Irving Galarza

Unlike most of the cases that I blog about here this is not a murder case, but it is only by pure luck that it is not. The defendant in this case, Irving Galarza, was charged and convicted of attempted murder when he hired people to set fire to the home next door to him. Obviously this is one of the many crimes that was not fully thought through.

Recently I posted a case that was featured on the show Fear Thy Neighbor, one of my favorite show on Investigation Discovery, but I also posted about a lot of misinformation given on that particular episode. The episode about this case may not have had a whole lot that was technically misinformation or things changed for dramatics, but there were some things left out. One of the main things involved the fact that the episode portrayed Irving Galarza as a single man when in fact he was married (or at least had a companion living with him) and two children. I feel this is important because in reality aside from the woman in this case who nearly died, in my opinion they were the most affected by his crime. Yes, there were several people who suffered because of Irving Galarza's actions but I still think they should have all been mentioned, even if not by name.

Irving Galarza lived in a nice neighborhood in Cleveland Ohio. By all accounts almost all of the neighbors got along very well on the block. There only seemed to be one problem. There was one rental house on the block and it had not always had the best tenants over the years. The home was right next door to Irving so he, and the family on the other side, tended to have the most issues with the rental home. At some point it was said that Irving attempted to buy the rental home but he had been unable to. The home was considered to be a tri-level. The bottom part was the main house and then there was an apartment on the top with apparent access from the back.

It is not clear but it seems that sometime in 2014 a single woman named Susanne Borden moved into the upstairs apartment. It appears that she and Irving got along very well for a long while. The television show indicated that Susanne did not have a vehicle or drive and my research also leads me to believe this, which is sadly, as petty of a thing as it seems, quite important to this story. A few months later the lower portion of the home was rented to a couple with at least one teenage child. The television show indicated it was just the couple, and they appeared on the show but I do not recall their names and my research did not reveal their names, only that there were three of them, one being a teenager.

It did not take long for the issues to begin. It started over a shared driveway between the home and Irving's home. Irving insisted that the driveway was his and only his and he insisted that the other family not use it. The driveway was one of those that was wider than needed for a single car, but not wide enough for two, side by side. This meant that if there was more than one car in the drive then it would require possibly asking the other people to move for them to get out. The television show indicated that each household had one car, however, I cannot prove that was true. It could have just as easily been that Irving Galarza, had two vehicles. What was clear was that he wanted and expected full use of the drive. According to the tenants next door they first attempted to be civil and calm with Irving but that they had also checked with the landlord who assured them, and apparently so did the property line divisions, that the driveway was the property of both homes.

Things escalated from there between the neighbors and even the once good relationship between Irving and Susanne Borden became a casualty. It seems that the male inhabitants on both side were in essence egging things on but Irving was taking things to extreme, especially with his outbursts. Irving had even spoke to the landlord of the home, encouraging him to evict the tenants. The landlord refused. At one point the family would get behind on the rent and Irving got excited believing they were going to finally have to move. He became even more angry when he learned that a deal was made for them to get caught up and remain living in the home. Everything would come to a head on the morning of February 10, 2015.

The tenants in the lower portion of the home were all gone but Susanne Borden was still upstairs in her bed. She also had several animals with her. This is something that she, and authorities would later say that Irving Galarza would have known. Around 8:30 that morning a neighbor, Michael Varnes, who lived across the street noticed smoke and flames coming from the rental home. He then saw two men running from the area. Varnes grabbed his phone, called 911 and began chasing the men, giving the dispatcher his location as he went along. He also video taped some of the chase, including a bag the two men dropped. The fire spread very fast not just through the rental home, but also to both homes on either side of it. Susanne Borden was awakened by the smoke and attempted to get her animals. While doing so she lost consciousness for a period of time. When she awoke she was barely able to escape the home herself, let alone get her animals. Here again is where the exact situation was a bit, in this case, under-dramatized on the television show. It had been portrayed as showing Susanne coming out the front of the home from the downstairs area where in reality she was only able to make it out to a balcony from her own apartment. It was there that she had to be rescued. Whether that was from firefighters or concerned neighbors is unclear. What is clear is that once she was out, the first person there to comfort and help her was Irving Galarza.

For his part Irving had claimed to be sleeping in the basement of his own home at the time the fire started. His family and the family on the other side of the rental home were able to escape before the fire reached their homes. But, in the end all three homes would be destroyed, two completely and the third to the point that it would be condemned. In total eleven people lost their home. Susanne Borden would lose four animals.

Using footage from surveillance cameras and from Michael Varnes' cell phone police were able to eventually find their way to Ismael Camacho and Luis Figueroa. The bag they had dropped when Varnes was chasing them had contained a gas can. Camacho and Figueroa were arrested in June and soon after Camacho confessed and told investigators that he had been hired by Irving Galarza to set fire to the home. Camacho had hired Figueroa, a homeless man, to help. It was said that both of these men were heroin addicts so it seems obvious that investigators did not go solely on their word.

Susanne Borden spent more than six months in the hospital recovering from her injuries. Her lungs had been severely burned and she was forced to have a tracheotomy to repair her burnt esophagus. She also had to use a feeding tube for quite some time as she could not eat or swallow. Her injuries has caused her to have permanent ear and eye damage and she is forced to wear hearing aids and glasses now, something she did not have before.

It seems as if it was not until the end of October 2015 that investigators felt they had enough to arrest Irving Galarza. They had determined that cell phone records proved that Galarza and Camacho had spoken several times on the phone in the days leading up to the fire. Police were also contacted by a woman who called anonymously and stated that Galarza had offered her ex-boyfriend between $800 and $1,000 to set the fire but he had refused. It is not clear what Galarza offered Camacho.

It appears that both Camacho and Figueroa (aka Luis Cruz-Figueroa) made plea deals. Figueroa would receive a five year sentence on charges of arson, burglary and tampering with evidence. The Department of Corrections website show his “expiration” date as September 29, 2020. Camacho would receive a ten year sentence for pretty much the same charges, but varying in degree. His expiration dates is shown as March 20, 2025. Irving Galarza decided to take his case to trial. Four days into his August 2016 trial that changed when he agreed to plead guilty to charges of attempted murder, aggravated burglary and three counts of aggravated arson. He was sentenced to eleven years and required to pay $50,000 in restitution to his victims. He is currently housed with the Ohio Department of Corrections with an expiration date of August 12, 2027.

It was researching this case that I came across something I had never heard before... an arson offender registry. I did a little research on it to get some information. Ohio passed this law in 2013. An article in 2013 state that it was joining two other states in this law but strangely they only mentioned Illinois enacting a registry in 2004 but had problems with implementing it correctly. It also mentioned two other states that had attempted to do this but had failed. Further research showed that California did this in 2006. There seemed to be a push for a national registry in 2009 but I found nothing else about that later. I cannot say what the other states that have this law have done or what it means for offenders but I did find a little on the Ohio law. It requires arson offenders to registry with the state for ten years after their release from prison. Unlike the sex registry lists that are generally released to the public, the Ohio arson registry is allegedly only available for law enforcement official to view. Irving Galarza is required to register.

While these types of crimes “fascinate” me based on the idea that any one of us could come across a “disorderly” neighbor and you never know how far someone will go, this crime particularly intrigues me. This man not only put the life of Susanne Borden at risk, but theoretically he put his own family at risk also. It is unknown if he knew or cared if the remaining tenants of the rental home were in the house at the time, or for that matter the residents of the home on the other side of the rental home. He of course knew his own family was home. But, it is not just about the people, it is about the homes and the personal belongings lost. He was so focused on his anger to get rid of not just the tenants but obviously the home completely that he either did not factor in or care who else was hurt in the process. His own family not only saw him off to prison but they lost their home and belongings also. Even if he had not been behind the fire, the fact of the matter is he would have lost his home too. In reality in the end he got a new home... what about his family and the others?