Friday, June 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MOULIN ROUGE FIRE: Suspect admits he helped set blaze

Man identifies his friend as co-conspirator

One of the two men facing arson charges in the fire that razed the historic Moulin Rouge casino admitted to investigators that he helped set the three-alarm blaze, according to a police report obtained Thursday by the Review-Journal.

Fred "Bubba" Ball also implicated his friend John Antwan Caver in the quick-spreading inferno that swept through the site of the first racially integrated casino in Las Vegas, leaving little more than its distinctive marquee unharmed.

"Ball did admit to helping to set (the) fire," his arrest report states. "Ball identified John Antwan Caver as a co-conspirator."

In a court document obtained by the Review-Journal, prosecutors indicate that Ball brought a "gasoline type substance" to the casino and acted as a lookout while Caver took the accelerant inside the building and started the fire.

Ball, a former Moulin Rouge employee, remained jailed Thursday evening at the Clark County Detention Center on suspicion of first-degree arson and conspiracy.

Caver, who authorities said is known on the street as "Antman," posted $3,000 bail on the same charges Thursday afternoon and was released from the jail.

Las Vegas Fire Department investigators arrested both men Wednesday evening near the Moulin Rouge, 900 W. Bonanza Road.

The two suspects have had extensive contact with local law enforcement authorities over the past decade, with nearly 40 arrests between them, according to Metropolitan Police Department records.

Local and federal authorities interviewed more than 110 witnesses to the blaze and were led to Ball by two witnesses who spotted him outside the Moulin Rouge just minutes before the flames erupted, his arrest report states.

"I'm so relieved they caught these guys," Moulin Rouge owner Bart Maybie said Thursday. In an interview earlier this month, Maybie said he believed a drug dealer had ignited the flames because security guards there had cracked down on such trafficking in the six weeks preceding the fire.

Maybie refused to elaborate at the time, but the Canadian developer confirmed Thursday morning that Ball and Caver were the men he always believed were responsible for the destruction of the 89,000-square-foot club.

He said Ball, whose only felony conviction stems from being caught near the Moulin Rouge with crack and marijuana about five years ago, had been tossed off the property for selling drugs about two months before the fire. Maybie said Caver was a friend of Ball's.

"A lot of people have indirectly implied that I was involved, that it was an inside job," Maybie said. "So it is a relief they made arrests and cleared me."

Maybie's wife said Ball worked at the property more than two years ago, when he was a resident there. "He took care of the grounds, sweeping up and that kind of thing," Linda Maybie said.

Investigators on Thursday remained extremely tight-lipped about possible motives, and also refused to discuss the fire's point of origin and whether accelerants were used. The brief arrest reports for Ball and Caver also do not disclose such information.

Ball, 45, and Caver, 29, also could face federal arson charges since the Moulin Rouge was on the National Register of Historic Places, investigators said at a Thursday morning news conference.

Firefighters spent hours battling the fire that broke out about 1:20 a.m. May 29 at the shuttered casino. Three people were injured, and 100 residents were evacuated from nearby apartments.

Investigators with the Fire Department and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent five days examining the charred remains of the club and interviewing more than 100 witnesses before announcing June 4 that the blaze was arson.

Ball had been sought for questioning last week, and Fire Department officials announced Monday that he had been found.

Neither he nor Caver is a stranger to Las Vegas police.

Caver has been arrested more than two dozen times, mostly on warrants stemming from failure to show up for court appearances after being cited in car crashes.

"It looks like this guy can't drive," said officer Jose Montoya, a spokesman for the Police Department. "He's had a bunch of traffic collisions."

Over the past decade, Caver also has been arrested three times on domestic violence battery charges. In addition, he has faced numerous gun, drug and alcohol charges during that time, police records show. The disposition on many of those cases could not be determined Thursday.

Ball has been arrested about a dozen times. "Most of his arrests are drug-related, and most of the warrants are because he fails to show up for court," Montoya said.

Ball's sole felony conviction stems from a 1998 arrest in which police caught him with crack cocaine and three bags of marijuana less than 200 yards from the Moulin Rouge, court records show.

After pleading guilty to felony drug possession, Ball was sentenced to drug court but was thrown out of the program and given jail time when he repeatedly failed to show up at a drug treatment center.

The Fire Department on Thursday refused to authorize the release of Ball's and Caver's booking photographs from the Clark County Detention Center.

Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said the reason for this was the possibility that federal arson charges will be filed. U.S. Department of Justice guidelines do not permit the release of booking photographs for defendants in federal cases.

Wednesday's arrests cap part of a three-week mystery into the destruction of the shuttered casino, which nearly a half-century ago became the city's first racially integrated gambling hall.

In the five months it was open in 1955, the Moulin Rouge hosted black entertainers such as Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis Jr., who headlined shows on the Strip but were barred from sleeping in the segregated hotels there.

The casino quickly became popular as an after-hours club where performers such as Frank Sinatra would perform impromptu shows late into the night for crowds of blacks and whites.

The site remained vacant for a few years after its closure. It has changed hands many times in the past 40 years, and has been listed in the National Register for more than a decade.

Maybie bought the dilapidated hotel-casino in 1997 for $3 million and rented its 120 hotel rooms-turned-apartments to people on government assistance.

Maybie had been in negotiations for months to sell the property to the Moulin Rouge Development Corporation when the fire struck.

Dale Scott, president of the development corporation, said Thursday that he was still pursuing the purchase. He said he plans to reopen the casino and build a museum there to educate others about the site's role in the desegregation of Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Fire Department officials on Thursday expressed regret for publicly circulating last week a photograph of a man they mistakenly identified as Ball. That man now appears to have had nothing to do with the blaze at the Moulin Rouge.

The Fire Department supplied the photo to Las Vegas media outlets, including the Review-Journal, and asked that it be broadcast and published with Ball's name in hopes that a tipster would lead investigators to Ball, who was being sought for questioning.

Szymanski said investigators have determined the man depicted in the photo is not Ball, but they do not know who he is. "We thought it was him (Ball)," Szymanski said.

When asked for details about the origin of the photo, Szymanski said a citizen had volunteered it to investigators.

"It wasn't authorities or officials or anything; it was just someone down from the Moulin Rouge area who said they had a photo of him, so we went with that picture," Szymanski said.