Stuff You Should Know - The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

The fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club was not in Los Angeles, but Kentucky. Which happened to be Las Vegas before Vegas was Vegas. Confused? Listen in and all will be clear.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who

have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know about Northern Kentucky. That's right, which was in the 1930s and 40s, the casino capital of the United States. And 50s. It was the Vegas of the United States before Vegas. And 50s too, even. It's hard to believe. I never knew any of this. So much 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. It's on the other end of Ohio from it, because the area we're talking about is just across the river from Cincinnati. And I guess I'd 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 in the mid to late 70s, it was a national thing. It was a really big deal that this happened, this Beverly Hills supper club fire that we're going to talk about today. Yeah, it was definitely one of the worst 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 165 people died in horrific fashion. Obviously, dying by fire is always horrific, but this was as bad as it gets. And I didn't know anything about it. So big thanks to you for commissioning this from Dave Ruse. My friend, you did. No, I didn't. I didn't commission this.

I didn't either. We're going to have to get to the bottom of this. 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. Okay. So that may have been one of these because I didn't know about this. I don't think. No. What day is it? 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. Let's do it. So let's dust it out. Let's fire it up. There's a positive living in here. It chewed 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 1920s prohibition era in Northern Kentucky. Okay. Here we are, Chuck. And it turns out that despite prohibition being in full force, liquor is really, really easy to get. Especially because there was a loophole in the Volstead Act that said, and I know we talked about this in the prohibition episode, that said that if you 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. It's got to be 100 proof on the nose. There is a bunch of criteria, but you could legally produce alcohol. And there was a guy named George Remus 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 is a lot of money in bootlegging. So I saw that he did a little research, found out that 80% of the legal booze produced in 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 you must have some good insider information. And indeed he did. He was known after he made that move as the king of the bootleggers because he would, 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 $40 million a year in the 1920s. Yeah, it's about $900 million 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 that, you know, that operation up. But of course he wasn't. For sure. So if you were a politician or 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, 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 Remus did. And you're right,

he got caught pretty quickly, I think, within just a few years of setting up this organized crime syndicate. And I just a little aside on him, he was really interesting. He had a cellmate in jail who turned out to be an FBI agent, not an informant, an actual agent who was planted there. The agent found out about all the money that Remus had, that his wife controlled, it was in her name. The guy left the jail, quit the FBI, and started an affair with Remus' wife, Imogen, and then talked her into basically like selling off all his stuff and funneled money from her. So the FBI guy robbed him blind. Remus was so mad that when he got out of prison, 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 on reason of insanity, was taken to a sanitarium. Sanatorium or terium, I can't remember, 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 mental hospital and became a free man very quickly. Oh, 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 Remus because he had met F. Scott Fitzgerald at some point. Yeah, and probably through some pretty wild parties would be my guess. For sure. But he didn't drink or smoke. Well, did Gatsby, yeah, I could think Gatsby drank some. Yeah, I think he did.

All right, so it's 1925. He's in jail. But by this time, he had established such an operation there in northern Kentucky that a little industry of sleaze grew up around it. 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. There was a guy named Pete Schmidt, who now factors in the story, who used to be a driver for Remus. And in 1927, he bought this old roadhouse outside of Newport, perched upon a hill, and basically renovated it into a casino. And a really nice one. They had casinos there, but 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 nice place. 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, the whole jam was kind of sleazy. In fact, Newport earned the nickname Sin City back in the 30s. And again, Las Vegas is a glimmer in anybody's eye at this point. No, it's a tumbleweed. No, like Newport is Las Vegas, and Atlantic City wrapped into one. And if you were a tourist, like you were totally fine. You were safe. The streets were clean. Like nobody was going to 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 Mo 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. We're in Cleveland. We're going to get in on this. And he moved in on Newport and started buying up casinos around town. Deletes? Deletes. That's what I saw. Oh, really? Yeah. I know I want to say Dalits, but it's not Dalits. It's Deletes. Yeah. It's delightful is what it is. If you look at Mo Deletes, he looks exactly what you would think a mobster Mo Deletes would look like. He was a big time mobster. Like he was one of the ones that was grilled by the Kefaufer committee. Kefauver. He was one of the ones 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 founded is because Mo Deletes was one of the first like big time mob guys who showed up in Newport and took over. It was just the blueprint for Vegas later on. All right. So Schmidt is... And again, Chuck, I want to just really drive home. We're talking about Northern Kentucky. Okay. Yeah. You know how I know that? How? Because we've said Northern Kentucky like 60 times so far. I know, but it's just still boggles the mind. So Schmidt owns this Beverly Hills Country Club and 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 is the mob said, fine, we'll burn it down. This was not the big fire, obviously, that came 40 years later. This was in February 1936. Only one fatality. Very sadly, a 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 that was it. Mo Deletes now owned 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 their, whatever a Cleveland accent is.

So you want to take a, I don't know that there is one actually, not that you mentioned it. That's kind of Midwestern. Hey, what do you say? Let's, let's go down to Newport and run the place. That's a Cleveland accent, I think. By the way, Steve Busch and me, is it similar? All right, we'll take that break and we'll, we'll come back right after this. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood

between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your

favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved-bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing,

and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 and New York and Chicago. I think the population was about 30,000 and 70,000 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 blueprint, again, for Vegas. They were doing it all. Duke Ellington was playing, and Marilyn Monroe was there, and it was just, it was quite a scene. Again, where? In Northern Kentucky. And the other thing. It is hard to believe. 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 is 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 it wasn't like this is a backroom 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 started complaining to the federal government and said, hey, we got a real organized crime problem in this country. So that Kifalver committee that you were talking about earlier was established 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 1949 or 50. And throughout the 50s, 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

late 50s, the general consensus among law enforcement, at least officially, was that it was all just local hoods and thugs and criminals. But there was certainly no organized crime that didn't exist. Even after the Kifalver committee revealed, like, no, these people 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 meeting of 1957 in Appalachian, New York, where they literally caught 100 mob bosses from around the country in Cuba and Italy meeting to figure out how to organize their crime better that 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. And it played out in Newport in ways that you would expect. In the 1950s, their homicide rate in this pretty small place was four times the national average. 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. There was a reporter in 57 that counted 300 sex workers per mile in Newport. And eventually, 1961 rolls around. And a football player, a former player from Notre Dame in the Browns, there in Cleveland named George Ratterman ran for sheriff in Newport as a reform candidate.

Okay, you know that reference? No. Is that from Blazing Saddles? No, no, no, no, no. Good guess, though. It was a brother, the Coen Brothers great movie where Charles Dunning said, people want that reform. Oh, yeah. That was a good character. Yeah, he was a southern politician. But this is what Ratterman ran for. Basically, I'm going to clean this place up. Right. 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. Yeah. But it kind of came back to sting the mob, didn't it? It did, because they did blood tests on George Ratterman, probably at his insistence. He said that he was drugged and it turned out that, yes, indeed, he was drugged with chloral hydrate, which is the

basis of a Mickey, a Mickey Finn. If you slip someone a Mickey, you give them chloral hydrate and a drink. And that's what they did to George Ratterman 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 in bed naked with a sex worker and take his and call the cops. Exactly. So with black and white pictures, gotta be black and white photos, right? Oh, yeah. So Ratterman 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. 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 60s. So Vegas was in its earlier days. And people skipped down basically said, all right, let's go out there in the sunshine. Newport is done. And in the mid 1960s, 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, 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. Was that Engelbert Humperdink or Gordon Lightfoot?

It was a duet. Between the two. Yeah, it was a sea shanty. That's right, sung in a Cleveland accent. All right, so then we will enter another character, Dick Schilling, Richard Schilling Jr. He was working at these casinos when he was just a kid, right? And eventually rose up to like management. And in the late 60s and 69, 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, and was like, I'm going to restore this giant, giant facility. I mean, just so big. 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 like unbelievable how big this place was.

Like they would have a half a dozen wedding parties going on at this on the same night, in addition to the thousand seat to Frank Sinatra restaurant. Yeah, in the other room, like it was nuts. And it was really lavishly done. Like Dick Schilling did a really good job bringing this thing back and put it back on the map again. The thing is, is that longstanding tradition of a legitimate business owner buying the place, fixing it up and being unwilling to sell it to the mob who in short order turn around and burn it down. 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 it mob. You're not going to, you're not going to deter me. And the mobs

have fine, fine, go ahead and open. And he did in 1971. 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. And it's like, how many times can this place burn down? I guess the answer is three. At least, yes. And big thanks to, we need to mention Dave used a 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 and Northern Kentucky, Forbidden Fruit Colon, Sin Cities Underworld and the Supper Club Inferno. And was that who it was in the video that you sent to? No, there's another guy named Robert Webster who was in that video I sent to and he wrote another definitive

book on it called the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. 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. Colin, everything that Bronson guy missed. They're famously feuding with each other to this day. Yeah, they keep burning down one another supper club. Oh, no, no, no. All right. So this thing, like you said, opened in 70, burned, reopened in 71, chilling was not to be deterred. And 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? Elephant's Gerald played there, Red Fox, the Righteous Brothers. It was again a big deal.

And such a big deal that they would routinely oversell and overpack 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 number. I don't know that that's necessarily true, but it popped up. It seems like it came out in court that it did though. No, but they said that there was some minor violations, but nothing that cost anyone their lives. So that tells me right there that no, they weren't doing any major violations like overcapacity crowding. Okay. And it was a huge place too. It was so mind bogglingly big

that I think people were like, oh, there's 1,300 people there. Obviously, it's overcapacity. Well, I mean, I think they said there were 1,300 people in that one room. Right, in the cabaret room. Yeah, where the main stage was. Right. Which was, that was a sweet looking place. I mean, the decor in this place was awesome. All right. So Memorial Day weekend is obviously going to be a big deal at a place like this. And it was certainly the case in 1977. John Davidson was the headliner that night. John Davidson, who would later make noise in the 80s for guys like us, as a co-host of a show called Real People. Is that right? That's incredible.

That's incredible. Okay. Real People was the other one. Yeah. It was the down market version or maybe the up market version of Real People. I think that's incredible was just that was the one with Tarkenton and Kathy Rigby. No. Oh yeah. I think it was Kathy Rigby. 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 would bring on people to do this. Right. 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 going to have to look that up. I think it was Yogi Kudu. So, Chuck, we kind of set the stage. Kathy Lee Crosby. Oh, nice. Okay. Good job. Kathy Rigby 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 May 28, 1977 night at the Beverly Hills Supper Club. John Davidson is going to 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. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your

history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads, or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name

is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot

be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. He did it five times a day. He liked to come out there with a clean, clean, close shave. Who were the two comedians that were opening up for him? Kathy Rigby. I saw it in the video, but I don't remember now. Teter and McDonald, they were a comedy duo plus a ventriloquist act on top of it. Sure. Everyone back then had a dummy at their disposal. Yeah. But also, I think they were kind of like, we're kind of funny. We need to jazz this act up somehow. We're not funny enough to just be a comedy duo. Right. No shade toward carrot top because he will beat me up now. Oh, dude, yeah.

Yeah. So, all right. The club is packed out. There was a wedding receptions going on in what was called the zebra room. Like you said, the cabernet room. I'm sorry, the cabaret room. But the curtains could make it called the cabernet room for sure. Sure. And all the wine. Are you kidding me? Sure. I bet they were serving some osteosupamante in that joint. Reunited. That was where Davidson was. But the point is, 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. I saw that there was essentially 3,000 people in that building at the time.

Yeah. 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, yeah. So, there's 3,000 people there on this. What was it, Saturday night, I think? Friday night? That was May 28, 77. So, there were 3,000 people there. And there was a wedding party. One of the like half dozen wedding parties that were celebrating that day were 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 trays, I think, out of the place. And notice 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 Dick Shilling'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 is lost to history, or at the very least, Dave didn't 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 it 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 was really, really black smoke. And 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 1977, all manner of like

terrible plastics and fabrics that were terrible when burned. Yes. So the zebra room's on fire. And apparently, 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 toward the cabaret room. Well, there was a, I saw a 16 year old, this says 18 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 in McDonald during their comedy act, ask 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 in 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 teeter McDonald's comedy. And teeter and McDonald said, man, we need to steal that and add it to our act later on, because it got a huge response. Yeah, there's no way that they didn't 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 hero and there are a lot of heroes as we'll see. But he, I mean, imagine being like 16 to 18 years old without anybody telling you to like just getting on stage, interrupting an act and telling

everyone to calmly leave. Yeah, everyone across the board says that he very calmly told everyone we need to go ahead and go out the doors. Yeah. That's off to Walter Bailey. So people sort of started to leave. Other people would like were 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 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 or smoke. Yeah, for sure. There were two back exits, but two of the doors pushed out, two of them pulled in.

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 rush of people pushing and you can't even get the door open. So it's that sad, sad, typical scene 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 saw 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 in 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 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 lot of people died at that blocked exit right there. Yeah, I think there were several dead ends that people thought were exits, like hallways that led to closets and coat closets and things like that. And again, 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. And if you see a hallway and you run down it and you hit a dead end, then that's basically it for you in this kind of scenario. Very sadly, there were people who actually made it outside only to collapse and die on the front lawn because they couldn't get 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 3,000 people there and something on the order of 2,600 people made it out safely. The vast majority of the people who did die died at that one exit. Yeah, there were no sprinklers installed and this was not a

requirement. So that wasn't negligent, but it does bear mentioning. And thanks to people like Walter Bailey and the 500 firefighters who rushed to the scene, and this thing burned for seven hours. But I mean, you nailed it, man. 165 people is a lot of people to lose, but considering how massive this place was and how many people were in there. 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 them were probably drunk by that point. It was just a very tough situation. And I think they're lucky that more didn't perish. Yeah. So 100 victims were found at that one blocked exit that was blocked by people. 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. 30 people were recovered from the hallway off of that exit. And then there was a closet off of that hallway that looked like an exit, but it was just a closet. And another 20 people were found there. So 165 people died. 150 of them were all just 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. 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 as far as how kind of gruesome it got. But he said, I did choose to show some of this because he said, I feel like, you know, people that have never heard of this need to see a little bit of what really happened for it to have its full impact. 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. I think just kind of drive home how awful it was. Yeah, for sure. I mean, 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 who, his name was Bill. He was 13 at the time. He was another kind of hero in helping people, Bill Klingenberg. He said that it looked like people were just sleeping. And it wasn't until like you realized, like it sunk in that they were dead. You're looking at 100 plus dead people just laying around that it really became just nightmarish. And they moved people to the nearby National Armory gym and used it as a makeshift morgue for families to come and identify people. And that's really worth pointing out. Like this is a smallish town. Like you said, 30,000 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. They worked there. 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 is psychologically damaged now for having survived it. 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 116 that suffered severe injuries, obviously from the burns and the smoke inhalation. Mm-hmm. So the question then is, was this arson? Did the mob do this yet again? And depending on who you ask, they will say it's either officially undetermined,

which it is officially. Right. Or if you're the author of that first book, Bronson, he will say, no, this was absolutely the mob. 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 in nature and blamed on aluminum wiring. But that zebra room where it started was bulldozed the next day, supposedly to get more bodies out there and recover more people. But 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 direct order of Julian Carroll, the governor of Kentucky,

which is a really weird thing to do. And 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 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 not far-fetched at all. This isn't just local residents trying to make sense of something really psychologically damaging. These are historians and local long-time journalists who are writing books saying, yeah, the governor literally covered up this fire that killed 165 people that was set under orders from the mob.

Yeah, there was an annual major nightclub fire every year for seven straight years in northern Kentucky. This was the most deadly, so it got the most news. But for seven straight years from 70 to 77, one of these nightclubs burned to the ground. And that's not coincidence, you know? No, for sure. There was, like we said, a grand jury investigation into dick-shilling and whether or not he was negligent in any way. 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. And as Bronson put it basically, because apparently the fire marshals, they were 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 an accident. A lot of people say, no, this was arson. And there were people who worked at 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 days and weeks leading up to this, including there were 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 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 heard, I'm sorry, had conversations with a stranger on a plane who predicted that it would be burned down. And that could have been a real thing or it could have been just like, hey, that place is burned twice, it'll burn again. So I kind of put that one in the maybe category. Personally, what else? There was an employee who said that she overheard a heated discussion where two men wanted to buy the supper club. And she said that no one followed

up on the tip and that she's received threatening phone calls to 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. And remember the zebra 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 1975 where investigators found that the pink pussycat lounge in Newport had been saturated in lubricant oil to help use it 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. 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 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 AM and cause 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 burn down a business, a night

club, something like that in northern Kentucky. Yeah, you're not trying to murder people. No, you did it on a Sunday morning basically. I think there was one employee too that reported that they saw John Davidson shaving backstage before his show. He was shaving so fast he caused a spark. So that is the story. There was one little bit here at the end that Dave included that it was also notable in legal terms historically because it was the first 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 the master of disaster who got all these claims together more than 300 victims into a class action suit against the aluminum wiring industry. 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 50 million bucks in damages and I think the families received about 30 million dollars. Yeah, and I think that actually was the beginning of the end for aluminum wiring. There's still like ongoing litigation over it. So we talked largely about Newport, but the supper club itself was up Highway 27 or I guess down Highway 27 in Southgate just outside of Newport and that's hallowed 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 site of the supper club or you can build on the site of 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 a memorial up where the cabaret room is or if they haven't yet, they're going to very soon. All this news was like 2021, 2022. 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. And I guess I saw a picture taken in the woods and there was a burned like cocktail tray in the woods. And this is like a picture taken in

like 2008 or nine or something like that. So they're like, there's still stuff in the woods. So it really is hallowed ground for sure. Wow. Yeah. You got anything else? No, this is a story I'd never heard. And I guess Dave thought of it. So I'm glad he did. Yeah, way to go Dave. Thanks for this one. 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. Been working my way through the back catalog as I'm doing some DIY 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. This is a correction. No, it's not a correction. Oh, okay, great. I love this one. Yeah, this is just

a little 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 1970s. Wow. It's funny. It seems like a very 70s dad thing to do with a kid going like, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, it's delicious. He's like, leave me alone and get back to your macrame. 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. He ate hamburger steak and microwave vegetables every night for dinner for decades. Wow. 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 than anywhere

else in the US. So we could usually just get them cheaply in season. I bet. I bet your dad was stealing them from the neighbor's yard would be my guess. Just want to let you know that some of us have been avocado toast enthusiasts for more than 50 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 thirdly, I have a question for Cookie or anybody who can answer it. Is a hamburger steak just like a hamburger without the bun? Is that right? Yeah. I used to, uh, when I was a line cook, when I was, believe it or not, 13 years old,

at JJ's barbecue. Oh yeah, with the foot. Yeah. I would, uh, I would cook the griddled bread, garlic bread and the hamburger steaks. And a 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 technically you could serve it that way. But the idea is to make it long and rectangular. Like it's at stake. And, uh, it's really kind of funny, but you want to hear something funnier? What? I made one of those two weeks ago for myself. Nice. I got this. We get, uh, in our CSA, our CSA. CSI Miami. That's a little, when you go to the, some parking lot and a bunch of farmers, farmer hippies, give you a bag of stuff. Yeah. Or go up. What's a CSA? I think it's called

a CSA. Co-op surprise. Ardvark. But, uh, 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. Wow. And I was like, you know what? I don't have anything else here in the house. So I'm going to make some veggies. I'm going to make a hamburger steak. So I've been making some really great recipes from your friend, uh, Kenji Lopez Alt Delete. He is, that guy is just amazing. I'm a big fan of this now. See? 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 going to 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 cumin, like buying cumin, whole cumin 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 are like an extra step that make it just an enormous 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. Yeah, for sure. It's beyond

chefdom. 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 10 people are like, Josh, from stuff you should know sent 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 try Kenji's chocolate chip cookies.

Okay, we'll try them all. I've got no problem with that. Yeah, they're all good. Uh, you got anything else? Nothing. I'm just starving now. Who was that cookie that wrote in? That was cookie. That's how it started. 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 iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, Hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm

Alex French, and I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to let's start a coup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, main accounts, the story of MySpace. I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to main accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast,

Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.