Crime & Safety

Irvine Professor Denies Plot to Kill Hundreds of HS Students

A UC Irvine professor accused of setting eight fires and making plans to kill students and administrators at Irvine's University High School, which his son attended before committing suicide, pleaded not guilty today. 

Rainer Klaus Reinscheid, 49, of Irvine, was ordered to return to court July 9, when attorneys will discuss setting a date for his trial. He remains jailed without bail. 

After a preliminary hearing, a judge ruled in January there was enough evidence against the defendant for him to stand trial. 

Reinscheid is charged with three counts of arson of forest lands, two counts each of arson of another's property and arson of a structure, and one count each of arson of an inhabited residence and attempted arson -- all felonies. He is also charged with a misdemeanor count of resisting or obstructing an officer. 

According to prosecutors, investigators examined his cell phone and uncovered emails he wrote to his wife in April allegedly detailing his plans to burn down University High School, commit sexual assaults, buy guns and kill school officials and students before killing himself. Reinscheid wrote drafts of the emails, but it's unclear whether he sent them, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Katz said. 

Katz said investigators also uncovered evidence about Reinscheid's online searches for information regarding auto explosions and guns and about purchasing weapons, explosives, ammunition and fertilizers. 

Reinscheid's 14-year-old son, who was a student at the high school, committed suicide in Mason Park Preserve in Irvine after being disciplined at school in March 2012, Katz said. 

Reinscheid is accused of setting fires and attempting to set another blaze between last July 4 and July 24. Several of the fires were on the University High School campus, one was at Mason Park Preserve and another at a school administrator's home, Katz said. 

Reinscheid was arrested about 12:40 a.m. July 24 in Mason Park Preserve. Irvine officers, who had increased patrols of the park because of the arson fires, came upon Reinscheid as he was trying to set a blaze with newspaper and lighter fluid, Katz said. Reinscheid, who allegedly resisted arrest, posted $50,000 bail the same day. 

Irvine police found the threatening emails on Reinscheid's phone on July 27, Katz said, and he was re-arrested that evening. 

Reinscheid's former attorney, Ron Cordova, has said his client, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences who has taught at UC Irvine for about 12 years, did not intend to carry out anything he wrote about and should be allowed to post bail. 

"It wasn't a plan or a blueprint of conduct, but simply the musings of a very anguished soul, a man who lost his soul and released his anger by writing down these ideations that, unfortunately, all human beings are capable of writing down in moments of anguish," Cordova said. 

"In fact, it's quite therapeutic to release worse thoughts rather than to let them fester and cause great havoc." 

Cordova said the fires were "ineffectual at best" and that a fire log was used. 

Fire logs "are designed for a particular purpose, to confine it to a small perimeter," he said, adding that trying to spark a blaze with a fire log would be "like attempting mass murder with a BB gun." 

Two days after the mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., Reinscheid signed an online petition supporting a review of gun laws regarding access to automatic weapons, Cordova said. 

Reinscheid is now represented by attorney Joshua Glotzer. 

- City News Service


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