MICHAEL AND JEFFREY Derderian walked into 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, nicknamed 30 Rock, home to the NBC television network. The stunning sixty-six-story skyscraper was part of a twenty-two-acre Art Deco complex built during the Great Depression, and at its centerpiece was Paul Manship’s enormous gilded statue of Prometheus, the immortal that ancient Greeks believed stole fire from the gods. For his crime, Prometheus was sentenced to an eternity of suffering.
At street level sat the studios of the nation’s top morning news program, NBC’s Today show, and the Derderians were there at the invitation of one of the broadcast’s shiniest stars, anchor Matt Lauer. Lauer was also a product of Rhode Island, having worked there in the early 1980s as cohost of the breezy PM Magazine at WJAR-TV 10, the NBC affiliate in Providence. Lauer eventually suited up and made his way to stations in Boston and New York before jumping to the network, but Rhode Islanders later would deign him a “favorite son,” even though he was actually a New York native. Lauer was arguably the most successful of several national television news stars with Rhode Island connections. Meredith Vieira grew up there and reported for WJAR-TV before moving on to 60 Minutes, The View, and Today, and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and John King both attended the University of Rhode Island.
It was April 2004, more than a year since the fire, and the Derderians had still not granted an interview. The nightclub fire remained in the headlines, with new developments gaining front-page coverage in the Providence Journal, which were often picked up by the national media. Yet the brothers remained silent, on the advice of their attorneys, warned that the trial should take place in court, and not the court of public opinion. When Jack Russell and others with Great White repeatedly claimed that they had permission to use fireworks in the club, the Derderians did not respond. After the Journal’s report that there were more patrons inside the nightclub than were legally allowed, the brothers wanted to present a different set of facts, but held their tongues.
The Derderians felt there had been a relentless campaign in the news media, especially the Journal, to paint them as two irresponsible, greedy, gold-chain-wearing, cigar-smoking louts who would do anything to make a buck. That storyline even made its way into popular culture as primetime television network crime dramas that depended on plots “ripped from the headlines” did their own versions of The Station nightclub tragedy, including the nation’s top-ten program CSI: Miami, which portrayed the nightclub owner character as a mercurial and hook-nosed caricature, similar to the way Nazis portrayed Jews in the lead-up to the Holocaust.
WPRI-TV 12, the CBS affiliate that employed Jeffrey Derderian and photojournalist Brian Butler, who videotaped the real-life blaze, refused to air the May 5, 2003, episode of CSI: Miami called “Tinder Box,” because it was so strikingly similar to The Station fire. The drama could still be viewed in Rhode Island via the nearby Boston CBS affiliate.
Other scripted dramas had similar plotlines, and television producers had plenty of material to inspire them. Prosecutors and the news media fed the public a steady stream of damning allegations that the brothers were obsessed with making money and as a result had cut corners that killed a hundred people. The Providence Journal published an essay by esteemed Harvard University economics professor James Medoff that accused the Derderians of relentless, deadly greed. Without citing evidence, Medoff told readers the brothers regularly ignored fire codes for profit. “Night after night,” Medoff wrote, “the club filled above its licensed limit.” The professor reported that Jeffrey rescued the club’s cash drawer while dozens died. The source for Medoff’s essay was noted in a footnote: “The ideas for his column arose from a class Mr. Medoff taught at Harvard with Journal Sunday Editor Peter Phipps.”
Medoff, news reports, and talk radio shows also pushed the idea that the foam on the walls of the club was the flammable type because the Derderians were too cheap to pay for foam that would have been flame retardant.
To confirm this theory was videotape evidence in the form of a story Jeffrey reported two years before the fire for WHDH-TV 7 News in Boston about how polyurethane foam could be deadly when ignited. In dramatic fashion Jeffrey’s report showed how the foam, which is commonly found in furnishings including mattresses, can instantly turn into an inferno. “Polyurethane foam. Fire safety experts call this stuff solid gasoline,” Jeffrey said in the story. Clips from Jeffrey’s report were depicted as proof that he knew, more than most people would, that the foam presented a mortal danger, and in his avarice he simply did not care.
It was also reported that the brothers did not have required Workers’ Compensation insurance coverage for Steven and Andrea Mancini, Tracy King, and Dina DeMaio, their four part-time employees who died. This too was presented in the media as confirmation of the brother’s insatiable mammonism. To save a few dollars, the Derderians risked leaving the families of victims impoverished.
Michael’s divorce was used to demonize the brothers, with reporters combing through the case to discover that the couple had debts, including money owed to the IRS. News reports noted that Michael’s estranged wife, Judi, said in court filings that she wanted her husband to sell the nightclub, contending that it had been a drain on their resources. Surely all of this, common sense demanded and the media argued, meant that one hundred people were dead because Michael needed to squeeze every penny possible out of The Station.
The brothers, however, had answers for each of these accusations, which they planned to use at trial:
Yes, the divorce was acrimonious and there were arguments over assets, but that was not unusual, and Michael’s tax issue with the IRS was fairly typical for a person who ran his own business.
From the brothers’ perspective, Jeffrey’s reporting on the dangers of foam for Channel 7 was not proof of carelessness. The clip from Channel 7 that had received so much media attention was from a story that Jeffrey did not write or research, but one where he was just the on-air talent, providing the voice to someone else’s script and an on-camera stand-up shot in a producer’s home. The story focused on foam used in mattresses, which was not anything like what the Derderians thought they had purchased for their club.
It was true, however, that Jeffrey had more knowledge than the average person when it came to foam. As a professional in broadcasting, Jeffrey was familiar with sound foam, since it appeared in the studios and recording booths of every television and radio station where he’d worked. He had constant contact with sound foam, and from that perspective never had any doubt of its safety or its effectiveness. Jeffrey believed that was the same type of foam in the nightclub, and he would cite his experience and knowledge as part of his defense at trial. The Derderians ordered sound foam, they would argue, and when they received foam for the club that was not sound foam, they had been deceived.
The brothers also disagreed with the story that Barry Warner, the neighbor and foam salesman who first suggested they use the product for soundproofing, was somehow only distantly involved in the transaction. Warner knew exactly what they intended to use the foam for, and in the brothers’ minds had convinced them to make the purchase. They had explored other options for containing the sound, but said that Warner had made the case that foam had the best chance of actually working in a place like The Station. Warner even helped them determine how much of the foam to order to cover the walls and ceilings, Michael said, noting that the order called for twenty-five blocks of sound foam, a quantity he would not have known to order if not for the expert advice of Warner.
Michael had placed the order himself in a short letter that was faxed:
June 9, 2000
American Foam Corp
61 John Street
Johnson, RI 02919
Att: Barry Warner
Dear Barry:
Please accept our order for 25 blocks of sound foam. If you have any questions, please give me a call at …
Sincerely,
Michael Derderian
The Station
211 Cowesett Ave
West Warwick, RI 02893
The letter was addressed to Warner at the company, and the foam salesman went as far as to recommend the specific type of 3M glue to hold the foam in place, something Warner admitted in his grand jury testimony, so the brothers thought it absurd for Warner to deny his role in the foam installation. Reports that the Derderians had demanded the cheapest foam in stock were also wrong—nothing like that had occurred.
As far as a capacity violation was concerned, the brothers thought the numbers reported by the Journal were wrong. The newspaper seemed more interested in creating a big scoop than facts, and had inferred that something underhanded had occurred between Michael and the fire marshal when the club’s capacity increased to 404. For Michael, it was just a matter of math, and if the fire marshal said the number was safe, then the brothers had to rely on that expertise. The inspector had also deemed the whole building safe. The Derderians brought their children to play in the club, celebrated Michael’s fortieth birthday there, and hosted Linda’s office party, and would never have done any of that if they thought there was danger. They would also say at the trial that Jeffrey trusted the inspections so much that he picked the club as a place to shoot b-roll for his report on public venues safety. He’d be “an idiot,” he later said, to invite a camera inside if he thought there were safety problems, since any issues would be broadcast for all to see.
Yet to the brothers, even that logical line of reasoning had been twisted against them. Media critics jumped in after the fire to condemn Jeffrey and WPRI-TV 12 for using the Derderians’ nightclub in his reporting, charging a conflict of interest for featuring a business on television in which Jeffrey had a financial benefit.
“The station defended its actions, saying it had no plan to publicize or promote the nightclub in the story. But that argument doesn’t hold up. The feature would have undoubtedly put the club in a good light,” said Deborah Potter, a former reporter for CBS News and CNN, and executive director of NewsLab at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism, in an article in the American Journalism Review. “That positive spin alone might have brought the club more business, and Derderian would have benefited financially.”
In Jeffrey’s mind that was something an out-of-touch academician would say. Videographer Brian Butler was at the club shooting b-roll because Jeffrey was in a position to get past the hurdles of permissions for recording at a live music venue, something typically difficult. The visuals were a small portion of a larger story that had never been completed or aired, so it was speculation by Potter and others that the club would have been promoted by name in the report.
Butler would later confirm that he was specifically instructed to shoot “generic” footage. “Don’t identify the place,” Butler said the assignment desk told him. “Nothing with the club’s name on it.”
For Jeffrey, there was also one important point all the righteous media ethicists had failed to mention: the Derderians had just signed papers to sell the nightclub. If any story ever aired, and if the nightclub gained publicity, the benefit would belong to the new owner. Jeffrey would not profit.
These were facts, Jeffrey thought, but the media did not seem intent on facts.
To the contrary of how they’d been portrayed, the Derderians had not cut corners to squeeze money out of the club for their pockets. They were building a business, and had reinvested proceeds for improvements, like $60,000 for a new sound system, one with higher-quality acoustics and volume control. They’d also renovated the aging building, remodeled bathrooms, painted, and added new landscaping and furniture.
Instead of the money-grubbing failures portrayed by the media, the brothers considered themselves responsible businessmen who’d branched out in the music business to some success and acclaim. In 2002, with the nightclub’s former owner Howard Julian, they’d formed Derderian-Julian Entertainment, and brought Aretha Franklin to the Providence Performing Arts Center, plus Earth, Wind & Fire to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, shows the Providence Journal praised as two of the top ten best concerts of the year.
In the brothers’ minds, The Station was not a failing business, but a turn-around story in progress. Many of the problems that plagued the club before the Derderians purchased it had been addressed, and the brothers had been lauded for that at a meeting of the West Warwick Town Council. They also informed the town council when they installed the foam for soundproofing, but after the fire, the audio recording of the meeting where the Derderians talked about the foam was missing.
It was true the nightclub failed to carry Workers’ Compensation insurance coverage for four part-time employees who died in the fire, but the brothers said they had been misinformed by the previous owner that it wasn’t required. The Derderians also owned a gas station where they carried Workers’ Compensation coverage for employees, so the idea that they were blatant scofflaws was untrue. They were simply confused about who was supposed to receive coverage.
The Derderians were hardly alone in their misinterpretation of the complexities of the Workers’ Compensation system. After the fire and discovery of the Derderians’ lapse in coverage, the Workers’ Compensation Fraud Prevention Unit launched a statewide investigation of bars, clubs, and restaurants. In a sweep of 1,700 establishments, no coverage was found at 504, or about one-third. The rate of compliance was even worse when the investigation then looked at twenty campaigns of state and congressional politicians and found only four with coverage, just one in five. Caught in the sting was Sheldon Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island attorney general and candidate for governor, who had made reform of the state’s “messy” Workers’ Compensation system a centerpiece of his campaign. “There are 50,000 things you have to think of as a candidate,” Whitehouse told the Providence Journal when asked about the failure to cover his workers, “but I don’t think that was one of them.” Also named in the sweep was the campaign of Attorney General Patrick Lynch, although Lynch contended that his campaign staff, including his campaign manager and press secretary, were not real employees but independent contractors, and therefore exempt. Other politicians, however, recognized their campaign staff as employees. Governor Carcieri, the former businessman, did have coverage for his campaign workers.
With such differing interpretations and confusion throughout the state about the Workers’ Compensation rules, and with Rhode Island’s former top prosecutor not in compliance, the Derderians felt unfairly singled out when the state fined them a record $1.06 million for failing to have coverage. Other businesses not in compliance were fined nominal amounts in the low thousands, and the brothers would eventually successfully argue the amount was excessive and have it reduced to a small fraction of the headline-grabbing amount.1 In the meantime, despite the evidence that the Workers’ Compensation system was widely misunderstood by employers, the media reported the brothers’ fine as further evidence of their wanton greed, reckless mismanagement of the club, and disregard for human life. It became part of the public case against them.
The Derderians knew they could counter most of what had been alleged by prosecutors or reported by the media about them, and they felt like punching bags for remaining silent for so long.
Matt Lauer and the Today show offered a forum to set the record straight. The brothers, however, had something more than just an interview in mind.
At NBC’s 30 Rock, after checking in with security and receiving mandatory guest passes to stick on their jackets, the brothers were escorted onto an elevator to the top of the skyscraper and one of the luxurious executive office suites. From the beginning of the negotiations for the interview the network had poured on all its charms, going as far as to offer to fly the brothers from Rhode Island to New York in NBC’s private jet. The Derderians declined. With so many people suffering from the fire and its aftermath, the brothers thought it would be incredibly wrong for them to accept a private jet ride or anything of value, since it would feel like they were cashing in on the tragedy. The brothers opted instead to make the four-hour drive in a small two-door car in pouring rain.
Lauer was on the same elevator with the brothers, looking dapper in a light tan-colored suit with tie. He’d just finished working out at the gym, carried a small tote bag, and munched on peanut M&Ms. The anchor did not speak to the brothers on the ride up, and the Derderians guessed that Lauer had no idea who they were.
When they reached their destination introductions were made. The suite on the fifty-second floor was laden with a spread of high-end catered foods, and had a spectacular bird’s-eye view of Manhattan. Lauer would later explain that the suite was regularly used as “a little bit of razzle-dazzle” to woo guests to appear on the broadcast.
Even though the brothers thought Lauer did not recognize them in the elevator, they were impressed when the anchor recalled that Jeffrey had appeared on Today a few times while working at WHDH-TV Channel 7 News in Boston, the NBC affiliate. Visiting the headquarters for NBC News and being schmoozed by Lauer would have been a career highlight for Jeffrey, had his life not taken such a turn, but now that he was finally here in the wake of the fire, he was no longer enamored with the news business. “I couldn’t be further away from it if I was on Mars,” Jeffrey later said. He had officially resigned as a news reporter for Providence’s Channel 12 four months after the fire, never returning to the airwaves after the tragedy.
Lauer played up his Rhode Island bona fides, talking about his stint at Channel 10 and encounters with the city’s infamous mayor Buddy Cianci. Lauer said he felt terrible for the Derderians, and offered to be the first one to tell the brothers’ side of the story. Lauer would later say that there were questions about whether the brothers had been treated fairly by the local media in Rhode Island, and he hoped that by not being part of that—as a member of the national press—he’d have a shot at landing the first exclusive interview.
Jeffrey recognized Lauer’s techniques. The setting of the executive suite was meant to showcase the power and prestige of television, and then the appeal to their vanity, and the show of sympathy. It was a reporter’s standard playbook, one that Jeffrey had used countless times himself, and Lauer was a master.
Then the brothers broached their real agenda with Lauer.
Yes, they could do an interview, but in exchange for that exclusive they wanted Lauer to help them put together a benefit concert for the victims of the nightclub fire.
The brothers were keenly aware of the suffering the survivors and victims’ families had endured, and that many were destitute from the disaster. Like others in Rhode Island, the brothers thought there needed to be a fundraiser similar to what was done in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when celebrities and performers fronted huge events that raised millions of dollars for those in need. The Station fire was the deadliest rock concert in United States history, and yet the rock music industry had done nearly nothing to help. When the Derderians were asked to do an interview with Lauer, they sensed an opportunity—they would endure the pre-trial risk of a media appearance, if the famed anchor would use his contacts to gather stars for a significant benefit show. Lauer was not just a morning newsman, he was one of the country’s most famous people, and he hobnobbed with other celebrities. If he wanted to, he could use his contacts to help produce a charity show. And, of course, Lauer had a genuine connection to Rhode Island.
Jeffrey noted the look on the anchor’s face when the brothers explained their real agenda: a concert for an interview. Lauer smiled slightly and seemed to have a moment of clarity. Lauer would later remember that the brothers were polite in their pitch—it was conversation and not a “direct quid pro quo” demand. But asking Lauer to effectively buy an interview violated journalism ethics. “I couldn’t,” Lauer said. “It would have crossed a big red line.”
Jeffrey knew these were the ground rules of journalism, but he cared little for the axioms that once defined his career. It might be ethically compromising for Lauer to make such a deal, but Jeffrey no longer worked as a journalist, and he felt no shame in asking. Michael, who had never worked in the media, saw no problem with asking for Lauer’s help. The stakes were too high, and the need too great.
The meeting ended with vague promises to keep in touch. They would never meet again, there would be no Today interview, and no Matt Lauer benefit concert for the nightclub victims.
Years later the Station Family Fund held its own fundraising concert, “Phoenix Rising! Musicians United to Benefit the Victims of the Station Nightclub Fire” at Providence’s Dunkin’ Donuts arena around the fifth anniversary of the fire on February 25, 2008, emceed by Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider with appearances by groups like Tesla, Stryper, and Winger. The show was recorded and televised the following month by the cable television music channel VH1 as Aftermath: The Station Fire Five Years Later. Ticket sales for the performance at the arena were reportedly sluggish, but the benefit raised a million dollars.
Michael and Jeffrey did not give up on the idea of helping the fire’s victims. In 2007 the Derderians cofounded the Station Education Fund with Jody King, brother of the club bouncer Tracy King who heroically died in the fire. The charity obtained scholarships and benefits at seven Rhode Island colleges for the children of fire victims. Additionally, the fund provided books, clothes, and other supplies for students. Of the seventy-six children who lost parents in the fire, twenty-three received help from the fund by 2019.
The idea of Matt Lauer parlaying his celebrity status for disaster victims did eventually happen, but not for Rhode Island.
Even though Lauer would not help victims of the nightclub fire, the anchor went on to do exactly that for those hurt by Hurricane Sandy, which hit New Jersey and New York in 2012. Lauer told Billboard.biz that he came up with the idea to do a telethon benefit for those impacted by the disaster, and that he personally picked up the phone and called Jon Bon Jovi to book him for the show. Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, Billy Joel, Sting, and Aerosmith followed.
“It’s been the easiest thing to book because everybody wants to be involved,” Lauer said.
Lauer’s “Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together” benefit raised nearly $23 million for the American Red Cross in one hour. But in time the veteran anchor would experience his own reversal of fortune. He was fired from NBC News in 2017 for sexual misconduct after coworkers said he coerced them into having sex, sometimes in his Today show office.