Posts Tagged trial for Cicero arsonist

Landlord gets life in prison for fatal Cicero fire

The Chicago Tribune has this article:

A former landlord was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole for the murders of seven Cicero residents, ages 20 years to 3 days old, who were killed in a 2010 fire the man ordered set to an apartment building he owned.

Cook County Judge Carol Kipperman said she would have sentenced Lawrence Myers to death if Illinois law still allowed such a sentence. “Everything on this trial was horrendous,” Kipperman said at the courthouse in Maywood. “His motivations were for money. This (trial) left me speechless.”

Myers, who was convicted by a jury in November, showed no emotion when the sentence was announced.

The fatal fire took place on Valentine’s Day 2010. According to prosecutors, Myers, 64, wanted to burn down his building in the 3000 block of South 48th Court to collect on a $250,000 insurance policy and move to West Virginia. Deep in debt, he hired his maintenance man, Marion “Andre” Comier, 51, who is still awaiting trial on murder charges, to set the fire, prosecutors said.

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Trial for Cicero arson suspects from 2010 fire (update)

The Chicago Tribune has an updated article about the trial of Lawrence Myers for murder relating to the 2010 fatal fire in Cicero:;

A jury Monday convicted a Cicero landlord of murder in an arson fire on Valentine’s Day, 2010, that killed seven people, including four children, according to prosecutors and court records.

Lawrence Myers, 64, wanted to burn down his building in the 3000 block of 48th Court to collect on a $250,000 insurance policy and move to West Virginia, prosecutors had alleged. Deep in debt, he hired his maintenance man, Marion “Andre” Comier, 51, who is still awaiting trial on murder charges, to set the fire, according to prosecutors.

But the fire in the four-flat apartment building at 3034 S. 48th Court, which prosecutors said Comier set with gasoline on a back porch, spread quickly and trapped tenants in the building. Killed were Byron Reed, 20, Sallie Gist, 19, and their sons Rayshawn Reed, 3, and Brian Reed, 3 days; as well as Sallie Gist’s twin brother and sister, Elijah Gist and Elisha Gist, 16; and family friend Tiera Davidson, 18.After the fire was set, it spread up the only staircase to the second floor, where those who died were sleeping. The victims died from carbon monoxide intoxication due to smoke inhalation, prosecutors said.

A jury took only 90 minutes late Monday afternoon to convict Myers of seven counts of murder–one for each of the victims, according to a release from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

Two days after the fire, three people reported to Cicero police they had heard Myers and Comier talking about burning down the building, authorities said.

Investigators “developed information that the homeowner and the maintenance man had conspired to burn down the building for the purposes of collecting insurance money,” Cicero Police Detective Joseph Melone said in a release Monday.

Police found “a cooperating witness who agreed to wear a wire and recorded many conversations that more than assisted in this investigation,” Melone said.

On one of the secretly recorded tapes, Myers told Comier that he shouldn’t have set the fire when so many people were home, prosecutors have said.

“It was done at the wrong time,” Myers complained to Comier, according to court documents. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.”

In conversations recorded on five separate days, Myers is heard complaining that Comier didn’t follow his instructions.

“I told him to do it in the afternoon before the kids came home from school,” Myers was quoted as saying in court documents. “I told him I’d give him $3,000. … I told him not to hurt anybody.”

Myers filed an insurance claim on the torched building soon after the blaze, prosecutors said.

After he was arrested, Myers confessed his role in the fire to detectives a few hours later and said he was motivated by his financial troubles, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said at the time.

Myers is set for sentencing Dec. 16 but faces a mandatory life sentence in the case, according to Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

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Trial for Cicero arson suspects from 2010 fire

NBC5.com has an article about a recent trial for the men responsible for a fire in Cicero that kileed 7 in 2010:

Proceedings were expected to start [last] Friday against a man accused of setting a fire that killed seven people, including a 3-day-old infant, in Cicero on Valentine’s Day nearly five years ago.

Lawrence Meyers, who owned the home on the 3000 block of South 48th Court, was charged with first-degree murder along with the building manager, Marion Comier. Prosecutors allege both men plotted to burn the building down to collect the insurance money.

Meyers is due in court Friday as jury selection begins in the case.

He’d previously denied being involved with the fire but police said they have audio recordings of him confessing to the crime. On that recording, Meyers reportedly says the fire was set at the wrong time and that he didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Seven people, ranging in age from 20 years to three-days-old, were killed in the Feb. 14, 2010 fire that tore through the three-flat building. A firefighter was injured when a portion of a chimney collapsed on him.

The dead included Sallie Gist, 18; Gist’s two children, Rayshawn Reed, 3, and newborn Byron Reed; her twin siblings, Elisha and Elijah Gist, 16; her boyfriend, Byron Reed, 20, and family friend Tiera Davidson, 19.

As many as 30 people may have been living in three apartments in the building at the time of the fire, authorities said. The lack of 911 calls from the building, and the fire’s rapid spread, led investigators to question whether the fire had been smoldering for hours or an intentionally set blaze.

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