The Circus Fire (44 page)

but that the only thing he remembered prior thereto was seeing the Red Man and seeing a man strike a match and set the wall tent on fire at a point where the tent had been soaked in oil to make it waterproof; that the flames shot on up to the large tent to the top of the big top. He stated that it could be that actually what he saw was himself starting the fire or it could have been a dream and the first appearance of the Red Man. He stated that after he had been awakened he recalled helping to get people out of the big tent."

Segee next confessed to a fire at a Columbus hotel which he started in a clothes hamper and a wastebasket in a broom closet—much like the un-remarked-upon fire at the Aetna building in Hartford while the circus was barred from leaving town.

The following day, investigators drove Segee around Circleville so he could identify the buildings he claimed to have set on fire. He pointed out three barns and garages; the police verified the specific fires and provided dates. They charged Segee with arson, attempted arson and malicious de-

struction of property. He pleaded guilty to all three. They held him for psychiatric evaluation.

Segee was only twenty, meaning he'd been fourteen at the time of the fire. There was some question whether he could have actually worked with the circus at that age.

As the story broke in Ohio, a reporter for the United Press called Commissioner Hickey to let him know. So far Segee hadn't actually admitted setting the Hartford fire, but Ohio fire marshal Harry Callan had told the reporter he thought they would "have a good story by the first of the week."

Hickey got on the phone to Ohio, trying to find out whether he should send a man. One of Callan's deputies said the probe wasn't far enough along to justify that, and that they had no hard evidence that Segee was with the show. If anything developed, the deputy assured Hickey, Callan himself would call him.

The next day Segee's face was in the papers, and the story had added details. The Red Man turned out to be the logo of the National Board of Fire Underwriters—a flaming Indian astride a fiery horse. The board called him "The Fifth Horseman." Segee's mind would go blank; when he came to, he'd find the fire already blazing. Though Haley's defense attorney said this was vindication and that show folks had always held that the fire was set, articles quoted Hickey as not "getting excited" about the case. "They haven't enough on the suspect at present with regard to the circus fire here." He cited Segee's age at the time of the fire and said he had no plans to send any investigators to Ohio.

Later that morning, Ohio authorities said they were convinced that Segee had been with the circus. He'd been called "Little Bob." Segee said he'd been asleep just before the fire, and when the Red Man woke him up from his blackout, the tent was in flames. He slashed the canvas to let a man escape, then tried to rescue another. "As I drug, his arms came out of his socket. I guess it turned my stomach." Like the runaway Roy Tuttle, Robert passed out. He suffered burns on his hands.

Hickey sent two investigators the next day, secretly. While they were en route, Segee kept talking and the arson bureau kept feeding releases to the press. Now Segee believed he
had
set the circus fire, but couldn't be sure. He had blank spots. "We've gone as far as we can with him," one in-

terrogator said. "Psychiatrists will have to work out on him now and I think we'll get the Hartford case cleared up."

A Ringling spokesman traveling with the show doubted Segee worked for them when he was fourteen and said they didn't have employee records going back that far. But a subsequent check with circus attorneys in New York determined Segee had been telling the truth. He'd signed on June 30th in Portland with Whitey Versteeg's light crew and been dismissed July 13th in Hartford.

In Columbus, Ohio officials brushed off Hickey's men. They weren't allowed to speak to Segee, his relatives or William Graham. One of Hickey's men pumped local investigators for information, finding out that the night before the fire Segee had allegedly dropped a cluster of spotlights, breaking them, and Versteeg slapped his face and cut his pay. Segee and Graham, they said, were "for quite some time sexual perverts, in effect, 'sweethearts.'"

A psychologist at University Hospital began his examination of the suspect, asking that no one else question him. The process would take at least three days, possibly as many as ten.

Hickey's men again tried to get interviews with the principals in the case. Failing, they spoke to the members of the arson bureau who'd talked with Segee's relatives. His sister mentioned that as an infant Robert had had a severe case of undulant fever, followed by rheumatic fever as a child, and sunstroke. He'd been confined to bed for a year. At present, she believed her brother was mentally unbalanced.

One of the investigators said that when he was driving Segee from the psychologist's office back to jail, Segee asked what Connecticut authorities would do if he admitted to setting the circus fire. Members of the arson bureau were unanimous in their opinion of the suspect, the men reported to Hickey; based on their investigation, they thought "that Segee was definitely a pervert, a 'psycho,' and a pyromaniac."

With Segee under the direction of the psychologist, Hickey's men could have no contact with him. They asked Callan's office to send them a copy of the examination when it was done, then packed their bags and snuck out of town.

The psychologist tried to gain Segee's trust, saying that by discovering why he set fires, they might prevent other boys from making the same mis-

takes. The doctor also assured him that since most of his crimes had been committed while he was a juvenile, there was little chance of adult punishment. Without concrete proof, any confession he made—"even if true"— would not be grounds for conviction. "As a result," the doctor wrote, "Robert was completely co-operative, at least to the 18 yr. or about age. From that time on we can only give him credit for using his intelligence, although he did plead guilty to the Circleville fires."

Robert Segee confessed not only to more than twenty fires, including the circus fire, but also to four murders, the first occurring when he was only nine years old. On a riverbank in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he'd beaten a neighbor girl to death with a rock. In Portland, he strangled a night watchman when the man caught him setting fire to a warehouse on the docks. At Cape Cottage, Maine, he'd strangled a boy on the beach. And in Japan, less than a year ago, while in the army, he strangled a Japanese boy who called him "chop-chop-chimble," or damn cocksucker.

Ohio sent an investigator to Portland to check up on his story. He found a rash of fires around the Segees' many different homes, and placed Robert's family in Portsmouth at the time of the girl's murder. In 1943, a warehouse two blocks from the Portland waterfront burned; in the basement firemen found the body of the janitor. But police in Cape Cottage had no record of any unsolved murder. And while Segee said the army had court-martialed him for killing the Japanese boy, and that was why he'd been discharged early, no one ultimately verified this.

Meanwhile, the psychologist was fitting together a neat Freudian puzzle of Segee's early life. Robert's father, according to Segee, had punished him for masturbating by beating him and burning his fingers with a match. His hostility toward his father forced him to identify with his mother, and Robert took on a more feminine role. "It has been noted that feminine boys are more addicted to sex stimulation than are normal boys," the psychologist wrote (he would make a point later of stating that he was not a psychiatrist). "It is as if both male and female glandular tissue were demanding satisfaction." Segee's later fires, the doctor discovered, all followed unsatisfying hetero sex. The suspect said he wanted to burn away any bad memories.

The doctor also wanted to tie Robert's firesetting to malnutrition, a pet theory of his. He said he never rated Robert's intelligence, since it had

no bearing on his behavior, though on two I.Q. tests in 1943 Segee scored a 78 and a borderline 60.

As if Segee's father supposedly burning his fingers for masturbation wasn't striking enough, the doctor posited an "undiscovered traumatic event" that lurked in Robert, waiting for a "trigger event" to release his repressed fury—probably the neighborhood girl calling him names. Everyone called Robert names—"Dopey" and "Dummy"; he hated it.

The psychologist believed Robert Segee. He considered him capable of the crimes to which he'd confessed, consistent with the circumstantial evidence of proximity and opportunity unearthed by investigators. He recommended the suspect be held at Lima State Hospital for further observation, and treatment, if possible.

In Portland, one of Hickey's men followed the trail left by the Ohio inspector. He found Segee's old neighborhood and interviewed people who said the whole family was "queer" and "funny-acting" and "crazy." After the circus fire, Robert had come home with a burned hand and gone around telling stories about how he'd slept with the daughter of one of the show's owners. He also said he'd beat up a man who was stealing money from the dead.

The Segees' neighbors in Dover, New Hampshire, were of a similar opinion, considering the entire family to be mental defectives—as the police chief put it, "halfwits right down through." A doctor who knew them professionally said they were morons of the lowest type and didn't consider their word worth much.

The two investigations went on separately, with little consideration or cooperation between the two states. Occasionally Maine—out of some New England kinship, perhaps—leaked documents or accounts of the Ohio investigation to Connecticut, but more often Hickey found out his information from the morning papers. In early June he sent a telegram to Callan officially requesting any statements by Segee concerning the circus fire. It had been ten days since his men had been denied permission to interview the prisoner. Once the psychologist finished his exam, Hickey would appreciate a copy of the results.

Callan called Hickey two days later and assured him that Segee was still incommunicado, with the psychologist. Then where were the papers getting their information, Hickey wanted to know. Callan blamed the

Circleville authorities. Hickey again pressed Callan to provide any and all information on Segee with regard to the circus fire; Callan promised that he would.

Two weeks later, Hickey got his first look at Segee's initial statement—now almost a month old—not from Callan, but slipped to him by Maine.

Meanwhile, Ohio was taking formal statements from Segee's family. His sister knew of Robert setting two fires when he was five or six years old, but none after that. He kept to himself. He and their father didn't get along. She did remember that when they were living in Portsmouth, Robert had witnessed a little girl who'd been raped being pulled from the river. She also thought that the army had given him an honorable medical discharge.

Segee's mother cried through her interview. His father was always very mean to Robert, and the boy was sensitive. He spent most of his time in his room, staring into space, biting his fingernails. She knew there was something wrong with him, but, a mother, she didn't want to admit it. His dreams were so bad he hated going to sleep; he'd wake up sobbing and tell her he didn't want to die. As for the army discharge, Mrs. Segee said Robert felt bad about that; he didn't know what they'd let him out for. She seemed bewildered by it all. "I never knew that Robert had anything to do with any fires and never realized that Robert was responsible for as many fires as he has been responsible for. I feel that possibly his father's treatment in his early life and all through his life has had a lot to do with his condition; also the general treatment by the schoolteachers and other children, including his brothers and sisters."

Segee himself was making pencil and crayon drawings for the psychologist—the red horse and a fiery demon with fangs and flames coming from his head. This was the Red Man Robert dreamed about. "I want to burn again," ordered the demon. A series of pictures showed Robert killing the girl and strangling the other three victims—the two boys kneeling before him. One drawing of a woman's face remarkably like his own on a wall of flames represented "a dream," "like a voice at the circus fire"—the victim telling Segee, "You are the cause of that." Another series showed Robert as an Indian in a sunlit, mountainous land, menaced by a flying eagle.

Of the horse and the Red Man, Robert explained: "The fire would burst up in front of me and it would change into this flaming horse and a

man would appear either afterwards or slightly before I saw the red horse. They would come after I would light a match. It would please me for a split second and then they would frighten me and I would run away. The horse and the man would run after me. I never knew how far they chased me. I would generally end up at home but by the time I got there the fiery horse would be gone. He was running but his hoofs wouldn't be touching the ground. The man would be running like any other man but his feet wouldn't be touching the ground. I was afraid he was going to burn me. I was afraid the horse was going to eat me up."