Niagara County Crime

I wrote about the Nancy Guthrie case, February 2026, and it got me into crime writing mode. I spent hours looking through old news about Niagara County and I would like to show how Niagara County had it's own version of the Zodiac Killer, who sent in complex clues, but was never noticed.

Exactly fifty years ago, rural Niagara County was terrorized by a serial arsonist. The arsonist targeted wooden structures and lumberyards and did a tremendous amount of damage, although he didn't seem intent on hurting anyone. There was an article about it in the New York Times, November 20, 1976.

What finally happened is that the arsonist got a little bit too bold. In January 1978 he tried to torch two lumber companies in the north end of Niagara Falls. He got the first one but was caught at the second one, on Lockport Road. He had a scanner radio that could receive both police and fire department communications. This was in the news on January 17, 1978. 

What I want to add is the possibility of additional targets.

1969 was my first summer where I live now. One evening, from somewhere out in La Salle, was a towering column of smoke. There must have been no wind at all because the column of smoke went straight up into the sky. The news the next day revealed that it had been the River Road Lumber Company.

I see now that the cause must have been arson, by a game-playing arsonist. Someone had made two emergency calls, one that he had set fire to a restaurant and the other to a school. Then he made a third call that there was a fire in the basement of the lumber company. The police carefully checked the lumber company and nothing seemed out of place. But then, about two hours later, the lumber company really was burning. This was in the news on July 14, 1969 but was never connected to the later Niagara County Arsonist, who targeted many lumberyards including the final two described above.

There was an old school, Pacific Avenue School on Buffalo Ave between 71st and 72nd Streets, that had closed and then been converted into a restaurant. It burned around the beginning of 1977. This is just down the street from where the lumber company had been located. So the arsonist called before torching the lumber company that he had set fire to a restaurant and to a school and now a school that had turned into a restaurant had mysteriously burned. But this was never connected together.

Also around the beginning of 1977 were two major fires in downtown Niagara Falls. As with the lumber company and the school they were right down the street from each other. There was Levy Brothers Furniture, at Pine Avenue and 15th Street, and the Haeberle Plaza. The plaza fire was caused by arson which began with an explosion.

What might have happened is that, with the rural arsons getting a lot of attention, the arsonist shifted his focus into the city of Niagara Falls, picking up where he left off with the River Road Lumber Company seven years before. 

With that background now let's get to the deadly part. 

The arsonist had called in that there was a fire in the basement of the River Road Lumber Company, before there really was a fire. The Haeberle Plaza arson, seven years later, would begin with an explosion. In the early morning of February 20, 1970, an explosion in the basement of the Sagamore Apartments building, at Main and Third Streets, started a fire that killed two elderly women but I cannot see that this was ever considered as arson. The building is just down the street from the Haeberle Plaza.

The Sagamore was one of two apartment buildings that were connected together. The fire was prevented from spreading to the other building by an internal fire wall. In the following image from Google Earth the former Sagamore building is to the right and you can see that there is a narrow gap between the two buildings, although they are joined in the front.

A few weeks after the Sagamore fire came the worst fire of all. In the early morning of April 4, 1970, a terrible fire in Lockport killed six children. The children, from two related families, were sleeping in a house at 7 Mill Street. Their parents were next door at a bar-restaurant at 5 Mill Street, which was heavily damaged by the fire. 

Both old structures were considered as substandard and the city was trying to vacate them. The following image, which I think was taken in the 1950s from the Mill Street Bridge, shows the restaurant in the foreground. The light colored house, just beyond the restaurant with the white car in front of it, is where the six children died (History Collection).

The cause of the fire was listed as electrical, due to improper wiring. But the fire happened at about 2:30 AM. An electrical fire is caused by the flow of electricity through improper or overloaded wiring. This means that an electrical fire is least likely to happen in the middle of the night because, at least in a house, that is when the least amount of current would be flowing.

There was a narrow gap between the two buildings and, at that gap, part of the lower outer wall of the house was completely burned away. This is obviously where the fire must have started. Since heat and flame goes upward it is extremely rare for the outer wall of a house to be burned through unless the fire burned for a long time, which this one didn't. This indicates that the fire started outside, in the narrow gap between the buildings.

The following illustration shows the house at 7 and the restaurant at 5 Mill Street. The red line shows where the fire started.

The narrow gap between the two buildings is reminiscent of the gap between the Sagamore and the adjoining apartment building. The fire was prevented from spreading to that building by an internal fire wall but this time the arsonist would solve that and the fire would spread from one building to the other. This was a clue that he had also set the Sagamore fire.

If it had been in the news that the city was trying to vacate these two properties then he might have thought that the house was vacant. There seems to have been a break in the fires until they began again in earnest in April 1976. It is interesting that he killed six children and April 1976 would be the sixth anniversary of this fire. Maybe he was initially horrified at having killed six children but later decided to send clues as to what he had done with further fires. This ultimately got the article in the New York Times, described above.

The final two arsons, at the lumberyards in the North End of Niagara Falls with the second being on Lockport Road as described above, were to convey that the arsonist had set the fire in Lockport that had spread from one building to the other. The Mill Street fire had been in the northernmost part of Lockport, Lowertown.

Just look at the following 1976 article. This article tells us what we need to know. The arsonist was sending clues with the fires during this period that he had set the deadly Mill Street fire. Unlike the Zodiac Killer he used the names of the locations of the fires, rather than sending in cryptograms.

The arson fires are heavily concentrated on Lockport Road. Why would there be such a concentration of fires on Lockport Road? There are five such fires listed in this article. With the later one where he was caught, as described above, that makes six fires on Lockport Road.  Could it be to tell us that he was the one who killed the six children in Lockport? 

The children in Lockport had been native Indians. The other streets where his targets were located were Shawnee, Erie and, Cayuga. These are native Indian tribes. 

But then why would he target Miller Hardware and the Sanborn Milling Company? As clues to the fire that happened on Mill Street.

One unfortunate farmer was targeted twice, apparently at two different locations. He probably never imagined that he was being targeted because of his name, as a clue to Mill Street (NYT article).

The arsons against this farmer are listed as having been 13 days apart. The fires were lit at night, often around midnight, and I wonder if they were intended to be 12 days apart, as another clue. The deadly fire in Lockport had been at 5 and 7 Mill Street and 5 + 7 = 12.

His favorite targets were 84 Lumber stores. Could this be a clue that he had killed 8 people, six in Lockport and two at the Sagamore, and also that 8 + 4 = 12?

With all of these clues about what he had done, there must be some as to who he was. He might have targeted lumber yards and wooden structures because the nearest intersection to where he lived was Candlewood. He might have targeted the site on Quarry Road because the street where he lived ended at Stone Road.

He let himself be seen, sometimes showing up in bars and talking about the fires and correctly predicting which targets would be next although not admitting to starting them.

Finally we have the physical geography clues. Five of the sites described above have the target adjacent to a waterway and a bridge over the waterway. This could not be a coincidence. In the days before the Internet he must have spent a lot of time with maps and this gave him a strong sense of physical geography. Images from Google Earth.

In the initial two calls before the River Road Lumber Company fire in 1969, the caller claimed to have set fire to a restaurant and then a school. The sites of these are indicated by the two red lines in the following image, both adjacent to Bergholtz Creek and the 91st Street Bridge over it. The road parallel to the creek is Cayuga Drive.

The site of the River Road Lumber Company is indicated by the red line, adjacent to Cayuga Creek and the La Salle Expressway bridge over it.

The former Sagamore Apartments building is shown in the upper right by the red dot on the white roof, adjacent to the Niagara River and the Rainbow Bridge.

The red line shows the location of the wooden restaurant structure on Mill Street in Lockport, adjacent to the canal and the Mill Street Bridge over it.

The red line across the park in the upper right of the following image is the site of the former Pacific Avenue School, later turned into a restaurant, adjacent to the Niagara River and the Grand Island Bridge.

The Zodiac Killer couldn't have done the clues any better than this. But it was never recognized.

For more about crime see "Insights Into Major Crimes", September 2024.