Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire by John Barylick

Author:John Barylick [Barylick, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Performing Arts, Theater, General, History, United States, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), New England (CT; MA; ME; NH; RI; VT), Music, Genres & Styles, Technology & Engineering, Fire Science
ISBN: 9781611682045
Google: BFJ-lo54z8kC
Publisher: UPNE
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile, criminal investigators remained in a quandary over Frank Davidson’s story. Both club manager Kevin Beese and soundman Paul Vanner denied Davidson’s accounts of The Station’s encouraging pyrotechnics there. What’s more, Beese and Vanner claimed not to even know the guy. The police would have to somehow tease out who was lying. If only investigators could listen in on phone calls between Davidson and the two club employees, they might just learn the truth.

A wiretap is a court-ordered secret surveillance of a phone conversation. Neither party to the conversation knows the conversation is being recorded — until it is too late. But when police have one cooperative witness and another not so cooperative, they sometimes use a recorded “controlled call.” A controlled call is one in which the apparently cooperative witness, in the presence of, and under the supervision of, the police, calls the less cooperative one. The caller follows an agreed-upon outline, which is designed to elicit admissions from the other person. The Rhode Island State Police used separate controlled calls by Frank Davidson to Kevin Beese and to Paul Vanner in an attempt to confirm Davidson’s story. The calls’ content proved to be enlightening, if not particularly enlightened.

On the issue of whether Davidson actually knew Beese and Vanner, that much was readily apparent from the opening seconds of each call. As to whether either club employee was aware of prior pyro at the club, the transcripts of the calls could fairly be entitled, “Beavis and Butthead Analyze Fault in the Station Fire.” Studies in rationalization and circumlocution, the two conversations establish beyond dispute that employees of the club well knew that pyro was used there for years, with permission often explicit, but sometimes tacit. In his call, Vanner volunteered that once a band was given permission by the club to use pyro, it probably wouldn’t ask permission on subsequent gigs.

Contrary to the statements he gave police, Beese admitted to Davidson in his recorded call that permission to shoot pyro was, indeed, given in the past: “Some we knew about, some we didn’t know about. . . . But it’s not like every show we have is a pyrotechnic thing.” As far as Beese was concerned, the prosecutors should have only focused on Dan Biechele. “The guy from Great White is the guy that should go down,” was the club manager’s considered legal opinion.

Unaware that the call was being recorded, Beese confirmed Davidson’s claim that he had demonstrated pyro for Beese, and shot it at concerts at The Station: Davidson: And you know, he [Biechele] didn’t have any extinguishers or, I mean, that was a real dumb move on his part.

Beese: Oh, it was really dumb.

Davidson: Yeah.

Beese: It was real dumb.

Davidson: I mean, at least we had, you know, we had Scott [Gorman, holding a fire extinguisher] there and all that shit, and I had Aaron there and, you know.

Beese: Right.

Davidson: So at least I had my ass covered that, you know, the nights I shot. I just want to make sure that I, you know.

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