LOS ANGELES—More than a year after one of the most destructive fires in U.S. history, attorneys on Wednesday offered opening salvos in a federal jury trial accusing a 29-year-old man of sparking the initial flame that would lead, a week later, to the catastrophic inferno that claimed the lives of 12 people and reduced thousands of homes to ash in the wealthy coastal enclave of the Pacific Palisades.
“He wanted revenge—revenge against society because he blamed society for all his troubles,” U.S. Attorney Mark Williams told the court.
Dejected and alone on New Year’s Eve, driven by resentment, Jonathan Rinderknecht set fire to the hills surrounding an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood where he had once lived a better life, prosecutors charged….