with other humans.

Adopted as a child, Deitz apparently lived most of his life in isolation-in a sense, a self-imposed exile.  While his mother and other family members prefer not to comment about him, except to note that his life has been tragic, it appears that he has never been close to his stepparents.  In fact, probate records on file at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse show that when his adoptive father, Morris (Mace) Deitz, died in 1973 at the age of 70, the whereabouts of Arthur Deitz were unknown.

What little is known about his background is that when he was a boy of eight or nine his art teacher suspected Arthur was having emotional problems.  The Deitzes, both devoted to the Temple-on-the-Heights where Mace served on the board, were told that his drawings, done in dark colors, revealed a brooding, depressed personality.

Growing up in Cleveland Heights, Arthur was perceived as being “strange” by his classmates.  After attending Wiley Junior High and Cleveland Heights High School, Deitz transferred to Shaker Heights High School and was graduated in 1968.  Some believe he never grew beyond that era-and perhaps he was trapped in the attitudes that were current in the later 1960s.

During the seventies Deitz reportedly lived in San Fransisco, Houston and South America before returning to Shaker Heights and moving in with his mother in 1978.  He came back, police speculate, because he felt comfortable in the Coventry Road area of Cleveland Heights, a place where aging hippies still congregate.

Deitz, according to police, had no close friends; he simply drifted in and out of Coventry.  In Shaker Heights he was known as the “midnight walker”-the man with the stocking cap pulled down close to his piercing eyes who walked the streets, sometimes all night long on weekends.

Walking five or six miles or more on some nights and working odd jobs as a landscaper enabled Deitz to live a shielded existence, free of intrusion and contact from the outside. 

Following his arrest, his principal concern was being harmed.  “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me,” he pleaded with the police who caught him.  Apparently he was puzzled when they began to smile, and he became even more confused when firefighters voiced their joy in his capture.  When Police Chief Lentz offered him a can of soda pop, Deitz eyed it suspiciously, apparently fearing it was poisoned.  At his arraignment Deitz cried out for protection from the television cameras.

When I recently visited him in the Cuyahoga County Jail, Deitz appeared as if he were going to break into tears.  After shaking hands reluctantly with me, he began yelling, “Get away from me, get away from me… I don’t want to talk to you!” his eyes widened, filled with fright.  Appearing frail and bent like an old man, he scurried behind several other inmates in their yellow and orange jail uniforms.  Finally, he took refuge behind a glass partition.

He has spoken at length, though, to Cleveland Heights police, confessing to setting the 53 fires.  But there is one investigator Deitz has refused to let question him.

THAT MAN IS Frank Molls, a lieutenant on the Shaker Heights fire department.  A 28-year veteran, Molls believes he is the Frank for whom Deitz has nicknamed himself.  Although Molls has known Deitz for four years and has visited him at the jail, he has been unsuccessful in persuading him to discuss a number of suspicious, unsolved fires in that suburb.

There was a time when Deitz would speak to Molls.  But that was back in

early September 1978.  Molls had telephoned Deitz and asked him to

come to his office after reviewing the routine log of fire department runs

one day.

The entry which had caught Molls’s attention was a report of a fire alarm

box which had been pulled in the 3200 block of Warrensville Center Road.

  A policeman had stopped Deitz at 1:15a.m., 15 minutes after the alarm

was pulled.  Examining the suspect’s hands with a black light, the policeman

had detected fluorescent paint-which had come from the fire alarm.

On the phone, Molls had asked Deitz why he had pulled the alarm. 

“I saw a fire,” Deitz replied.  Molls told him there had been no fire in that

vicinity.  Deitz, however, insisted there had been a fire, and he agreed to

talk about it.  When Deitz arrived at the office, he appeared with a camera

dangling on a strap around his neck.

“What are you going to do with the camera?” Molls asked.

“Take pictures,” Deitz replied.

“I guess that’s okay,” said Molls.  “Would you mind driving out to the alarm box and showing me where you saw the fire?”

Deitz agreed.

When they arrived at the box, Deitz led the way across the street and into the basement of a home under construction.  Pointing upward, he showed Molls two black-charred joists.

The lieutenant reacted immediately: “You son of a bitch, there’s no way you could have seen this fire from across the street.  You set it, didn’t you?”“Prove it,” Deitz retorted.  “You’ll have to prove  it.”

On that day, there was a house fire on Milverton Road, and Molls (trained in police photography) arrived carrying a camera.  Because the fire’s cause was suspicious, the lieutenant scanned the crowd for suspects.  Glancing across the street, he quickly spotted Deitz, also with a camera in hand.  Molls snapped only one picture of Deitz before Deitz began yelling profanities and ran off.

Although Molls felt certain that Deitz had set the fire, he had no proof and no witnesses.  In the meantime, he contacted the Shaker Heights police to learn more about the suspect.  He was informed that Deitz had been convicted in 1969 for possession of marijuana.  In 1972, Molls was told, Deitz had been convicted of breaking and entering into his own apartment building-and only a week before the fire alarm incident Deitz had nearly foiled a six-month investigation of a major heroin trafficker who lived next door to the Deitz apartment.

In recounting that incident, Shaker Heights police Lieutenant James Brosius said that apartment building had been under constant surveillance by police from Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland as well as by the FBI.  One morning while FBI agents were watching the building from their unmarked car, Deitz appeared-first on a skateboard and then on a stoop, strumming a guitar and singing.

Thinking that the agents were watching him, Deitz began to approach their car, then swore at them and retreated into the building.  Although Deitz was in no way connected with the heroin trafficker, the agents feared their cover would be blown.  Finally Deitz began pelting the car with stones, and the FBI was forced to arrest him.

Because of all the commotion, the police decided to raid the apartment.  A band of suspects was rounded up, and $3 million worth of heroin was confiscated.  Deitz, however, was soon released from custody; he was fined $50 for throwing the stones at the FBI car and another $100 for pulling the fire alarm.

Several weeks later there was another blaze-this one in the basement of the Drake Apartments.  Suspecting Deitz had set the fire, Molls this time went to his apartment.  In the presence of Mrs. Deitz, Arthur warned the lieutenant not to walk into the apartment.  “Don’t cross the threshold,” he told Molls.

When questioned as to his whereabouts at the time of the fire, Deitz said he had been at the high school watching children play.  At that point he pushed Molls backwards and said: “If you don’t stop this, I’ll kill you.”

By this time Molls was in the hallway, but Deitz threw a glass at him, cutting one of Molls’s hands.  A week later Deitz was convicted of assault, fined $300 and sentenced to 10 days in jail.  That was the last time the lieutenant saw Deitz until February 13th, 1981.

Although the cause of the house fire remains unsolved, Molls is not sure Deitz was involved.  Nonetheless, when the Cleveland Heights police began their search for Frank’s Boy, Molls thought of Deitz.  He showed a picture of him to detectives a month before the arrest, but at the time Deitz was just one of 200 suspects.

“The only thing I regret,” says Molls, “is not catching him for setting fires here.”  The Shaker Heights fire department suspects that Deitz is responsible for at least a half-dozen or more fires, most of them involving cars parked within a block of his apartment building.

DEITZ, SAYS MOLLS, is an expert in fire science and can readily discuss the point of origin of a fire, the apex, and the use of accelerants.  “There are firemen who don’t know as much about fire as Artie knows.”

After his arrest a cynical prankster photocopied a mug shot of Deitz, framed it and left it near Molls’s desk.  Beneath the picture are the word: “With all my love, to Dad, Artie”

Does Molls sincerely believe he is responsible for the nickname Frank’s Boy?  “I believe it’s me, I really do,” says Molls.  “I think he sees me as a father figure.”

Frank’s Boy ultimately was arrested because of his calls to the Cleveland Heights fire department.  With the use of tracing equipment, the Ohio Bell Telephone Company determined that the majority of the arsonist’s calls were being made from pay phones along Coventry Road.  Because the police knew their chances of catching the arsonist at the scene of a fire were slim, they concentrated on those Coventry pay phones.

Regardless of how large a fire might be, the police were instructed not to leave their assigned pay phone.  Also, the officers were told the phone company would trace any calls to the fire departments made from pay telephones in the designated area.  The policemen were to wait to hear three special tones over their radios before making any arrest.  The night Deitz was arrested, he used the southernmost staked-out pay phone on Coventry Road.

Deitz has not incriminated himself in any fires where people were injured.  There was, for example, a fire last March 27th which hospitalized five residents in a 27-suite apartment building on Superior Park Drive.  Deitz has denied involvement.

His attorney, Seymour Terrell, declined to be interviewed, but quickly set the stage for an insanity defense at Deitz’s original arraignment last June.  “He is a very sick boy, your honor,” Terrell told Cleveland Heights Municipal Court Judge Sara R. Hunter.

It appears the letter sent to the fire chief, reportedly typed at the Deitz apartment, and the Frank’s Boy comic strip may be the two most important pieces of evidence against Deitz.  Both in the case of the letter and the comic strip a jury could interpret that he did know the difference between right and wrong, or that he was suffering from pyromania.

The court will decide Deitz’s fate.  Terrell is expected to present an insanity defense.  In the meantime, members of the Cleveland Heights police and fire departments hope Deitz is incarcerated and given treatment.

“You’d feel sorry for someone who was sorry for what he had done,” said Molls.  “But he set those fires for kicks.  I have no compassion for him because he has no remorse.  I just hope he can be put away.”