June 24th, 1973 – New Orleans: UpStairs Lounge Arson Attack Kills 32 People

June 24th, 1973 – New Orleans: UpStairs Lounge Arson Attack Kills 32 People by Will Kohler

On June 24th, 1973 the final day of Pride Weekend, thirty-two lives were lost when an arsonist set fire to the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans, Louisiana and is the deadliest fire in New Orleans history and the largest massacre of gay people ever in the U.S

The gay club was, located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets in the French Quarter and was a private meeting place for LGBT people of that time.

That Sunday, dozens of members of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the nation’s first gay church, founded in Los Angeles in 1969, got together there for drinks and conversation and to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Stonewall . The club hosted free beer and dinner for 125 patrons. The atmosphere was evem welcoming enough that two gay brothers, Eddie and Jim Warren, even brought their mom, Inez, and proudly introduced her to the other patrons.

At 7:56pm, a buzzer from downstairs sounded; bartender Buddy Rasmussen asked Luther Boggs to answer the door. To answer it, you had to unlock a steel door that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to the ground floor.  Boggs opened the door to find the front staircase engulfed in flames, along with the smell of lighter fluid. In the next instant, he found himself in unimaginable pain as the fireball exploded, pushing upward and into the bar.

The ensuing 15 minutes were the most horrific that any of the 65 or so customers had ever endured — full of flames, smoke, panic, breaking glass, and screams.

Metal bars on the UpStairs Lounge windows, meant to keep people from falling out, were just 14 inches apart; while some managed to squeeze through and jump, others got stuck.  Reverend Bill Larson of the MCC clung to the bars of one window until he died.  When police and firefighters surveyed and began clearing the scene, they left Larson fused to the window frame until the next morning.

MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped, but soon returned to try to rescue his boyfriend, Louis Broussard. Both died in the fire, their bodies clinging together in death, like a scene from the aftermath of Pompeii.

Thirty-two people lost their lives that Sunday 40 years ago — Luther Boggs, Inez Warren, and Warren’s sons among them.

A police officer at the time dismissed the French Quarter lounge as a place where "thieves" and "queers" hung out and their was little interest in solving the case.  There were no City Hall press conferences or statements of condolence from the governor, and no civil authorities publicly spoke out about the fire, other than to mumble about needed improvements to the city’s fire code.  The detectives wouldn’t even acknowledge that it was an arson case, saying the cause of the fire was of “undetermined origin.”

To this day no one was ever officially charged with the crime, The only suspect in the attack was Rogder Dale Nunez, a local hustler and troublemaker who had been tossed out of the bar earlier in the evening.  Nunez escaped from psychiatric custody and was never picked up again by police, despite frequent appearances in the French Quarter. A friend later told investigators that Nunez confessed on at least four occasions to starting the fire. He told the friend that he squirted the bottom steps with Ronsonol bought at a local Walgreens and tossed the match.

Will Kohler