John J. Lentini

John Lentini has been at the center of most of the important developments in fire investigation for the past 35 years. He began his career at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in 1974. There he learned criminalistics in general and fire debris analysis in particular and received an introduction to fire scene investigation. He went into private practice in 1977 and spent the next 10 years working 100 to 150 fire scenes per year, mostly for insurance companies that had doubts about the legitimacy of their insureds’ fire losses. At the same time, he managed a fire debris analysis laboratory with a nationwide clientele.

He has been at the center of the standardization of both laboratory and field investigations of fires. As co-chair of the International Association of Arson Investigators’ (IAAI) Forensic Science Committee, he was the principal author of the first laboratory standards published by the IAAI in 1988. He oversaw the acceptance of those standards by ASTM Committee E30 on Forensic Sciences, where he served for two terms as chairman of the Criminalistics Subcommittee and for three terms as main committee chairman.

When the American Board of Criminalistics (ABC) was incorporated in 1993, he was the first civilian elected to the ABC Board of Directors. He served two terms on the board, was the principal organizer of the ABC Operations Manual, and served as the first editor of the ABC newsletter, Certification News. He was a co-author of the examination for the certification of fire debris analysts.

Lentini has been a certified fire investigator since certification first became available and was among the first group of individuals certified by the ABC as Fellows in fire debris analysis. He is one of the few individuals in the world who has held certifications for both laboratory and field work.

He has been a contributor to the development of National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, and was a member of the NFPA’s Technical Committee on Fire Investigations from 1996 to 2108. On that committee, he was instrumental in the development of committee positions on accelerant detection canines, the concept of the “negative corpus,” and the acceptance of the scientific method.

When NIST and NIJ set up the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) in 2014, he was one of the first fire investigators invited to serve. In 2016, he joined the Texas Fire Marshal’s Science Advisory Workgroup, which is the first agency to conduct retrospective case reviews, a practice endorsed by the IAAI but so far, only adopted in Texas.

Lentini is the author of more than 30 publications, both in the peer-reviewed literature and in the trade journals of fire investigation, the insurance industry, and the legal profession. His study of the Oakland Hills fire in 1991 resulted in a rethinking of much of the conventional wisdom in fire investigation, and his laboratory work has resulted in research papers that are standard works in the field. Lentini has personally conducted more than 2,000 fire scene inspections and has been accepted as an expert witness on more than 200 occasions. He is a frequent invited speaker on the subjects of the standard of care in fire investigation, laboratory analysis of fire debris, and on the progress of standardization in the forensic sciences.

After managing the fire investigation department at Applied Technical Services in Marietta, GA, for 28 years, he moved to the Florida Keys in 2006 and now provides training and fire investigation consultation, doing business as Scientific Fire Analysis. He offers a three-day course based on the contents of this book. His website is www.firescientist.com. Mr. Lentini can be contacted via e-mail at scientific.fire@yahoo.com.

I’m tickled to announce that my book, “Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation, Third Edition (Protocols in Forensic Science),” made it onto BookAuthority's Best Forensic Science Books of All Time:

https://bookauthority.org/books/best-forensic-science-books?t=rny6g3&s=award&book=113803701X

BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world, and it is a great honor to

get this kind of recognition. Scientific Protocols was #6 on the list of 70, and the highest-rated fire investigation book on the list! The next closest fire investigation book came in at #23. I also wrote a chapter in Forensic Science Reform, which made the list of winners at #8.