The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire

of this is very cinematic. I was just trying to work out how to tell the story in a movie without doing flash forwards and flashbacks. But that's probably how you would have to do it. So I grew up in Northern Ohio, which is not that far from Northern Kentucky, on the other end of Ohio from it, because the area we're talking about just across the river from Cincinnati. Um,

And I guess I had heard of this before. It's one of those things where I can't remember if my mind is telling me that I had a memory before I actually had a memory, Like I didn't really have one, I just want to think I did. It might be one of those scenarios but regardless, it is like a huge, huge piece of northern Kentucky southern Ohio history. And in fact, the more you learn about it, if you were alive and sentient, you know, in the um mid to late seventies,

it was a national thing. Like it was a really big deal that this happened, this Beverly Hill supper club fire that we're going to talk about today. Yeah, it was definitely one of the worst, um sort of entertainment club fires in US history. I would have to look at numbers. I mean, it's probably one of the deadliest fires in US history because a hundred and sixty five people died in horrific fashion obvious, See, dying by fire is always horrific. But this was as bad as it gets, um,

and I didn't know anything about it. So a big thanks to you for uh commissioning this from Dave Rouse, my friend, you did No, I didn't. I didn't commission this. I didn't either. We're gonna have to this. May be occasionally Dave will say like, hey, have you heard of this cool thing? And we'll say, oh, yeah, just that sounds great. So that may have been one of these because I didn't know about this I don't think. What day is it? Uh? It is Tuesday? I think, are

we Is this a job? Am I dreaming? You're like that kid David on the way home from the dentist? Is this real? All right? So let's go to Newport, Kentucky in the way back machine. We haven't pulled that thing out in a while, so let's dust it out. That's fired up through the wiring, so I'll have to hot wire it. Luckily, I'm good at that. So let's get it fired up and let's go back to the nineteen twenties Prohibition era Northern kentuckt Okay, here we are,

Chuck and uh. It turns out that despite prohibition being in full force, UM liquors really really easy to get, especially especially because there was a loophole in the Volstad Act that said, and I know we talked about this in the Prohibition episode UM that said that if you UM are making alcohol for medicinal use, you can't. You have to have a huge license. Each bottle has to be bonded by the government. You can't be it's got

to be a hundred proof on the nose. There is a bunch of like criteria, but you could legally produce um alcohol. And there was a guy named George Remus who who was a lawyer. He also was a pharmacist by trade, but he had been defending all sorts of bootleggers in Chicago and realized, man, there's a lot of

money in bootlegging. So I saw that. He did a little research, found out that of the legal booze producing the United States was coming out of the Cincinnati area, and he moved over there and said, I'm going to get into organized crime. And boy did he ever. Yeah, he was living in Chicago at the time, and if you're leaving the organized crime in Chicago to go to Cincinnati, then he must have some good insider information, and indeed

he did. He was known after he made that move as a king of the bootleggers because he would um and you know, it's a great scam. He would manufacture this quote unquote medicinal whiskey and then he would have a setup where his guys would steal the truck, hijack the truck, and then sell it. And this money number is staggering because it says at one point this guy

was making forty million dollars a year in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, it's about nine hundred million dollars today, So I mean that's that made him probably one of the wealthiest people in the United States if he would have been able to keep the you know, that operation up, But of course he wasn't for sure. So if you were a politician or um, a police chief or even probably a local cop in the area, it made you pretty wealthy too.

Because one of the reasons why he set up in northern Kentucky's, particularly in Newport, was because you could pay people off a lot easier. It was a small town. You could basically make it your fiefdom. And that's what George Remis did. And you're right he Um. He got caught pretty quickly, I think, um within just a few years of setting up this organized crime syndicate. UM. And I just a little aside on him. He was really interesting.

He had a sellmate in jail who turned out to be an FBI agent, not an informant, and actual agent who has planted there. The agent found out about all the money that Remus had that his wife control that was in her name. The guy left the jail, quit the FBI, and started an affair with Remus's wife, Imogene, and then talked her into basically like selling off all his stuff and funnel money from her. So the FBI

guy robbed and blind. Remus was so mad that when he got out of prison, he he tracked down his wife and shot her in public in broad daylight. Did he get pinched for that? He got pinched. He was convicted but found not guilty and reason of insanity, was taken to UM Sanitarium right sanatorium ortarium, I can't remember um a mental hospital, and then, because he was a lawyer, used the prosecutor's reasoning that he wasn't insane to get himself released from the actual UM, the mental hospital, and

became a freeman very quickly. Boy, he knew all the angles, Yeah he did. And also one other thing about him is that it's pretty much a certainty that Jay Gatsby from the Great Gatsby was based on George D. Remus because he had met um F Scott Fitzgerald at some point. Yeah, and probably through some pretty wild parties would be my guests. But he didn't drink or smoke. Well, I don't, well did Gatsby here? I could think gets to be drinks something yeah, I um, alright, so it's he's in jail.

But by this time he had established such an operation there in northern Kentucky that a little industry of sleeves grew up around it. Uh, kind of a red light district, is how Dave put it. And this is where we get to the birth of what was then called the

Beverly Hills Country Club. Uh. There was a guy named Peachman who now factors in the story, who used to be a driver for Remus and in seven he bought this old roadhouse outside of Newport, Newport perched upon a hill and and and basically renovated it into a casino, and a really nice one. They had casinos there, but they were they were called bust out joints. They were kind of again, they were kind of sleazy places to go.

And the Beverly Hills Country Club was what was known as a carpet joint, and it was a it was a nice place. It was it was the blueprint for what ended up being Las Vegas. Like a nice place where you could go and you could gamble, and you get a dinner and some drink and even see a show. Yeah. So the thing about that is yes, it was. The whole jam was kind of sleazy. In fact, Newport earned

the nickname Since City back in the thirties. And again, Las Vegas is a glimmer in anybody's eye at this point. It's a it's a tumble wheat. No like Newport is Las Vegas and Atlantic City wrapped into one. And if you were a tourist like you were, you were totally fine. You were safe. The streets were clean, like nobody was gonna mess with you because it was so fully mob run.

But it was mob run by a bunch of like different disparate people who used to work with George Remus and the Cleveland mob that led by Moe Deletes, who went on to help found Las Vegas. He was one of the original founders. He said, I want this action. This is like just off the border of Cincinnati. Were in Cleveland. We're going to get in on this. And he moved in on Newport and started buying up casinos around town. Delete Deletes, that's what I saw. Oh really,

I know. I want to say dallots, but it's not dallots. It it's delightful as what it is. If you look at uh deletes, Uh he looks exactly what you would think of mobster. Moe Deletes would look like he was a big time mobster. Like he was one of the ones that was grilled by the Kaffer Committee. He was one of the ones that that helped found Las Vegas years later, right, right, Yeah, that's what I was saying.

But this was years and years later. And again one of the reasons Las Vegas was found was because Mo de Letz was one of the first, like big time mob guys who showed up in Newport and took over it was. It was just the blueprint for Vegas later on. Alright, So Schmidt and again Chuck, I want to just really drive home. We're talking about northern Kentucky. M hm okay, yeah, Uh you know how I know that because we said northern Kentucky like sixty times so far I know. But

it's just still boggles the mind. So Schmidt owns this Beverly Hills country club, and uh doesn't want to give it up despite mob pressure. He's like, no, this is my place. I want to own it. So what looks like happened as the mom said, fine, we'll burn it down. Uh, this was not the big fire obviously that came, you know, forty years later, this was in February. Only one fatality, very sadly, h five year old girl, the niece of the club's caretaker, died. And here's the thing. They didn't

prove arson. But again, everyone was on the take, so it was kind of just understood that it was burned down because Schmidt wouldn't sell well. Plus also, right after the fire, Mo Deletes came and said you want to sell now? And uh that was it. Mo Deletes now own the Beverly Hills Country Club and with that he basically owned Newport in conjunction with a couple other big time heavy hitter Cleveland bosses. Yeah, with whatever they're whatever

Cleveland accent is. So you want to take a I don't know that there is one actually know that you mentioned it. It's kind of midwestern. Uh, hey, what do you say, Let's let's go down to Newport and run the plate. That's a Cleveland accent, I think by way Steve Bush and me is it's all right, We'll take that break and we'll we'll come back right after this, Okay, Chuck, So Mo Deletes and the Cleveland mob have taken over Newport. And this is when it really becomes like the casino

capital of America. Yeah, it's bustling. People are and this isn't like, oh I came in from Cleveland or Cincinnati. People are coming in from the West coast in New York and Chicago. I think the population was about thirty thousand, and uh seventy thousand people, you know, more than double that amount would come in on the weekends to hang out and see young Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And it was a literal blue print again

for Vegas. They were doing it all. Duke Ellington was playing, and Marilyn Monroe was there and it was just, uh, it was quite a scene. Again where in northern Kentucky and the others. The other thing about it too, is there was no legalized gambling in Kentucky. This was all just flouting the law. And the reason why because everybody was on the take. They just looked the other way. And it was the casino Capital of America was located

in a state that didn't have legalized gambling. Yeah, so so it wasn't like this is a a back room poker game like they were literal casinos that they got away with it, and eventually, you know, of course the feds are going to take note, and the American Municipal Association uh started complaining to the federal government and said, hey, we got a real organized crime problem in this country. So that Cafalbre Committee that you were talking about earlier,

it was a stab bush by the Senate. These big televised hearings. They trotted out everyone, including deletes, including Frank Costello and people like that. And here's the thing, it kept going that had no effect on shutting Newport down. This was in nineteen or fifty, and throughout the fifties it was still booming. Yeah. One of the reasons why they were able to get away with this was this was before even the FBI would admit that there was

a national crime syndicate of organized crime. Like Up to the like late fifties, the general consensus among law enforcement, at least officially, was that it was all just local hoods and thugs and you know, criminals. But there was certainly no organized crime that didn't exist. Even after the ki father Um Committee like revealed like, no, these people wh are in touch with one another and they're all mobbed up like this does exist, it still didn't quite take.

It wasn't until the Appalachian me of nineteen fifty seven in Appalati to New York, where they literally caught a hundred mob bosses from around the country in Cuba and Italy meeting to figure out how to organize their crime better. The people, including the FBI, were finally like, okay, fine, there's organized crime. But that's one way that they were able to get away with this is because they just refused to accept that this was an organized crime syndicate. Yeah,

which it very much was. Uh. And it played out in Newport in ways that you would expect in the nineteen fifties. They're homicide rate and you know this, you know, pretty small place was four times the national average. Uh. There were a lot of people that just vanished. Basically. Dave introduced me to a new term called the Newport nightgown, which was when you were wrapped up in chains and

thrown off a bridge. Uh. There was a reporter in fifty seven that counted three hundred sex workers per mile in Newport And eventually nineteen six one rolls around and a football player, former player from Notre dame in the Browns there in Cleveland named George Raderman ran for sheriff in Newport as a reform candidate. Okay, you know that reference?

No is that from No No, No, no, No. Good guess though it was Oh brother were art dal the Coen Brothers great movie where Charles Dunning said, people want that reform. Oh yeah. It was a good character. Yeah, he was a southern politician. But this is what uh Raderman ran for. Basically, I'm going to clean this place up. Uh. And it was all going fine in his campaign until he was found naked and passed out in a hotel room with a sex worker and arrested. But it kind

of came back to sting the mob, didn't it. It did because they did blood tests on George Raderman, probably at his insistence. He said that he was drugged, and it turned out that yes, indeed, he was drugged with oral hydrate, which is the basis of a mickey a Mickey finn. If you slip someone and mickey, you give him chloral hydrate in a drink. And that's what they did to George Raderman and framed him. The mob, in conjunction with the local police framed this guy who was

running for sheriff. It is a trope, but this was actually happening. Drug him and throw him dead naked with his sex order and take his and call the cops. Exactly. So um with with black and white picture. It's got to be black and white photos. Right. So Raderman actually goes on to win the election. He like, he comes out of this and clears his name, wins the election, and then all of the national attention that was given to this incredibly like just like almost mythical thing that

happened to him. Um. Robert Kennedy, who was new as the U. S. Attorney General, said what is going on down there? And started sending feds to Newport, and all of a sudden, the party was over. That's right, The party was very much over by this town. This was the sixties, so Vegas was it's earlier days and people skipped down. Basically, he said, all right, let's go out

there in the sunshine. Uh, Newport is done. And in the mid nineteen sixties, the Beverly Hills Country Club closed, but not for good, because, as we will see, it was revived, which will ultimately lead us to our tragedy. Yeah, It sounds like a break spot, but it's not because we just took one, that's right. This is also the time when the famous song Goodbye Northern Kentucky I'm going to Las Vegas was written that Inglebert Humperdink or Gordon Lightfoot.

It was a duet. Okay, yeah, yeah, it was a sea shantie that's right, sung into Cleveland accent. Alright. So then we will enter another character, Dick Schilling Richard Chilling Jr. He was working at these casinos when he was just a kid and eventually rose up to like management and in the late sick season sixty nine, when Newport wasn't doing great, he had the foresight to buy this abandoned property, the Beverly Hills Supper and renamed it the Beverly Hills

Supper Club. This time, I was like, I'm going to restore this um giant, giant facility. I mean, like, the more we looked into this, that video you sent me that kind of lays out the not the schematic, but the floor plan. It's unbelievable how big this place was. Like they would have half a dozen wedding parties going on at this and the same night in addition to the thousand seat to Frank Sinatra. Yeah, in the other room, like it was nuts and it was really lavishly done.

Like Dick Schilling like did a really good job bringing this thing back and put it back on the map again. The thing is is that long standing tradition of a legitimate business owner buying the place, fixing it up, and uh being unwilling to sell it to the mob, who in short order turned around and burn it down. Um, that happened again, just like a year after he revamped it, right before he was able to open, and amazingly, Dick

Schilling said, no, I'm doing this, stop at mob. You're not gonna You're not gonna deter me and the mobs and fine, fine, go ahead and open and he did in and you know, in just a few years it was it was like I think they called it the show place of the nation, a supper club in northern Kentucky. Uh. And it's like, how many times can this place burn down?

And I guess the answer is three at least. Yes, Uh and big thanks to we need to mention Dave used to book for this research by a man named Peter Bronson, who wrote easily I would say, the quintessential book on the Beverly Hill Supper Club Fire. Uh and Northern Kentucky Forbidden Fruit. Colon since Cities Underworld in the supper Club Inferno. And was that who it was in the video that you said to No, there's another guy named Robert Webster who was in that video. I sent tune.

He wrote another definitive book on it, um called the the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire, The Store the Untold story behind Kentucky's greatest tragedy. And it's really exhaustive too. Apparently it's got five years of research behind it as well. Colon everything that Bronson guy missed. Right, they're famously feuding with each other to this day. They keep burning down one another supper clubs. Oh no, no, no, alright, So this thing, like you said, opening seventy burned, reopened in

seventy one. Chilling was not to be deterred. And uh, it was a big deal. And Frank Sinatra came back even he was like that place is open again. All right, I'm back. You can still get a flight into Cincinnati, right. Uh. Ella Fitzgerald played their Red Fox, The Righteous Brothers. It was. It was again a big deal, and such a big deal that they would routinely um over sell and overpacked that place out. So I saw, this is under dispute.

So I think Robert Webster in particular, he chalked reports of that up to poor reporting, early reporting after the fire, that they routinely flaunted the building capacity, the fire marshal's capacity um number. I don't know that that's necessarily true, but it posses though. But no, but they they were. They said that there was some minor um violations, but nothing that costs anyone in their lives. So that to that tells me right there that no, they weren't doing

any major violations like over capacity crowding. Okay, And it was a huge place too. It was so mind bogglingly big that I think people were like, oh, there's people there, obviously it's over capacity. Well, I mean I think they were. They said there were people in that one room, yeah, where the main stage was, which was that was a sweet looking, uh place. I mean this the decor in

this place was awesome. Alright. So Memorial Day weekend is obviously going to be a big deal at a place like this, and it was certainly the case in nineteen seventy seven. John Davidson was the headliner that night. John Davidson, who would later make noise in the eighties for guys like us as a co host of a show called Real People. Isn't that right? That's incredible? Okay, Real People was the other one. Yeah, it was the downmarket version or maybe the upmarket version of Real People. I think

that's incredible. It was just that was the one with Tarkenton and Kathy Rick I think, yeah. Remember she always came out wearing a beard of bees like every episode. I just remember the guy. I remember two guys. There was one guy that could catch arrows. That was Kathy Rigby. That was that would bring on people to do this kufas uh. And then the other guy. I think I even remember his name for some reason. It's funny how these things stick with you as an adult from when

you were a kid. I think he was the Yogi Kudu. He was the guy that could fold himself and put him in a tiny, little clear cube. That was Kathy Rigby too. You were a very confused young man. I'm gonna have to look that up. I better. I think it was Yogiku do Um, so, Chuck, we kind of set the stage. Um, Kathy Lee Crosby, Oh nice, Okay, good Cathy Rigby. It was a gymnast, all right. I'm glad I said that, but I was thinking of Kathy Lee Crosby. I just had the name wrong with you,

but that's who I was thinking of. At any rate, we've set the stage for this seven night at the Beverly Hill Supper Club. Yep. John Davidson's kind of go on apparently shaving backstage at this moment, and I say, we take a little break, leave John Davidson to his shaving, and come back and really talk about the fire. All right, you missed a spot, John, Yeah, imagine like shaving right before we go on stage. I'd be like I would nick myself and I'd come out bleeding, like your face

isn't supposed to bleed when you are entertaining. You know. I'm so glad I don't shave. I hated shaving. I don't like it either. Yeah, I didn't like shaving. So John Davidson apparently loved to shave, do it five times a day. He liked to come out there with a clean, clean clothes, shaved who were the two comedians that were opening up for him, Kethy Rig It was in the video, but I don't remember now. Peter and McDonald. They were a comedy duo plus a ventriloquist act on tops of

everyone back then had a had a dummy at their disposal. Yeah, and but also I think they were kind of like, we're kind of funny, we need to somehow, we're not funny enough to just be a comedy duo, right, No shade towards the carrot top because he will beat me up now, Oh dude. Yeah, So all right, this the club is packed out the um there was a wedding receptions going on, and what was called the Zebra Room,

Like you said, the cab cabernet room. I'm sorry, the cabaret room, but the curtains could make it called the cabernet room for sure. And all the wine you couldn't me Um. I bet they were serving some usty supermanty in that joint. Uh they they that was where Davidson was. But the point is there was just there was activity all over this place such that if there was a fire, like we will soon see, the other part of the facility wouldn't even know what was going on. No, not

at all. Um, there I saw that there was essentially three thousand people in that building at the time, in the complex, I should say, But it's not like it was a bunch of different buildings. It was one big building with a bunch of huge rooms. So, um, yes, so there's three thousand people there on this this what was this Saturday night? I think Friday night that was So there were three thousand people there, and um, there was a wedding party, one of the like half dozen

wedding parties that were celebrating that day. Um, we're in the Zebra room. And they left, they were done, their wedding party was over, and I think a couple of servers came in to get some some trades I think out of the place and noticed that there was a thing of smoke that was kind of bunching up in the back of the room. And they're like, well, that's kind of odd, and they went and got um Dick Schilling's son, Rick, who came in with a fire extinguisher.

But by the time he got there, apparently it was spreading pretty quickly, and it was made even worse by a bus boy whose name has lost to history or at the very least day didn't um use his name who opened the doors to the Zebra room to kind of help put the fire out, but instead that had the exact opposite effect. Yeah, the whole backdraft effect. All that oxygen entering the room basically made I mean, it

didn't explode, but it did not explode. Like everything in that room all of a sudden was on fire and this, uh, that was really really black smoke. Um. We'll talk a little bit later about what all was in it, but it was incredibly noxious, as you would expect from a lavishly decorated place in late night, all manner of like

terrible plastics and and fabrics that were terrible when burned. Um. So the Zebra rooms on fire, and apparently the um when the flames kind of burst in the Zebra room, it moved really quickly up the hall of mirrors, which will become suspicious later on, and it's moving towards the cabaret room. Well, there was a I saw sixteen year

old This says eighteen year old. Regardless, there was a teenage bus boy working there and he heard didn't see anything, He just heard over the grapevine that there was a fire in the Zebra room and he had the wherewithal to go on stage interrupting the great Teeter and McDonald during their comedy act, asked them for the microphone and very calmly said, folks, there's a fire in an adjoining room. It's nothing to panic about, but we all need to leave.

So there are exits here and here. Please go ahead and make your way to the exits. And about a third to a half of the crowd laughed and clapped because they thought that Walter Bailey was part of Teter McDonald's comedy and Teeter and McDonald said, man, we need to steal that and added to our act later on because it got a huge response. Yeah, there's no way that they didn't uh get that ventriloquist thing out and say who's this dummy when that guy got on stage.

There is no way. But Walter Bailey is a huge here and there are a lot of heroes and we'll see but he I mean, imagine being like sixteen to eighteen years old and without anybody telling you to, like, just getting on stage, interrupting an act and telling everyone, calmly, calmly leave. Yeah, everyone across the board says that he very calmly told everyone, we need to go ahead and go out the doors. Hats off to Walter Bailey. So

people sort of started to leave. Other people would like, we're kicking back and drinking their drinks and stuff and wondering what was going on. And eventually the cabernet room it became evident when flames and heat and smoke burst through that entrance door, and exactly what you would think happened happened, which is people started, uh panicking. They started trying to get out any way they knew how, which it turns out was pretty confusing in a big place

like this smoke um. There were two back exits, but two of the doors pushed out, two of them pulled in. Uh. They found survivors who were basically crushed against those inward pulling doors, because you know, once you get to that door and you have a a rush of people pushing and you can't even get the door open. So it's it's that that sad, sad typical seeing you hear about with a rush of people where a crush happens and people are stepping on one another trying to get out.

So part of it also, I it was started when a man in a dinner jacket who was kind of quickly making his way to that one exit where one of the doors was closed and the other was open. He tripped and fell, and a woman very closely behind him fell on him, and then the people behind her fell on her, and they just kind of stacked up, sealing the fate of the people behind them, because the margin of error in getting out of the cabaret room

at that time was razor thin. I saw it. Put like whether you lived or died depended on what side of the table you were sitting on and having to get out of that cabaret room. That's how noxious that smoke was and how quickly it was killing people who were overcome. And so when that pile of people started um piling up by that one exit, there was only one exit to be had, and that was on the other side of this thousand person room. So a a

lot died at that blocked exit right there. Yeah, I think that was um There were several dead ends that people thought were exits, like hallways that led to closets and coat closets and things like that. Uh and again, and you know when this thing is when panic is set in. There are people everywhere, it's full of smoke. You're just going in a direction basically at that point. Uh. And if you see a hallway and you run down it and you hit a dead end, then that that's

basically it for you in this kind of scenario. Um. Very sadly, there were people who actually made it outside only to like collapse and die on the front lawn because they couldn't get like fresh air into their lungs soon enough. A lot of people made it out. A surprising number of people made it out. So bear in mind there's about three thousand people there and something on the order of twenty people made it out safely. Yeah, the vast majority of the people who did die died

at that one exit. Yeah, there were no uh sprinklers installed and this was not a requirement, so that wasn't negligent. But it does bear mentioning. Um. And you know, thanks to people like Walter Bailey and the five firefighters who rushed to the scene and this thing burned for seven hours. But uh, I mean, you nail it, man. A hundred and sixty five people is a lot of people to lose.

But considering how massive this place was and how many people were in there, um, And it's not like you're ever prepared to flee a burning building, but I think out drinking and having a good time after nine, like half of more probably drunk by that point. Um. It was just a very tough situation and and I think they're lucky that more didn't perish. So a hundred victims were found at that one blocked exit that was blocked by people, uh, some people who had made it through

that exit. Like you said, it wasn't clear which way to go. The exits weren't clearly marked. Thirty people were recovered, um from the hallway off of that ex it, and then there was a closet off of that hallway that looked like an exit, but it was just a closet, and another twenty people were found there. So a hundred sixty people died. A hundred and fifty of them were all just uh scattered in this really localized area off of the cabaret room, right inside of the cabaret room

and right outside of the cabaret room. Yeah, um, the uh you sent me this video. It was a presentation and it's well worth watching if you're into this kind of like even more thorough explanation of the layout of the place. But it was the what was his name

that wrote that other book, Robert Webster. Yeah, Webster was presenting and he, you know, at one point in the video he talks about some of the pictures he was showing and he was like, you know, I really debated on what I felt like I could show, uh as far as how kind of gruesome it got, but he said, I did choose to show some of this because he's said, I feel like, you know, people that have never heard of this need to see a little bit of what

really happened to have its full impact. Um. And it didn't get too gruesome, but he did show I mean there were no like close ups, but he did show shots of people like, you know, dead on the lawn. Um. I think just kind of drive home how awful it was. Yeah, for sure, I mean it's it's it looks kind of like people like the people who were able to be gotten out, including like the ones like you said, just collapsed after they made it out themselves, Like they just

looked like they were sleeping. Said this one kid, um who his name was Bill. He was thirteen at the time, he was another kind of hero in helping people. Bill Klingenberg, Um he uh. He said that it looked like people were just sleeping. Um. And it wasn't until like you realized, like you, it sunk in that they were dead. You were looking at a hundred plus dead people just laying

around that it really became just nightmarish. And they moved people to the nearby National Armory Jim and used it as a makeshift morgue for families to come and identify people. And that's that's really worth pointing out. Like the this is a smallest town I think, like you said, thirty people, probably less because a lot of people fled to Las Vegas a decade before, so it was a fairly small town.

And the people who were going there were residents. Um, they worked there, They m the whole town was essentially devastated by this fire. One way or another. You were touched by this fire, whether you lost somebody directly, or you knew someone who lost somebody, or you knew someone who was psychologically damaged now for having survived it. It was Um, it was. It's it's just hard to overstate what a big deal it was. Not just nationally, but

especially in this area where it happened. Yeah. I mean there were another hundred and sixteen that suffered severe injuries, um, obviously from from the burns and the smoke inhalation. Uh. So the question then is, did was this arson? Did the mob do this? Yet? Again? Uh? And depending on who you ask, they will say it's either officially undetermined, which it is officially um or um. If you're the author of that first book, Bronson, he will say, no,

this was absolutely the mob. Um. There were six official investigations. The first one was obviously ordered by the governor of Kentucky at the time, Julian Carroll, and said it was likely electrical and nature and blamed on aluminum wiring. But that zebra room where it started was bulldozed the next day. Uh. Supposedly to get um more bodies out there and recover more more people, but um, who knows. Some people contend that it was raised as part of the cover up.

They certainly couldn't do the investigation any further investigations like they wanted to after that, So that bulldozing happened by director order of Julie and Carol, the the governor of Kentucky, which is a really weird thing to do. And um, some authors, I think Bronson also Robert Webster is basically like that guy was so mobbed up it's not even funny. The upshot of this is like we've entered into this period or this this realm where we're like, well, these

are conspiracy theories. The area was so mob influenced and it has such a history of things burning down because of arson that it's really it's not far fetched at all. This isn't just you know, local residents trying to make sense of something really psychologically damaging. Uh. This really like these are historians and local, like longtime journalists who are writing books saying like, yeah, the governor literally covered up this fire that killed a hundred and sixty five people

that was set under orders from the mob. Yeah there was. There was an annual major nightclub five are every year for seven straight years in northern Kentucky. Uh this was the most deadly, so it got the most news. But for seven straight years from seventy to seventy seven, one of these nightclubs burned to the ground. Uh. And it's that's not coincidence, you know. Um, there was like we said, a grand jury investigation into um Dick Chilling and whether

or not he was negligent in any way. Uh. They said that at least the findings of the grand jury was that he clearly violated the fire code, but not to a criminal degree. Uh. And as Bronson put it, basically because apparently the fire marshals, they're like, well, it's really their fault, and then they're pointing fingers and Bronson the author eventually said everyone was guilty. So nobody was guilty, which sometimes is how those things go down. Yeah, So,

like you said, the cause remains undetermined. It was ruled in accident. A lot of people say, no, this was arson, and there were um, there were people who worked at UM the supper club who came forward afterward, because, like

you said, a half dozen investigations were launched. So these people were either spoken to or they came forward on their own accord and said, hey, there was some really weird stuff going on at the supper club in the in the days and weeks leading up to this UM including there are a couple of guys who were found in the basement laundry room right below the Zebra room, who caused an explosion a week before the fire, and these two guys said that they were working on the

air conditioning and told the hostess UM to leave, go ahead, get out of here, which is not something that air conditioning repair people say to the people who are working there very frequently. What else There was an FBI memo apparently a couple of weeks before the fire that said an anonymous tipster M heard I'm sorry, I had conversations with a stranger on a plane who predicted that it would be burned down. UM. And that could have been a real thing, or it could have been just like, hey,

that places burned twice, it'll burn again. So I kind of put that one in the maybe category personally. Uh. What else? UM? There was a an employee who said that, UM, she overheard a heated discussion UM where two men wanted to buy the supper club and she said that, UM, no one followed up on the tip and that she's received threatening phone calls to telling telling her to keep

quiet about that. And then also this one was I think multiple people said that they saw men that they couldn't identify wiping down the walls of the Hall of Mirrors with some weird smelling liquid. On the day of the fire, I remember the Zebra Um room caught fire, but then the fire spread very quickly up the hall

of mirrors to the cabaret room. And apparently there was another fire in nineteen where UM investigators found that the Pink Pussycat Lounge in Newport had been saturated in lubri can oil to help use as an accelerant, and it's entirely possible this was used as well in this There's other stuff too. If you watch that Robert Webster presentation I think on YouTube, it's the same title of his book The Beverly Hills Supper Club colin The Untold Story

Behind Kentucky's Worst Tragedy UM. He says that there were like timers found in the basement underneath the Zebra Room, that the wiring had been ripped out from plugs and put into outlets, and that essentially the the upshot of this of people who believe that this was arson, or may even actually know for a fact it was arson, that it was not meant to happen on that Saturday night, that it was supposed to happen on Sunday morning, and that the two goons who actually set up the timers

set some to PM rather than a M and caused this massive tragedy. Oh and that it was supposed to have been just burned to the ground with no one there. Yeah, because typically if you burned down a business and night club something like that in Northern GA, not trying to murder people. No, you did it on a Sunday morning. Basically, I think there was one employee to that reported that they saw John Davidson shaving backstage. He was he caused

a spark. Uh. So that is the story. There was one little um a bit here at the end that Dave included that it was also notable in legal terms historically because it was the first um disaster case that ended up having a class action mass tort lawsuit applied. There was a lawyer named Stan Chesley who would later be known as a Master of Disaster, who got all these claims together more than three victims, into a class

action suit against the aluminum wiring industry. Uh. And even though that was never proven as the reason for the fire, they did have to admit that they knew that the wire could catch fire from overheating, and the jury awarded bucks and damages and I think the families received about thirty million dollars. Yeah, and I think that actually was the beginning of the end for aluminum wiring. Um. The

there's still like ongoing litigation over it. So UM, you know, we talked largely about Newport, but um, the supper club itself was up Highway twenty seven or I guess down Highway twenty seven in Southgate, just outside of Newport, and um that's hollow ground to the people in that area. But it was recently sold. The entire site was sold to a developer who intended to put like condos in

an assisted living facility and stuff on it. And so there's been a bunch of lawsuits saying like, no, don't build at all, or you can build, but you just can't build on the side of the supper club, or you can build inside the supper club, you just can't build over the cabaret room where most of the deaths occurred.

And I can't quite tell if the if the project is moving forward or if it's just stalled out right now, or what they're going to do, but I believe that they put m Morial up where the cabaret room is, or if they haven't yet. They're going to very soon. All this news was like, oh, well that's good. Yeah, so there's still and apparently there's there's people convinced that there are still remains on the site. Um, and I

guess there. I saw a picture taken in the woods and there's a burned like cocktail tray um in in the woods. And this is like a picture taken in like two thousand eight or nine or something like that. So they're like, there's still stuff in the woods. So it really is hollow ground for sure. Yeah, you got anything else? No, this is a story I've never heard. And uh, I guess Dave thought of it, so I'm glad he did. Yeah, way to go, Dave. Thanks for

this one. Uh And since I said way to go Dave, that means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail. This is about avocado Toast. Hey, guys, love the show. I've been working my way through the bad catalog as I'm doing some d i y work on our house. You have saved my sanity. But I wanted to address Josh's comment about the relatively recent hipster fascination with toast. Giving us avocado Toast is a correction. Now it's not a correction. Okay, great, I love this one. Yeah, this

is just a little I guess what thing? Hey, guys, So my dad has mashed an avocado onto toast and added salt and pepper since I was a kid in the n uh It's funny. It seems like a very seventies dad thing to do. And then with a kid going like why do you do and and he's like, oh, it's delicious, He's like, leave me alone and get back to your macro main As a matter of fact, I'm not a big avocado fan in general, but I still love that version of avocado toast. And just in case

you're wondering, my dad was not a foodie. Far from it. Kate Hamburger steak and microwave vegetables every night for dinner for decades. My siblings and I used to joke that his biography should be called beyond practicality. I grew up in San Diego, which I think grows more avocados and anywhere else in the US, so we could usually just get them cheaply in season. I bet your dad was stealing them from the neighbor's yard, would be my guess.

I just want to let you know that some of us have been Avocado Toast enthusiasts more than fifty years. Thanks again for keeping me entertained and educated with the show. It's fantastic. I really can't thank you enough. And that is from Cookie Davis. Nice Cookie. First of all, awesome name. Secondly, thanks for the story. I appreciate it. And then third day, I have a question for Cookie or anybody you can answer. It is a hamburger steak, just like a hamburger without

the button. Is that right? Yeah? I used to, uh, when I was a line cook when I was believe it or not, thirteen years old at JJ's barbecue. Yeah, I would. I would cook the grittled bread, garlic bread and the hamburger steaks. And hamburger steak is just ground beef shaped like a New York strip and that's all it is. So it's not like round like a hamburger. I guess comple you conserve it that way. But the idea is to make it long and rectangular like it's

its steak. And uh, it's really kind of funny, but you want to hear something funnier. I made one of those two weeks ago for myself. I got this we get in our c s A Our c s A Miami. That's a little when you go to the some parking lot and a bunch of farmers partner hippies give you a bag of stuff. Yeah, or go up. What's the c s A. I think it's called a c s

A co Op Surprise r vark. But they got this really delicious local, locally raised, humanely raised ground beef and it's delicious, like the most noticeable difference you could imagine from like something you would get in a grocery store. And I was like, you know what, I don't have anything else here in the house, so I'm gonna make some veggies and make a hamburger steak. So I've been making some really great recipes from your friend, uh Kenji Lopez all delete he is. That guy is just amazing.

I'm a big fan of now. Yeah, he's the best, and I'm not sure how much we can mention him and be ignored. But here's yet another. Yeah, I was gonna say, if he's a friend of the show and doesn't know it, yeah, exactly, but yeah, it's um. I think I made the carne asada. I can't remember the name of the recipe, but it was like the best carne asada or something like that. It was so easy

but so good. And it all comes down to like doing your own stuff, like rather than using ground cuman, like buying human whole human like seeds, toasting them and then putting them in like a grinder. Sounds like a lot, it's actually really easy and it produces like just amazing stuff. Or like using like whole dried chilies, um and then reconstituting them, like just just little things like that that maybe you're like an extra step that makes it just

a nor of this world of difference. It's almost as if eating real whole foods is the better way. Almost chuck. Almost. He's a food scientist. He knows his stuff beyond chef um. Uh, just bake a batch of his chocolate chip cookies and see me in the morning. Oh. By the way, I know, I told everybody about um Sally's baking addictions chocolate brown butter chocolate chip cookies, and I I went to go look at the recipe um to see about browning butter again.

And in the comments there's like ten people are like Josh from stuff you Should Know set me here. It was like weird, like bizarre thing because I wasn't expecting it at all. But the upshot of it is I tried Sally's Baking Addiction brown butter sugar cookies. They may be even better than the brown butter chocolate chip cookies. So if you tried the chocolate chip cookies, please, I beseech you go make the sugar cookies too. Yeah, and trunk and chocolate chip cookies. Okay, we'll try them all.

I've got no problem with that. They're all good. You got anything else? Nothing, I'm just starving now. Who was that cookie that wrote in? That was Cookie? Yeah? Cool? Great? Well, if you want to be like Cookie and get us going about cookies, you can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows