The words startled Henry. Had he just been outed as a “queen’s ass”? Hoping the joke wasn’t about him, he played it safe by not lingering for long. He loaded a cart and took it back to the elevator. Up again in the Port Orleans, Henry noticed waiters and customers gathering in the northeast corner of the floor, looking down and pointing. Curious, Henry wandered over and attempted to peer down, too, despite his having poor vision. All he thought he saw were darkly clouded streets. Must be a fire, he thought, before heading back to his dishes.19
Down on the street, Ronnie Rosenthal guided Ricky Everett from spot to spot. Ricky was unable to see for the tears clouding his eyes. “They had all that space for people lying there,” recalled Ricky. “And they were pulling the burning clothes off of them.” By some strange fate, neither Ricky nor Ronnie turned the corner onto Chartres to witness Ricky’s best friend, pastor Bill Larson, in his final repose.20
Courtney Craighead, however, did so and became dumbstruck. The legendary essayist Michel de Montaigne once described this traumatic condition as the body’s inability to express that “torpor that paralyzes us when events surpassing our capability overwhelm us.” Indeed, Courtney Craighead struggled to inhale and exhale alongside Rusty Quinton and the other survivors who, by some miracle or some curse, were forced to look up at carnage also intended for them. Their guilt was sudden and uncontrollable.21
Courtney moved like a stranger in his own limbs. Dropping all of his social defenses, which had protected him from the dangers of wayward openness, he inadvertently used his real name when answering questions from bystanders and police.22 Just then a throng of reporters and news crews seemed to materialize, among them John LaPlace of the Times-Picayune and Bill Elders of the CBS-affiliate WWL-TV. They showed press credentials, and police lifted the tape to allow them immediate access. In this era, little adversity between police and the press seemed to exist. It was Frank Hayward, the police information officer serving as the department’s liaison to City Hall, who managed the list of journalists approved to receive official press passes.23 In the competitive field of breaking news reporting, one’s holding of a certified New Orleans press pass, which provided entrée to everything from crime scenes to city-sponsored galas, had become table stakes for working in the industry. If a press pass was denied or revoked, a journalist ran the risk of getting scooped, and thus could members of the press be favored or squeezed by the gatekeepers.
En masse, reporters rushed survivors like Courtney. The cacophony of voices made it difficult for survivors to hear orders from police and firefighters. As the ranking officer on the scene, Major Henry M. Morris made a statement to the States-Item about the Up Stairs Lounge. “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar,” he said. A second police officer, perhaps attempting to qualify Morris’s comment, explained how it was “not uncommon for homosexuals to carry false identification.”24
Ronnie LeBoeuf, a photojournalist, captured images of the dead and despairing. “Fire came up the stairs fast,” Courtney muttered to the States-Item. “Two guys told me to jump, and I was small enough,” survivor Adolph Medina said to the Associated Press. “What was done was done intentionally,” an anonymous man, interviewed with his back to the camera, told Elders, the WWL reporter. Seeing the macabre, ashen-gray face of Bill Larson in the window, photographer Pat Bourke of the Daily Record, displaying a gallows humor common to newsmen, took a picture and jested, “At least it was only a mannequin factory.” “Those aren’t mannequins,” someone else told him.25
A nearby tourist provided testimony to the Daily Record: “We watched those people burn before our very eyes, and we couldn’t do a thing to help them. Don’t use my name. I just won’t think about it, it never happened, it never could have happened.” Down the street, an Associated Press reporter watched a bartender set up a drink station on the sidewalk and do “a brisk business with spectators.”26
BUDDY RASMUSSEN WOUND through the crowds looking for a person of interest. Something instinctual told Buddy that the destruction of his bar was connected to the ruckus that happened earlier. “I had already in my mind,” Buddy later told investigators, “and said to myself that it was arson because of the way this fire started.” Buddy ran into Mark Allen Guidry, the nineteen-year-old hustler who’d come to the beer bust with Roger Nunez, and it was Guidry who directed Buddy toward Wanda’s. At the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets, Buddy spotted his man. He ran up to Roger, who was drinking a cup of beer, and grabbed hold of him.27
“Where have you been?” Buddy asked.
“At Wanda’s,” Roger answered.28
Buddy attempted to drag Roger toward a plainclothes policeman.29
“Why are you holding me?” Roger yelled as he struggled to get away.30
Reaching the officer, Buddy tried to explain that this person he was restraining had been causing trouble at the Up Stairs Lounge just before the fire. Buddy demanded that Roger be held for questioning. Given the era, this policeman had probably never had any interactions with homosexuals other than arresting a few. At first, the officer feigned distraction, ignoring the hubbub as these two gay men struggled and shouted in front of him. After a few minutes, the officer looked Buddy in the eyes and gave him the proverbial “move along.” Buddy released Roger, who stumbled a few steps and just stood there, watching the calamity. “I couldn’t convince the policeman that he should hold this person, and I let him go,” Buddy later told investigators.31
Moments later, Courtney Craighead ran up to Buddy and pointed accusingly toward Roger. Buddy threw up his hands and explained what had just happened. The deacon walked over to that same officer and attempted to clarify the matter. According to the fire marshal report, “The police officer told [Courtney Craighead] that he didn’t have the authority to restrain the subject and referred him to the lieutenant that was standing across the street from them, in front of the Walgreens.” Courtney and Buddy then approached the lieutenant and told the same story. “You think you know police business better than I?” the officer yelled. After muttering something into his walkie-talkie, he turned back and told them, “Go back across the street, you’re in the way.”32
Courtney and Buddy obeyed, lest they be arrested. The deacon and barkeep watched helplessly as Roger Dale Nunez slowly disappeared into the masses.33
Roy Reed of The New York Times reached the intersection just as the firefighters were packing away their hoses. Reed was a reporting legend, the lone member of The New York Times Southern bureau. He had achieved a rare level of journalistic fame by reporting civil rights events throughout the South, like the 1965 march by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Selma, Alabama.34
Reed focused on the scene at hand. “The first thing that hits you was the odor, burning flesh,” remembered Reed about the Up Stairs Lounge. “Then the sight of the man in the window, the expression of horror on his face.” Reed interviewed Buddy Rasmussen and Fire Superintendent McCrossen. The veteran reporter spent about thirty minutes around the intersection and even spoke to a news photographer who’d been permitted upstairs to document the mass grave. Aware of a 10:30 p.m. deadline, Reed knew that he had to rush home to a typewriter and telephone if he was going to dictate a story that would make it into the Times morning edition. Driving back, Reed attempted to outline the story in his head. The scene had been as gruesome as some of the church burnings he’d covered during the civil rights era. Then it dawned on him: this was the first assignment he’d ever received from The New York Times involving homosexuals. The Up Stairs Lounge was a gay bar. Reed knew this fact from his interview with Buddy Rasmussen. The sexuality of victims and survivors could prove a crucial detail. This was an undertone that his editors had likely missed when they’d assigned him to report yet another disaster to strike downtown New Orleans.35
Reed would be bound by the ethics of his profession to print an unmistakable and provocative fact, one that would likely irk his editors at the national desk of the Times: the Up Stairs Lounge served a “ho
mosexual” clientele. It was a fact that, Reed recalled, “could point to motive in the event of a crime.”36
CLANCY DUBOS, an eighteen-year-old reporter six weeks into a summer internship at the Times-Picayune, stood in the Accident Emergency Room of Charity Hospital as Up Stairs Lounge victims arrived. At least fifteen people were brought to this facility. Blood smeared across tile as a nurse’s aide attempted to mop the floors. A physician drew fluid from a festering arm. Earlier that night, DuBos had caught himself lolling in the Times-Picayune newsroom. A night editor named Frank Martin shouted, “Come on, let’s make some news happen,” and everyone chuckled. Tedium had broken when a colleague came barreling in after hearing the word “fire” on police radio.37
Now, at the hospital, DuBos watched doctors in tennis shoes cut dead skin from the chest of a middle-aged man who hemorrhaged with pain. Friends and family members hovered nearby, watching until orderlies cordoned them into a visiting area, where DuBos heard them praying loudly. “Nursing divided themselves into teams,” DuBos would later write. “Some gathered blood, others tried to get names from those who could talk.” DuBos observed Phillip Byrd, a nineteen-year-old moving somewhat freely, asking for help making a phone call because his fingers were so badly burned that he couldn’t take a nickel out of his pocket.38 DuBos noticed the age similarity between himself and the boy, whose hands trembled uncontrollably. “David? Listen, I’ve had a sort of accident,” Byrd spoke into the receiver. Sights and smells began to overpower the young reporter. In front of him lay Eugene Thomas and Fred Sharohway, the couple who had plunged down the burning staircase to save their lives. There was Francis Dufrene, with scalds on his temples from what looked like a backyard grill.39
DuBos saw two Catholic priests arrive and attempt to provide spiritual succor. Visitors grew so voluminous in the waiting pen that a supervising social worker, identified only as “Ms. Schwarz,” cleared a separate hospital wing to hold them. According to The Advocate, Schwarz “persuaded the dietary department to provide coffee” and described the handling of the emergency by some police officers and staff as “dispassionate.” When the critical patients, like Luther Boggs and Jim Hambrick, arrived, the hospital director took one look and opened the new burn unit—an unstaffed, state-of-the-art facility weeks away from its official unveiling.40 An emergency of this magnitude, quite simply, forced an early opening.
Names and numbers of fire victims floated about, but no could say for sure who was dead or who was merely missing. “Confusion seemed to reign,” DuBos would write. Medical personnel became so preoccupied with saving lives that DuBos walked into an operating room and observed a surgery. “All these doctors came in,” recalled DuBos. “And they were dressed in the same street clothes as I was.” DuBos eventually left, having witnessed all the gore that he could stomach.41
Returning to the Times-Picayune newsroom, DuBos headed straight for a typewriter, which ignored the newspaper’s established protocol of conversing with the editor on duty, Frank Martin, to frame the story and its angle. A few minutes later, Frank Martin noticed the young intern at work and glanced at the first draft. Martin clapped a hand on DuBos’s shoulder. “That’s what I want,” the newsman said.42
HOMICIDE DETECTIVES Charles Schlosser and Sam Gebbia of the New Orleans Police Department strode through the hospital doors around 9:00 p.m. Notified of six persons dead at the Up Stairs Lounge and one alive at Charity Hospital, these detectives had rushed to the infirmary hoping to interview the lone witness. Obviously, they were operating on faulty information—a bad start to their investigation. What Schlosser and Gebbia found at the hospital made their stomachs churn. Tom Carr, a firefighter who had hopped into an ambulance with paramedics, told detectives that several survivors were now being released. These men, Carr said, were cognizant enough to be questioned.43
Clicking into action, the officers took statements from Rusty Quinton, Adolph Medina, and Phillip Byrd. Interviewing—but not arresting—homosexuals would have represented new terrain for these detectives. In their defense, few—if any—policemen in America had received official guidance for investigating gay crimes. Indeed, the novelty of dealing with homosexuality would lead to their compulsively citing who was homosexual in their reports, reflecting an inability to recognize and offset what was then a commonplace bias. Nor had the officers been briefed on up-to-date studies for “pathological firesetting,” which would have given them a suspect profile for a potential arsonist: a white male between the ages of sixteen and twenty-eight with a chronic condition or physical disability and divorced parents. As a result, they didn’t know that the desire for revenge was what made a so-called firesetter snap in more than one quarter of such cases. Nuanced concepts such as homophobia, internalized self-hatred, or even the closet were absolutely foreign to them—for this was a law-breaking group with whom their profession spurned relations. Law enforcement officers could in fact be punished for simply knowing a gay person. In January 1972, for example, three sheriff’s deputies in suburban Jefferson Parish had been fired from their jobs for merely associating with “a known homosexual,” a man not under arrest for any crime and who turned out to be the hairdresser of the deputies’ wives.44
These detectives, to put it plainly, approached the task ill equipped. “There were some very fine officers on that force,” said Bob McAnear, who as a criminal investigator with U.S. Customs had ample experience with the NOPD, “but there were so many more that looked down on gays as less than humans.” Schlosser and Gebbia left Charity Hospital at 9:20 p.m. to scope the scene on Iberville Street. At the site, they met fire officials conducting a concurrent investigation. Indeed, because of the profound levels of death and destruction at the bar, and the distinctive possibility of arson, the NOPD investigation would occur simultaneously with an inquiry compiled by the New Orleans Fire Department and an arson investigation conducted by the Louisiana Office of the State Fire Marshal (a law enforcement agency with authority to investigate crimes involving fire).45
Schlosser and Gebbia found and interviewed Harold Bartholomew, the lawyer who had been driving his kids home; he recalled what the men said as they ran from the burning staircase. They also questioned the nineteen-year-old hustler Mark Allen Guidry, who said that he’d gone to the Up Stairs Lounge with a “male he did not know.” Perhaps abiding by the code of no snitching among Iberville hustlers, Guidry then further protected Roger Dale Nunez by misremembering his name and contact information, stating that he knew the guy “only as Gerry or Johnny” living “somewhere in the 2700 block of Esplanade Street.”46 The NOPD pursued this false lead, which would take them away from Iberville.
DUANE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL waited in the lobby of the theater long after the movie ended, as if forgotten. The showing of The World’s Greatest Athlete had been thrilling, but when neither their dad nor Uncle Horace arrived with the car, the kids began to feel unsafe. Duane knew his father as a reliable man who kept his promises, a salesman who made regular appointments. Duane hid his anxiety by keeping his brother distracted with another showing of the film.47 Fortunately for them, the G-rated feature was playing in a loop that Sunday, first at 3:15 p.m. and again at 5:10, with the last showing at 9:00 p.m.
What a treat, Duane tried to convince Stephen. “I was trying to look after him,” Duane recalled, “and scared to death myself.” The boys again took in the story of Nanu, the title character, who left his jungle home to enter an American athletic competition against all odds. But when the end credits rolled, once more, and their father didn’t pull up with the car, their world seemed to fall apart. “Where’s Dad at?” Stephen asked. “I don’t know, he’ll be here,” Duane answered. Today, Duane swears that he watched The World’s Greatest Athlete seven times with his brother, but it’s just as likely that these repeat viewings, under such duress, tattooed the movie in his brain.48
Stephen cried as Duane struggled to explain that their father would soon arrive. But when the clock passed 11:00 p.m., which signified a later hour t
han Duane and Stephen Mitchell had ever been awake, theater attendants began to eye the boys with concern. Duane broke down in tears in front of strangers. He pleaded for help. Eventually, a manager called the Mitchell residence. No answer. The manager also tried the Up Stairs Lounge. No answer, again. Lastly, the manager tried a neighbor. Luckily, this woman picked up, and agreed to collect the boys. Perhaps, Duane told himself, nothing was wrong. Then the neighbor showed up with a police escort. “She knew that we were going to the movies,” explained Duane. “And she knew something happened.”49
CHAPTER 6
Call for Aid
Night—June 24, 1973
Coroner Carl Rabin crossed the threshold of the Up Stairs Lounge. The structure had cooled enough by then for him to safely enter the second floor and pronounce those who had not been able to flee dead. His go-ahead signaled police photographers and coroner’s assistants to spring to their work. Together, the staff combed the premises to make a meticulous record of where everyone and everything was positioned. They commenced the gruesome process of finding and tagging bones beneath layers of human cremains. “The charred, still-oozing remains filled the air with a stench difficult to bear,” noted the States-Item.1
Because the electricity was out, firemen shined klieg lights up from the street. As they noted, none of the bar’s supposed safety features had worked. The fire-rated front door, rigged to close on a spring, had crumpled on contact with heat, as if patently defective. Several Exit signs, supposedly connected to an emergency power system, had not functioned.2 While measuring the stairwell, Major Henry Morris discovered an item of interest, an empty seven-ounce can of Ronsonol lighter fluid. The yellow can lay right side up, the blue writing on it legible and the top pointing toward Iberville; the plastic spout of the can was missing, suggesting that it had been pulled off in haste. Nearby, police also found two half-burned ten-dollar bills, which were scorched enough to be worthless but just intact enough to display their monetary increments.3 The police sent the can to the lab for fingerprints.4 Maybe, they figured, they’d get lucky.
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