The Beverly Hills Supper Club: The Untold Story Behind Kentucky's Worst Tragedy
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- At the 24th Annual Northern Kentucky Regional History Day on March 25, 2017, Robert Webster presents.
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This event was just one reason that I try to always be aware of my surroundings and to note where or how I could get out quickly, if necessary. I hope I never end up in a disaster, but of course it could happen.
Exactly!
I was in a retired bowling alley that was used as a night club and the back escape doors were chained shut. I had my eyes wide open the hole time I was there.
Good advice, no matter where you are. I stopped going to events with large crowds years ago and no matter where I at I'am watching and aware.
I'm from Lexington, KY and still reside here, my parents close friends also from Lexington, KY were unfortunately at the Beverly Hills Supper Club on this fateful night. The couple's wife told my mom that the lights went out and you couldn't see to get out and the only reason they survived was due to her husband's sense of direction and he was able to find his way in the pitch-black and lead her out the exit. Obviously this tragedy changed them forever and she said from then on whenever they went out anywhere she knew were all the exits were and she wouldn't dine in a restaurant in Lexington, KY called Darryl's restaurant because it's floor plan was so windy, with multiple stair cases, etc and she said it would have been a fire trap if the lights went out, etc. And she was so right about Daryls restaurant as I had visited that restaurant myself before this tragedy. In any case, it's always good to know your surroundings and where the exits are! God Bless all those who went through hell that night, living and dead.
@@Dan-um9bk thank you for sharing your parent's story. I'm glad they got out!
We were there about a year or so before the fire to see Al Green.
Five members of my family from Paris, KY, and three members from Cincinnati.
When I heard/read about the fire, it was just unbelievable.
"What if...." ran....and continues to run....through my mind occasionally.
I was 9 years old when that happened. But, I can remember that horrific night like it happened last night. A terrible loss of life.
My parents were in the Cabernet Room. I remember this because shortly before this, I attended a Girl Scout banquet. My dad showed me down the side hall how he was going to take my mom to see John Davidson. He even showed me the room where they would sit.
Wow!
They survived, right?
How was the food?
@@Youngstown529 - Cooked, with a slightly burnt flavor.
@@syrsafox32 They survived the fire, but immediately after exiting the building, they were mauled to death by rabid hamsters.
I have a strange obsession with this fire and the station nightclub. I feel bad for them all , its just fascinating to me that we as humans could fuck up so bad .
I feel the same way about those fires also and 9/11. I live in NYC and have watched God knows how many documentaries and videos on 9/11. I'm convinced those towers were brought down on purpose. Crazy how the 9/11 investigation was bullshit also.
OUTSTANDING video!! This needs to be investigated as the federal level about corruption!!
That's super funny.....the corrupt investigating corruption....🤨👎
i went up to where the Beverly Hills Supper Club used to be last year, it’s so chilling. It feels so dark up up there. There’s still items like shoes, clothes, books, and other things that belonged to the people up there. There’s still the caution tape that everyone who was hurt was lined up on up there. You can see remaining artifacts of the building up there. It’s just so chilling up there and what’s worse is I got lost and there’s no service up there.
Others have said the same thing. They can sense the spirits of people who died there. I wouldn't doubt it.
It's so unthinkable that the owners/operators would leave those items at the site like that. It's so disrespectful to the victims. How hard would it have been to pay for a crew to go up there and clean up the area, to avoid souvenir hunters and the like.
@@whiteclawbitch-out6366 I don't think so. I think leaving the objects there is a lot more repectful then to just tossing them away or leaving them on the ground like garbage. I think it's a very powerful statement and reminder that the effect of human fault and ignorance can ruin so much and change everyone's lives and how it changed safety standards and regulations and an example of how human greed had cost the lives of many others. But yeah I think there should be at least someone there to keep an eye out for thieves. It's not someting dangerous or threatening but those remnants and rubble were peoples lives and enjoyment. It's almost like a second cemetery for those who died. I hate the fact that it's being thought to be redeveloped it's already a memorial I hope they leave it alone.
@@girlscanbedrummers5449 I don't think there are plans to develop it anymore.
Sur, thanks for having the guts to tell the truth.
This is what troubles me: The mob abandoned the place after the 500 cleaned everything up. Therefore, the mob would have been the ones to sell the place to the Schillings. It's common for the mob to move in on a successful place, but it was in the process of being remodeled when it was burned the first time. What was the point? Why not let him spend the money on the remodeling, get the place running and then muscle in? Makes no sense. Then, he builds the place even bigger, and they apparently let him go ahead and do it. Why, if they didn't allow it the first time? Finally, the place was burned and the land sat empty for more than 40 years, so who gained what here? My thoughts about the last question is that the fire was never intended to kill all those people and even the mob was reluctant to build there because there would likely be opposition. Still, there is something not right with the money trail.
I was 2 years old when it happened my mother worked there but she was off that night and was at home because my sister was sick if it wasn't for that who knows I might not have her here with me today
I've read the book. It is excellent and has much more information that isn't covered in this video.
This was fascinating and is the only explanation that I have heard that makes sense about this tragedy.
Thank you for your outstanding book and this presentation from you!!!
This fire needs to be re-opened and federally investigated. It's been 40 years and it's long over due. There was obviously a cover up and it's time the victims, survivors and their families received some sort of justice.
The FBI, and ATF have such awesome forensic tools they can still do an investigation today. They could even exhume bodies for signs of arson, smoke particles, cause of death, etc. Sadly there would be a lot of resistance.
@@notthatdonald1385 here's the issue. The Mafia had been trying to get a piece of that action for 30 yrs up to the incident.
I heard through the grapevine that 3 professional arsonists were hired as "maintenance men" to set the fire. They allegedly installed a timer to go off at 8p to ignite the interior walls up into the zebra room. The building was built with additions over time. There were gaps between rooms and hallways that created the perfect storm of fire oxygen and space to expand.
The wedding party in the zebra room complained of extreme heat around 830. They paid until 10p but they left early due to the heat.
So in conclusion, I believe the management company agreed to work with the mob then backed out
Where's McConnell? He's been senator there for decades. Has he done passed any laws so this doesn't happened again or pushed for more deregulation? Hold your elected officials accountable!
I agree but nobody seems to want to even bring all this evidence up since it makes Boone County Kentucky look bad and we can't have that. I remember when it happened to I was 15 and my parents were watching it live on TV. Some of the eventual ashes were on my back roof. I lost a classmate in that fire a boy named Scott.
The two a-holes that gave this great video a thumbs down must have been the governor involved and the mafia kingpin involved!
It's up to 3 assholes now....who would respond in that way? Obviously mob-friendly a-holes!
i live in the northern Kentucky area the stories I've heard from some of the older people are wild. just crazy shit to do with the mafia.
That former governor and his ilk are probably the ones wanting the place redeveloped. I don't know what it is with the eastern US and UNited Kingdom but everything has to be 'developed'.
I was a child living in a suburb of Cincinnati when it happened and just from the news footage gave me nightmares for a long time!!!
I've heard stories here locally about men picking up and throwing their wife's over the pile up at the fire exits,in the cabaret room.scary and sad.
Kevin Oswald yeah, never sssume any building is fully safe. Corruption is alive and well..Chicago has the worst fire in US history, 602 dead at the Iroquis. And to this day, I STILL see funky buildings with exits only on one wall of the building (Metro, last week, Chicago) or flat-out "locked n blocked" exits at No Exit cafe'/Theobuique theatre. They had a drum.kit blocking one exit, and LOCKED the other door during the show. HUGE no-no, particularly in Chicago. I didn't see a single fire extinguisher anywhere, much less near the stage or kitchen. Only 2 exits on the same wall. No windows. They're SUPPOSED to have panic bars on both doors, at a cost of all of 160.00 each, also. That's why they're real big on old buildings in this city, they get grandfathered in and they don't have to buy sprinklers.
There is nothing done in darkness that won’t be exposed in the light.( In time)
This is interesting history of corruption and crime in Government , local authorities.
Dave Brock and Tom McConaughy deserve the credit for this story. They contacted Bob to publish their hundreds of hours of research.
They all deserve equal credit. Bob ultimately wrote the book and it reads like a well written mystery rather than just statements of evidence. He weaves a good tale. Not to say this incident was in any way good, but his telling of it draws the reader in so they can effectively present their case.
This should be made into a movie.
Horribly sad.
Thank you so very much for compiling all of the information and photos. After reading and watching several other pieces of the story, none of it made any sense and left me with more questions than answers. Your video was a refreshing take on the truth of what happened and actually as ugly as it may be, it is how America operates. Perhaps if you ever get bitten by the bug to take a deeper look into the World Trade Center story, I'd be most interested in that too; so much left unanswered.
You're a fucking moron if you think the WTC attacks were anything other than terrorism.
Fascinating presentation, can’t wait to get the book!
14:35, I loved everything about the 70s, it was an awesome time!
Yep, I remember my Allsavers Certificate of Deposit that psid 12%. Of course inflation was eating most of it.
except for the fires
Wow, Ive lived in Kentucky my whole life and I have never heard of this tragedy, but we talked about the Carlton bus crash (which obviously is just as tragic and also needs to be talked about) 4 different times in high school. This can be just as educational
We can only hope that this will be re-opened and the truth be known. The likely antagonists in the mob are long gone (probably died years ago, with blood on their hands), but the mob is still alive, maybe not alive AND WELL, but alive just the same and they intend for none of this to come out and will fight to the end. It feels like everyone's hands are tied. I pray that everyone who were relatives and close friends of the folks that were murdered that night have come to find some peace and acceptance in their lives and not be continuously bogged down in the pain and sadness and the frustration of it all. May the souls that passed that warm and humid evening be forever at peace.
This is an unbelievable tragedy! No smoke alarms or sprinkler system, not enough doors, no emergency lights to come on in the dark building, people didn’t no where to go, in the dark. Lots more mistakes, when building this establishment, was lacking safety in case of a fire. Paneling and furniture, did not have fire retardant, but had combustible material on them.
This is a wonderful presentation but, kindly please say "paramedic" not "ambulance driver" You don't say "police car driver" or "fire truck driver" and saying "ambulance driver" erases the main purpose of being a paramedic which is to be a medical professional bringing the ER to the field and saving lives.
In many areas the paramedics ride on the fire trucks and the ambulance drivers are ambulance drivers.
Doesn't make any sense to me but that's how my town does it.
That means sending a ladder truck and an ambulance if grandma falls over but that's how they do it.
@@1978garfield Yeah fire/medics really shouldn't be a thing. It's a cost cutting measure that does not benefit paramedics or the community. It can benefit some fire unions though.
This was fascinating! The history of Newport was awesome!
Sounds like the timers in the basement went off too early. The plan was most likely for overnight when the place was empty.
Someone might have set one for 6 pm instead of 6 am.
Such a tragedy-so sad. They should NEVER have had those teenagers help with moving the bodies, they were too young to be exposed to something so gruesome. They were heroes, too, for being so selfless to step up and help out like they did, but the ones in charge should've kept them at redirecting traffic ONLY.
I have seen comments written by some of them on forums about the fire and yes, several (if not all) were deeply affected by it. In some it caused what we now call PTSD. It's a mistaken concept that this happens only to soldiers during war. I don't know what they were thinking letting them move those bodies like that. Look how many adults have been affected by this, and they were just kids.
Children and teenagers were not as sheltered and protected back in those days as they are now.
It was 1977.
Sounds like the mob paid off the Governor. I am sure he knew about the fire well before it happened.
He is 89 now. I understand he took the 5th when he had to testify. I can assure everyone when he dies and stand before the BIG JUDGE his 5th Amendment will be worthless.
I remember reading about the fountain shorting out
I saw John Davidson at Night Club in New Jersey in 1976.
Well, the story's been told now.
No question this was Arson and a mass murderer got away with it
The speaker is annoying when he doesn't even let people asking questions to FINISH their questions.
The Kentucky State Police were and are crooked.
With no physical evidence remaining we'll. Probably never know barring a confession
Does anyone have a link to the song about the beverly hills supper club?
What happened to the houses of the mob? Im sure they had beautiful homes. Were any of them left abandoned? Are there any stories of the people who died in the fire? Just like a short synopsis? I think there's so much more that can be done here.
Does anyone know what happened to the chapel ?
Was the food there any good? I’m curious because it seemed like a happening place, so sad that it burnt down and took many loyal clientele with it. 😢
The food, like the building, was sometimes burnt.
I went there several times, with the last time, mothers day of that year, so just a couple of weeks before the fire. I was a teenager and was mesmerized with this club. The food was great, in my opinion. Their Shirley Temples were the best!
@@georgeglenn4138 Gosh to have been able to go there at least once, what a treat it must’ve been. The food seemed really popular!
Ersatz elegance and a chequered, very troubled past. Hindsight is 20-20 but, still, _why_ would people go there?
i am confused is this Kentucky or California?
This is in Northern Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati.
Kentufornia
More like Califucky.
It was in KY but they called it BHSC because it sounded glamorous.
@@snoozeking7497 Too bad the name couldn't make the poorly thought out interior designs causing 165 to die glamous
24:45 Weird noise
I really thought all this time that this Fire took place in California hence Beverly Hills. Wtf
Either the electricians that worked there were bad, or somebody went and rigged some of the wires in the zebra room. We'll never know.
They rigged it in the basement. He showed it with pictures. The electrician who did the the original wiring was also a fireman and he had the receipts showing he had purchased copper wiring. He was never called to testify in court. He went to the site after the fire and offered to show the Kentucky State Police the work he had done. They told him to leave and not come back or he would be arrested.
@@greyeaglem Yeah, not shady at all. "Officers I have some evidence that might help you in this investigation". Get outta heah if ya know what's good for ya! They should have checked the "officers" for NY accents.
@Antonio S yeah. I know.
Do some simple math, people - if there were untold numbers of people in a restaurant / banquet / nightclub facility like this place on ONE night, how much would have this place have raked into its cash registers on just one typical late-Spring Saturday afternoon and evening in May? Is anyone really stupid enough to think that from a business perspective the club was just barely managing to scrape by in order to break-even or manage to make a small profit?
It's an old familiar story. Inadequate / blocked / locked exits by greed-motivated Management, Mob / La Cosa Nostra involvement, payoffs of dirty scumbag local and state, cops, investigators and politicians all the way up to a Governor's office, and in the end unfortunately, untold numbers of victims that are all the result of either greed or political corruption (if not both). Yet whenever realistic, enforceable penalties for evading zoning or building safety codes are mentioned about being made into a reality, in order to safe-guard the general public are brought up, such codes are always shouted down, weakened or left toothless because of "free enterprise" Republicans that object to anything and everything that might be in the general public interest, with all of the bought-off politicians and business-owners crying and screaming about the cost. A year after this tragedy, it still wasn't enough for politicians in Frankfort to get its act together and MANDATE that it was time to make ALL prospective entrepreneurs VERY MUCH aware of what the cost of opening their little business is, and if they don't like it, well then, let them sacrifice their dreams like a lot of people have to do in order to make a living.
All of the cost to implement EVERYTHING such as installing adequate smoke & fire alarm systems, fire sprinklers and most importantly include MANDATED fire exits is minuscule, whether it is mandated BY LAW or not, but there will never be any shortage of a LOUD chorus of greed-motivated (shady OR honest) businessmen and "free market" politicians that say "free enterprise" can police itself, who will do anything within their power to make sure that such regulations are never implemented, and if they are implemented, such codes and regulations are left unenforced if not unfunded altogether. At least HALF of what went wrong here has been ignored by an apathetic if not totally ignorant populace since the 1942 fire at the Coconut Grove supper club in Boston that ended up killing 492 people in a fire that lasted barely 25 minutes, that afterwards fire regulations were fully understood to be necessary whether mandated by law or not. It's the same kind of small-town "it could never happen here" ignorance that is the ONLY reason why contemporary gun violence is what it is in the US.
Demonrat projection at its finest.
44:23 lmao
10:26 godfather part 2
A similar tragic fire happened in Mississippi with DOUBLE the loss of life, that gets no publicity. Why? Bcuz it was in a poor Black neighborhood,.
Rhythm nightclub fire of 1940 . Mr Frazer boarded up the windows so people could not see in and locked the back door to keep people from sneaking in . 209 people died that terrible night . All the fire department had on night duty was 2 men for the fire crew with one hose to start until more men could be called . There's an excellent documentary on youtube about it .Cocoanut grove nightclub fire in 1943 was worse then both 492 died in that fire same problem not enought exits and turnstile doors . Beverly Hills Supper club 165 died this fire is one I have faint memories of as well as the Jonestown Massacre I was 8 when this happened and I remember the news papers had front page for both . I didn't know about the possibility of this being a case of mafia arson. I don't go to any public place with not knowing where all the exits are after the Station nightclub fire in 2003 . That video is on youtube also and very disturbing . You see the fire start and the cameraman backs out and in 5 minutes the whole place is burning same thing people went to the one door and piled on top of each other and died there . There were several exits but that instinct to go to the door they came in 98 people die there . A documentary with survivor's is hear on youtube .
Quit with victimhood crap. It wasn't covered as widely or known as well BECASUE IT WAS 1940!!!! There was no internet, and very, very few people had tvs.
Wow. I'm gonna look that up.
@@MsMedford You sound like a great Biden supporter. Fucking NERD
@@fiona3637 They had newspapers so shut your ignorant ass up, because you sound like a member of the white citizen council.
😮unbelievable. The mafia did it!
I'm not sitting through all this. Summarize it in one word.
Corruption
Farts
Phlegm
Is this the club Moe dalitz and those Jews like sam Tucker and klineman owned
In another documentary of the Beverly Hills supper club it was said a court order alone stopped the way too early starting demolition and removal of evidence in faulty wiring etc.