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The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should know a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is
0:16
Speaker 1: stuff you should know about Northern Kentucky, that's right, which
0:21
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen thirties and forties the casino capital
0:27
Speaker 1: of the United States. It was the Vegas of the
0:31
Speaker 1: United States before Vegas and fifties too. Even it's hard
0:36
Speaker 1: to believe I've never knew any of this. So much
0:39
Speaker 1: of this is very cinematic. I was just trying to
0:43
Speaker 1: work out how to tell the story in a movie
0:46
Speaker 1: without doing flash forwards and flashbacks. But that's probably how
0:50
Speaker 1: you would have to do it. So I grew up
0:52
Speaker 1: in Northern Ohio, which is not that far from Northern Kentucky,
0:57
Speaker 1: on the other end of Ohio from it, because the
1:00
Speaker 1: area we're talking about just across the river from Cincinnati. Um,
1:04
Speaker 1: And I guess I had heard of this before. It's
1:07
Speaker 1: one of those things where I can't remember if my
1:09
Speaker 1: mind is telling me that I had a memory before
1:13
Speaker 1: I actually had a memory, Like I didn't really have one,
1:15
Speaker 1: I just want to think I did. It might be
1:18
Speaker 1: one of those scenarios but regardless, it is like a huge,
1:21
Speaker 1: huge piece of northern Kentucky southern Ohio history. And in fact,
1:25
Speaker 1: the more you learn about it, if you were alive
1:28
Speaker 1: and sentient, you know, in the um mid to late seventies,
1:32
Speaker 1: it was a national thing. Like it was a really
1:35
Speaker 1: big deal that this happened, this Beverly Hill supper club
1:38
Speaker 1: fire that we're going to talk about today. Yeah, it
1:41
Speaker 1: was definitely one of the worst, um sort of entertainment
1:46
Speaker 1: club fires in US history. I would have to look
1:49
Speaker 1: at numbers. I mean, it's probably one of the deadliest
1:51
Speaker 1: fires in US history because a hundred and sixty five
1:55
Speaker 1: people died in horrific fashion obvious, See, dying by fire
2:00
Speaker 1: is always horrific. But this was as bad as it gets, um,
2:05
Speaker 1: and I didn't know anything about it. So a big
2:07
Speaker 1: thanks to you for uh commissioning this from Dave Rouse,
2:11
Speaker 1: my friend, you did No, I didn't. I didn't commission this.
2:17
Speaker 1: I didn't either. We're gonna have to this. May be
2:21
Speaker 1: occasionally Dave will say like, hey, have you heard of
2:24
Speaker 1: this cool thing? And we'll say, oh, yeah, just that
2:26
Speaker 1: sounds great. So that may have been one of these
2:29
Speaker 1: because I didn't know about this I don't think. What
2:33
Speaker 1: day is it? Uh? It is Tuesday? I think, are
2:38
Speaker 1: we Is this a job? Am I dreaming? You're like
2:42
Speaker 1: that kid David on the way home from the dentist?
2:45
Speaker 1: Is this real? All right? So let's go to Newport,
2:48
Speaker 1: Kentucky in the way back machine. We haven't pulled that
2:51
Speaker 1: thing out in a while, so let's dust it out.
2:54
Speaker 1: That's fired up through the wiring, so I'll have to
3:00
Speaker 1: hot wire it. Luckily, I'm good at that. So let's
3:03
Speaker 1: get it fired up and let's go back to the
3:06
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties Prohibition era Northern kentuckt Okay, here we are,
3:16
Speaker 1: Chuck and uh. It turns out that despite prohibition being
3:21
Speaker 1: in full force, UM liquors really really easy to get,
3:27
Speaker 1: especially especially because there was a loophole in the Volstad
3:31
Speaker 1: Act that said, and I know we talked about this
3:33
Speaker 1: in the Prohibition episode UM that said that if you
3:37
Speaker 1: UM are making alcohol for medicinal use, you can't. You
3:42
Speaker 1: have to have a huge license. Each bottle has to
3:44
Speaker 1: be bonded by the government. You can't be it's got
3:47
Speaker 1: to be a hundred proof on the nose. There is
3:49
Speaker 1: a bunch of like criteria, but you could legally produce
3:53
Speaker 1: um alcohol. And there was a guy named George Remus
3:57
Speaker 1: who who was a lawyer. He also was a pharmacist
4:00
Speaker 1: by trade, but he had been defending all sorts of
4:02
Speaker 1: bootleggers in Chicago and realized, man, there's a lot of
4:06
Speaker 1: money in bootlegging. So I saw that. He did a
4:09
Speaker 1: little research, found out that of the legal booze producing
4:13
Speaker 1: the United States was coming out of the Cincinnati area,
4:16
Speaker 1: and he moved over there and said, I'm going to
4:19
Speaker 1: get into organized crime. And boy did he ever. Yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: he was living in Chicago at the time, and if
4:27
Speaker 1: you're leaving the organized crime in Chicago to go to Cincinnati,
4:31
Speaker 1: then he must have some good insider information, and indeed
4:34
Speaker 1: he did. He was known after he made that move
4:37
Speaker 1: as a king of the bootleggers because he would um
4:41
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a great scam. He would manufacture
4:43
Speaker 1: this quote unquote medicinal whiskey and then he would have
4:47
Speaker 1: a setup where his guys would steal the truck, hijack
4:51
Speaker 1: the truck, and then sell it. And this money number
4:55
Speaker 1: is staggering because it says at one point this guy
4:59
Speaker 1: was making forty million dollars a year in the nineteen twenties. Yeah,
5:04
Speaker 1: it's about nine hundred million dollars today, So I mean
5:09
Speaker 1: that's that made him probably one of the wealthiest people
5:12
Speaker 1: in the United States if he would have been able
5:14
Speaker 1: to keep the you know, that operation up, But of
5:16
Speaker 1: course he wasn't for sure. So if you were a
5:19
Speaker 1: politician or um, a police chief or even probably a
5:24
Speaker 1: local cop in the area, it made you pretty wealthy too.
5:27
Speaker 1: Because one of the reasons why he set up in
5:29
Speaker 1: northern Kentucky's, particularly in Newport, was because you could pay
5:34
Speaker 1: people off a lot easier. It was a small town.
5:37
Speaker 1: You could basically make it your fiefdom. And that's what
5:39
Speaker 1: George Remis did. And you're right he Um. He got
5:43
Speaker 1: caught pretty quickly, I think, um within just a few
5:46
Speaker 1: years of setting up this organized crime syndicate. UM. And
5:50
Speaker 1: I just a little aside on him. He was really interesting.
5:54
Speaker 1: He had a sellmate in jail who turned out to
5:57
Speaker 1: be an FBI agent, not an informant, and actual agent
6:00
Speaker 1: who has planted there. The agent found out about all
6:03
Speaker 1: the money that Remus had that his wife control that
6:07
Speaker 1: was in her name. The guy left the jail, quit
6:11
Speaker 1: the FBI, and started an affair with Remus's wife, Imogene,
6:15
Speaker 1: and then talked her into basically like selling off all
6:18
Speaker 1: his stuff and funnel money from her. So the FBI
6:22
Speaker 1: guy robbed and blind. Remus was so mad that when
6:25
Speaker 1: he got out of prison, he he tracked down his
6:28
Speaker 1: wife and shot her in public in broad daylight. Did
6:32
Speaker 1: he get pinched for that? He got pinched. He was
6:35
Speaker 1: convicted but found not guilty and reason of insanity, was
6:39
Speaker 1: taken to UM Sanitarium right sanatorium ortarium, I can't remember
6:46
Speaker 1: um a mental hospital, and then, because he was a lawyer,
6:49
Speaker 1: used the prosecutor's reasoning that he wasn't insane to get
6:53
Speaker 1: himself released from the actual UM, the mental hospital, and
6:57
Speaker 1: became a freeman very quickly. Boy, he knew all the angles,
7:01
Speaker 1: Yeah he did. And also one other thing about him
7:03
Speaker 1: is that it's pretty much a certainty that Jay Gatsby
7:06
Speaker 1: from the Great Gatsby was based on George D. Remus
7:09
Speaker 1: because he had met um F Scott Fitzgerald at some point. Yeah,
7:13
Speaker 1: and probably through some pretty wild parties would be my guests.
7:16
Speaker 1: But he didn't drink or smoke. Well, I don't, well
7:20
Speaker 1: did Gatsby here? I could think gets to be drinks
7:22
Speaker 1: something yeah, I um, alright, so it's he's in jail.
7:27
Speaker 1: But by this time he had established such an operation
7:31
Speaker 1: there in northern Kentucky that a little industry of sleeves
7:36
Speaker 1: grew up around it. Uh, kind of a red light district,
7:39
Speaker 1: is how Dave put it. And this is where we
7:42
Speaker 1: get to the birth of what was then called the
7:45
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Country Club. Uh. There was a guy named
7:47
Speaker 1: Peachman who now factors in the story, who used to
7:50
Speaker 1: be a driver for Remus and in seven he bought
7:54
Speaker 1: this old roadhouse outside of Newport, Newport perched upon a
7:58
Speaker 1: hill and and and basically renovated it into a casino,
8:04
Speaker 1: and a really nice one. They had casinos there, but
8:06
Speaker 1: they were they were called bust out joints. They were
8:08
Speaker 1: kind of again, they were kind of sleazy places to go.
8:13
Speaker 1: And the Beverly Hills Country Club was what was known
8:15
Speaker 1: as a carpet joint, and it was a it was
8:18
Speaker 1: a nice place. It was it was the blueprint for
8:21
Speaker 1: what ended up being Las Vegas. Like a nice place
8:23
Speaker 1: where you could go and you could gamble, and you
8:26
Speaker 1: get a dinner and some drink and even see a show. Yeah.
8:30
Speaker 1: So the thing about that is yes, it was. The
8:33
Speaker 1: whole jam was kind of sleazy. In fact, Newport earned
8:37
Speaker 1: the nickname Since City back in the thirties. And again,
8:40
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is a glimmer in anybody's eye at this point.
8:44
Speaker 1: It's a it's a tumble wheat. No like Newport is
8:48
Speaker 1: Las Vegas and Atlantic City wrapped into one. And if
8:52
Speaker 1: you were a tourist like you were, you were totally fine.
8:54
Speaker 1: You were safe. The streets were clean, like nobody was
8:57
Speaker 1: gonna mess with you because it was so fully mob run.
9:00
Speaker 1: But it was mob run by a bunch of like
9:03
Speaker 1: different disparate people who used to work with George Remus
9:07
Speaker 1: and the Cleveland mob that led by Moe Deletes, who
9:11
Speaker 1: went on to help found Las Vegas. He was one
9:14
Speaker 1: of the original founders. He said, I want this action.
9:17
Speaker 1: This is like just off the border of Cincinnati. Were
9:20
Speaker 1: in Cleveland. We're going to get in on this. And
9:22
Speaker 1: he moved in on Newport and started buying up casinos
9:26
Speaker 1: around town. Delete Deletes, that's what I saw. Oh really,
9:31
Speaker 1: I know. I want to say dallots, but it's not dallots.
9:35
Speaker 1: It it's delightful as what it is. If you look
9:39
Speaker 1: at uh deletes, Uh he looks exactly what you would
9:45
Speaker 1: think of mobster. Moe Deletes would look like he was
9:48
Speaker 1: a big time mobster. Like he was one of the
9:49
Speaker 1: ones that was grilled by the Kaffer Committee. He was
9:55
Speaker 1: one of the ones that that helped found Las Vegas
9:58
Speaker 1: years later, right, right, Yeah, that's what I was saying.
10:00
Speaker 1: But this was years and years later. And again one
10:02
Speaker 1: of the reasons Las Vegas was found was because Mo
10:05
Speaker 1: de Letz was one of the first, like big time
10:08
Speaker 1: mob guys who showed up in Newport and took over
10:11
Speaker 1: it was. It was just the blueprint for Vegas later on. Alright,
10:14
Speaker 1: So Schmidt and again Chuck, I want to just really
10:17
Speaker 1: drive home. We're talking about northern Kentucky. M hm okay, yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: Uh you know how I know that because we said
10:26
Speaker 1: northern Kentucky like sixty times so far I know. But
10:28
Speaker 1: it's just still boggles the mind. So Schmidt owns this
10:32
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills country club, and uh doesn't want to give
10:35
Speaker 1: it up despite mob pressure. He's like, no, this is
10:38
Speaker 1: my place. I want to own it. So what looks
10:42
Speaker 1: like happened as the mom said, fine, we'll burn it down. Uh,
10:45
Speaker 1: this was not the big fire obviously that came, you know,
10:48
Speaker 1: forty years later, this was in February. Only one fatality,
10:54
Speaker 1: very sadly, h five year old girl, the niece of
10:57
Speaker 1: the club's caretaker, died. And here's the thing. They didn't
11:01
Speaker 1: prove arson. But again, everyone was on the take, so
11:05
Speaker 1: it was kind of just understood that it was burned
11:07
Speaker 1: down because Schmidt wouldn't sell well. Plus also, right after
11:10
Speaker 1: the fire, Mo Deletes came and said you want to
11:13
Speaker 1: sell now? And uh that was it. Mo Deletes now
11:16
Speaker 1: own the Beverly Hills Country Club and with that he
11:20
Speaker 1: basically owned Newport in conjunction with a couple other big
11:24
Speaker 1: time heavy hitter Cleveland bosses. Yeah, with whatever they're whatever
11:29
Speaker 1: Cleveland accent is. So you want to take a I
11:32
Speaker 1: don't know that there is one actually know that you
11:34
Speaker 1: mentioned it. It's kind of midwestern. Uh, hey, what do
11:39
Speaker 1: you say, Let's let's go down to Newport and run
11:42
Speaker 1: the plate. That's a Cleveland accent, I think by way
11:48
Speaker 1: Steve Bush and me is it's all right, We'll take
11:53
Speaker 1: that break and we'll we'll come back right after this, Okay, Chuck,
12:25
Speaker 1: So Mo Deletes and the Cleveland mob have taken over Newport.
12:29
Speaker 1: And this is when it really becomes like the casino
12:32
Speaker 1: capital of America. Yeah, it's bustling. People are and this
12:37
Speaker 1: isn't like, oh I came in from Cleveland or Cincinnati.
12:39
Speaker 1: People are coming in from the West coast in New
12:42
Speaker 1: York and Chicago. I think the population was about thirty thousand,
12:47
Speaker 1: and uh seventy thousand people, you know, more than double
12:51
Speaker 1: that amount would come in on the weekends to hang
12:53
Speaker 1: out and see young Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra and
12:56
Speaker 1: Dean Martin. And it was a literal blue print again
13:00
Speaker 1: for Vegas. They were doing it all. Duke Ellington was playing,
13:03
Speaker 1: and Marilyn Monroe was there and it was just, uh,
13:07
Speaker 1: it was quite a scene. Again where in northern Kentucky
13:14
Speaker 1: and the others. The other thing about it too, is
13:17
Speaker 1: there was no legalized gambling in Kentucky. This was all
13:20
Speaker 1: just flouting the law. And the reason why because everybody
13:24
Speaker 1: was on the take. They just looked the other way.
13:27
Speaker 1: And it was the casino Capital of America was located
13:31
Speaker 1: in a state that didn't have legalized gambling. Yeah, so
13:34
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like this is a a back room
13:36
Speaker 1: poker game like they were literal casinos that they got
13:40
Speaker 1: away with it, and eventually, you know, of course the
13:43
Speaker 1: feds are going to take note, and the American Municipal
13:47
Speaker 1: Association uh started complaining to the federal government and said, hey,
13:51
Speaker 1: we got a real organized crime problem in this country.
13:55
Speaker 1: So that Cafalbre Committee that you were talking about earlier,
13:59
Speaker 1: it was a stab bush by the Senate. These big
14:01
Speaker 1: televised hearings. They trotted out everyone, including deletes, including Frank
14:06
Speaker 1: Costello and people like that. And here's the thing, it
14:11
Speaker 1: kept going that had no effect on shutting Newport down.
14:16
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen or fifty, and throughout the fifties
14:21
Speaker 1: it was still booming. Yeah. One of the reasons why
14:23
Speaker 1: they were able to get away with this was this
14:25
Speaker 1: was before even the FBI would admit that there was
14:29
Speaker 1: a national crime syndicate of organized crime. Like Up to
14:34
Speaker 1: the like late fifties, the general consensus among law enforcement,
14:39
Speaker 1: at least officially, was that it was all just local
14:42
Speaker 1: hoods and thugs and you know, criminals. But there was
14:45
Speaker 1: certainly no organized crime that didn't exist. Even after the
14:49
Speaker 1: ki father Um Committee like revealed like, no, these people
14:53
Speaker 1: wh are in touch with one another and they're all
14:55
Speaker 1: mobbed up like this does exist, it still didn't quite take.
14:58
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the Appalachian me of nineteen fifty seven
15:01
Speaker 1: in Appalati to New York, where they literally caught a
15:05
Speaker 1: hundred mob bosses from around the country in Cuba and
15:07
Speaker 1: Italy meeting to figure out how to organize their crime better.
15:12
Speaker 1: The people, including the FBI, were finally like, okay, fine,
15:15
Speaker 1: there's organized crime. But that's one way that they were
15:17
Speaker 1: able to get away with this is because they just
15:20
Speaker 1: refused to accept that this was an organized crime syndicate. Yeah,
15:25
Speaker 1: which it very much was. Uh. And it played out
15:27
Speaker 1: in Newport in ways that you would expect in the
15:30
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. They're homicide rate and you know this, you know,
15:34
Speaker 1: pretty small place was four times the national average. Uh.
15:40
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people that just vanished. Basically.
15:42
Speaker 1: Dave introduced me to a new term called the Newport nightgown,
15:46
Speaker 1: which was when you were wrapped up in chains and
15:48
Speaker 1: thrown off a bridge. Uh. There was a reporter in
15:51
Speaker 1: fifty seven that counted three hundred sex workers per mile
15:56
Speaker 1: in Newport And eventually nineteen six one rolls around and
16:02
Speaker 1: a football player, former player from Notre dame in the
16:05
Speaker 1: Browns there in Cleveland named George Raderman ran for sheriff
16:09
Speaker 1: in Newport as a reform candidate. Okay, you know that reference?
16:15
Speaker 1: No is that from No No, No, no, No. Good
16:19
Speaker 1: guess though it was Oh brother were art dal the
16:24
Speaker 1: Coen Brothers great movie where Charles Dunning said, people want
16:27
Speaker 1: that reform. Oh yeah. It was a good character. Yeah,
16:31
Speaker 1: he was a southern politician. But this is what uh
16:35
Speaker 1: Raderman ran for. Basically, I'm going to clean this place up. Uh.
16:39
Speaker 1: And it was all going fine in his campaign until
16:41
Speaker 1: he was found naked and passed out in a hotel
16:45
Speaker 1: room with a sex worker and arrested. But it kind
16:49
Speaker 1: of came back to sting the mob, didn't it. It
16:51
Speaker 1: did because they did blood tests on George Raderman, probably
16:54
Speaker 1: at his insistence. He said that he was drugged, and
16:57
Speaker 1: it turned out that yes, indeed, he was drugged with
17:00
Speaker 1: oral hydrate, which is the basis of a mickey a
17:02
Speaker 1: Mickey finn. If you slip someone and mickey, you give
17:05
Speaker 1: him chloral hydrate in a drink. And that's what they
17:07
Speaker 1: did to George Raderman and framed him. The mob, in
17:10
Speaker 1: conjunction with the local police framed this guy who was
17:13
Speaker 1: running for sheriff. It is a trope, but this was
17:16
Speaker 1: actually happening. Drug him and throw him dead naked with
17:19
Speaker 1: his sex order and take his and call the cops. Exactly.
17:22
Speaker 1: So um with with black and white picture. It's got
17:25
Speaker 1: to be black and white photos. Right. So Raderman actually
17:28
Speaker 1: goes on to win the election. He like, he comes
17:30
Speaker 1: out of this and clears his name, wins the election,
17:33
Speaker 1: and then all of the national attention that was given
17:36
Speaker 1: to this incredibly like just like almost mythical thing that
17:41
Speaker 1: happened to him. Um. Robert Kennedy, who was new as
17:44
Speaker 1: the U. S. Attorney General, said what is going on
17:47
Speaker 1: down there? And started sending feds to Newport, and all
17:49
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the party was over. That's right, The
17:53
Speaker 1: party was very much over by this town. This was
17:56
Speaker 1: the sixties, so Vegas was it's earlier days and people
18:03
Speaker 1: skipped down. Basically, he said, all right, let's go out
18:05
Speaker 1: there in the sunshine. Uh, Newport is done. And in
18:10
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen sixties, the Beverly Hills Country Club closed,
18:15
Speaker 1: but not for good, because, as we will see, it
18:18
Speaker 1: was revived, which will ultimately lead us to our tragedy. Yeah,
18:22
Speaker 1: It sounds like a break spot, but it's not because
18:24
Speaker 1: we just took one, that's right. This is also the
18:26
Speaker 1: time when the famous song Goodbye Northern Kentucky I'm going
18:30
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas was written that Inglebert Humperdink or Gordon Lightfoot.
18:35
Speaker 1: It was a duet. Okay, yeah, yeah, it was a
18:40
Speaker 1: sea shantie that's right, sung into Cleveland accent. Alright. So
18:45
Speaker 1: then we will enter another character, Dick Schilling Richard Chilling Jr.
18:50
Speaker 1: He was working at these casinos when he was just
18:54
Speaker 1: a kid and eventually rose up to like management and
18:58
Speaker 1: in the late sick season sixty nine, when Newport wasn't
19:02
Speaker 1: doing great, he had the foresight to buy this abandoned property,
19:07
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hills Supper and renamed it the Beverly Hills
19:10
Speaker 1: Supper Club. This time, I was like, I'm going to
19:12
Speaker 1: restore this um giant, giant facility. I mean, like, the
19:19
Speaker 1: more we looked into this, that video you sent me
19:22
Speaker 1: that kind of lays out the not the schematic, but
19:26
Speaker 1: the floor plan. It's unbelievable how big this place was.
19:31
Speaker 1: Like they would have half a dozen wedding parties going
19:35
Speaker 1: on at this and the same night in addition to
19:38
Speaker 1: the thousand seat to Frank Sinatra. Yeah, in the other room,
19:42
Speaker 1: like it was nuts and it was really lavishly done.
19:46
Speaker 1: Like Dick Schilling like did a really good job bringing
19:49
Speaker 1: this thing back and put it back on the map again.
19:53
Speaker 1: The thing is is that long standing tradition of a
19:56
Speaker 1: legitimate business owner buying the place, fixing it up, and
20:00
Speaker 1: uh being unwilling to sell it to the mob, who
20:04
Speaker 1: in short order turned around and burn it down. Um,
20:07
Speaker 1: that happened again, just like a year after he revamped it,
20:11
Speaker 1: right before he was able to open, and amazingly, Dick
20:14
Speaker 1: Schilling said, no, I'm doing this, stop at mob. You're
20:18
Speaker 1: not gonna You're not gonna deter me and the mobs
20:21
Speaker 1: and fine, fine, go ahead and open and he did
20:23
Speaker 1: in and you know, in just a few years it
20:27
Speaker 1: was it was like I think they called it the
20:29
Speaker 1: show place of the nation, a supper club in northern Kentucky. Uh.
20:36
Speaker 1: And it's like, how many times can this place burn down?
20:39
Speaker 1: And I guess the answer is three at least. Yes,
20:43
Speaker 1: Uh and big thanks to we need to mention Dave
20:46
Speaker 1: used to book for this research by a man named
20:48
Speaker 1: Peter Bronson, who wrote easily I would say, the quintessential
20:54
Speaker 1: book on the Beverly Hill Supper Club Fire. Uh and
20:59
Speaker 1: Northern Kentucky Forbidden Fruit. Colon since Cities Underworld in the
21:03
Speaker 1: supper Club Inferno. And was that who it was in
21:06
Speaker 1: the video that you said to No, there's another guy
21:08
Speaker 1: named Robert Webster who was in that video. I sent tune.
21:11
Speaker 1: He wrote another definitive book on it, um called the
21:14
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire, The Store the Untold
21:20
Speaker 1: story behind Kentucky's greatest tragedy. And it's really exhaustive too.
21:24
Speaker 1: Apparently it's got five years of research behind it as well.
21:28
Speaker 1: Colon everything that Bronson guy missed. Right, they're famously feuding
21:33
Speaker 1: with each other to this day. They keep burning down
21:35
Speaker 1: one another supper clubs. Oh no, no, no, alright, So
21:38
Speaker 1: this thing, like you said, opening seventy burned, reopened in
21:41
Speaker 1: seventy one. Chilling was not to be deterred. And uh,
21:46
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. And Frank Sinatra came back
21:48
Speaker 1: even he was like that place is open again. All right,
21:51
Speaker 1: I'm back. You can still get a flight into Cincinnati, right. Uh.
21:56
Speaker 1: Ella Fitzgerald played their Red Fox, The Righteous Brothers. It was.
22:00
Speaker 1: It was again a big deal, and such a big
22:04
Speaker 1: deal that they would routinely um over sell and overpacked
22:08
Speaker 1: that place out. So I saw, this is under dispute.
22:12
Speaker 1: So I think Robert Webster in particular, he chalked reports
22:18
Speaker 1: of that up to poor reporting, early reporting after the fire,
22:23
Speaker 1: that they routinely flaunted the building capacity, the fire marshal's
22:28
Speaker 1: capacity um number. I don't know that that's necessarily true,
22:32
Speaker 1: but it posses though. But no, but they they were.
22:37
Speaker 1: They said that there was some minor um violations, but
22:41
Speaker 1: nothing that costs anyone in their lives. So that to
22:44
Speaker 1: that tells me right there that no, they weren't doing
22:46
Speaker 1: any major violations like over capacity crowding. Okay, And it
22:51
Speaker 1: was a huge place too. It was so mind bogglingly
22:54
Speaker 1: big that I think people were like, oh, there's people there,
22:57
Speaker 1: obviously it's over capacity. Well, I mean I think they were.
23:01
Speaker 1: They said there were people in that one room, yeah,
23:06
Speaker 1: where the main stage was, which was that was a
23:09
Speaker 1: sweet looking, uh place. I mean this the decor in
23:12
Speaker 1: this place was awesome. Alright. So Memorial Day weekend is
23:17
Speaker 1: obviously going to be a big deal at a place
23:19
Speaker 1: like this, and it was certainly the case in nineteen
23:23
Speaker 1: seventy seven. John Davidson was the headliner that night. John Davidson,
23:29
Speaker 1: who would later make noise in the eighties for guys
23:33
Speaker 1: like us as a co host of a show called
23:36
Speaker 1: Real People. Isn't that right? That's incredible? Okay, Real People
23:40
Speaker 1: was the other one. Yeah, it was the downmarket version
23:43
Speaker 1: or maybe the upmarket version of Real People. I think
23:46
Speaker 1: that's incredible. It was just that was the one with
23:47
Speaker 1: Tarkenton and Kathy Rick I think, yeah. Remember she always
23:56
Speaker 1: came out wearing a beard of bees like every episode.
24:00
Speaker 1: I just remember the guy. I remember two guys. There
24:03
Speaker 1: was one guy that could catch arrows. That was Kathy Rigby.
24:06
Speaker 1: That was that would bring on people to do this
24:09
Speaker 1: kufas uh. And then the other guy. I think I
24:13
Speaker 1: even remember his name for some reason. It's funny how
24:15
Speaker 1: these things stick with you as an adult from when
24:17
Speaker 1: you were a kid. I think he was the Yogi Kudu.
24:20
Speaker 1: He was the guy that could fold himself and put
24:21
Speaker 1: him in a tiny, little clear cube. That was Kathy
24:24
Speaker 1: Rigby too. You were a very confused young man. I'm
24:29
Speaker 1: gonna have to look that up. I better. I think
24:31
Speaker 1: it was Yogiku do Um, so, Chuck, we kind of
24:34
Speaker 1: set the stage. Um, Kathy Lee Crosby, Oh nice, Okay,
24:39
Speaker 1: good Cathy Rigby. It was a gymnast, all right. I'm
24:41
Speaker 1: glad I said that, but I was thinking of Kathy
24:43
Speaker 1: Lee Crosby. I just had the name wrong with you,
24:46
Speaker 1: but that's who I was thinking of. At any rate,
24:49
Speaker 1: we've set the stage for this seven night at the
24:53
Speaker 1: Beverly Hill Supper Club. Yep. John Davidson's kind of go
24:57
Speaker 1: on apparently shaving backstage at this moment, and I say,
24:59
Speaker 1: we take a little break, leave John Davidson to his shaving,
25:03
Speaker 1: and come back and really talk about the fire. All right,
25:34
Speaker 1: you missed a spot, John, Yeah, imagine like shaving right
25:38
Speaker 1: before we go on stage. I'd be like I would
25:40
Speaker 1: nick myself and I'd come out bleeding, like your face
25:43
Speaker 1: isn't supposed to bleed when you are entertaining. You know.
25:47
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I don't shave. I hated shaving. I
25:49
Speaker 1: don't like it either. Yeah, I didn't like shaving. So
25:54
Speaker 1: John Davidson apparently loved to shave, do it five times
25:57
Speaker 1: a day. He liked to come out there with a clean,
25:59
Speaker 1: clean clothes, shaved who were the two comedians that were
26:02
Speaker 1: opening up for him, Kethy Rig It was in the video,
26:08
Speaker 1: but I don't remember now. Peter and McDonald. They were
26:11
Speaker 1: a comedy duo plus a ventriloquist act on tops of
26:16
Speaker 1: everyone back then had a had a dummy at their disposal. Yeah,
26:19
Speaker 1: and but also I think they were kind of like,
26:20
Speaker 1: we're kind of funny, we need to somehow, we're not
26:24
Speaker 1: funny enough to just be a comedy duo, right, No
26:27
Speaker 1: shade towards the carrot top because he will beat me
26:30
Speaker 1: up now, Oh dude. Yeah, So all right, this the
26:35
Speaker 1: club is packed out the um there was a wedding
26:39
Speaker 1: receptions going on, and what was called the Zebra Room,
26:42
Speaker 1: Like you said, the cab cabernet room. I'm sorry, the
26:45
Speaker 1: cabaret room, but the curtains could make it called the
26:48
Speaker 1: cabernet room for sure. And all the wine you couldn't
26:51
Speaker 1: me Um. I bet they were serving some usty supermanty
26:56
Speaker 1: in that joint. Uh they they that was where Davidson was.
27:03
Speaker 1: But the point is there was just there was activity
27:06
Speaker 1: all over this place such that if there was a fire,
27:10
Speaker 1: like we will soon see, the other part of the
27:14
Speaker 1: facility wouldn't even know what was going on. No, not
27:16
Speaker 1: at all. Um, there I saw that there was essentially
27:20
Speaker 1: three thousand people in that building at the time, in
27:24
Speaker 1: the complex, I should say, But it's not like it
27:26
Speaker 1: was a bunch of different buildings. It was one big
27:29
Speaker 1: building with a bunch of huge rooms. So, um, yes,
27:32
Speaker 1: so there's three thousand people there on this this what
27:35
Speaker 1: was this Saturday night? I think Friday night that was
27:39
Speaker 1: So there were three thousand people there, and um, there
27:43
Speaker 1: was a wedding party, one of the like half dozen
27:45
Speaker 1: wedding parties that were celebrating that day. Um, we're in
27:49
Speaker 1: the Zebra room. And they left, they were done, their
27:52
Speaker 1: wedding party was over, and I think a couple of
27:55
Speaker 1: servers came in to get some some trades I think
27:58
Speaker 1: out of the place and noticed that there was a
28:01
Speaker 1: thing of smoke that was kind of bunching up in
28:03
Speaker 1: the back of the room. And they're like, well, that's
28:07
Speaker 1: kind of odd, and they went and got um Dick
28:09
Speaker 1: Schilling's son, Rick, who came in with a fire extinguisher.
28:13
Speaker 1: But by the time he got there, apparently it was
28:16
Speaker 1: spreading pretty quickly, and it was made even worse by
28:20
Speaker 1: a bus boy whose name has lost to history or
28:23
Speaker 1: at the very least day didn't um use his name
28:26
Speaker 1: who opened the doors to the Zebra room to kind
28:29
Speaker 1: of help put the fire out, but instead that had
28:31
Speaker 1: the exact opposite effect. Yeah, the whole backdraft effect. All
28:36
Speaker 1: that oxygen entering the room basically made I mean, it
28:40
Speaker 1: didn't explode, but it did not explode. Like everything in
28:44
Speaker 1: that room all of a sudden was on fire and this, uh,
28:48
Speaker 1: that was really really black smoke. Um. We'll talk a
28:52
Speaker 1: little bit later about what all was in it, but
28:54
Speaker 1: it was incredibly noxious, as you would expect from a
28:57
Speaker 1: lavishly decorated place in late night, all manner of like
29:03
Speaker 1: terrible plastics and and fabrics that were terrible when burned. Um.
29:12
Speaker 1: So the Zebra rooms on fire, and apparently the um
29:17
Speaker 1: when the flames kind of burst in the Zebra room,
29:21
Speaker 1: it moved really quickly up the hall of mirrors, which
29:23
Speaker 1: will become suspicious later on, and it's moving towards the
29:27
Speaker 1: cabaret room. Well, there was a I saw sixteen year
29:31
Speaker 1: old This says eighteen year old. Regardless, there was a
29:34
Speaker 1: teenage bus boy working there and he heard didn't see anything,
29:39
Speaker 1: He just heard over the grapevine that there was a
29:42
Speaker 1: fire in the Zebra room and he had the wherewithal
29:46
Speaker 1: to go on stage interrupting the great Teeter and McDonald
29:50
Speaker 1: during their comedy act, asked them for the microphone and
29:54
Speaker 1: very calmly said, folks, there's a fire in an adjoining room.
29:58
Speaker 1: It's nothing to panic about, but we all need to leave.
30:01
Speaker 1: So there are exits here and here. Please go ahead
30:03
Speaker 1: and make your way to the exits. And about a
30:06
Speaker 1: third to a half of the crowd laughed and clapped
30:10
Speaker 1: because they thought that Walter Bailey was part of Teter
30:12
Speaker 1: McDonald's comedy and Teeter and McDonald said, man, we need
30:16
Speaker 1: to steal that and added to our act later on
30:19
Speaker 1: because it got a huge response. Yeah, there's no way
30:22
Speaker 1: that they didn't uh get that ventriloquist thing out and
30:26
Speaker 1: say who's this dummy when that guy got on stage.
30:29
Speaker 1: There is no way. But Walter Bailey is a huge
30:32
Speaker 1: here and there are a lot of heroes and we'll
30:33
Speaker 1: see but he I mean, imagine being like sixteen to
30:36
Speaker 1: eighteen years old and without anybody telling you to, like,
30:40
Speaker 1: just getting on stage, interrupting an act and telling everyone, calmly,
30:43
Speaker 1: calmly leave. Yeah, everyone across the board says that he
30:47
Speaker 1: very calmly told everyone, we need to go ahead and
30:50
Speaker 1: go out the doors. Hats off to Walter Bailey. So
30:54
Speaker 1: people sort of started to leave. Other people would like,
30:58
Speaker 1: we're kicking back and drinking their drinks and stuff and
31:01
Speaker 1: wondering what was going on. And eventually the cabernet room
31:07
Speaker 1: it became evident when flames and heat and smoke burst
31:12
Speaker 1: through that entrance door, and exactly what you would think
31:16
Speaker 1: happened happened, which is people started, uh panicking. They started
31:21
Speaker 1: trying to get out any way they knew how, which
31:24
Speaker 1: it turns out was pretty confusing in a big place
31:26
Speaker 1: like this smoke um. There were two back exits, but
31:32
Speaker 1: two of the doors pushed out, two of them pulled in. Uh.
31:36
Speaker 1: They found survivors who were basically crushed against those inward
31:40
Speaker 1: pulling doors, because you know, once you get to that
31:43
Speaker 1: door and you have a a rush of people pushing
31:45
Speaker 1: and you can't even get the door open. So it's
31:48
Speaker 1: it's that that sad, sad typical seeing you hear about
31:52
Speaker 1: with a rush of people where a crush happens and
31:56
Speaker 1: people are stepping on one another trying to get out.
31:58
Speaker 1: So part of it also, I it was started when
32:01
Speaker 1: a man in a dinner jacket who was kind of
32:04
Speaker 1: quickly making his way to that one exit where one
32:07
Speaker 1: of the doors was closed and the other was open.
32:09
Speaker 1: He tripped and fell, and a woman very closely behind
32:13
Speaker 1: him fell on him, and then the people behind her
32:15
Speaker 1: fell on her, and they just kind of stacked up,
32:17
Speaker 1: sealing the fate of the people behind them, because the
32:22
Speaker 1: margin of error in getting out of the cabaret room
32:25
Speaker 1: at that time was razor thin. I saw it. Put
32:28
Speaker 1: like whether you lived or died depended on what side
32:32
Speaker 1: of the table you were sitting on and having to
32:35
Speaker 1: get out of that cabaret room. That's how noxious that
32:38
Speaker 1: smoke was and how quickly it was killing people who
32:41
Speaker 1: were overcome. And so when that pile of people started
32:45
Speaker 1: um piling up by that one exit, there was only
32:48
Speaker 1: one exit to be had, and that was on the
32:50
Speaker 1: other side of this thousand person room. So a a
32:53
Speaker 1: lot died at that blocked exit right there. Yeah, I
32:59
Speaker 1: think that was um There were several dead ends that
33:02
Speaker 1: people thought were exits, like hallways that led to closets
33:06
Speaker 1: and coat closets and things like that. Uh and again,
33:09
Speaker 1: and you know when this thing is when panic is
33:11
Speaker 1: set in. There are people everywhere, it's full of smoke.
33:14
Speaker 1: You're just going in a direction basically at that point. Uh.
33:18
Speaker 1: And if you see a hallway and you run down
33:20
Speaker 1: it and you hit a dead end, then that that's
33:22
Speaker 1: basically it for you in this kind of scenario. Um.
33:25
Speaker 1: Very sadly, there were people who actually made it outside
33:30
Speaker 1: only to like collapse and die on the front lawn
33:33
Speaker 1: because they couldn't get like fresh air into their lungs
33:35
Speaker 1: soon enough. A lot of people made it out. A
33:38
Speaker 1: surprising number of people made it out. So bear in
33:41
Speaker 1: mind there's about three thousand people there and something on
33:44
Speaker 1: the order of twenty people made it out safely. Yeah,
33:49
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the people who did die died
33:52
Speaker 1: at that one exit. Yeah, there were no uh sprinklers
33:56
Speaker 1: installed and this was not a requirement, so that wasn't negligent.
34:01
Speaker 1: But it does bear mentioning. Um. And you know, thanks
34:05
Speaker 1: to people like Walter Bailey and the five firefighters who
34:09
Speaker 1: rushed to the scene and this thing burned for seven hours.
34:12
Speaker 1: But uh, I mean, you nail it, man. A hundred
34:15
Speaker 1: and sixty five people is a lot of people to lose.
34:18
Speaker 1: But considering how massive this place was and how many
34:21
Speaker 1: people were in there, um, And it's not like you're
34:25
Speaker 1: ever prepared to flee a burning building, but I think
34:29
Speaker 1: out drinking and having a good time after nine, like
34:32
Speaker 1: half of more probably drunk by that point. Um. It
34:36
Speaker 1: was just a very tough situation and and I think
34:39
Speaker 1: they're lucky that more didn't perish. So a hundred victims
34:43
Speaker 1: were found at that one blocked exit that was blocked
34:47
Speaker 1: by people, uh, some people who had made it through
34:50
Speaker 1: that exit. Like you said, it wasn't clear which way
34:53
Speaker 1: to go. The exits weren't clearly marked. Thirty people were recovered,
34:57
Speaker 1: um from the hallway off of that ex it, and
35:00
Speaker 1: then there was a closet off of that hallway that
35:03
Speaker 1: looked like an exit, but it was just a closet,
35:05
Speaker 1: and another twenty people were found there. So a hundred
35:08
Speaker 1: sixty people died. A hundred and fifty of them were
35:11
Speaker 1: all just uh scattered in this really localized area off
35:16
Speaker 1: of the cabaret room, right inside of the cabaret room
35:19
Speaker 1: and right outside of the cabaret room. Yeah, um, the
35:24
Speaker 1: uh you sent me this video. It was a presentation
35:27
Speaker 1: and it's well worth watching if you're into this kind
35:29
Speaker 1: of like even more thorough explanation of the layout of
35:33
Speaker 1: the place. But it was the what was his name
35:34
Speaker 1: that wrote that other book, Robert Webster. Yeah, Webster was
35:38
Speaker 1: presenting and he, you know, at one point in the
35:41
Speaker 1: video he talks about some of the pictures he was
35:43
Speaker 1: showing and he was like, you know, I really debated
35:45
Speaker 1: on what I felt like I could show, uh as
35:48
Speaker 1: far as how kind of gruesome it got, but he said,
35:51
Speaker 1: I did choose to show some of this because he's said,
35:54
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, people that have never heard
35:56
Speaker 1: of this need to see a little bit of what
35:59
Speaker 1: really happened to have its full impact. Um. And it
36:02
Speaker 1: didn't get too gruesome, but he did show I mean
36:05
Speaker 1: there were no like close ups, but he did show
36:07
Speaker 1: shots of people like, you know, dead on the lawn. Um.
36:11
Speaker 1: I think just kind of drive home how awful it was. Yeah,
36:14
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean it's it's it looks kind of
36:16
Speaker 1: like people like the people who were able to be
36:20
Speaker 1: gotten out, including like the ones like you said, just
36:22
Speaker 1: collapsed after they made it out themselves, Like they just
36:26
Speaker 1: looked like they were sleeping. Said this one kid, um
36:29
Speaker 1: who his name was Bill. He was thirteen at the time,
36:32
Speaker 1: he was another kind of hero in helping people. Bill Klingenberg,
36:37
Speaker 1: Um he uh. He said that it looked like people
36:40
Speaker 1: were just sleeping. Um. And it wasn't until like you realized,
36:44
Speaker 1: like you, it sunk in that they were dead. You
36:46
Speaker 1: were looking at a hundred plus dead people just laying
36:51
Speaker 1: around that it really became just nightmarish. And they moved
36:55
Speaker 1: people to the nearby National Armory Jim and used it
37:00
Speaker 1: as a makeshift morgue for families to come and identify people.
37:04
Speaker 1: And that's that's really worth pointing out. Like the this
37:08
Speaker 1: is a smallest town I think, like you said, thirty people,
37:12
Speaker 1: probably less because a lot of people fled to Las
37:15
Speaker 1: Vegas a decade before, so it was a fairly small town.
37:18
Speaker 1: And the people who were going there were residents. Um,
37:24
Speaker 1: they worked there, They m the whole town was essentially
37:29
Speaker 1: devastated by this fire. One way or another. You were
37:32
Speaker 1: touched by this fire, whether you lost somebody directly, or
37:35
Speaker 1: you knew someone who lost somebody, or you knew someone
37:37
Speaker 1: who was psychologically damaged now for having survived it. It
37:41
Speaker 1: was Um, it was. It's it's just hard to overstate
37:44
Speaker 1: what a big deal it was. Not just nationally, but
37:47
Speaker 1: especially in this area where it happened. Yeah. I mean
37:51
Speaker 1: there were another hundred and sixteen that suffered severe injuries, um,
37:57
Speaker 1: obviously from from the burns and the smoke inhalation. Uh.
38:00
Speaker 1: So the question then is, did was this arson? Did
38:04
Speaker 1: the mob do this? Yet? Again? Uh? And depending on
38:09
Speaker 1: who you ask, they will say it's either officially undetermined,
38:12
Speaker 1: which it is officially um or um. If you're the
38:17
Speaker 1: author of that first book, Bronson, he will say, no,
38:19
Speaker 1: this was absolutely the mob. Um. There were six official investigations.
38:25
Speaker 1: The first one was obviously ordered by the governor of
38:28
Speaker 1: Kentucky at the time, Julian Carroll, and said it was
38:32
Speaker 1: likely electrical and nature and blamed on aluminum wiring. But
38:37
Speaker 1: that zebra room where it started was bulldozed the next day. Uh.
38:42
Speaker 1: Supposedly to get um more bodies out there and recover
38:45
Speaker 1: more more people, but um, who knows. Some people contend
38:49
Speaker 1: that it was raised as part of the cover up.
38:52
Speaker 1: They certainly couldn't do the investigation any further investigations like
38:55
Speaker 1: they wanted to after that, So that bulldozing happened by
38:59
Speaker 1: director order of Julie and Carol, the the governor of Kentucky,
39:03
Speaker 1: which is a really weird thing to do. And um,
39:06
Speaker 1: some authors, I think Bronson also Robert Webster is basically
39:10
Speaker 1: like that guy was so mobbed up it's not even funny.
39:13
Speaker 1: The upshot of this is like we've entered into this
39:17
Speaker 1: period or this this realm where we're like, well, these
39:20
Speaker 1: are conspiracy theories. The area was so mob influenced and
39:26
Speaker 1: it has such a history of things burning down because
39:30
Speaker 1: of arson that it's really it's not far fetched at all.
39:34
Speaker 1: This isn't just you know, local residents trying to make
39:37
Speaker 1: sense of something really psychologically damaging. Uh. This really like
39:42
Speaker 1: these are historians and local, like longtime journalists who are
39:46
Speaker 1: writing books saying like, yeah, the governor literally covered up
39:50
Speaker 1: this fire that killed a hundred and sixty five people
39:52
Speaker 1: that was set under orders from the mob. Yeah there was.
39:57
Speaker 1: There was an annual major nightclub five are every year
40:02
Speaker 1: for seven straight years in northern Kentucky. Uh this was
40:06
Speaker 1: the most deadly, so it got the most news. But
40:08
Speaker 1: for seven straight years from seventy to seventy seven, one
40:11
Speaker 1: of these nightclubs burned to the ground. Uh. And it's
40:15
Speaker 1: that's not coincidence, you know. Um, there was like we said,
40:19
Speaker 1: a grand jury investigation into um Dick Chilling and whether
40:24
Speaker 1: or not he was negligent in any way. Uh. They
40:28
Speaker 1: said that at least the findings of the grand jury
40:32
Speaker 1: was that he clearly violated the fire code, but not
40:35
Speaker 1: to a criminal degree. Uh. And as Bronson put it,
40:39
Speaker 1: basically because apparently the fire marshals, they're like, well, it's
40:43
Speaker 1: really their fault, and then they're pointing fingers and Bronson
40:47
Speaker 1: the author eventually said everyone was guilty. So nobody was guilty,
40:50
Speaker 1: which sometimes is how those things go down. Yeah, So,
40:53
Speaker 1: like you said, the cause remains undetermined. It was ruled
40:56
Speaker 1: in accident. A lot of people say, no, this was arson,
41:00
Speaker 1: and there were um, there were people who worked at
41:03
Speaker 1: UM the supper club who came forward afterward, because, like
41:07
Speaker 1: you said, a half dozen investigations were launched. So these
41:10
Speaker 1: people were either spoken to or they came forward on
41:12
Speaker 1: their own accord and said, hey, there was some really
41:15
Speaker 1: weird stuff going on at the supper club in the
41:18
Speaker 1: in the days and weeks leading up to this UM
41:21
Speaker 1: including there are a couple of guys who were found
41:24
Speaker 1: in the basement laundry room right below the Zebra room,
41:27
Speaker 1: who caused an explosion a week before the fire, and
41:31
Speaker 1: these two guys said that they were working on the
41:33
Speaker 1: air conditioning and told the hostess UM to leave, go ahead,
41:36
Speaker 1: get out of here, which is not something that air
41:38
Speaker 1: conditioning repair people say to the people who are working
41:41
Speaker 1: there very frequently. What else There was an FBI memo
41:46
Speaker 1: apparently a couple of weeks before the fire that said
41:49
Speaker 1: an anonymous tipster M heard I'm sorry, I had conversations
41:53
Speaker 1: with a stranger on a plane who predicted that it
41:56
Speaker 1: would be burned down. UM. And that could have been
42:01
Speaker 1: a real thing, or it could have been just like, hey,
42:02
Speaker 1: that places burned twice, it'll burn again. So I kind
42:05
Speaker 1: of put that one in the maybe category personally. Uh.
42:09
Speaker 1: What else? UM? There was a an employee who said that, UM,
42:14
Speaker 1: she overheard a heated discussion UM where two men wanted
42:17
Speaker 1: to buy the supper club and she said that, UM,
42:21
Speaker 1: no one followed up on the tip and that she's
42:24
Speaker 1: received threatening phone calls to telling telling her to keep
42:27
Speaker 1: quiet about that. And then also this one was I
42:30
Speaker 1: think multiple people said that they saw men that they
42:33
Speaker 1: couldn't identify wiping down the walls of the Hall of
42:36
Speaker 1: Mirrors with some weird smelling liquid. On the day of
42:40
Speaker 1: the fire, I remember the Zebra Um room caught fire,
42:44
Speaker 1: but then the fire spread very quickly up the hall
42:47
Speaker 1: of mirrors to the cabaret room. And apparently there was
42:50
Speaker 1: another fire in nineteen where UM investigators found that the
42:55
Speaker 1: Pink Pussycat Lounge in Newport had been saturated in lubri
43:00
Speaker 1: can oil to help use as an accelerant, and it's
43:03
Speaker 1: entirely possible this was used as well in this There's
43:07
Speaker 1: other stuff too. If you watch that Robert Webster presentation
43:10
Speaker 1: I think on YouTube, it's the same title of his
43:12
Speaker 1: book The Beverly Hills Supper Club colin The Untold Story
43:16
Speaker 1: Behind Kentucky's Worst Tragedy UM. He says that there were
43:20
Speaker 1: like timers found in the basement underneath the Zebra Room,
43:25
Speaker 1: that the wiring had been ripped out from plugs and
43:27
Speaker 1: put into outlets, and that essentially the the upshot of
43:32
Speaker 1: this of people who believe that this was arson, or
43:35
Speaker 1: may even actually know for a fact it was arson,
43:38
Speaker 1: that it was not meant to happen on that Saturday night,
43:42
Speaker 1: that it was supposed to happen on Sunday morning, and
43:44
Speaker 1: that the two goons who actually set up the timers
43:47
Speaker 1: set some to PM rather than a M and caused
43:50
Speaker 1: this massive tragedy. Oh and that it was supposed to
43:54
Speaker 1: have been just burned to the ground with no one there. Yeah,
43:56
Speaker 1: because typically if you burned down a business and night
44:00
Speaker 1: club something like that in Northern GA, not trying to
44:02
Speaker 1: murder people. No, you did it on a Sunday morning. Basically,
44:06
Speaker 1: I think there was one employee to that reported that
44:08
Speaker 1: they saw John Davidson shaving backstage. He was he caused
44:13
Speaker 1: a spark. Uh. So that is the story. There was
44:18
Speaker 1: one little um a bit here at the end that
44:20
Speaker 1: Dave included that it was also notable in legal terms
44:26
Speaker 1: historically because it was the first um disaster case that
44:31
Speaker 1: ended up having a class action mass tort lawsuit applied.
44:35
Speaker 1: There was a lawyer named Stan Chesley who would later
44:38
Speaker 1: be known as a Master of Disaster, who got all
44:42
Speaker 1: these claims together more than three victims, into a class
44:45
Speaker 1: action suit against the aluminum wiring industry. Uh. And even
44:50
Speaker 1: though that was never proven as the reason for the fire,
44:54
Speaker 1: they did have to admit that they knew that the
44:55
Speaker 1: wire could catch fire from overheating, and the jury awarded
45:02
Speaker 1: bucks and damages and I think the families received about
45:05
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars. Yeah, and I think that actually was
45:08
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end for aluminum wiring. Um. The
45:11
Speaker 1: there's still like ongoing litigation over it. So UM, you know,
45:15
Speaker 1: we talked largely about Newport, but um, the supper club
45:19
Speaker 1: itself was up Highway twenty seven or I guess down
45:21
Speaker 1: Highway twenty seven in Southgate, just outside of Newport, and
45:25
Speaker 1: um that's hollow ground to the people in that area.
45:29
Speaker 1: But it was recently sold. The entire site was sold
45:32
Speaker 1: to a developer who intended to put like condos in
45:35
Speaker 1: an assisted living facility and stuff on it. And so
45:37
Speaker 1: there's been a bunch of lawsuits saying like, no, don't
45:40
Speaker 1: build at all, or you can build, but you just
45:42
Speaker 1: can't build on the side of the supper club, or
45:44
Speaker 1: you can build inside the supper club, you just can't
45:46
Speaker 1: build over the cabaret room where most of the deaths occurred.
45:49
Speaker 1: And I can't quite tell if the if the project
45:53
Speaker 1: is moving forward or if it's just stalled out right now,
45:57
Speaker 1: or what they're going to do, but I believe that
45:59
Speaker 1: they put m Morial up where the cabaret room is,
46:02
Speaker 1: or if they haven't yet. They're going to very soon.
46:05
Speaker 1: All this news was like, oh, well that's good. Yeah,
46:10
Speaker 1: so there's still and apparently there's there's people convinced that
46:14
Speaker 1: there are still remains on the site. Um, and I
46:18
Speaker 1: guess there. I saw a picture taken in the woods
46:21
Speaker 1: and there's a burned like cocktail tray um in in
46:25
Speaker 1: the woods. And this is like a picture taken in
46:26
Speaker 1: like two thousand eight or nine or something like that.
46:28
Speaker 1: So they're like, there's still stuff in the woods. So
46:31
Speaker 1: it really is hollow ground for sure. Yeah, you got
46:35
Speaker 1: anything else? No, this is a story I've never heard.
46:39
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess Dave thought of it, so I'm
46:41
Speaker 1: glad he did. Yeah, way to go, Dave. Thanks for
46:43
Speaker 1: this one. Uh And since I said way to go Dave,
46:46
Speaker 1: that means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail.
46:52
Speaker 1: This is about avocado Toast. Hey, guys, love the show.
46:56
Speaker 1: I've been working my way through the bad catalog as
46:58
Speaker 1: I'm doing some d i y work on our house.
47:01
Speaker 1: You have saved my sanity. But I wanted to address
47:03
Speaker 1: Josh's comment about the relatively recent hipster fascination with toast.
47:08
Speaker 1: Giving us avocado Toast is a correction. Now it's not
47:11
Speaker 1: a correction. Okay, great, I love this one. Yeah, this
47:14
Speaker 1: is just a little I guess what thing? Hey, guys,
47:18
Speaker 1: So my dad has mashed an avocado onto toast and
47:21
Speaker 1: added salt and pepper since I was a kid in
47:23
Speaker 1: the n uh It's funny. It seems like a very
47:27
Speaker 1: seventies dad thing to do. And then with a kid
47:30
Speaker 1: going like why do you do and and he's like, oh,
47:32
Speaker 1: it's delicious, He's like, leave me alone and get back
47:34
Speaker 1: to your macro main As a matter of fact, I'm
47:37
Speaker 1: not a big avocado fan in general, but I still
47:39
Speaker 1: love that version of avocado toast. And just in case
47:41
Speaker 1: you're wondering, my dad was not a foodie. Far from it.
47:45
Speaker 1: Kate Hamburger steak and microwave vegetables every night for dinner
47:48
Speaker 1: for decades. My siblings and I used to joke that
47:52
Speaker 1: his biography should be called beyond practicality. I grew up
47:56
Speaker 1: in San Diego, which I think grows more avocados and
47:58
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the US, so we could usually just
48:01
Speaker 1: get them cheaply in season. I bet your dad was
48:05
Speaker 1: stealing them from the neighbor's yard, would be my guess.
48:09
Speaker 1: I just want to let you know that some of
48:10
Speaker 1: us have been Avocado Toast enthusiasts more than fifty years.
48:14
Speaker 1: Thanks again for keeping me entertained and educated with the show.
48:17
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I really can't thank you enough. And that
48:21
Speaker 1: is from Cookie Davis. Nice Cookie. First of all, awesome name. Secondly,
48:25
Speaker 1: thanks for the story. I appreciate it. And then third day,
48:28
Speaker 1: I have a question for Cookie or anybody you can answer.
48:30
Speaker 1: It is a hamburger steak, just like a hamburger without
48:34
Speaker 1: the button. Is that right? Yeah? I used to, uh,
48:38
Speaker 1: when I was a line cook when I was believe
48:39
Speaker 1: it or not, thirteen years old at JJ's barbecue. Yeah,
48:45
Speaker 1: I would. I would cook the grittled bread, garlic bread
48:48
Speaker 1: and the hamburger steaks. And hamburger steak is just ground
48:53
Speaker 1: beef shaped like a New York strip and that's all
48:57
Speaker 1: it is. So it's not like round like a hamburger.
48:59
Speaker 1: I guess comple you conserve it that way. But the
49:01
Speaker 1: idea is to make it long and rectangular like it's
49:04
Speaker 1: its steak. And uh, it's really kind of funny, but
49:07
Speaker 1: you want to hear something funnier. I made one of
49:10
Speaker 1: those two weeks ago for myself. I got this we
49:14
Speaker 1: get in our c s A Our c s A Miami.
49:20
Speaker 1: That's a little when you go to the some parking
49:22
Speaker 1: lot and a bunch of farmers partner hippies give you
49:25
Speaker 1: a bag of stuff. Yeah, or go up. What's the
49:28
Speaker 1: c s A. I think it's called a c s
49:30
Speaker 1: A co Op Surprise r vark. But they got this
49:37
Speaker 1: really delicious local, locally raised, humanely raised ground beef and
49:44
Speaker 1: it's delicious, like the most noticeable difference you could imagine
49:49
Speaker 1: from like something you would get in a grocery store.
49:52
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know what, I don't have
49:53
Speaker 1: anything else here in the house, so I'm gonna make
49:56
Speaker 1: some veggies and make a hamburger steak. So I've been
50:00
Speaker 1: making some really great recipes from your friend, uh Kenji
50:04
Speaker 1: Lopez all delete he is. That guy is just amazing.
50:09
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of now. Yeah, he's the best,
50:12
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how much we can mention him
50:15
Speaker 1: and be ignored. But here's yet another. Yeah, I was
50:17
Speaker 1: gonna say, if he's a friend of the show and
50:19
Speaker 1: doesn't know it, yeah, exactly, but yeah, it's um. I
50:22
Speaker 1: think I made the carne asada. I can't remember the
50:25
Speaker 1: name of the recipe, but it was like the best
50:27
Speaker 1: carne asada or something like that. It was so easy
50:30
Speaker 1: but so good. And it all comes down to like
50:34
Speaker 1: doing your own stuff, like rather than using ground cuman,
50:38
Speaker 1: like buying human whole human like seeds, toasting them and
50:44
Speaker 1: then putting them in like a grinder. Sounds like a lot,
50:46
Speaker 1: it's actually really easy and it produces like just amazing stuff.
50:50
Speaker 1: Or like using like whole dried chilies, um and then
50:54
Speaker 1: reconstituting them, like just just little things like that that
50:57
Speaker 1: maybe you're like an extra step that makes it just
50:59
Speaker 1: a nor of this world of difference. It's almost as
51:02
Speaker 1: if eating real whole foods is the better way. Almost chuck. Almost.
51:08
Speaker 1: He's a food scientist. He knows his stuff beyond chef um. Uh,
51:13
Speaker 1: just bake a batch of his chocolate chip cookies and
51:16
Speaker 1: see me in the morning. Oh. By the way, I know,
51:19
Speaker 1: I told everybody about um Sally's baking addictions chocolate brown
51:22
Speaker 1: butter chocolate chip cookies, and I I went to go
51:26
Speaker 1: look at the recipe um to see about browning butter again.
51:30
Speaker 1: And in the comments there's like ten people are like
51:33
Speaker 1: Josh from stuff you Should Know set me here. It
51:35
Speaker 1: was like weird, like bizarre thing because I wasn't expecting
51:38
Speaker 1: it at all. But the upshot of it is I
51:41
Speaker 1: tried Sally's Baking Addiction brown butter sugar cookies. They may
51:45
Speaker 1: be even better than the brown butter chocolate chip cookies.
51:49
Speaker 1: So if you tried the chocolate chip cookies, please, I
51:51
Speaker 1: beseech you go make the sugar cookies too. Yeah, and
51:55
Speaker 1: trunk and chocolate chip cookies. Okay, we'll try them all.
51:58
Speaker 1: I've got no problem with that. They're all good. You
52:01
Speaker 1: got anything else? Nothing, I'm just starving now. Who was
52:04
Speaker 1: that cookie that wrote in? That was Cookie? Yeah? Cool? Great? Well,
52:09
Speaker 1: if you want to be like Cookie and get us
52:10
Speaker 1: going about cookies, you can send us an email to
52:13
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
52:21
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
52:24
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:27
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows