Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (48 page)

The long-pending settlements in the Station fire cases were like raw meat for
LFCS
. During the two years between settlement of all claims in principle and actual disbursement of proceeds under the McGovern plan,
LFCS
persuaded several cash-strapped plaintiffs, over their attorneys’ vociferous objections, to take “advances.” Some fire victims only took one or two modest advances, which did not greatly reduce their final net recovery in the case. One Station fire widow, however, took
thirteen
separate
LFC
advances over sixteen months, totaling $80,500. In month seventeen, she had to repay $137,777 under her
LFC
contract.

Annual percentage rate on the transaction: 64.7 percent.

CHAPTER 29

MEMENTO MORI

FIVE YEARS TO THE DAY AFTER THE FIRE
, four shivering people, wrapped tightly in winter coats, have paused to reflect. They are standing on a tiny piece of ground, smaller than a house lot, where one hundred homemade crosses have been arranged in a rough oval, each with a white balloon tethered to it. At each cross there are attempts to individualize a memorial — photos of the deceased, or even votive candles. Other objects are left as reminders of a visit, including countless stuffed animals, bedraggled by wind, sun, and rain; poems; and angel figurines. On one cross hangs a construction hard hat.

A van from
WPRI-TV
Channel 12 idles in what remains of The Station’s parking lot. Inside it, a cameraman and reporter keep warm until it’s time for their stand-up, marking the fifth anniversary of the fire. It’s doubtful, though, that the logo of Jeff Derderian’s old
TV
station is something the mourners really want to see.

Against the hood of a parked car leans a street-corner preacher of sorts, dressed in black, a Bible at his side. He engages the visitors in comforting conversation. One asks if he lost anyone in the fire. “I feel that I lost all one hundred of them,” the man of the cloth responds, with a trace of self-importance.

No offense is taken. In a state this small, all are permitted to mourn.

The ground at 211 Cowesett Avenue in West Warwick, Rhode Island, is considered sacred by many. Flanked by Barry Warner’s house, a busy four-lane road, and a car dealership, this unlikely plot of land sprouted makeshift memorials from the moment the crime scene fence came down. The personal nature of the memorials maintained by loved ones at the site is a poignant reminder that the round number, one hundred, does a grave injustice to the individuality of the souls lost in the Station fire. It is too easy to simply refer to that terrible sum. It is much harder to read the memorial tributes, and study the biographies, of each victim.

The individual memorials at the Station site began as one hundred wooden
crosses, assembled by an anonymous loved one out of tongue-and-groove flooring salvaged from the club’s wreckage. Names of the deceased were carved or painted on each. Memento mori soon followed — and were supplemented as the seasons changed. Halloween pumpkins; Christmas decorations; Mardi Gras beads; in a Ziploc plastic bag, a greeting card addressed “to my son on his birthday.” The odd-angled, slapdash construction of many of the crosses strangely parallels that of the club where each of the victims perished.

A few years after the fire, someone installed one hundred solar-powered landscaping lights to illuminate the site at night — one at each makeshift memorial. The years, and elements, have since rendered each light useless, almost as if the ground there eventually kills everything on it. As much as anything, the site is a memorial to the impermanence of a life, and of the objects we choose to symbolize it.

A cross for Sandy and Michael Hoogasian occupies one spot up front, near the rutted parking lot. It is covered with smiling photographs of the couple. One visitor has added a kaleidoscope; another, sunglasses. At the memorial to Jeff Rader’s girlfriend, Becky Shaw, lie a box of chocolates and a Valentine’s Day card from her parents and brother. At Jeff Rader’s cross, someone has inexplicably left waffles.

Many have chosen to wear Station fire memorials on their bodies. Dozens of fire survivors acquired tattoos in remembrance of those who did not escape the flames. Erin Pucino’s entire forearm, covered in flames and crosses, is dedicated to those who fell behind her in the crush at The Station’s front doors. She understands all too well just how close she came to their fate.

One Station patron, who narrowly escaped from the flames, restored a ’59 Chevy Biscayne, transforming it into an antique red fire chief’s vehicle, complete with dome light and siren. On its doors are lettered in gold leaf, “Rhode Island Station Nightclub Fire.” Its trunk lid is covered with the names of all one hundred persons killed in the fire. Strange? Perhaps. Heartfelt? There can be no doubt.

Few expressions of grief at the Station site could be called traditional. Several were understandably angry. The father of one young woman killed in the fire commissioned a professionally lettered metal sign for the site, which read, “Our daughter’s life [
sic
] was no accident. . . . It was a tragic event that could have been prevented!” Other less permanent, but no less strident, signs seethed anger at town officials for their part in the tragedy.

Profound loss often clouds judgment. One grieving parent took it upon herself to uproot the cross for Great White guitarist Ty Longley, who lost his
life in the blaze. She left behind a scribbled note: “Ty and his band
KILLED MY DAUGHTER
. . . I’m sorry but Ty doesn’t deserve to have a cross here. The killer isn’t honored with thoes [
sic
] he killed. As many times as something goes up I will tear it down.”

In truth, Longley was a mere session musician with no control whatsoever over the Great White tour, its venues, or its pyrotechnics. The guitarist probably died because he chose to follow his friend, Bill Long, toward the atrium windows, rather than exit with his bandmates through the nearby stage door. On the other hand, that mother’s rage might more understandably be directed at Jack Russell himself, who controlled the tour in all respects, pyro included.

Russell’s career continued apace following the fire. Seven years later, Great White was still packing them in. Before an appearance at Neumeir’s Rib Room and Beer Garden in Fort Smith, Arkansas (population 84,000), Russell, sans pirate bandanna and four inches of hairline, was asked by a local reporter how he and his band “found strength to soldier on after the tragedy.” After pausing for dramatic effect, the front man explained, “The love of music helped us push forward. There is nothing like it, having so many people sing your songs and seeing all of the smiling faces in our fans.”

The seating capacity of Neumeir’s is two hundred.

One Station fire tribute, however heartfelt, was not without its irony. At a memorial service one year after the fire, Michael Kaczmarczyk, the lead singer for Human Clay, sang a Creed song. In the past, Human Clay had hired “Grimace” Davidson to shoot pyro on multiple occasions at The Station. With the same foam on the walls. And the same overcrowding. There, but for dumb luck, had gone Human Clay.

Even luckier, in the final analysis, was Jeff Derderian, whose criminal sentence was completely suspended following his no-contest plea. His brother Michael didn’t exactly do hard time, either. He spent only two years and three months of his four-year sentence in medium security prison, then was paroled with time off “for good behavior.”

A year after the fire, the brothers tried an interesting legal ploy, suing their own liability insurance company, claiming that it owed them the cost of their legal defense against the
criminal
charges. The Superior Court judge, not surprisingly, disagreed.

In yet another legal proceeding, the Derderians challenged a Workers’ Compensation judge’s ruling that they
personally
owed a $1 million dollar fine for failing to carry workers’ compensation insurance before the fire. The brothers dodged that bullet in 2004 when legal counsel for the state Department of Labor and Training opined that only the Derderians’ (penniless)
limited liability company,
DERCO LLC
, and not they, personally, owed the fine.

Less than a year after his early release from prison, and shortly before the seventh anniversary of the Station fire, Michael Derderian agreed to be a featured speaker, along with his brother Jeffrey, at a conference for amusement park operators and inspectors in Pennsylvania. Displaying stunning tone-deafness for music impresarios, the brothers chose as their presentation topic “safety in places of public assembly/amusement.”

Within a week of announcing their speaking gig, the brothers abruptly canceled it, in the face of public outrage in their home state. It will probably be a little while before Rhode Islanders accept the idea of Michael and Jeffrey Derderian lecturing anyone on the subject of safety.

The only other person who was convicted of a crime in the Station fire, Great White road manager Dan Biechele, quietly served less than half his four-year prison sentence before being released on parole. Several relatives of Station fire victims wrote letters to the parole board in support of Biechele’s early release. One, Chris Fontaine, whose daughter died in the fire, observed, “He is the only one that I feel demonstrated any remorse whatsoever for what happened, and I didn’t feel it was put on. It felt genuine.” After doing his time, Biechele immediately moved back to Florida, preferring to put Rhode Island, and its horrific memories, as much in the past as possible.

The Station fire evoked an unprecedented outpouring of charitable giving in the state. Over sixty companies made in-kind donations during and after the relief efforts. The Station Nightclub Relief Fund was established, and $200,000 was raised in its first forty-eight hours. When the fund reached $2 million, its management was transferred to the nonprofit philanthropic Rhode Island Foundation. Additionally, the state Crime Victims Compensation Fund provided up to $25,000 to each victim for proven economic losses.

It was inevitable that someone would try to game even this charitable system. One Station regular applied to the Crime Victims Compensation Fund for “medical expenses,” “counseling” expenses, and “lost wages,” despite the fact that his two companions’ statements to the police placed him outside the club with them, safely across the street in the Cowesett Inn parking lot (fetching cigarettes from a car), when the fire erupted.

Would-be scammers aside, the fire was not without some positive aftereffects. The tragedy spurred improvements to Rhode Island’s fire code. Business owners fought the changes, arguing (not without some merit) that merely enforcing existing fire and building codes would have prevented the Station tragedy. Nevertheless, even as the Cocoanut Grove fire spawned new
restrictions on flammable decorative materials in public spaces, so, too, the Station fire gave rise to new regulations for owners of large clubs and function halls. To their credit, Rhode Island lawmakers ended the pernicious practice of “grandfathering” older places of public assembly that do not meet current code, requiring sprinklers in all gathering places with occupancies over three hundred, regardless of their vintage. That change alone may prove lifesaving for future generations.

Changes of a different kind occurred for several officials who played roles in the Station fire tragedy. West Warwick town manager and apologist-in-chief Wolfgang Bauer (“Our officials were doing their customary public duty in a conscientious way”) was fired in December 2007 after he reportedly authorized purchase orders for a town project that exceeded its $3.2 million budget by $802,000. (Presumably, he, too, had been doing his “customary duty in a conscientious way.”) Bauer sued the town, alleging wrongful termination, later effectively settling for his retirement pension.

Jay Kingston, the
ME
investigator who worked unassisted for seventeen hours managing the extrication and transportation of ninety-six burned corpses from The Station, returned to work right after the fire, declining any mental health assistance and denying any problems. Kingston had long been an insulin-dependent diabetic, who kept his blood sugar well managed — right up until the fire. Then, in the summer of 2003, things began to change. It was harder and harder to keep his blood sugar within the normal range, even with adjustments to his insulin pump. His night vision deteriorated.