The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire: 40 years later

SOUTHGATE, Ky.-- 40 years after she escaped the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, Shirley Baker Turner is making the sad pilgrimage up Beverly Hills Drive to pay her respects. Turner Baker was working in the Zebra room when she saw flames on a bus boy's jacket.

"You could see it. I just went and ripped it off of him and told him drop the extinguisher it was empty and let's go," Baker Turner recalled.

Rusty and Brenda Lawrence were celebrating their anniversary and a friend's birthday when the fire started. Brenda was eight months pregnant and had stopped to use the ladies room. They would have already been inside the Cabaret room had she not made the stop. The Lawrences and their friends were going to see John Davidson perform when a bus boy and a a maitre d told them they had to leave the building.

"As we started out down the hallway there were pictures on the wall. We stopped and looked at pictures not knowing anything was going on," Brenda said.

Rusty said the maitre d led him, Brenda and several others through a glass door that he unlocked. When they got outside they knew something was wrong.

"Brenda noticed some smoke and we turned around there seemed to be a lot of black smoke coming out of the chimney and about that time was the first big boom," Rusty said.

Local 12's Howard Ain reported from the scene for several hours that night.

165 people died in the fire. Many of the people who died were overcome by fumes given off from materials that burned.

The Lawrences had traveled to Southgate from Carlisle, Kentucky for the evening. They spent hours outside on a hillside that night. Rusty remembered some women going into labor outside. There were awful scenes they will never forget.

"One of the reasons I things I remember is that people were walking around and calling other relatives names because they couldn't find them," Brenda said. "And the bodies, I can still see that."

At the top of the hill where the Supper Club once sat, survivors laid flowers at a makeshift memorial for those who were lost. The Lawrences and so many others were thankful Sunday that they made it out alive.

"When we think about it, we're just so grateful we're here," Brenda said.

An investigation found several things contributed to the fire including faulty aluminum wiring. The club was also operating over capacity that night. And fire codes were not properly enforced.

Now disbarred attorney Stan Chesley filed a class action lawsuit against the companies that made the aluminum wiring and other materials in the club. He won millions for the victims.