OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS
The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire - Mass Murder?
by Billy Ingram

Every once in a while I'll be featuring phone conversations with various people I'm interviewing for a project I'm working on. Since I can't use most of what I get from these conversations in this particular book I thought you might enjoy some insight into events that you may not be aware of.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION

My talk with Wayne Dammert on July 5, 2009 was a real eye opener. He was a longtime employee at the famed Beverly Hills Supper Club near Cincinnati and he was there the night of the mother of all modern nightclub fires in 1977.

He and others on the scene that night are convinced it was deliberately set and that one of the nation's worst mass murderers got clean away. He also tells me about the wild days when Newport, Kentucky was an "open town" with illegal gambling joints all over the place.

Wayne wants to get this story out because, at every turn since the beginning of the investigation, too many people have been willing to turn a blind eye to the possibility of arson. If it's true, the 165 victims deserve justice.

From Wikipedia: On October 28, 2008, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear appointed a panel to investigate claims that arson may have been the cause of the fire. In March 2009, the panel, in recommending that the investigation not be reopened, characterized the new accusations as "a very tiny shred of evidence of arson and a huge mountain of conjecture, unsupported speculation and personal opinion."

The site sits relatively undisturbed over the last 30 plus years, surely there's an enterprising TV producer with a Cold Case type show that could bring together a forensic team to go over the site and look for evidence. It doesn't appear that the Governor's panel did that.

You can read more about this tragic event in the book Inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire by Ronald E. Elliott and based on an original story by survivor Wayne Dammert.

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Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire