The Circus Fire (46 page)

A sudden nostalgic interest built, shored up by books like Fred Bradna's
The Big Top
and J. Y. Henderson's
Circus Doctor.
In '52,
The Greatest Show on Earth
hit the big screen. It grossed over $20 million—at that time the second biggest box office in history, behind
Gone With the Wind
—and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The show received over $1 million in royalties—money they desperately needed.

Now that all the claimants had been paid, Edward Rogin applied for his receiver's fee. He asked for $175,000. The circus refused to pay him. Like any good lawyer, he took them to court. Among the facts that came out of the proceedings was Rogin sending Pinkertons after the circus when he suspected the show of underreporting their daily gate receipts (it proved to be true). While Rogin's receivership had been incredibly successful, the court needed better documentation of his work, and in the end awarded him only $60,000. He appealed to the court of errors—and lost.

In another long-standing case, the Coughlans of Bristol won custody of Patty Murphy and her brother. Mr. Coughlan would die just one year later.

The circus grounds changed once again. On Hampton Street, the city broke ground for Stowe Village, a sprawling housing project, part of which encroached on John Sponzo's old property. Within months of its opening, the same ghost stories made the rounds, except now instead of flimsy barracks the spirits of dead children wandered the halls and stairwells of brick lowrises.

In January of 1952, the fund set up to provide flowers for Little Miss 1565's grave ran dry. After a notice in the paper, Thomas Barber received a ten-dollar check from an inmate in the Massachusetts State Penitentiary known as "The Phantom Burglar." Rightfully shamed, the Allied Florists Association of Greater Hartford stepped in and pledged to supply flowers for her in perpetuity.

In November, Democrat James Haley ran for the U.S. Congress and won, representing a newly formed district in Sarasota. His constituents would reelect him to the House eleven consecutive times. In stark contrast to his tenure with the Ringlings, he never lost an election.

Also that year, Barbour Street's John Stewart, who'd discovered in himself an unsuspected courage and urge to help people that day, joined the Hartford Fire Department. One day he would be chief.

Commissioner Edward J. Hickey died in the fall of 1953, with Adolph Pastore and Hugh Alcorn at his bedside. Thousands attended his funeral. The police blocked the streets off. During his career, he'd championed the use of such innovations as radar and helicopters. His obituary didn't mention the circus fire.

As if the two had been mysteriously linked, Edith Ringling died the very next day in Sarasota. Edward Rogin credited her with the success of the receivership, saying she was always on the side of the claimants "when other interests in the circus were opposing us. She was a great woman and a great humanitarian."

Also that fall, Barbara Smith finished her nursing courses at St. Francis, earning her cap. She applied for a job at Municipal Hospital (now called McCook) and got it.

In the summer of '54, just short of the fire's tenth anniversary, the courts awarded Julius Schatz $100,000 for his services as receiver's counsel. Schatz had worked closely with John Ringling North; both exuberant, difficult men, they took an immediate liking to each other. Quiet, steady

Edward Rogin could not help but see the judgment as a slight. Schatz had made himself out as a major player when Rogin had been the one stuck with the daily chores of the receivership. The resulting bitterness between the two men poisoned their lifelong friendship.

Patty Murphy finished her freshman year at Bristol High. An honor student, she belonged to the Junior Red Cross, edited the freshman page of the school paper, and sang in the glee club. She was a typical teenager, her grandmother said. The burns hadn't restricted her at all.

Elliott Smith worked the tobacco fields that summer before heading off to Syracuse in the fall. He planned to major in chemistry. His parents had nurtured his settlement money; he would use it for tuition.

Donald Gale's uncle was a devoted amateur photographer. He roved upstate New York and New England, seeking out picturesque churches. Donald watched him develop his prints, the images magically solidifying at the bottom of the trays. Soon he was doing it, too. He built his own darkroom, and in 1955 landed a job at Newington Children's Hospital in the photography department. He would stay there thirty-three years.

Jerry LeVasseur attended the Gunnery, where all students were required to play sports. He lettered in basketball and captained a football team that lost only one game. In college he would run track; later he raced competitively.

In 1956, Ed Lowe moved with his new family to Westbrook, down by the shore. He'd retired, but in his living room, under the glass top of a tea table, he kept a picture of 1565. Once he had his six-year-old daughter lie down on the couch in the same attitude as the mystery girl—eyes closed, a blanket thrown over her exactly the same way—while he took pictures.

He didn't see much of Thomas Barber anymore. On Decoration Day and the anniversary and Christmas Eve he'd get dressed and drive up to Hartford and meet his old partner at the cemetery, but that was it. He had a new family, a new life.

But the girl didn't let go. She came up in conversation; she was a part of him. A friend from West Hartford who rented a summer cottage near them thought the girl might be Judith Berman. Ed Lowe had known her uncle Bill Berman for years. He used to have the beat in front of their store on Franklin Avenue. The day of the fire Judith's father Hy Berman had been out of town, so Bill Berman and his wife made the identification.

Lowe drove up to West Hartford with the picture and talked with Bill Berman. According to his widow Judith Lowe, Ed Lowe told her that Bill Berman said he thought it was his niece, but asked that Lowe not make it public. The family had been through enough. Lowe promised, telling only his wife. On the back of the photo, he wrote in black magic marker: "JUDY
BERMAN? NO QUESTION."

In '56 the circus visited Plainville for the last time. Emmett Kelly was gone, taking his Weary Willie routine to nightclubs and TV. The troupe struggled through the summer until John Ringling North could bear it no more. On July 16th, at Heidelberg Raceway outside of Pittsburgh, North closed down the show, saying the tented circus was "a thing of the past." From now on they would play in stadiums and arenas.

That summer Henry Ringling North received a telegram from a
Courant
reporter (obviously new) wondering if any elephants had been killed in the circus fire. "Some bones have been found near the old circus grounds which scientists are examining," it said. "They believe the bones are either from an elephant or a prehistoric mammal."

In August, State Policewoman Anna DeMatteo made a brief formal inquiry as to the identity of Little Miss 1565. The year before, she'd worked in New Haven with Don Cook, and in the course of their conversations, Don mentioned that he had a little sister who died in the fire and who was never found. Don believed the girl whose grave Barber and Lowe decorated was his sister. At the time, DeMatteo made little of his remarks, but the next spring while attending a lecture on identification at the police academy, she recalled his story. Now an officer, she requested a picture and a sample of hair (snipped, it seems, from the corpse) and quietly took this information to her superiors.

She received a reply within a week. "Your report was reviewed by Chief Michael J. Godfrey, who recalls the persons involved in your report, and he personally talked with Mrs. Cook at the time of the fire.

"The young man Donald, who gave you this information, must be misinformed because Mrs. Cook did lose a child in the Hartford circus fire, but it was a boy instead of a girl. Identification was made.

"This matter can now be considered closed."

All of this, of course, was suspect. Mildred Cook drifted in and out for several weeks after the fire, and according to the records, Godfrey him-

self never followed any of the missing leads. He was too busy being Mortensen's point man. Also, though Thomas Barber was still working with the city police, and nationally known for his involvement in the 1565 case, it seems that no one brought him in on the investigation.

Barber stayed faithful, visiting Northwood three times a year. Apparently Lowe couldn't make it for the anniversary in 1958, because the AP wire story featured only Barber at the grave with a pot of red carnations. It was Sunday morning; he'd worked graveyard that night and he was tired, but he was there, on one knee, his hat in his hand. "I think I'll go to the grave as long as I live," he said. There was a geranium there too; he wasn't sure who it was from. "I have this funny feeling that people who lost a child in the fire are getting doubtful about Miss 1565. They think that maybe she is their little girl. I've found flowers here before."

AP sent the story out around the country, and a surprising number of papers picked it up. It had been years since people had thought of the fire, and to find this man still honoring that little girl touched them. Barber received a flood of mail, including a few marriage proposals from widows and older women. The majority thanked Barber for restoring their faith in the goodness of man. Many wrote poems or enclosed inspirational literature.

The story also brought out the self-styled detectives and amateur psychics. One who signed herself as Solid Citizen guessed: "My impression is that the girl was named Molly Vincent (or Benson, Bronson, Brinson, Von Zandt or a similar two-syllable name) and that she came from the Upper Linden— Bayonne area of N.J. Magnolia is a clue. Either she lived on Magnolia St., her mother was named Magnolia, or she was born in Mississippi."

Among the stack of letters was one from a Los Angeles columnist. Years before, she'd mentioned the case in her column and a woman had called her, saying she'd lived in Massachusetts at the time of the fire. The woman told her a story about a local girl that now the columnist struggled to recall. "The little girl, about seven, was being raised along with her brothers nine and eleven by an aunt since her widowed mother was employed in Hartford. The day of the fire the mother had taken all three of her children to the circus. During the panic they became separated; she and the older boy were badly burned, the younger boy's body was recovered but the little girl was never found. The aunt viewed Little Miss 1565 but knew she was not her niece.

"Now here comes the weird part. They had a simulated grave next to the little boy's grave and—this young woman told me—on anniversaries would take the children's toys out to the cemetery and even have 'tea parties.'"

The columnist had forgotten all the names, and the young woman had left years back to join her serviceman husband in Japan, but she offered Barber the information, for what it was worth. Whether Barber did anything with the letter or the lead is unknown, but clearly the woman had described, with a few twists and a weird anecdote attached, Eleanor Cook and her family.

The sudden popularity of Barber and 1565 inspired a novel. Connecticut mystery writer Doris Miles Disney's
No Next of Kin
cashed in on the public's interest, solving the case of an unidentified little boy.

A different, far more horrible reminder struck that December. In Chicago, a fire at the Our Lady of the Angels school killed ninety-five people, nearly all children. Three years later, police arrested a teenager in connection with a rash of smaller fires. In the course of his interrogation he confessed to the Our Lady of the Angels fire. Records indicated he attended the school that day. He was introverted, a poor student and—doctors said—derived sexual pleasure from setting fires. His father once punished him by holding his fingers over the flame of a gas stove. The similarities to the Segee case were unmistakable, and as with Segee, authorities could never pin down a conviction. A juvenile, he served time for the other fires.

While the boy's trial was going on, a lit cigarette ignited trash stuck in a chute between the floors of Hartford Hospital's South Building. The chute acted like a flue, filling the upper floors with smoke. People trying to flee couldn't see the exit signs. Among the sixteen patients that died in the fire was Gladys Kokoska, a grandmother who'd recovered from her circus fire burns in the very same building. Her family buried her in Northwood Cemetery.

As the city recovered from the shock, news came from Brazil that a nylon circus tent in Rio de Janeiro had burned, killing more than 320 people, almost twice the Hartford toll. A young former employee whom doctors called mentally retarded admitted setting the blaze for revenge, an older accomplice splashing gas on the fabric. Police played his taped con-

fession for newsmen as a line of more than two thousand relatives formed outside the morgue to identify loved ones.