Blunderbuss Firozabad
Made of Pumpkin pie
Louis Taylor served 42 years for the Pioneer Hotel fire based on this:
"[Cy] Holmes, the lead fire investigator, admitted in a 2002 deposition that his profile of potential suspects included race.
"He's probably a negro, and he's probably 18," he said he told the City Council after the fire, based on years of experience he had investigating arson cases."
"Another investigator testified in Taylor's trial that an accelerant had been used in the fire, but that was not supported by laboratory tests and Taylor's lawyers were not aware of the test results.
Taylor, who is mixed Hispanic and African American, was convicted by an all-white jury during a time of racial tension in Tucson."
Taylor was at the hotel that night and assisted in saving lives:
"Taylor, who said he was at the hotel to score free drinks at a holiday party held by an aircraft company that night, knocked on room doors to alert guests to the fire and later helped put the injured on stretchers."
In 2013, he was released when his case was re-examined:
" On April 2, 2013, the 58-year-old Taylor was released from prison after pleading no contest to the original charges and given credit for time served. The Arizona Justice Project (a Phoenix-based non-profit group of attorneys and law students, advocating for inmates believed to have been wrongfully convicted) filed a motion earlier in 2013 for a new trial, which would have been difficult, as key witnesses are now deceased, and key evidence has since been destroyed. Also, modern arson investigators are unable to determine a cause for the fire, even using modern investigative methods."
" Taylor was just 16 years old when he was sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences for a fire that ripped through the Pioneer Hotel, a Tucson landmark that went up in flames in December 1970 while employees of an aircraft company were there for a Christmas party. An Arizona man who has maintained for 42 years that he had nothing to do with a horrific hotel fire that killed more than two dozen people pleaded no contest Tuesday in a deal that set aside his original conviction and freed him from prison."
Now, the City of Tucson is making moves to completely exonerate him.
Pioneer Hotel – The Fire That Destroyed Downtown Tucson
Albert Steinfeld In the 1920’s, one of Tucson’s richest men was Albert Steinfeld. When he was 18-years-old, the German-born Steinfeld
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