A hopeful end to a story that shouldn’t need to be told
It has been several years since I wrote about Louis Taylor, the 17-year-old arrested in the 1970s for his purported role in a fire at Tucson’s historic Pioneer Hotel that resulted in 29 deaths. Louis spent almost 42 years in custody, including the time I knew and occasionally visited with him during his stay as a juvenile at Chazen Institute, previously Arizona Ranch School, a nationally recognized adolescent treatment center in Tucson.
During conversations I had with Louis, and likewise in talks I was aware of him having with the school’s founder, Marshall Chazen, he repeatedly denied having a role in the Pioneer Hotel tragedy. In fact, he had been called a hero for helping to save the lives of some of the victims.
My part in this story
As a bit of background, my peripheral connection with the case was the result of the years I spent overseeing an intensive schedule of newspaper, television and public appearances that Chazen, the school’s founder, made around the U.S. to describe his innovative treatment regimen. Thus, in the time I spent with staff at the facility, I came to know Louis and some of the others referred there, mostly by government entities wanting custodial treatment for young people considered at risk.
Louis, based on his lack of previous criminal activity, was an unlikely candidate even for that type of minimal care. However, in the Pioneer Hotel case, the public’s unyielding determination to exact retribution for a calamity of such magnitude left police with no choice but to track down the supposed perpetrators and pursue an arrest quickly. Because of the urgency of that mandate, and the magnitude of the event itself, an imminent arrest was no surprise.
The fire and what came next
Looking back at the night of the tragic event, Louis and a group of friends had been on a fun-seeking escapade, looking more for a night of teenage revelry than a treacherous killing-spree. That was their story when police finally learned of the group’s havoc-making and tracked down its participants.
What followed, according to the record, was police interrogating Louis for hours, without an attorney or a recording device involved. Louis, who at the time and throughout his custodial years maintained his innocence, was sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2013 after serving 42 years, part of which, as mentioned previously, were spent in Chazen’s Tucson facility. Although Chazen at the time was largely certain of his Louis’ claim of innocence, and helped in the efforts by others to reconsider what role, if any, Louis had played in the fire, no court was willing to rehash the case or, apparently, consider the possibility that Louis had been falsely accused and convicted. In the years that followed, one group after another, including the Arizona Justice Project, tried to intervene on Louis’ behalf. Even a finding along the way that the real cause of the fire, an electrical malfunction, failed to result in a retrial for Louis. It was only after a “60 Minutes” investigation, and further efforts by the Justice Project, raised even more compelling questions about Louis’ alleged guilt, and he finally was released from custody after agreeing to plead no contest to the charges.
Said Taylor upon his release: ‘I’m just grateful to God, man, that I finally got out.”
According to those who welcomed him less than 24 hours after his departure from prison, Taylor was full of conflicting emotions.
“I did 41 years of my life for something I didn’t do. It was shameful—it was shameful what they did to me.” Asked why Louis’ attorneys didn’t go forward with another trial to completely clear Taylor’s name, one of them said, “We would have done that, but the Pima County Attorney’s Office said they’d fight the petition of relief all the way to the Supreme Court. It would have meant another two, three, four years of incarceration for Louis.”
Taylor said he almost cried when he made the decision to plead no contest. “I didn’t want to go against my principles but I didn’t have a choice,” Taylor said. “How should I give them another minute, another hour, another decade in prison for something I didn’t do? I wanted my freedom.”
Now, all these years later, it appears there may be one more chapter to the story. A financial settlement was being pursued, based on a rush to judgment in arresting and incarcerating him, and failing to consider the faulty conclusions that led to him going to prison.
“They overpowered him, for hours, to the point he would say anything to get them off his back,” said Howard Kashman, who was Taylor’s attorney. Taylor filed suit against Pima County and the city of Tucson asking for damages for a wrongful prosecution, violation of his constitutional rights, and prosecutorial misconduct. Both the city and county were scheduled to hold behind-closed-doors executive sessions to discuss the case and what appear to be settlement options.
The city’s call for an executive session reads “in order to consider its position and instruct its attorneys regarding the City of Tucson’s position in pending litigation or in settlement discussions in order to resolve litigation.” As Taylor looks back on his lost years, friends tell him things could have been different if he had reacted in other ways.
“You could have run that night,” one asked. “Run? Run from what?” he said. “Run away?” the friend said. “Run away for what reason,” Taylor said. “I had no reason to run away.” As to my comparatively short-term connection to the story, it was one nonetheless that has stayed with me these many years. One that has most recently come to mind again and caused me to wonder if I should call or email Louis with a reminder of the few times we met and a simple word of congratulations: “Finally!”
