Big Top Burning
Page 5
When the circus got into town on July 5, it was not properly inspected. Because the circus train had arrived late, the grounds were not set up when Charles Hayes, the building inspector, arrived to check that safety precautions had been met. His inspection wasn’t a requirement in Hartford, but it was customary to have someone check things out. Hayes returned later in the afternoon, but things still weren’t quite ready. He claimed that since the circus had always complied with fire safety regulations in the past, he was sure this year would be no different. Because the setup was not complete when Hayes left the grounds, he had not checked the fire extinguishers or the fire hoses. He did not even check the tent to make sure all the exits were clear. Hayes gave the circus the go-ahead anyway.
Downtown, Police Chief Charles Hallissey issued the circus a permit to perform on the Barbour Street lot, even though he had not checked the safety of the circus grounds or the tents either. Hallissey hastily filled out the permit form, not even bothering to write the date, and in exchange received 50 free passes to the show.
While Connecticut did not require the local fire department to be present at public events, several police officers were assigned and stationed throughout the tent. Detectives Paul Beckwith, Edward Lowe, and Thomas Barber had been onsite, and they remained on the case for some time after the disaster as well. What began as a routine assignment turned into a massive disaster response operation.
The official report of the Hartford County coroner cleared the city from any blame. “The report finds no legal responsibility to inspect circuses placed upon city fire, police, or building departments.” Instead, the entire blame for the disaster was placed upon the Ringling Bros. circus. Six circus officials were sent to jail because of the unsafe conditions inside the big top tent. On February 21, 1945, the men were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
Three circus officials were sentenced to one to five years in the state prison: James Haley, the circus’s vice president and director, convicted for knowledge of unsafe conditions; general manager George W. Smith, convicted for negligence; and boss canvasman Leonard Aylesworth, who was in charge of supervising fire prevention, convicted for deliberately leaving his post and neglecting to appoint someone to supervise the fire equipment in his place. (On the day of the fire, Aylesworth was in Springfield, Massachusetts, preparing the next location.) Edward “Whitey” Versteeg, chief electrician, and William Caley, seat hand, were each sentenced to one year in prison; Versteeg for failing to distribute fire extinguishers and Caley for leaving his designated post. David Blanchfield, superintendent of rolling stock, was given six months for obstructing the tent’s exits with his trucks. Some sentences were later reduced, but all six men served time in connection to the fire.
Ringling Bros. circus managers in court. Left to right: George W. Smith, James Haley, Edward “Whitey” Versteeg, Leonard Aylesworth, and David Blanchfield.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc. was ordered to pay $4 million to compensate people for their losses. Today that figure would be close to $42 million. It was a large enough sum to bankrupt the circus. Fortunately, the lawyers for the victims were clever. They arranged for the circus to continue to function because, they argued, if the circus were to close down, there would not be enough money to pay the damages owed to people. It was crucial that Ringling Bros. continue to put on their show. Incidentally, this plan worked out for the circus as well. It could be argued that if the lawyers had not come up with this plan, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the most popular circus in the United States, would not be around today.
William Caley began his prison sentence immediately, but the other convicted circus employees remained free long enough to help prepare for the upcoming 1945 spring season. A portion of the money earned each season would help pay the thousands of claims made by circus fire survivors and the families of the victims. Eventually, the Ringling Bros. circus paid every cent of that debt.
Regardless of who was to blame, many people wondered, could this kind of tragedy happen again? The mayor of Hartford decided to make some changes in how circuses and other outdoor events were handled by the city. Hartford became an example that other cities across the country would follow. In January 1945, officials passed a law that required careful inspections of events held in tents. The grounds, seats, aisles, exits, and first-aid facilities must be checked by police and fire departments. Smoking and overcrowding in the tents would not be allowed. All tents must be fireproof.
Officials also realized that every second counts when ambulances and fire trucks are on their way to an emergency. Before the circus fire, emergency vehicles did not always use their flashing lights to help them move quickly through traffic. Now, it was required for them to be on at all times.
Despite the new safety inspections, it was years before anyone in Hartford wanted to attend the circus again. As they grew older, survivors of the fire refused to take their children to circuses. Many had a lifelong fear of crowds. The Ringling Bros. circus performed in other cities in the years after the fire, but it did not return to Hartford again until 1975, more than 30 years later. By then, the circus was no longer performing inside a tent, but instead held its shows in indoor arenas.
Negligence on the part of both Ringling Bros. and the city of Hartford contributed to the tragedy. But was the fire, in fact, accidental? Was it possible that, when the seat hands left their stations to move the animal chutes, someone had intentionally put a match to the canvas?
8
ACCIDENT OR ARSON?
“An investigation of the cause, circumstances and origin of a fire which occurred in Hartford on July 6, 1944 during the circus performance at the Ringling Bros.—Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, Inc. was instituted by me … to determine whether such fire was the result of carelessness or the act of an incendiary.”
—Report of Commissioner of State Police, Edward J. Hickey, January 11, 1945
- 1944 -
Arson was not foremost in the minds of the investigators as they walked through the charred remains of the big top in the days after the tragedy. Rumor spread that the cause of the fire was a cigarette or a match carelessly thrown onto dry grass covering the circus grounds or against the side wall of the tent. Police officer McAuliffe could not find the man who’d mentioned the cigarette to him. In McAuliffe’s original report, he records the man’s statement as “some dirty son of a bitch tossed or dropped a cigarette,” which sounds more like the man was guessing than reporting something he had actually seen. In Commissioner Hickey’s report, the statement is misquoted and sounds more accusing—“That dirty son-of-a-b---- just threw a cigarette butt!” The missing witness’s remark could not be verified, but it had a huge impact. It was one of the things that led investigators to focus on an accidental cause instead of an intentional one.
Commissioner Hickey led a formal investigation after the fire. He leaned heavily on the cigarette theory. New York fire marshal Thomas Brophy, an expert in fire investigations, was called in. In his opinion, a carelessly dropped match or cigarette could have started the fire, but he also said he did not know the physical conditions at the time or whether there was any other flammable material near the location of the fire. He found that one of the wooden supports for the bleachers was badly charred at the bottom. A cigarette or match itself could not have ignited the support, but if the side wall of the tent was ignited first, it could have caused the support to catch fire. With so many variables and without a witness, Brophy could not make a definite conclusion.
Kenneth Gwinnell, an usher, made a statement to police in which he said it was common for cigarettes and discarded matches to start fires. He suggested that “a cigarette would have smoked for a while, but [the fire] came all of a sudden and it evidently was a match.” Whether it was the cigarette itself or the match used to light it, Gwinnell’s statement supported the idea that the fire was accidental.
Police detectives inspect the scene of the fire.
Coroner: “Supposing your chemical analysis of the side walls of that tent show that a cigarette under full force would not ignite that canvas?”
Commissioner: “My answer to that would be based on the testimony before me, that consideration has got to be given to the dry ground, the condition of the ground, the manner in which the side wall canvas was hanging folded over on the ground, and the manner in which the cigarette or burned match landed on the combustible material.”
Witnesses to the blaze, however, told a different story. They reported that the fire had started high up on the tent side wall, not on the ground. Jane Pelton, age 12, said, “At about the end of the animal [act], just as the animals were leaving the cage, someone shouted help. I looked back to my right and saw a large flame at the beginning of the roof of the tent.” Helen Fyler, age 40, saw “a patch of flame about 6 or 8 feet wide at the point where the side wall meets the tent top.” And Joseph Dewey, age 10, said, “I sat … about two seats from the top. While we were looking at the animals in the cage doing tricks, I heard someone say the tent was on fire. I looked back and I saw the fire where the tent bends over above the bleachers. This fire was just starting and there was a little hole in the tent…. I didn’t see any fire along the bottom of the tent when we came out.”
This photo seems to show the origin of the fire, above the small tent that housed the men’s restroom.
In fact, Commissioner Hickey contradicts himself when, in his own report, he notes, “Many patrons for the first time saw the fire burning the upper portion of the side wall canvas and the lower section of the top adjoining the side wall canvas.”
Investigators from the Hartford police questioned and took statements from countless circus-goers and members of the Ringling Bros. staff. No one seemed to know how the fire started. A few employees had criminal records, and some were investigated on suspicion of arson. They were all dead ends.
Commissioner Hickey based his conclusions almost exclusively on the testimony of two men: Kenneth Gwinnell and Daniel McAuliffe. Neither man had actually seen how the fire started. Both of their statements relied on assumptions and hearsay.
Commissioner Hickey issued his final statement: “Upon the testimony before me, I find that this fire originated on the ground in the southwest end of the main tent back of the ‘Blue Bleachers’ about 50 feet south of the main entrance, and was so caused by the carelessness of an unidentified smoker and patron who threw a lighted cigarette to the ground from the ‘Blue Bleachers’ stand. The evidence before me does not disclose this to be the act of an incendiary.”
The case was closed, and the cause of the Hartford circus fire was declared accidental … until six years later, when Robert Segee, the teenage member of the lighting crew, confessed to setting it.
Burned bleacher seats.
- 1950 -
Now Segee was 20 years old, and he was in police custody on suspicion of setting a fire at a factory in Circleville, Ohio. As police detectives questioned him, the young man admitted to setting fires in Circleville and Columbus, Ohio, as well as in Portland, Maine. He also confessed to setting the circus fire in Hartford, Connecticut.
Commissioner Hickey was angry when he heard the news. It looked as though the police in Columbus, Ohio, were going to crack his case. What’s more, Hickey would look pretty bad if they revealed that he was wrong about the fire being an accident. Hickey sent police captains Paul Lavin and Paul Beckwith to Ohio to question Segee in relation to the Hartford fire, but when they arrived, authorities turned the investigators away. They said the reports were not written up yet, so they couldn’t share their findings. Furthermore, the Hartford detectives could not interview Segee because the Circleville case was still open. In a letter to Commissioner Hickey, Lavin wrote: “It appeared throughout our investigation that these two gentlemen [Ohio detectives R. Russell Smith and LaMonda] want to get the credit of breaking the Hartford case as well as the cases in their own jurisdiction to build the prestige of their own office and division.”
Robert Segee at age 20.
Commissioner Hickey was livid. In snappish back-and-forth phone calls and telegrams Hickey blamed authorities in Ohio for not sharing information about Robert Segee, and the Ohio authorities told Hickey to stay out of the way of their investigation.
Meanwhile, Ohio investigators pulled together details about Segee’s past. They interviewed Robert’s mother, Josephine Segee, and Dorothy Segee Thompson, his sister. According to Josephine, Robert’s father “was always very mean to Robert. The boy was very sensitive and [he] would leave home every time his father would [holler] at him.” Josephine told the investigators that as a child, Robert was afraid to go to bed because he was constantly plagued by bad dreams. At nine years old, Robert roamed the streets at night rather than face the nightmares. In the interview, Robert’s mother said, “I never had any idea that Robert was setting any fires. I knew there was something wrong with him but you know how a mother is—I never wanted to admit it.”
Dorothy, on the other hand, knew Robert had acted out in dangerous ways. She remembered her brother setting two fires at their house, one of which occurred when, at age five, Robert had thrown a newspaper onto an oil stove. Over the course of six years, 68 suspicious fires were reported within 10 blocks of the Segees’ home. Could Robert have set those fires?
When Robert had joined the Ringling Bros. circus in June of 1944, perhaps he had hoped to escape his troubles. Instead, it appeared things had gotten worse.
Now, Ohio investigator R. Russell Smith and psychologist Dr. Bernard Higley interviewed Segee. During the interview, Segee described visions he’d had of a Native American he called “the red man.” He said that this man had told him to start the fire at the circus in Hartford. Segee made several drawings during his mental evaluation. Most reflected his Native American heritage. Some were peaceful scenes: birds soaring over wooded landscapes; a man canoeing down a river. But Segee also drew pictures of his most disturbing visions, including the face of a woman engulfed in flames that admonished him for setting the circus fire. “You are responsible,” he claimed the vision had told him.
Segee admitted to setting the fire in Hartford, but he also said he did not remember doing it. He claimed that before the show, he’d been downtown on a date. When the girl rejected his advances, he went back to the circus grounds to take a nap. “I laid down and went to sleep and then there was the strike of the match again and the red man came,” he related. “[I saw] a small flame and then it turned into this red man again and then the red man became a red horse and then I remembered somebody shaking me and when I came to I was standing on my feet with my clothing and shoes and stockings on and I ran in and tried to help with the people.”
Throughout his interviews with Ohio authorities, Segee appeared remorseful, almost tearful. He claimed he was plagued by the visions that told him he had set the fires and was the cause of the victims’ pain. He maintained throughout questioning that he did not remember setting the fire, but he felt his visions and mental anguish meant that surely he must be to blame. It appeared that Segee had difficulty distinguishing between his bad dreams and reality.
Was Segee guilty? He was known to set fires as a child and was about to be convicted for the Circleville fire. He had been at the scene of the crime. He had even confessed to setting the Hartford fire. However, the fact remained that no one had seen Segee set the circus fire. He himself said he did not remember doing it, and his unstable mental state made his admission of guilt dubious.
And then, on November 17, 1950, Segee recanted his confession.
Around this time, police in Scituate, Massachusetts, were eyeing Segee as a murder suspect. Two police sergeants were sent to interview him in prison to find out if they could connect him with the murder. They questioned him about his activities prior to the Hartford circus fire. During the course of the interview,
Segee told the officers that he was not to blame for any of the fires he was accused of setting. He had never set a fire in his life, he said. Segee claimed that the accusations against him were based on his vivid dreams and imagination, rather than what he’d actually told investigators in Columbus. Segee now said he had not been on a date or returned to the grounds to take a nap before the fire started as he had previously stated. Instead he said that on the day of the circus fire, he and a friend had been downtown watching a movie. When Segee and his friend returned, the tent had already burned to the ground. He said they were questioned by officers and released. Segee was firm. He did not do it.
After Segee completed his prison sentence for the fire in Circleville, he was evaluated by another psychiatrist. The doctor diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic and committed him to the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ohio.
Commissioner Hickey never got to interview his suspect, but the Ohio detectives hadn’t cracked the case, either. The cause of the Hartford circus fire remained “accidental” for the next four decades—the prevailing theory: a carelessly discarded cigarette.
- 1980s -
Lieutenant Rick Davey, an arson investigator for the Hartford fire department, had ferreted out the causes of thousands of fires during his career. He once boasted that every arson case he’d ever sent to court ended in a conviction. Though easygoing and soft spoken, he also had the determination of a salmon swimming upstream. People who have met him have called him tenacious and driven. If anyone could resolve the decades-old Hartford circus fire case, it was Davey.