Beverly Hills Fire Newport Kentucky

Retired Intelligence Unit Detective Gary Jenkins interviews author Robert Webster, president of the Kenton County Historical Society, about his book, The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy. Webster revisits one of America’s deadliest nightclub fires, unearthing the possible mafia ties, cover-ups, and shocking safety failures that shaped this haunting night.

Robert Webster outlines the rise of the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, noting its glamorous past hosting Las Vegas–worthy shows—and its lasting link with organized crime in Northern Kentucky.

The 1977 Fire and Its Devastation
On May 28, 1977, the club was engulfed in flames, ultimately claiming 165 lives—making it one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history.

Safety Failures and Code Violations
Webster discusses staggering oversights: overcrowding far beyond legal capacity, lack of marked or accessible exits, absence of sprinklers or alarms, unsafe wiring, poor construction, and inadequate regulatory enforcement—true firetrap conditions.

Unraveling the “Untold” Story
What truly sets Webster’s work apart is his examination of the controversial claim that mafia operatives may have deliberately set the fire in retaliation for the owner’s refusal to cooperate—a theory supported by previously unreleased documents, crew testimonies, and survivor accounts.

Investigative and Legal Aftermath
The episode highlights the State’s formal review of the arson allegations, which concluded they lacked “proof,” being largely speculative. Meanwhile, Webster’s book earned him a 2013 Kentucky History Award for its contribution to the record.

Click here to get this fascinating account of this devastating fire in The Beverly Hills Supper Club – The Untold Story Behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy.

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Gary Jenkins: [00:00:00] well hey, all you wire tapper’s. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. I have a, a little bit different sort of a story. It’s it’s part mob and, and part fire protection and a huge fire that was you know, it really hit the headlines all over the United States back in the seventies.
It’s Bob Webster, Bob really appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate the invitation. Looking forward to it now, Bob, you got, you got a pretty good accent. You, you got about as good an accent as I do.
We’re a little bit different speaking, aren’t we? Little bit a little bit different. My New York fans and my Chicago fans I bet. And my Southern fans you know, you got that, we got that kind of Midwest twang, I guess, if you will. Exactly. Kentucky and I’m from Missouri and you know, Bob, my, my first relatives came, of course, from Virginia first, then to Kentucky, and then onto Missouri.
It’s the, okay. It was the immigrant path back there in the 18 hundreds, and I got a ton of them that some of ’em are still down there actually from they came here in the [00:01:00] 1860s, just before the Civil War. They came to Missouri, but okay, but deep roots there in Kentucky. Oh, guys, the, the book is inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club, the untold story behind Kentucky’s Worst Tragedy, and it happened in May 28th, 1977 as the Supper Club right along the Ohio River.
And Bob is from that area and he does a lot of local history down there. And Bob, you’ve got other books out there, correct? I do, I’m working on number eight right now. Beverly Hills is certainly the most popular, but I’ve written books on other local history topics. I also have sort of a textbook out that’s covers the, just a generalization of of history of Northern Kentucky came out about four years ago and just finished a historical fiction book.
I, a lot of my, counterparts kind of teased me for writing a partly fiction book, but it’s based on a true story. So I can get by with it, but certainly almost everything that I write is nonfiction, just the facts. Yeah. And this is totally [00:02:00] nonfiction, correct? Oh, absolutely. I looked at it well, researched, searched, and everything’s documented.
There’s end notes for every chapter. It’s, yeah, I could tell. So yeah, and I understand that right in historical fiction because. Can, you can make it more of an entertaining read, and you can tie things together that nobody knows, with a little literary or poetic license, if you will.
And it does make it a little more entertaining to read sometimes. Yeah. Broaden out your audience somewhat, which we’re always trying to broaden our audience, aren’t we? Yeah. Like I said, it’s based on a true story here locally, one of the neighboring counties, it’s interesting that I’ve had several people contact me and say, I, I know what you’re really talking about.
I know this, I know the real story you’re talking about. We don’t wanna be sued. They know the truth part of everything, now, what is that historical fiction about? Is it a Kentucky crime? It’s actually a murder mystery based on my own family.
You know, I mentioned off camera that my first book was a family history [00:03:00] project, about 700 pages. So it was well in depth, but, you start researching things and almost every family runs into something that they were, not aware of. I ran into a murder. The more I read in the newspaper, I’m like, this doesn’t sound like it really happened this way.
This, this something else must be going on. So I did some research and said, this would make a really interesting book. I’d have to change some names and some facts and things. But it’s called Ellison Station and it’s based on a little town in Grant County.
And it’s gone over real well. Oh, well. Great, great. Well, let’s get back to the book at hand and back to the Mafia. ’cause the mafia had a big part in getting this started or organized crime. Out of I believe it was Cleveland, or was it Cincinnati? Oh, the yeah, the actually Newport, Kentucky right on the, we’re right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Okay. They have some. Gambling and illegal activity that dates all the way back before [00:04:00] 1800. But the Volted Act with illegal alcohol peach, mit, Jimmy Brink, buck Brady, some of the well-known names here locally started the bootlegging operation. But, that’s when the mafia really moved into the area.
Originally from Detroit, they were part of the little Jewish Navy. But Frank Milano I, I pronounce it mo Delete, D-A-L-I-T-Z. Came down and, and he formed what they called the Cleveland four. So it was Mo and Sam Tucker and Morris Kleinman and Lou Rothko. And the early 1930s, mid 1930s, they moved in, pretty much, took over Newport took over part of Cincinnati, some of the other areas as well.
But they really took over northern Kentucky, and the police and everyone down in Frankfort didn’t seem to pay any attention to what was going on way up here in northern Kentucky. They just consider us part of Cincinnati, I suppose. But they moved in and basically torched a lot of [00:05:00] the owners of the clubs back then with the same philosophy either.
Sell us your club and we’ll keep you on as a manager and pay you a little bit of a, a stippen or we’re you’re gonna be outta business. And most of ’em most of the club owners took heed and, and sold their clubs. But there were a couple of people Glen Schmidt or Peach mit who owned the Glen Hotel in Newport said, no, he’s not gonna be bought out.
They burned him out too. Mm-hmm. But he moved out of town just a few miles to what, what is now Southgate, Kentucky. And he reopened what was the king castle. It was it had been vacant for a few years, but he figured he, he’d let the mob have Newport and he was gonna open up his club there in Southgate.
But on February 3rd, 1936, the mob burned his place down again. And it would’ve gone unnoticed like all the other fires that had been going on for the last four or five [00:06:00] years. But there was a little 5-year-old girl who was the niece of the caretaker of the property, and she was killed in that fire.
So there was an investigation and several of the mobsters went to jail Masterson, who was probably the mastermind, we think. Got away scot free. But bottom line is he was able to rebuild the club there. He renamed it the Beverly Hills Club, then it became the Beverly Hills Country Club.
Mm-hmm. This is before the summer club era. But the mob didn’t give up. They they moved in started harassing customers. They robbed the payroll a couple of times. They also performed what was called ding Doning. I don’t know if. If you’ve heard of that. But they would send four or five of their henchmen into the lobby of this Glen hotel, and they would just urinate on the floor.
They would do that every day. And he finally said, okay, I give up. And he sold the place to the mob. So by 1940 [00:07:00] 1938 to 1942, there were over 30. Illegal gambling casinos in northern Kentucky, all operated by the Cleveland syndicate. Yeah, that’s mo d was, he, he was quite a mover and shaker.
It’s kind of interesting. He ends up being a a sterling citizen giving back to charity and everything out in Las Vegas. But yeah, those four guys you mentioned, those four Jewish guys, that Jewish cabal, if you will. Maybe not the best word, but, but cartel that started that they’re gonna end up starting Las Vegas basically, but they absolutely right here in this Beverly Hills Country Club, if I remember right.
Yeah, they absolutely. Is that what you would call carpet joint back then? Is that what you call a carpet joint back then? Yeah, we had two of those, but that was the first of what, what we called the carpet joints. Yeah. Okay. All the other places in Newport were sawdust floors. You could get buzzed in by the bartender to go into a back room or an upstairs parlor or downstairs.
It was not wide open. But the Beverly [00:08:00] Hills Club was the first one that, I mean, you could just walk right in the door. Everyone knew it was there, everyone knew it was illegal. There were two state governors that were there for opening night for the illegal gambling casino. But, chandeliers. I mean, it was, it was the place to be back then.
And I mean, we’re talking high notch entertainment. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Marilyn Monroe, the Andrews sisters. I mean, those were people that were frequent stars on the showroom floor there back in the back in the day. Yeah. Right. If you do a little research on Mo, you find out that he takes all of his illegal money that he got from Northern Kentucky and.
And went out there and, and you’re right. Became you know, the, the great citizen donating money to, I think he opened a hospital and, and whatever else. I don’t know. Yeah. But I mean, he, you know, they built a shrine for him out there, I suppose. Yeah. He’s a, he’s a hell of a story just to himself, and I’ve never really looked, looked into that story in great depth, but I [00:09:00] should do that.
He’s a hell of a story himself. But back to the Beverly Hills Club and, and now, who was a clientele, were they coming mainly out of. Cleveland, I guess, but also Chicago and Kansas City and all, all around the Midwest. A little bit like hot Springs. It reminds me of Hot Springs. Yeah, mostly not really good entertainment.
Were, were right around this area. They did bring quite a bit down from Cleveland and Indianapolis. We’re about an hour and a half away from there. Columbus Lexington, Kentucky. So the Cincinnati area, it was a strong hub. They had a very successful airport by that time, so people could fly in.
But most of the clientele were right in the greater Cincinnati area. Okay. But interesting. I mean, it was the only place like this in the, the whole, well, you would have to go to Chicago or New York to see anything like this. By the fifties, they had a little bit of stuff like this going on in hot springs, a little higher class entertainment.
But this was the big one from what I’ve read about it, it was best place and it was [00:10:00] just other reasoning for that as well. Some of the, most of the clubs down in the city of Newport were kind of shady. Based on my research you couldn’t win at, at any of the games if you were lucky enough.
They were all fixed. Really, if you were lucky, lucky enough to win some money, soon as you got outside, you’d get roughed up and robbed by, you know, one of the, one of the henchmen of the club. Of course, you couldn’t go to the police. They were being paid off. But at the Beverly Hills Club the games were not fixed.
You could actually win some money. The food was, was top-notch. The, like I said, the entertainment, you didn’t have this kind of entertainment down in Newport. So it was a different clientele. It was coat and tie and fancy dresses or you weren’t, were not gonna get in. Mm.
Interesting. Yeah, I know Sam Connor tried to start something called the Vene Villa, I believe was the name of it. That was just exactly what you’re describing. Then he had a big Quonset hu out back for the gambling. So this is a kind of a common thing around the United States is Yeah, having that club with high-end dining [00:11:00] and gambling somewhere connected to it, and the mob guys all got into it.
I had an expert on here once that said. These guys that that started Vegas Delits and those other three guys you’ve mentioned which I never remember their names, but other people who went out to run the casinos at Vegas when it first got started, they all. Earned their chops or they learned the game and how to run the gaming business and this kind of a club like this.
And that was the next step out Up was absolutely out in Las Vegas. So this was really the beginning of Las Vegas as we come to know it. Yeah, it was absolutely something like this. Interesting. So now we go on up into the fifties and sixties when Mo de sold out, I believe. And he, yeah, he sold out and, by the old late fifties we had some, some old we’ll call ’em groups of do-gooders that wanted to move in and, and get all the prostitution and the gambling and, and everything out of Newport. Yeah. We [00:12:00] locally here, call it the Ratterman fiasco. There was a, George Derman was well known in the area played football.
Decided he was gonna run for office in Newport and he vowed that he could not be bribed by the, the mafia. And I mean, he would’ve, he certainly was going to win. But Charles Lester, who was the mob’s attorney, and Tito Zi, who was I guess wanted to take over when Mo and everyone was, was outta here, he wanted to be the next big kingpin.
Called Ratterman with the plan. They, they said, oh, we’re, we’re gonna come clean. We wanna meet with you and have dinner, and we’ll talk about how we can, we can straighten this stuff out and get all the, this, this crime and corruption out of Newport. And, and I guess he, maybe he fell for it, but of course he showed up and they had drugged his drink.
And he wakes up in bed with one of the known prostitute call girls or showgirls from one of the clubs. And of course, the police just happened to be there with cameras. Yeah. So he’s all over the morning paper all over. [00:13:00] Yeah. Over the country. You know, he said, he had been drugged.
And of course the simple drug test proved that. So the, the mob didn’t work out very well. Several people were arrested, including police officers and judges. Most of those were acquitted. There wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough evidence to convict them, but, but several of the mobsters went. It went to prison for that.
But that really turned around Newport. I think at that time a lot of people thought that the gambling left completely and then some of the other corruption, but of course it didn’t. The New York syndicate the Dedo family moved into the area as well. They were specializing at that time in the adult theaters and peep shows and things of that nature.
Newport was overrun with those. I mean, there were several in town that you could visit there. The Cinemax would’ve been the most popular, the longest living one. But that’s sort of where the turnaround came. And 1969 Richard Schilling [00:14:00] Sr.
Purchased the old Beverly Hills Club for 400,000. He had already owned. The lookout house which was another high end show place restaurant. No gambling at that time when he bought it, but he was very successful in that and decided to buy the Beverly Hills. He renamed it the Beverly Hills Sub Club two, $2 million in renovations.
Mm-hmm. But the mob still didn’t give up. They, propositioned him the same way as it’s always been. You know, we’re gonna buy the club. We’ll keep you on as manager. He said, no. In June 21st, 1970 it burned the ground. The renovations hadn’t been done yet. It’s funny, the, the electric had been turned off during this renovation time.
But the local authorities although they called it arson the state police said that the fire was the cause was undeterminable. Well, they found large gasoline cans in the rubble. Yeah. There were four separate fires in separate, in separate areas of the [00:15:00] club. But the state police Yeah, said they couldn’t figure that out.
So he was basically threatened to not open the club again, but he did. It became known as the showplace of the nation. But in the seventies the, the mob was still here. I researched 45 different car bombings. There were 60 unsolved murders, 40 arson or suspicious fires in nightclubs. They were still here and they were still doing the same thing that they had always been doing, and that is running these successful clubs and taking all the profits.
Interesting. That brings us up to May 28th, 1977. Wow. So May 28th, 1977, the club’s still going, and it’s a big show that night. Who was the headliner that night? That was John Davidson. Ah blue-eyed, blonde-haired singer. All the women wanted to go see. Yeah. He, he was the headliner. He had been there the night before.
He was there for two nights. But he packed the place. [00:16:00] So they were, they were still getting in. They continued to get in national entertainment in little Oh, absolutely. Northern Kentucky, you know, out in the boonies like that, usually don’t get that kind of entertainment. We’re lucky to get it here in Kansas City anymore, it seemed like.
Yeah, they I, I don’t have a list in my head right now, but yeah, they. Certainly top notch the, the comedians that you would see on tv, the singers Uhhuh movie stars. John Davison at that time was the, not only good singer, he was host of a, a couple of different TV shows. Oh yeah. He was that’s incredible.
I think was the name of the, the, the one show that he was hosting. Mm-hmm. But yeah, they were packing ’em in every, every weekend for sure. But, what happened? What happened that night at that time? Go ahead. What happened that night then? Well, the we know now that there were, were rumors before the night that something might happen.
But that particular morning one of the bus boys showed up and, and found people working [00:17:00] on ladders. In one of the, the showrooms, the smallest showroom called the Zebra Room. He was supposed to be setting up tables and chairs in there. He asked them what they were doing. They said they were working on the air conditioning, so he went and set up chairs in some other room.
But came back and they were still working on that. They basically yelled at him and he, but he finally got in there, was able to set some things up for a small wedding reception that would be going on there.
There were gonna be about 2,500 people in the building that night, including staff. There were several things going on. There was a dinner party for some doctors and their wives in one area bar mitzvah in another area.
There were four different weddings going on that night. The AAA from Dayton, Ohio had come down. There was a senior citizens group from Aston, Kentucky and Huntington, West Virginia, which is about four hours, three, three or four hours away. They brought two Greyhound buses full of people, the place was packed for sure.
Yeah. And about oh, I guess it was about 10 minutes till nine that [00:18:00] evening people started complaining that the, the building was hot and they. Didn’t see smoke, didn’t see fire until about nine o’clock when two of the waitresses walked into that zebra room, which was now vacant. That little wedding party had already finished up and left.
They saw smoke lingering at the ceiling and immediately told the owners and the fire department was called, and they started evacuating the building right away. What is upsetting is, the later research, there were 12 different people that drove up the driveway that night before, anywhere from six 30 to nine, and saw smoke coming out of the roof of the building and didn’t say anything to anybody.
They just thought it was from the, from a chimney or from the kitchen or what have you. But they saw smoke you know, two hours beforehand and no one told the, the club staff or any, anyone obviously would’ve changed things completely. But really fire finally broke outta that room about nine [00:19:00] 15.
And it was absolutely a disaster, that’s for sure. What had it been going there above like a drop ceiling or up between the floors up in there and really, you know, spread out above everything. Yeah. What we know now is that the, the fire started in the basement and it was. Traveled up through a void space all the way through the first floor into the ceiling of the second floor.
Okay. And started burning down into the walls. So yeah, it started we think shortly after 6:00 PM So it wasn’t until nine a little after nine, that the fire and smoke actually made the, made it itself visible to the club staff and patrons. It had been burning for about three hours inside the walls and ceilings.
Wow. So when it burst loose, it burst fast, huh? Oh, it didn’t take long. There were two different retired firefighters that were on the scene there just as guests. And they could [00:20:00] tell how quickly the fire spread through parts of that building that it obviously had been burning for quite some time.
When it, it, it. I found that extra oxygen that it needed to mm-hmm. To really take off. And the main room was full, I assume, at this point in time. Yeah. The cabaret room was built to hold a thousand. We think that there was 1051 people in the room. So it was crowded by legal aspects.
It wasn’t grossly overcrowded. That’s what is in the history books, that it was grossly overcrowded. Yeah. But it certainly was crowded. There were tables and chairs set up in some of the aisles. It was certainly hard to move around in there. But there was say a busboy that was notified pretty quickly that there was a small fire on the other side of the building.
And he decided, he tells me, seems like it took several minutes, but it only took about a minute for him to decide, Hey, do I, do I get up on this stage? [00:21:00] Make an announcement. I’m gonna get fired if there’s not really a fire. He didn’t see a fire, he didn’t see smoke or anything. So, you know, there’s a room full of people that just ordered their drinks.
That’s where the, the club makes all their money is with the alcohol. If he clears out this room, yeah, this 16-year-old bus boy is going to get fired. \ But after just, you know, a minute, he, he decides, well, that that’s what I’m gonna do.
So he gets on the stage and he says, ladies and gentlemen, I can have your attention. There’s a small fire on the other side of the building. We want you to leave immediately. There’s an exit there. And he points to the left, an exit there to the right. You can also exit through the doors that you came through.
And then he jumps from the stage. On stage was the comedy duo of Teeter and McDonald. They ventriloquist comedians. And unfortunately, about one third of the people thought he was part of the show. Oh, for whatever reason, they paid no attention to him whatsoever. They, later told authorities.[00:22:00]
Yeah. The, another third of the people didn’t pay any attention to him at all. They had just sat down, they just ordered their drinks, they’re talking with their friends and family. They had no idea that he even jumped up on the stage. Only about one third of that 1000 people immediately gathered their belongings and started exiting the room.
Of course they made it out without any complication whatsoever. Mm-hmm. So the fact that 169 people were killed out of that 1000 in that room, and of course there were over a thousand other people in the building. It’s pretty remarkable. But, but still there a lot of lives lost just because they didn’t heed that morning.
What, what, what was the total loss of life in that 1 69? Oh, that was, that was the total loss was a 1 69. Okay. And yeah, now you’re, you’ll read in various places that the number 1 65, but that’s inaccurate. It was decided very early after the fire that unborn fetuses would be. Counted in the death toll.
I see. The [00:23:00] memorial that we have now here in northern Kentucky has a stone for all the victims. And it, it’s 1 69 is what it should be accurately. Ah, interesting. So what was the aftermath of that? The big investigation was there? Well, did heads roll or what happened that day?
Yeah, the aftermath was, was quite interesting. If you were living in this area at that time you were pretty upset at the owners because the, it was, it was determined very quickly that several of the doors had been changed and locked that there was at least a 20 minute delay in notifying the, the authorities about the fire.
There was no sprinkler system. The investigation within the first six months determined first of all, that there was, there’s no sprinkler system that was required by law at that point in time. It was not grandfathered into the, the previous construction. The associated press was actually notified at two minutes before nine, and we know that the fire department was called at at [00:24:00] four minutes before nine, so there was no delay in notifying the authorities.
The only door that was chained and locked was one that had been remodeled. You couldn’t find it from the inside anyway, and to get to that door, you would’ve had to walk through the fire to get the door so no one died as a result of locked exit doors or anything like that. So it’s interesting, I think that if someone would’ve told a reporter outside that they heard a bomb go off, they would’ve just preprinted that too.
They would, there doesn’t seem to be any. True research and determining what to print in the newspaper. At one point it, it said that there were over five times the number of people in the cabaret room that was, should have been in there. Well, we’ve had architects tell us that you, you couldn’t fit 5,000 people in that room if you took out all the chairs and tables.
But that’s what they, they printed. It was so, so overcrowded. So, there was a grand jury investigation that was put in because they were actually considering charging having murder [00:25:00] charges, going against the owner for all that he did not do to prevent this. And I think most of the public here was dumbfounded when they determined that there was no lack of communication with the authorities.
There was no delay, there was no overcrowding that the, the club staff did a remarkable job getting most of the people out in a timely manner so that, that kind of failed. But, it haunted some of the employees that saw some of the suspicious activity. I only brought up one thing right.
As far as those workers Dave Brock was the, the busboy. He went to the owners about six months after the fire and he said, has anyone ever talked to those workers that were in the zebra room? And Mr. Shin said, what? What do you mean? And Dave told ’em, but they, well, they told me they were working on the air conditioning and.
Mr. Shilling said, Dave, they, they’ve burned us down. There’s no air conditioning units in the ze room. It’s just duct work. There’s nothing that they would’ve been working on. We got our hands on the [00:26:00] records. There were, there was no maintenance work that was scheduled for that week at all.
So that’s, they were, you know, should not two, two minutes. That should not have been there. Yeah. We also heard from another waitress that came early Saturday morning that, that same Saturday morning and she thought it was strange that the, there were four or five people doing detailed cleaning.
They were wiping and cleaning the walls of the long hallway that goes from the front of the room from the front of the building down to the cabaret room, the main showroom. She said they don’t usually do detailed cleaning on a Saturday morning. They would do that on a, on a weekday morning. Well, we now know that they were likely wiping some type of et cetera on those walls because one of the firefighters that was there just as a patron was in that hallway when the fire broke out of the small zebra room.
He told authorities at that time, there’s no way that that fire raced down that hallway the way it [00:27:00] did unless it had been accelerated. He was a 20 year fire captain. He knew what he was talking about. They didn’t investigate that whatsoever. The club receptionist told authorities that that very morning there was an explosion down in the basement.
The same workers that had been there all week long saying that they were working on the electric and the air conditioning. Again, there was no work scheduled according to the owners that week. We now believe that the fire was set. We have certain evidence that shows that the basement.
Although the governor and the immediate investigation said that the basement wasn’t damaged or touched by fire, we have photographs of fire, patterns in the basement. We can see where there was an explosion in one of the air conditioning units that we feel had been set with timers.
The fire marshals division, by the way. The governor of Kentucky at that time sent them back to Frankfurt, said that they were not needed. I’ll repeat that. The fire [00:28:00] marshals division that came up to investigate the governor sent them back to Frankfurt and said that the state police would handle the investigation.
Before they were sent back to Frankfurt, they in their report said that the basement would be their, their main area of focus. Mm-hmm. They had already found timers in the rubble. But some were set on am and some were set on pm it’s our belief that the fire was set and it was supposed to start at six o’clock Sunday morning.
Yeah. That’s how they always do it. Every bar fire we’ve ever had. Four o’clock, five o’clock Sunday morning. Same here Newport I mentioned earlier that the, the dozens of, of club fires that we had in Newport, they were always Yeah. Sunday. So that’s interesting. That’s that’s what we think.
In my investigation, we even determined. In my opinion, the two people that actually set the fire I named them in the book they were not very good at what they did. Obviously the a m [00:29:00] pm timers. Mm-hmm. But several months after the Beverly Hills fire, they were hired to torch a warehouse in Covington for the insurance money for the owner.
And they set the fire and went outside. Stood around to, to watch and watch and watch, and nothing happened. So one of ’em went over and opened the front door and the place exploded. And they found their bodies down the street. But they just were not very good at what they did. Man. Talk about We don’t think license.
We thought there was, there’s, there’s no way that the the mob intended to kill 169 people. They, we, we feel it was, it was most likely set to go off Sunday morning. Interesting. Well, I’ll tell you what, Bob Webster, this has been great. That’s a heck of a story, guys. There’s a lot more juicy details in that book.
I highly recommend you get it. Inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club, the untold story behind Kentucky’s worst tragedy happened in May 28th, 1977, practically on the banks of the Ohio River in an area that is long noted for [00:30:00] lawlessness all along that Ohio River on the Southern Bank.
It’s a long been noted for lawlessness and mob activity and, and all other kinds of criminal activity. So Bob, I really appreciate you coming on the show and telling the guys all about your book. Absolutely.
Now, Bob, you got a website, don’t you? What’s your website? Website is very, very simple. My name is Bob and I’m an author. The website is bob the author.com. Alright, great guys. I’ll have a link to that website down below. You can see all about Bob and a lot more about the fire and his research and other books that he’s got.