Ten

CONFESSION

ALMOST THREE YEARS PASSED, during which little new information about the fire emerged. Then, on October 26, 1961, a handwritten letter sealed in a plain white envelope with no return address was delivered to Fire Department headquarters in Cicero, Illinois. Its anonymous writer named a thirteen-year-old boy as the person who had set fire to an apartment building two days earlier in the suburb made famous in another era as the domain of gangster Al Capone.

This blaze in a building on West 21st Place had started in a pile of crumpled newspapers at the base of a stairwell. It was discovered early and caused little damage. When the town’s fire chief, William Zahrobsky, turned the letter over to police, Captain Chris Rooney called in Lieutenant Victor Witt and youth officer Ron Richards.

“I think you better check into this boy’s background,” said Rooney, reminding the officers of another apartment building fire in the town the day before, October 25, on South 49th Court. This fire had been set in similar fashion—with newspapers being crumpled and ignited in a stairwell.

As they looked into the October 25 fire, the officers learned that the same boy identified in the letter had also been seen leaving that location. A woman who lived in the building across the street told police that at the time of the blaze the boy had come to her home to collect for his newspaper delivery.

“Can you smell any smoke on my jacket?” he asked her.

When the woman couldn’t say for sure, the boy pointed to the building across the street. “There’s a fire over there,” he said. “You better call the fire department.”

After the boy left, the woman found two books of matches inside her front door. They had not been there before he arrived.

The next day Chief Zahrobsky and Lieutenant Witt went to question the boy at Cicero public elementary school, where he was enrolled as an eighth-grader. After being summoned from his classroom, the youth walked into the principal’s office and sat down in a chair. He was chubby, blond-haired, and wore thick glasses. “I had a feeling you were going to come and see me,” he said, looking up at the men.

“Why do you say that?” Witt asked him.

“Because,” he replied, “I was the one who saw that fire on 21st Place the other night. The firemen driving the pumper told me I did a good job, that I probably saved a lot of lives.”

Witt was intrigued by the boy’s candor. He looked at him for a second, then asked, “Are you in the habit of carrying matches with you?”

“No,” the boy answered.

Witt asked the boy to stand up and empty his pockets on the desk. The boy complied. Among the contents were two books of matches and a cardboard box containing several wax-stick matches from the Playboy Club.

“Where did you get these?” Witt asked him.

“From my father’s jacket pocket.”

“Have you ever been in any trouble with the police?”

The boy thought for a second. “Once,” he said, “in Chicago. I tried to derail a train and the police saw me and chased me. They caught me.”

“How do your parents punish you when you do something wrong?”

Because he was a big boy, he said, his mother made him remove his pants, lie across a chair, “and then she strikes me with a cord from an electrical appliance.”

“What kind of punishment does your dad dole out when you do something wrong?” Witt asked.

“He punishes me like a man.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, you know, with rabbit punches.”

“Have you ever been punished for playing with matches?”

“Well, once. My father held my hand over the gas burner on the stove.”

The boy was asked if he was afraid to tell the men about the two Cicero fires for fear of punishment by his parents.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Did you set the two fires in those apartment buildings?” Witt asked him.

Hesitating briefly, the boy looked down, then nodded his head. “Yes,” he said.

As Zahrobsky and Witt continued their conversation with the boy, he revealed that he liked to play with matches and was excited by the sound of fire sirens. Witt decided they should take the boy to the police station for further questioning. His mother was called at her job at an electronics manufacturer in suburban Northlake, and was asked to meet them there.

Once at the station, the boy was led into an interview room where Lieutenant Witt was joined by Officer Richards. When the two officers asked the boy about other suspicious fires in Cicero, he maintained he had started only the two apartment building fires. The officers did not believe him. Witt bent down to one knee and looked the youngster in the eye. “As far as the seriousness of the act,” he said sympathetically, “it is just as serious if you started one fire or a hundred fires. Now, son, be honest with me, did you set any of these other fires in this area?”

“Yes,” said the boy, admitting to several other fires in various locations. One of them had occurred October 9 in a three-story apartment hotel on Cermak Road. He said he had ignited that fire by stuffing newspapers and a cardboard box under the rear staircase, then lighting them with a match. This blaze was extinguished by the fire department without serious damage. He also stated he had turned in a false fire alarm on October 24, the night of the 21st Place fire.

When the boy’s twenty-eight-year-old mother arrived, the officers explained the circumstances of the interview, telling her that her son had admitted setting a series of fires in the town. The woman, who was three months pregnant with her second child, did not look surprised.

“Why did you do this?” she asked him.

The boy did not reply.

Chief Zahrobsky showed the woman the matches that had been removed from her son’s pocket. “Do you know, ma’am, how he may have obtained these?”

“Well,” she said, “he has a habit of going through the drawers. He probably took them from his dad.”

The woman told the police that her son was under the care of the Catholic Counseling Service and had been seen by one of its psychiatrists. The treatment, however, had not been continuous.

Witt placed a call to the Chicago offices of the Catholic Counseling Service, which confirmed the relationship. A counselor advised that she had made one contact with the family, and that an appointment made for further treatment had not been kept. When Witt related the particulars of the current case, the counselor scheduled a new appointment to see the boy. Satisfied with this arrangement, the police released the boy to his mother’s custody.

“Please keep an eye on him,” Witt asked the mother.

ON NOVEMBER 16, 1961, another apartment building fire in Cicero was started on an enclosed rear porch, and the same boy was positively identified as having been seen leaving the building just before the fire was detected. This time a seventy-two-year-old woman living on the building’s second floor was hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

Officers Witt and Richards returned to the Cicero school to question the boy about the latest fire. He related that on the day and time in question, his mother had accompanied him on his newspaper route while he was making collections. But further questioning revealed a period of time in which he was out of his mother’s sight. Working on this period, the officers continued their questioning him about the fire. After a few minutes the boy’s alibi broke and he began to sob. “Yes,” he admitted. “It was me.”

The boy said he had gone to the rear porch of the building, removed some rags stored in a box there, then lit them with a match he claimed to have picked up from a Chinese restaurant on Madison Street in Chicago.

“What did you do after you started the fire?” Witt asked him.

“I went back on my collections,” he replied.

“Why did you start that fire?”

“Because,” he said, “I wanted to get even with the kid who lives there. He pushes me around a lot and I don’t like him.”

The boy’s mother had been called, and when she arrived the two officers related to her the circumstances of the interview, informing her of the admission her son had just made. At first she didn’t believe it.

“Speak to the boy,” Witt said to her. “He’ll tell you.”

After the mother talked with her son privately, the two officers accompanied her and the boy to the Cicero police station, where a juvenile complaint was sworn charging him with the November 16 fire. But later, at a hearing in Cook County Family Court, the boy recanted his admission to police, denying he had started the fire. His mother also testified before the hearing officer that her son had been with her and that she could account for his whereabouts the entire day.

After hearing the evidence and testimony, the court found the boy guilty. He was placed under the supervision of the Family Court and once again released to his mother’s custody.

MEANWHILE, in checking out the boy’s background, Officer Richards began building a rather intriguing profile.

Along with his mother, the youth lived with his thirty-one-year-old stepfather and his sixty-five-year-old grandfather in a brick two-flat on Cicero’s south end. The stepfather was employed as an assembly-line worker at a Chicago electronics manufacturer, and the mother worked full time in Northlake. Following the couple’s marriage in 1959, the husband had adopted the boy, who assumed his new stepfather’s last name.

The youth’s school record was troubled. After moving with his family from Chicago to Cicero in December 1960, the boy was enrolled in St. Attracta’s parochial school, but his parents withdrew him after only two months. In March 1961 he transferred to the Cicero public school, where his attendance record was poor and his behavior noted as “deplorable.” His grades were very low, and his teachers regarded him as a “troublemaker” who always pleaded “for another chance” when he misbehaved.

Digging into the boy’s earlier academic experience, Officer Richards made another discovery, and his interest in the boy heightened considerably. While living in Chicago in the late 1950s, the boy and his mother resided in a small frame cottage on North Springfield Avenue, and under his mother’s maiden name the boy attended the local parish elementary school. It was Our Lady of the Angels.

A check of attendance records confirmed that on the day of the fire—Monday, December 1, 1958—the boy had been in class, a ten-year-old fifth-grader assigned to Miss Tristano’s classroom, Room 206. Richards also learned that while a student at Our Lady of the Angels, the boy would leave his classroom at every available opportunity, asking his teachers to use the washroom or go to the principal’s office.

“He was a chubby little blond-haired kid, tended to fantasize, was not athletic, but smart,” Richards later recalled. “He wasn’t the only kid we ever questioned about starting fires. But knowing he went to Our Lady of the Angels, I admit I got excited.”

Richards called Sergeant Drew Brown at the Chicago police bomb and arson unit. “I need to get some background on the Our Lady of the Angels fire,” Richards told him. “I think we may have something for you.”

ON THE MORNING of December 21, 1961, Cicero firefighters were called to the boy’s home on South 50th Avenue after a fire broke out in the basement. Firefighters arrived shortly after 9:30 a.m., extinguishing the blaze in about thirty minutes. The basement sustained serious damage, and the whole building was filled with smoke.

In speaking with the woman who lived on the building’s first floor, fire officials learned that the boy had been seen in the basement shortly before the blaze erupted. “When I smelled smoke, I opened the back door and he was right there,” the tenant told Chief Zahrobsky. “I’ve seen him down there before, sometimes with a lighted torch. I’m deathly afraid of him.”

Zahrobsky located the boy in the house next door, where the Fire Department’s inhalator squad was treating the youngster’s grandfather for smoke inhalation and a possible heart attack after he was rescued by firefighters from the family’s second-floor apartment.

“Son,” said the chief, “would you come outside with me for a minute?”

“Sure,” the boy replied.

Once outside, the chief asked the boy to sit in his Fire Department sedan, and the youngster complied gladly. Firefighters were picking up their hose lines and clearing the house of smoke when the boy’s mother arrived home from work. “What’s he doing in that car?” she yelled to Zahrobsky.

“I asked him to wait for me there,” said the chief. “You can join him if you like.”

She opened the back door and slid in next to her son.

After the fire operations were completed, the chief returned to the car and drove the boy and his mother to the police station for questioning.

“Son,” the boy was asked, “did you start this fire?”

“No,” he replied. “I was taking the garbage out when I smelled the smoke.”

EXCEPT FOR his short-lived interrogations by Cicero police, because he was a juvenile the youth had at no time been taken into extended detention or locked up. Instead, after each questioning he was released to the custody of his mother.

On January 8, 1962, police again visited the Cicero school where the boy was a student. This time they wanted to question him about another suspicious fire on December 30. The blaze at the Town Hall Bowling Alley on West 25th Street, located a block and a half from the boy’s home, had killed four men. One of the victims, Walter “Sunny” Smith, aged twenty-three, lived with the boy’s family as a boarder. A coroner’s jury had ruled the deaths “accidental,” and foul play was not suspected. Authorities listed the fire’s cause as “unsolved,” though police suspected the boy was responsible.

But under questioning by Lieutenant Witt and Officer Richards, the boy denied any knowledge of the fire, insisting he had been home watching television with his parents. His mother verified the story. “He was with us,” she said. “He didn’t go out all night.”

The following day the boy and his mother were asked to return to the Cicero police station, where officers—joined by investigators from Chicago, among them Sergeant Drew Brown—requestioned the young suspect using a tape recorder. During this exhaustive interview the boy again broke down and admitted to setting a rash of fires both in Cicero and Chicago, in basements and on back porches. He said he had set his first fire when he was five years old, holding a match in front of a spray paint can in a garage near his home on Chicago’s West Side. The paint, he said, “ignited like a big torch” catching the garage on fire. The fire had been extinguished after a neighbor noticed smoke.

“I love to watch fire trucks,” the boy said. “I have a siren on my bicycle and I ride around with it on half the time. I like to set fire to garbage cans. I like to light a twig or a stick and carry it around from can to can like a torch. Sometimes the can burns like a rocket.

“When I set a fire, I stay in the neighborhood sometimes. I play ball or play with the kids. When the Fire Department comes, I run back and watch.”

When questioning turned to the Our Lady of the Angels fire, the boy grew tense and his face became flushed. But he quickly regained his composure and vehemently denied setting the school fire. “I don’t know who started it or how it started,” he said.

Police believed the boy was lying. “Son,” Brown inquired, “who was your teacher when you went to Our Lady of the Angels?”

“Miss Tristano,” he said. “She pushed me out the window.”

“You jumped from the window to save yourself?”

“She pushed me out. She pushed all the kids out. I did a belly-flopper and landed in a fireman’s net.”

Later that same afternoon Sergeant Brown and Officer Richards met with Miss Tristano, who by then had become an instructor at a local Catholic college. Tristano related to the officers how, after smelling smoke, she had led her students to safety by taking them down the interior stairway in the school’s south wing.

She disputed the boy’s claim that she had pushed him out the window. “None of my students left by the windows,” she said. “When I smelled the smoke, I took him and the others out into the hallway and down the stairs. I am quite sure I pushed no one out.”

“Do you remember this boy specifically?” Brown asked the teacher.

“Yes,” she replied. “He sat in the right front seat where I could watch him. He was a problem boy. Any kind of mischief you can imagine, he was in.”

“Do you know if he left the room that afternoon for any reason?”

“He was in my room when the fire broke out. I remember him being there at least ten minutes before the fire.” But, Tristano said, “three years have elapsed and children often went to the washroom. I just can’t remember.”

After the interview, Brown hastily returned to his office and checked his records on the school fire. Contained in the file was a statement the boy had given detectives on December 12, 1958, in which he reported being evacuated down the stairs along with his classmates from Room 206.

INFORMED OF their son’s admissions, his parents contacted an attorney for advice. Dino D’Angelo suggested they take the boy to the offices of John E. Reid, a prominent Chicago polygraph expert, and have the youth submit to a lie-detector test. The parents agreed and said they would pay for the examination themselves, ensuring that they would receive the results rather than have Reid turn over his findings to the police and fire officials.

On January 12, 1962, the mother brought the boy to Reid’s office in downtown Chicago. Reid was at lunch. While they waited, Robert Cormack, one of the firm’s staff examiners, interviewed the mother for a half-hour. She complained that fire investigators had been harassing and pestering her son and interfering with his education, interrogating him at school every time there was a fire in Cicero.

She did admit, however, that the boy had set some fires. She then produced a list of addresses and dates of eleven fires that had occurred in Cicero and Chicago, including those about which the boy had frequently been questioned.

“I want him to take a lie test to find out once and for all which fires he set and which ones he didn’t set,” she told Cormack. “I think he started one or two of them, but not all of them.” She did not tell Cormack that her son had attended Our Lady of the Angels, or that the police had also questioned him regarding the school fire.

Cormack asked if she thought her son was getting sexual gratification out of setting fires. “He doesn’t seem to realize he’s setting fires,” she said, “and after he sets them, he has a guilty feeling and remorse.”

Knowing his problem, the mother said she regularly drove her son back and forth to school and did not allow him to be out of the house unless he was accompanied. She also told Cormack that the boy was being seen by the Catholic Counseling Service.

During the course of her conversation, the mother related that her son had been born in 1948, in Cleveland, Ohio, an illegitimate child conceived after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather when she was fifteen. The child was born in a home for unwed mothers, and it was planned that the baby would be put up for adoption. But after being unable to agree to the arrangement, the mother decided to keep the boy. She later settled in Chicago, where she had relatives, and the boy’s natural father moved to California. Her new husband, she said, had bought the boy “all kinds of sports equipment,” but because her son was not interested in sports, the equipment had gone unused.

When John Reid returned to the office, Cormack briefed him on the facts, and Reid took the boy into a separate room to interview him further before administering the polygraph. A tall, slender, well-spoken man with a professional air about him, Reid was a lawyer and former Chicago police officer who had walked a beat before building a national reputation as a polygraph expert. He knew the thirteen-year-old boy would not be the most reliable subject for a polygraph test, so he tried to get as much information as possible before the test, letting the idle lie-detector apparatus serve as a silent threat to the boy to tell the truth.

“Son,” Reid began, “I want you to talk to me and tell me the whole truth before we hook you up to the lie detector.”

“I will,” the boy answered. “I’m not going to lie.”

“Good.”

Reid began by asking the boy about the fires he was alleged to have set in Cicero, and the youngster openly admitted to igniting four apartment building fires, including the blaze at his own home. He also admitted setting fire to the garage on Ridgeway Avenue in Chicago, “near where I used to live,” when he was five years old, and further related to Reid the facts of another fire he started in Chicago, inside the hallway of an apartment building near Springfield Avenue and Ohio Street. In starting this fire, the boy said, he had spread newspapers in the hallway, squirted them with lighter fluid, then ignited the papers with a match. “The firemen came and put it out,” he said. To this point the boy had not mentioned that he had attended Our Lady of the Angels School in 1958, or that he had been questioned about the school fire.

“Do you have any others as bad as me on this test?” he asked Reid.

“Yes, we do,” Reid replied. “We have much worse. We have had murderers sit in that same chair.”

The boy paused, then spoke again. “Sometimes,” he said, looking down at the floor, “after I set fires, I feel so bad that I wish I wasn’t even born.” Another pause. “Is it only boys or girls that set fires?”

“Boys or men mostly,” Reid said.

“Then why wasn’t I born a girl?”

Reid didn’t comment. Instead he asked, “What school do you go to?”

“Cicero Public School. It’s a grade school.”

“What grade are you in?”

“Eighth.”

“What religion are you?”

“Catholic.”

“But you don’t go to a Catholic school?”

“I used to,” said the boy. “I did go to St. Attracta and before that, when I lived in Chicago, I went to Our Lady of the Angels School.”

Reid was dumbfounded. Our Lady of the Angels?

“Son,” said Reid, trying to mask the sudden excitement in his voice, “were you at Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire?”

“Yes, I was.”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” he said. “Did you set the fire at Our Lady of the Angels School?”

“No, I didn’t,” the boy responded. “But on the afternoon it happened, I was coming back to school with this other kid, and I said, ‘I got some matches in my pocket and I could burn down the school and we wouldn’t have to go to school no more.’”

“Did you really have matches with you?”

“No. But I told my friend that I did.”

“Son, I want you to make sure you’re telling me the truth because I’m definitely going to include the Our Lady of the Angels fire on the lie test. Now, I’m asking you again. Did you start that school on fire?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Reid decided not to ask more questions about the school fire before administering the polygraph. To ensure that the machine would work on the boy, Reid gave him a standard control test. After fitting the boy with pulse, respiration, and blood pressure monitors, Reid presented him with seven numbered playing cards, all face down.

“I want you to choose one card but answer no to each question I ask you,” Reid instructed.

“Okay,” said the boy. He looked interested and inquisitive, and not the least bit intimidated.

When Reid asked him whether cards one through four were his chosen card, the boy answered no, and little movement was noted on the polygraph. Then Reid asked him whether he had chosen card number five. Again, as instructed, the boy answered no, but this time the polygraph showed considerable movement on the blood pressure and pulse recordings—indications he was lying.

“Son,” Reid said, “it’s clear to me that you took card number five.”

“Gee, that’s right!”

“Good,” Reid said. “It appears that the machine is working on you.”

“Good,” said the youth, his boyish curiosity still apparent.

“Okay,” Reid said, “let’s begin the real test. Remember, just answer the questions by saying yes or no. Understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

Reid decided to lead the boy back to December I, 1958. “Now, let’s start. Did you set fire to Our Lady of the Angels School?”

“No,” the boy answered.

Reid looked at the machine; its movements were identical to those registered after the boy had answered no to question five of the control test. He’s lying, thought Reid. Still, he decided to ease off a little, to let the last question hang over the youngster’s head.

“Did you set fire December 30, 1961, to the Town Hall Bowling Alley in Cicero, Illinois?”

“No,” said the boy. “I was home watching TV with my parents.”

The machine’s response regarding the bowling alley fire was not clear. Reid set down his pencil and looked the boy in the eye.

“Son,” said Reid, showing the boy the polygraph reading, “I think we’ve got something to talk about here. The machine indicates you were not being truthful for the question I asked you regarding the Our Lady of the Angels fire.”

“It says that, does it?”

“Yes, it says that. I don’t think you’re telling me the truth about the Our Lady of the Angels fire.” Reid paused for a moment. “Your mother wants the truth. I want the truth. You told me you’re a Catholic boy. You know telling a lie is a sin. There are ninety-two children and three nuns looking down at us right now from heaven who want the truth. Now tell me, did you set the school on fire?”

The boy looked suddenly to the floor, shifting his eyes back and forth, turning in his chair. “Well,” he said nervously, “I didn’t set the fire. But I’ll let you know who did.”

“All right,” Reid said. “Go on.”

“See, me and this kid, he came home with me at lunchtime, and when we were walking back, he says, ‘Lookit, I got some matches that I found at your house. I can set the school on fire and we’d have a couple weeks off.’”

It sounded to Reid like the boy had created an alter ego, that in fact he was describing himself. “Son,” he said, “I don’t think there’s any other kid at all in this case.”

“Well, do you think that’s so?”

“The lie detector has shown that.”

“Well, I guess so. I guess I better tell you the truth.”

“I guess you better.”

Suddenly the “friend” in the earlier story changed to the person of the suspect himself. The boy began describing to Reid how he had left his classroom on the afternoon in question, obtaining permission from his teacher to use the washroom. He had gone downstairs to the boys’ lavatory in the school basement. He said he had started the fire on the way back to his room, tossing three matches into a waste drum filled with paper at the bottom of the empty northeast stairwell.

“Are you sure,” Reid asked, “that you actually started a fire with the three matches?”

“Oh, yes,” said the boy. “I saw them start up. I stayed there for a minute and watched the flames get bigger and bigger, then I ran back to my room.

“I didn’t want it to be such a big fire, nobody to get hurt. I thought the janitor would find it and he’d put it out. I thought it would be bad enough just to give us a couple days off from school. I didn’t know so many kids were gonna be killed.”

“Why did you set the fire?” Reid asked him.

An edge of bitterness crept into the boy’s voice. “Because of my teachers,” he said. “I hated my teachers and my principal. They always were threatening me. They always wanted to expel me from school.”

John Reid was amazed. He was convinced the youngster was telling the truth. He asked the boy to draw a pencil sketch of the basement and northeast stairwell, and the youngster pinpointed the exact spot where the fire had started. The sketch showed the boy had excellent recall of the building’s interior.

When he finished, he set down his pencil and looked up to Reid. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to get this off my chest.”

BECAUSE OF the enormity of the boy’s confession, Reid left the youngster alone for a moment and walked to the reception room to inform the boy’s mother what he had been told. Upon hearing the news, she didn’t seem very surprised, and Reid quickly determined that all along she had suspected her son of setting the fire.

“I would like to call my husband,” she announced.

“Yes,” said Reid. “I think you should. I would also advise you to contact a lawyer, that is, if you don’t already have one.”

After showing the mother to a telephone, Reid stopped to confer with one of his staff associates, George Lindberg, also an attorney. Reid briefed Lindberg on the facts, and for a moment the two men immersed themselves in thought. The case was complicated, especially because of the confidential nature of the conversation. Still, it would be a good idea to take a statement from the boy, to get the confession on record. Reid looked thoughtfully at Lindberg. “George,” he said, “he’s got the history. He was in the school. I think we should get it down on paper and see where we go.”

LATE THAT AFTERNOON Mildred McGuffie, a secretary in Reid’s office, began taking a lengthy statement in shorthand from the boy in the presence of Reid, Lindberg, and a third staff associate, Stephen Kindig. The boy’s mother remained in the waiting room.

Reid began the questioning.

Q: Did you go to Our Lady of the Angels School at the time there was a fire there?

A: Yes.

Q: What year was that?

A: 1958.

Q: Do you recall the date of that fire?

A: It was on December 1st.

Q: … What grade were you in?

A: Fifth.

Q: Do you recall your room number?

A: 206.

Q: What was your teacher’s name?

A: Miss Tristano. I don’t know if I could spell it or not.

Q: When you went to Our Lady of the Angels, did you usually come home for lunch?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you go home for lunch on the day of the fire, that is December 1, 1958?

A: Yes.

Q: What time did the fire start?

A: Around three o’clock.

Q: Was that a.m. or p.m.?

A: Three o’clock in the afternoon.

Q: Did you come back from lunch with anyone?

A: Yes, my boyfriend.

Q: What is this boy’s name?

A: I don’t remember, but I think it was Bob.

Q: Where does Bob live?

A: I don’t know the exact address. It’s on the opposite side of the street. Our number was 508 North Springfield and he was on the odd side of the street.

Q: I suppose you talked to Bob when you were coming back with him.

A: Yes.

Q: Do you recall at this late time what you talked about?

A: Murders and horror pictures.

Q: How old was this lad you call Bob at the time?

A: Nine at that time.

Q: What grade was he in?

A: Fourth at Our Lady of the Angels School. I never seen his teacher.

Q: So you talked about murders and horror pictures and stuff like that?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you say anything about your school when you were coming back?

A: I told him I had matches in my pocket and I said I was going to burn down the school so we wouldn’t have no more school for a couple of weeks or days and that we’d have a vacation.

Q: What did Bob say?

A: He thought I was kidding.

Q: Were you actually kidding?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you think anything more about burning down the school after that?

A: About a quarter of three that same day.

Q: What did you do?

A: I asked my teacher if I could be excused and went to the washroom. After coming from the washroom, I went to the chapel [in the basement] to see if anyone was in there. Then from the chapel I went back to this here can like the janitors have. It was made out of cardboard and had steel rims on it and I didn’t see anybody no place, and I used three matches and I lit the thing and I ran back upstairs to my room.

Q: After you went to your room, what did you do?

A: I went back to my seat and was talking and goofing around, bothering kids and then my teacher opened the door and there was smoke coming and she ran to the fire alarm upstairs and she turned it in for the school so everybody could get out to know what it was. Then she got all us kids over to the window and [we] had to wait until the firemen could get through there first with the net and she pushed us out the window and she jumped out herself.

Q: What did you do after you got out?

A: I stayed around and watched the fire for a while and then I ran to my [Cub Scout] den mother’s house because she was going to have a den meeting. …

Q: … Just before we started this statement, you made a drawing for Miss McGuffie, Mr. Lindberg and myself, is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: Will you point this drawing out to Mr. Lindberg, who is sitting right next to you, and tell him again what you did after you left your room at Our Lady of the Angels School on December I, 1958?

A: I went downstairs to the boys’ washroom. Then after I went to the washroom I came out of the boys’ washroom and went to the chapel to see if there was anybody in there and there wasn’t anybody in there so I walked back to the can.

Q: What kind of can was that?

A: The can was a cardboard—it was a round cardboard rubbish can for papers and it had metal rims on it for the top and for the bottom. I looked around and I didn’t see anybody. I threw three matches in the can and then ran up the stairs to my room.

Q: Did you light these matches?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you see whether or not they caught fire?

A: Yes.

Q: Did they catch fire?

A: Yes.

Q: In the drawing here it seems as though you have the can located under the stairs, is that where it was?

A: Yes.

Q: Was there anything else under the stairs?

A: Two or three little rooms for the janitor to put his brooms, brushes and stuff like that.

Q: What was your reason for setting this fire?

A: What do you mean?

Q: What did you do it for?

A: Well, I thought we’d get a couple of days off from school because of the fire.

Q: Did you see flames in the can before you left to go back to your classroom?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you have any special feeling at the time you started this fire at Our Lady of the Angels School?

A: Just that I didn’t think it was going to hurt nobody.

Q: What was in this can that you threw the lighted matches into?

A: School paper from all the rooms—all kinds of paper and the papers that kids throw out that they didn’t need.

Q: Was it full to the top?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you tell anybody about Our Lady of the Angels fire before?

A: No.

Q: Why are you telling us about it now?

A: I wanted to get it off my chest.

Q: Why didn’t you tell it to anyone before?

A: Afraid my dad was going to give me a beating and I’d get in trouble with the police and I’d get the electric chair or something.

Q: Why are you thinking about the electric chair?

A: On account of what my dad told me.

Q: Was he referring to anything particularly?

A: No.

Q: How did your father start talking to you about the electric chair and so forth?

A: A couple of days ago it was a picture I seen—Wednesday, I think—a picture of a guy. He got sent to the chair for nothing—he didn’t do it and my dad kept telling me things about it and about the gas chamber.

Q: This picture you are speaking of, where was that picture?

A: On TV.

Q: Who played in that?

A: Edward G. Robinson.

Q: I want to get it clear in my mind as to how your father talked to you about the electric chair. You said he brought it up after seeing this Edward G. Robinson picture the other night, but did he say anything about that to you before this?

A: No, except for that one fire I set at 1906 49th Court in Cicero.

Q: When was that?

A: I don’t know what day it was. It was on the night I was collecting for my paper route. I think it was around Thanksgiving in November.

Q: What did he say to you then?

A: He said the next time I set any place on fire and if you kill somebody and if the police don’t get you and give you the electric chair, I’ll come after you myself personally and kill you.

Q: Did you believe your father would do this?

A: Yes.

Q: Before this past November and before the statement that you said your father made to you about the electric chair, what was the reason why you didn’t tell anyone about Our Lady of the Angels fire?

A: I was scared to.

Q: Who were you afraid of?

A: I was scared of my dad. Not my mother, but my dad would give me a beating.

Reid concluded the interview by bringing the boy back to the present, ensuring for the record that the statement was not in any way coerced or given under false pretenses—that the boy was confessing willingly and knowingly.

When the interview concluded, the boy was left alone in the examining room. Reid and his staff went into another office to begin transcribing the statement into typewritten form.

Meanwhile the boy asked for something to read, and he was handed a few magazines. Picking up a November 1961 issue of Look magazine, he began flipping through its glossy pages. When he came upon a color photograph showing the Kennedy family posing in front of a Christmas tree inside the White House, he stopped. The tree in the photo was set next to a grand staircase with bright red carpeting running up its steps. The boy unzipped his trousers, removed his penis, and began to masturbate.

Unknown to the boy, the scene was being observed by Stephen Kindig of Reid’s staff, who had been posted to monitor the boy through a two-way mirror to ensure that the youngster did not try to injure himself or attempt suicide by jumping out the window. Kindig went to summon Reid. “John,” he said, “I think you better come with me. I want to show you something.”

When the two men returned to the mirror, the boy was still masturbating—fondling himself with one hand and turning pages with his other, often returning to the photograph of the White House Christmas tree. The two men watched as the boy masturbated for four one-minute periods. He did not ejaculate. Finally, appearing as though he feared someone might walk in on him, the boy placed his penis back into his pants, zipped up his trousers, then ripped the page from the magazine, folding it in half and stuffing it into his pants pocket.

Reid knew that arson was often a sexually motivated crime, and after watching the boy’s actions he was convinced that the youth was receiving sexual gratification from starting fires. Reid concluded that the boy was dangerous.

THE BOY’S STATEMENT covered eight typewritten pages. At the bottom of the final page, Reid, Lindberg, Kindig, and Mildred McGuffie signed their names as witnesses.

When the boy’s stepfather arrived at Reid’s office early that evening, he and the mother were provided a copy of the boy’s typewritten statement and informed of their son’s admission regarding the school fire. The stepfather rose from his chair, incredulous. “He told you what? Why that little sonovabitch. Where is he?”

“Calm down,” Reid said from behind his desk. “Legally, he cannot be punished.”

Reid explained that despite the admission, the boy could not be charged with a crime. The Illinois criminal code of 1961 stipulated that a juvenile under the age of thirteen was “incapable of committing a crime” and therefore could not be held criminally liable until reaching the age of thirteen. Because the boy had been only ten years old at the time of the school fire, he was immune from prosecution. Still, Reid considered the boy a danger to himself and to society. “It’s obvious he needs psychiatric treatment,” he said. “I think we should give this information to the authorities.”

The stepfather could barely control his anger. “He made that up,” he said. “After that fire, he told us one of his friends, a fourth-grader, showed him some matches and said he was gonna burn down the school.”

Reid thought for a second, recalling that the boy had developed an alter ego during the interview and had attempted to place blame for the fire on this nonexistent person.

Again the stepfather spoke up. “I thought this was to be confidential. I don’t want it going any further.”

Reid said he favored full disclosure.

“If you give this information to the authorities,” argued the mother, “they’ll bring out all the other fires that happened in Cicero, and he was older then. He could get in trouble for that.”

“I think you’ve got a moral responsibility as parents to get help for the boy,” Reid countered. “If you don’t do something now, who knows what he might do? He might start a fire later on, in a hospital or a hotel or God knows where, maybe kill somebody, and then he’ll have to bear the full brunt of the penalty. At least by informing the authorities now, he’ll get proper psychiatric treatment while still a child.”

The mother looked nervous. “What about the newspapers?” she asked. “Can’t we do it without all the publicity?”

“I cannot assure you of that,” Reid answered. “But I promise you that as far as I’m concerned, I will not make any statement whatsoever.”

“If this comes out,” said the stepfather, “they’re gonna put him in jail forever or tie him to the electric chair.” He rose from his chair, visibly upset. “All right,” he said, “I’ve heard enough. I want to see him. Where is he?”

Reid escorted the parents to the examining room where the boy was waiting. As soon as the man confronted his stepson, his anger boiled out of him. “Goddammit!” he shouted. “Did you set that goddamn fire? You tell me now!”

The boy backed against the wall, frightened. “No!” he exclaimed.

“Then why did you say so?”

“Because,” he pointed to Reid, “he told me to.”

Reid asked the boy to leave the room and then scolded the stepfather for his emotional outburst. After the two men regained their composure, Reid told him, “If you don’t bring this thing to the attention of the authorities, I will myself.”

The stepfather thought for a second. “Give us a little time to talk to our lawyer,” he said softly. “He’ll get in touch with you over the weekend.”

“Okay,” Reid said.

FOR JOHN REID, the situation presented a terrible dilemma. The results of the test were supposed to be confidential. If he took them to the authorities, he would be violating the parents’ trust. Yet considering the enormity of the confession, coupled with the fact that the cause of the school fire had never been officially determined despite an enormous amount of money spent to investigate it, Reid felt obligated to clear up the mystery surrounding the deaths of ninety-five people.

The next day, Saturday, January 13, Reid contacted one of his colleagues, Fred Inbau, a Northwestern University Law School professor specializing in legal ethics. After listening to the facts of the confession, Inbau considered the tenuous legal issues of privileged communication versus the public’s right to know the truth. He also considered the boy’s own plight, realizing that by disclosing this information to the authorities, the youth could receive the proper psychiatric counseling he so desperately needed.

Seeing as how, under Illinois law, the boy was immune from criminal prosecution because of his age, Inbau advised Reid that as an attorney and member of the bar it was his duty and responsibility to inform city officials of these developments.

“I would advise you to tell them,” Inbau said.

Reid next telephoned attorney Dino D’Angelo and disclosed the information he had obtained from the boy on Friday, asking D’Angelo to convey the same information to juvenile authorities. He also advised him of his conversation with Inbau. D’Angelo said he would confer with his law partners over the weekend and discuss the matter with the boy’s parents, then contact Reid on Monday morning.

Late Monday Walter Dahl, one of D’Angelo’s partners, called Reid and told him that after discussing the matter with the boy’s parents, the attorneys were not convinced that the youngster had set the school fire and therefore had decided not to disclose the information to the authorities.

“And we hope you won’t either,” Dahl said.

Reid ignored the plea and called Judge Alfred Cilella of Family Court. Reid knew the boy was to be brought before the judge in regard to the Cicero fires, and he thought the judge should know about the youth’s admission about the school fire. But Cilella quickly terminated the conversation. He told Reid he did not want to disqualify himself because he would likely have to hear the case, adding that the boy was already under the jurisdiction of Family Court for another Cicero fire.

Meanwhile, word of the boy’s visit to the polygraph laboratory had leaked, and that same Monday Reid received telephone calls from police Sergeant Drew Brown and from George Bliss, a leading investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

Brown said the information had come to him from, among other sources, Monsignor William Gorman, chaplain of the Chicago Fire Department. “Can you at least confirm for me,” Brown asked Reid, “that this boy has confessed to you the crime?”

“If anything is forthcoming,” Reid replied, “it will probably come from the attorneys for the family.”

Bliss, though, seemed to know the situation well, and he pressed Reid to go on record and provide details of the boy’s confession. “We’ve had a reporter, Weldon Whisler, out in Cicero for the past month and a half checking the kid out,” Bliss advised. “We know all about the questioning he’s been through and we know about the interrogation of his fifth-grade teacher [Miss Tristano] too.”

The Tribune, Bliss said, had been tipped off by Cicero police. When he told Reid his newspaper had contacted Judge Cilella and was going to print the story without using the boy’s name, Reid confirmed that he had talked to the boy and had administered a lie-detector test. But he refused to disclose his findings. “I cannot comment,” he said.

The story of the boy’s alleged confession made front-page headlines in Chicago’s newspapers the next day, January 16: “Information that a 13-year-old boy has confessed setting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels School, which took the lives of 92 children and three nuns, was given yesterday to Judge Alfred J. Cilella of Family Court,” the Tribune’s story read. “Judge Cilella promised an investigation of the report that the boy signed an eight-page confession under questioning by John E. Reid, head of John Reid and Associates … a nationally known expert on lie detectors.

“Cilella said if the confession is found to be accurate, the boy should be taken into custody.

“Suspicion that the boy might have been responsible for the school fire began to grow when investigation showed he had been a pupil there at the time of the fire. He attended school there, however, under a different name….”

ON WEDNESDAY, January 17, 1962, the boy, accompanied by his attorneys, surrendered to Cook County juvenile authorities at the Audy Juvenile Home in Chicago. There, with the approval of Judge Cilella, he was held incommunicado, and investigators were not allowed to interview him.

Cook County State’s Attorney Daniel P. Ward asked Reid for his complete files on the case, and later that day a conference was held among all investigators who had worked on the school fire. After the conference, a delinquency petition was filed in Family Court charging the boy with the three fires he was alleged to have set in Cicero on October 24, October 26, and December 21, 1961. But authorities did not have enough evidence to charge him in the Town Hall Bowling Alley fire, and the petition made no mention of the Our Lady of the Angels fire.

If the boy was found delinquent for any of the Cicero fires, he would be placed in the custody of his parents (amounting to probation) or a psychiatric treatment center, or be incarcerated in an Illinois Youth Commission penal institution.

Ward did, however, indicate his intention of filing a second petition charging the boy with the Our Lady of the Angels fire, even though he knew the Illinois crime code forbade the conviction of any person under the age of thirteen at the time of the committed offense. Even so, by charging the boy, officials were hopeful that a judicial ruling could find the boy responsible for the school fire, the cause of which was still listed as “undetermined,” and thereby lay the mystery to rest.

The boy was not scheduled to be in court until early February. Meanwhile Judge Cilella ordered him to be examined by a team of psychiatrists to determine if he was fit to stand trial. The report submitted to the judge by Dr. John V. P. Steward, the court-appointed psychiatrist who examined the boy along with three consulting psychiatrists, included the following: “We are in agreement that the boy is aware and has full knowledge of the nature of the proceedings initiated against him and is capable of cooperating with his attorneys. … He is not mentally defective nor psychotic. Psychological tests indicate a full scale intelligence quotient of 110, placing him in the bright category.”

Chicago police and fire investigators had reviewed the boy’s confession (obtained from the state’s attorney), cross-referenced it with evidence obtained at the time of the blaze, and reconfirmed that the boy was present in school on December 1, 1958. They concluded that the young suspect was the person who had set fire to the school. Chicago police also tracked down a number of the boy’s former classmates from Room 206, questioning them as to whether they recalled him leaving the room on the afternoon of the fire. None could remember. When Miss Tristano, his teacher, was requestioned, she reiterated her earlier comments, saying she was unable to recall if she had granted the boy permission to leave the room and use the washroom, or if he had sneaked out of the room without her being aware of it.

In a legal maneuver to allow them to question the boy themselves, Chicago investigators issued an amended petition in Family Court charging him with arson in connection with the school fire, including the petition of the boy’s confession that he had started the blaze. The judge accepted the petition, but when the boy’s attorneys objected to his being questioned, Judge Cilella again sided with the defense, and the request to interview the suspect was denied.

FAMILY COURT hearings on the boy’s case began on February 8 and were continued twice. Because the case involved a juvenile, the three sessions were held behind closed doors; access to the courtroom was restricted to attorneys, witnesses, the boy’s family, and the press.

When he was called to testify before Judge Cilella during the first court session, the young suspect, on the advice of his attorneys, entered pleas of not guilty to all counts and denied he had ever started any fires.

At the second session John Reid was called as a witness and asked about the confession the boy was alleged to have made to him. Reid told the court he was convinced the boy was telling the truth about the school fire, describing for the judge how his secretary typed out the statement, which was then read and corrected by the boy, who initialed each of its eight pages. “He told me he set fire to Our Lady of the Angels School, and he drew a pencil schematic sketch of how he set the fire,” Reid testified. “My observation is that the boy set the fire and I believe sincerely that he did.”

When Reid finished, attorney John J. Cogan, a member of the boy’s defense team, objected. “Your honor,” said Cogan, “we would ask that the court strike from the record the testimony Mr. Reid has just given pertaining to this boy’s alleged confession on the grounds that the defense feels this alleged confession was obtained by Mr. Reid involuntarily and under color of coercion. Mr. Reid’s observation and opinion regarding what he ‘believes sincerely’ is not fact and should not be construed as such.”

Cilella agreed, ordering that Reid’s remark be stricken from the record.

Still, Chicago authorities introduced into evidence the burned rim of the fiber trash container in which the boy said he tossed the three matches, and photographs showing the stairwell floor where the circular mark of the trash barrel had been found. Neither the barrel rim nor the photographs had ever been revealed to the general public. Chief James Kehoe of the Chicago Fire Department’s arson squad and police Sergeant Drew Brown both testified that, in their opinion, the school fire started exactly where the boy said he had set the blaze.

At the final court session the boy was recalled to the witness stand and, under questioning by Cogan, recanted his confession that he set fire to the school. He said he signed the confession after Reid told him that if he did so, he could go home.

“I was frightened and tired,” he explained.

As for the pencil sketch he drew in Reid’s office showing the layout of the school basement and the path he allegedly took to the northeast stairwell, the youth testified that he had merely drawn what Reid had told him to. (While the boy was in his office, Reid had determined the school’s interior plan in a telephone call to investigator John Kennedy.)

When the session ended, Cogan asked the court for a directed verdict in favor of the boy, arguing that the school was not a dwelling and therefore the boy could not be charged with arson, only with burning a building, for which the three-year statute of limitations had run out. Cilella, however, disagreed, admitting into evidence the boy’s rough pencil drawing of the school basement.

JUDGE ALFRED CILELLA took pride in his image as a wise and fair jurist in Family Court matters. He had a reputation as being tough on offenders, and he never balked in imposing discipline on youngsters who had veered into a life of delinquency. But this case was different. Instead of helping to rehabilitate the boy, Cilella knew that if he found the youth responsible for the school fire, it would be tantamount to issuing a death sentence. Our Lady of the Angels was in an Italian neighborhood. He himself was Italian. If he ruled that the boy had started the fire, what would be accomplished except to place a deadline on the youngster’s life?

Even though the evidence was circumstantial, Cilella was convinced the boy had set the school fire. The facts showed the boy was obviously sick and a danger to the community, a person in need of psychiatric treatment. It was quite plausible he had not intended to harm anyone; he never expected the fire in that trash can to do what it did. Still, the evidence coupled with the polygraph test, the boy’s confession to Reid, and the drawing he made of the school basement, was overwhelming.

And what about Reid? His stature and reputation as a polygraph examiner was first rate, his credibility flawless. If Reid had formed an opinion that the boy was guilty, he was likely correct.

Then there was the issue of the archdiocese. Cilella was a devout, lifelong Catholic, an active member of the Knights of Columbus DeSoto Council on Chicago’s North Side. He felt a sentimental responsibility to the church in which he had been reared, and to its archbishop, Cardinal Meyer, a quiet, reverent, studious man who avoided the limelight and held a genuine concern for his people.

A finding of guilty against the boy would surely create a legal headache for the archdiocese, and the archdiocese, Cilella figured, had already taken enough hell for the fire. If it were ever proven that one of its own schoolchildren had started this tragic fire, the church could be held negligent for failing in its duty to supervise the boy while he was under its guardianship, thereby creating an environment that enabled him to sneak off and start a fire that killed ninety-five people.

No matter which way he ruled, Cilella knew it would not bring back the children who died in the fire. As a judge on the Family Court, his job now was to help rehabilitate this boy—a delinquent, mischievous thirteen-year-old—a habitual fire-setter with an extremely troubled background.