Ted Rowlands speaks with Wade Kirkwood, a convicted serial arsonist, who is serving a 9 year sentence for setting 11 fires. Watch the extended interview here, and watch the full report on AC360° tonight at 11p ET.

Program note: California investigators are trying to track down a suspected arsonist who may have set one of the current wildfires burning. Watch Ted Rowlands’ full report on how a community tracked down a serial arsonist; along with Ted’s jailhouse interview with the man whose compulsion destroyed hundreds of homes and terrified thousands of people.

Firefighters battle a wildfire that broke out early Thursday morning in the western part of Los Angeles, California.

Ted Rowlands
CNN Los Angeles Correspondent

Who starts fires for thrills? Wade Kirkwood does. We met Kirkwood in prison, where he’s serving a nine year sentence in Washington State for setting 11 fires in 2004.

Kirkwood told us he’s had the urge to set fires since he was a teenager, he says the rush he gets from setting a blaze is better than anything he’s ever felt.

I understand on some level the motivations for a lot of different crimes, but arson has always been difficult for me to appreciate, until I met Wade Kirkwood.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this guy, and I assume other arsonists, are wired differently. Wade Kirkwood loves everything about setting fires, he says he likes planning them, lighting them and watching them.

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Ted Rowlands
CNN Correspondent

On the Vegas strip dozens of people, who’d had no intention of watching election results, stood on Las Vegas Boulevard, glued to the Planet Hollywood Jumbo screen showing CNN.

It was a watch party nobody intended to attend, and that people were reluctant to leave.

When the race was called, there were some cheers. And when Barack Obama finished his speech I saw a few glassy eyes and heard some applause.

But mostly people just stood and stared, taking in a moment of history they hadn’t planned to experience, but will likely never forget.

A firefighter stands by as two mobile homes go up in flames early Monday morning, north of Los Angeles. Intense Santa Ana winds swept into Southern California Monday and whipped up a 3,700-acre wildfire, burning mobile homes and industrial buildings and forcing the evacuation of eight patients from a nearby hospital.

Ted Rowlands | Bio
CNN Los Angeles Correspondent

Firefighters say a man and his dog died under a homemade shelter trying to ride out one of the wind-driven fires burning in Southern California.

He died overnight when the Santa Ana winds kicked into full gear.

I’ve covered a lot of fires, many with more devastating consequences, but I’ve never seen winds like this. Usually only hurricane winds are strong enough to knock us off the air. But our truck, which is “rated” to withstand 65-mile-per-hour winds lost its ability to transmit because of winds hitting 70 miles per hour.

Firefighters are having a terrible time, too. When the gusts are up, the helicopters and planes have been grounded.

This fire hasn’t killed anyone else so far, besides the man and his dog, though it has destroyed about a dozen homes and about 3500 acres, mostly in the Angeles National Forest.

A second blaze nearby has destroyed 750 acres, and forced evacuations.

Forecasters expect the winds to get even more intense overnight, meaning the worst may be yet to come.

Ted Rowlands
CNN Correspondent

Morgan Doran did his best to stop the bailout plan. The 37-year-old Los Angeles attorney, who says he’s not a blogger, turned into one while on paternity leave for the past few weeks.

Between changing diapers and enjoying his newborn son he launched stopthehousingbailout.com, a full out assault against the bailout. Morgan, who works in the field of finance, says he thinks the government plan is “appalling,” and wanted to do everything in his power to educate people on the reasons why he doesn’t think this is good for the country.

Speaking by phone, Morgan told me the biggest issue he has with the plan, besides the “appalling” lack of detail, is the ridiculous notion that there is some sort of immediate catastrophe waiting if government doesn’t step in to save the day.

Morgan says everyone knew this was coming and yet just as lawmakers were set to leave town the White House and Treasury Secretary Paulson came running out to scare people into believing that a bailout is needed “right away” to avert dire consequences.

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File photo of Steve Fosset and his wife.

Ted Rowlands
AC360° Correspondent | Bio

Will the discovery of what appears to be the pilot license and FAA identification card of millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett in the California desert solve or just deepen the mystery surrounding his disappearance more than a year ago?

A hiker, Preston Morrow, says he found the items with another ID card and a thousand dollars in cash tangled in a bush in a remote area of Mammoth Lakes, California.

The FAA confirms that the numbers on the ID tag found match Fossett’s, so it’s unlikely this is another Big Foot type of hoax. But how did the stuff get there? Did Fossett crash nearby? The hiker said he went back the next day with a friend and couldn’t find any wreckage, but did find an XL Nautica pullover fleece.

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CNN's Ted Rolands on assignment in New Orleans

Ted Rowlands
CNN Correspondent

About a week after the hurricane, we did a story on 911 operators in Biloxi, Mississippi, who had to tell people calling for help there was nothing that could be done.

Listening to a recording of some of those conversations is something I’ll never forget; one call in particular.

The calls had been recorded on an old reel to reel machine, Cheri Hovecamp the 911 supervisor went through some of the tapes with us. The operators were getting flooded with desperate callers asking to be saved.

“Go to the roof” they’d say, “give me your address and we’ll come get you as soon as the storm dies down”

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Susan Atkins and Charles Manson in a Santa Monica courtroom Oct, 1970.

Ted Rowlands
AC360° Correspondent

It’s hard to imagine a better test case for California’s compassionate release program for prisoners who are terminally ill.

Susan Atkins, who has brain cancer and has been given six months to live, has been a model prisoner during her almost 40 years behind bars. Her attorney says she has had a leg amputated, can barely speak, and would most likely spend the rest of her life in the same hospital room she’s been in since March.
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Susan Atkins and Charles Manson in a Santa Monica courtroom Oct, 1970.

Ted Rowlands
AC360° Correspondent

It’s hard to imagine a better test case for California’s compassionate release program for prisoners who are terminally ill. Susan Atkins, who has brain cancer and has been given six months to live, has been a model prisoner during her almost 40 years behind bars. According to her Attorney she’s had a leg amputated, can barely speak, and would most likely spend the rest of her life in the same hospital room she’s been in since March.

The compassionate release program was designed in large part to save taxpayers money, and Susan Atkins is costing the state a bundle; More than a million in medical fees in three months, and 225 thousand for around the clock guards outside her hospital room. If she’s freed, her family would pay for her care, saving the state thousands of dollars.

But this is Susan Atkins, one of those creepy Manson girls that smiled at the cameras after brutally killing innocent people to appease Charles Manson. She was the one, who, by her own admission, held down the pregnant actress Sharon Tate while she and her unborn child were stabbed 16 times. She admits that Sharon Tate begged for Mercy saying “don’t kill me I want to have my baby” but she told Tate while holding her down, “I have no mercy on you”.

Should California now have mercy for Susan Atkins? Keep reading

Investigators and scientists search for evidence at the Barker Ranch in Death Valley

Ted Rowlands
CNN correspondent

We’re up in the remote Barker Ranch in Death Valley for day two of the search for human remains. This is a big day on a lot of people.

For Charles Manson fanatics it may be the day that rumors of murder at the Barker ranch will be verified.

For forensic scientists from the national lab in Oak Rridge, Tennessee, it may be a confirmation of the soil data compiled that prompted them to recommend a dig.

For Sgt. Paul Dostie, the local police detective who along with his dog Buster found the five dig sites a year ago, today may be the day that he feels vindicated for pushing authorities to dig or as he puts, he may end up “feeling like a fool”.

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