Episode 128

In Part 3 of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we turn our attention to the investigation—and to the stark differences between the work of the New Orleans Police Department and the Louisiana Fire Marshal’s Office.

We dig into the physical evidence recovered after the fire, including the Ronsonol lighter-fluid can, laboratory testing of the stairwell carpet, and a surprisingly fascinating series of flammability tests. Then we follow investigators as their attention turns toward Roger Nunez, a man thrown out of the Upstairs Lounge shortly before the fire who, according to a badly injured survivor, left after making an ominous threat.

As the Fire Marshal’s Office continues chasing witnesses and leads, investigators uncover a broken jaw, conflicting timelines, contradictory witness statements, and evidence that raises serious questions—but provides few definitive answers.

The police file contains many of those same questions. What it seemingly does not contain is much evidence that anyone kept trying to answer them.

More than fifty years later, we compare the investigations side by side and ask: Was the investigation into the deaths of 32 people simply difficult—or did investigators stop pulling at the threads before they should have?

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Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

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Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Delery-Edwards, Clayton. The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Fieseler, Robert W. Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Camina, Robert L., writer, director, and producer. Upstairs Inferno. Camina Entertainment / Upstairs Inferno, LLC, 2015. Documentary film. Narrated by Christopher Rice.

The National WWII Museum. “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.” Conversation with Robert W. Fieseler and Ed Lengel, PhD. September 9, 2020. YouTube video. https://youtu.be/6A13PovoDAQ?si=7GnzAeQBCgEfE1it

Episode 127

In Part Two of Fire in the French Quarter: The Upstairs Lounge, we look at what happened after the flames were extinguished. Survivors faced the threat of being outed, victims and their families were met with cruelty and rejection, and investigators began trying to determine whether the fire had been deliberately set. As police chased conflicting leads, strange confessions, and a can of lighter fluid found near the bottom of the stairs, a clerk at a nearby Walgreens gave them their first potentially significant lead.

CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com

The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Delery-Edwards, Clayton. The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Fieseler, Robert W. Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Camina, Robert L., writer, director, and producer. Upstairs Inferno. Camina Entertainment / Upstairs Inferno, LLC, 2015. Documentary film. Narrated by Christopher Rice.

The National WWII Museum. “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.” Conversation with Robert W. Fieseler and Ed Lengel, PhD. September 9, 2020. YouTube video. https://youtu.be/6A13PovoDAQ?si=7GnzAeQBCgEfE1it

Episode 126

On June 24, 1973, a fire tore through the Up Stairs Lounge, a second-floor bar in New Orleans’s French Quarter that had become a place of community and acceptance for the city’s gay population. Thirty-two people died in what remains the deadliest fire in New Orleans history.

In Part One of Fire in the French Quarter — The Up Stairs Lounge, we go back to New Orleans in 1973 to explore the people and the place before following the events of that Sunday evening as a fire in the lounge’s narrow entrance stairway turns a popular gathering place into a death trap.

But once the flames were extinguished, the hardest—and darkest—parts of this story were only beginning.

CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com

The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Delery-Edwards, Clayton. The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Fieseler, Robert W. Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Camina, Robert L., writer, director, and producer. Upstairs Inferno. Camina Entertainment / Upstairs Inferno, LLC, 2015. Documentary film. Narrated by Christopher Rice.

The National WWII Museum. “Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.” Conversation with Robert W. Fieseler and Ed Lengel, PhD. September 9, 2020. YouTube video. https://youtu.be/6A13PovoDAQ?si=7GnzAeQBCgEfE1it

Episode 125

After eight episodes unraveling the Whiskey Au Go Go fire, we're joined by Australian author and historian Geoff Plunkett, whose decades of research have helped uncover the complicated—and often contradictory—story behind one of Australia's deadliest fires.

Geoff takes us behind the investigation, the people at the center of the case, and the evidence that has fueled questions about what really happened at the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub on March 8, 1973. We talk about the challenges of separating fact from decades of rumor, what the historical record can—and can't—tell us, and some of the details that surprised us most while researching the series.

It's a chance to go beyond the case files with someone who has spent years digging into the story—and to revisit the Whiskey Au Go Go with a few questions we still weren't quite ready to put to rest.

Episode 124

In the finale of Pulpit and the Pyre: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney, the carefully constructed world around Pastor Nick Hacheney finally begins to collapse.

For years, Nick maintained control through secrecy, manipulation, spiritual authority, and a web of relationships with women who each knew only pieces of the truth. But when those women began comparing notes—and finding support outside the closed system of the church—the stories Nick had told them started falling apart. Eventually, Sandy Glass went to police with an explosive allegation: Dawn Hacheney's death had not been an accident. Nick had murdered his wife.

Investigators reopened a case that had been closed for nearly five years and took another look at the physical evidence. The extraordinarily high level of diphenhydramine in Dawn's blood. The wrapping paper found in bed around her body. The propane cylinders that were supposed to explain the flash fire—but weren't empty. And a fire timeline that didn't behave the way the original propane-leak theory said it should. Piece by piece, the explanation that had allowed Dawn's death to be ruled accidental began to collapse.

Finally, we look beyond the murder itself at the coercive control that allowed Nick to manipulate so many people around him—and why intelligence, charisma, compassion, religious knowledge, and even genuine acts of kindness are not proof that someone is trustworthy. Sometimes the most dangerous people wear incredibly convincing masks.

If anything discussed in this series feels familiar—particularly coercion, undue influence, or control within a religious group, organization, or personal relationship—resources are available through the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. You don't have to decide whether what you're experiencing deserves a particular label before you're allowed to ask for help.

CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com

The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Episode 123

When Dawn Hacheney’s death was ruled an accident, investigators had little reason to look beyond the fire. But outside the official investigation, troubling questions were already circulating about Pastor Nick Hacheney, the women he counseled, and the increasingly blurred boundaries inside Christ Community Church.

In Part 2 of Pulpit and the Pyre, we examine the church culture that gave spiritual leaders extraordinary influence over their congregation, Sandy Glass’s prophetic visions, the custom rings purchased before Dawn’s death, and the relationships Nick cultivated with vulnerable women who trusted him as their pastor. As Nick increasingly framed his own desires as the will of God, questions and challenges became “spiritual warfare”—and manipulation could masquerade as faith.

But eventually, the people around Nick began listening to the alarm bells they had been taught to ignore. And one of the women he manipulated would ultimately make a promise of her own: to tell the truth.

CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com

The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Episode 122

Pulpit and the Pyre: The Murder of Dawn Hacheney – Part 1

When a house fire claims the life of Dawn Hacheney the day after Christmas 1997, investigators initially conclude it was a tragic accident. A bedroom filled with Christmas gifts, portable propane cylinders, a space heater, and an elevated level of Benadryl appear to support a devastating—but explainable—chain of events.

But as a fire protection engineer, April isn't content to stop at the official explanation.

In Part One of this new series, we examine the fire scene, the science behind the original accidental-fire theory, and the unusual beliefs of the charismatic church community surrounding Dawn and her husband, youth pastor Nick Hacheney. Along the way, we explore authority, discernment, and how deeply held beliefs can shape the way people interpret tragedy.

Five years would pass before everything investigators thought they knew about Dawn's death would be turned upside down.

In this episode:

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The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Episode 121

After eight episodes, Foretold: Australia’s Whiskey Au Go Go Fire comes to its dramatic conclusion.

In this finale, we examine the extraordinary events that unfolded after James Finch's release from prison, including his televised confession, his immediate recantation, and the allegations that reignited questions about police corruption, fabricated confessions, and perjury. We also explore the competing theories that have surrounded the Whiskey Au Go Go fire for more than fifty years—from organized crime and protection rackets to insurance fraud, revenge, and international heroin trafficking.

Finally, we dive into the evidence presented during the recent coronial inquest, discuss why its findings remain eagerly awaited, and share where we believe the evidence points after eight weeks of research.

But above all, we remember the fifteen innocent people who lost their lives on March 8, 1973, and examine the building failures that transformed a criminal act into one of Australia's deadliest nightclub fires.

CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com

The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Episode 120

Were the right men convicted?

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The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified. 

Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments:

Listener discretion is advised.

Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated 

Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com

Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

SOURCES:

Episode 119

John Stuart and James Finch finally stand trial for the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing—but this is no ordinary murder trial. As prosecutors build their case around disputed confessions, jailhouse informants, and weeks of alleged extortion threats, Stuart repeatedly sabotages the proceedings by swallowing homemade spring-loaded wire devices that send him into emergency surgery. Eventually barred from attending his own trial, Stuart dismisses his lawyer, forcing the court into the extraordinary position of conducting part of the proceedings in his hospital room.

This episode explores the bizarre courtroom drama that followed, the witnesses whose credibility would be questioned for decades, and the evidence that convinced a jury to convict both men. But the story doesn't end with the verdict. From rooftop prison protests and repeated acts of self-harm to lingering allegations of fabricated confessions and unanswered questions about Stuart's death, the controversy surrounding Australia's "crime of the century" only deepens. And with another confession, a kidnapping, and fresh challenges to the convictions still ahead, the Whiskey Au Go Go saga isn't over yet. 

Sources for this episode include Geoff Plunkett's excellent book, The Whiskey Au Go Go Massacre: Murder, Arson and the Crime of the Century, along with contemporary reporting and historical records. If you'd like a much deeper dive into the case, we highly recommend the book.

As always, keep your exits clear and your fire escapes free of storage.

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Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at [email protected] We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review. 

If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet. 

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