| Boy Admits Fire Fatal To 95 |
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| CHICAGO - The Tribune said today information that a 13-year-old boy has confessed setting the fire at Our Lady of the Angels School, which claimed the lives of 92 children and 3 nuns, was given yesterday to Judge Alfred J. Cilella of Family Court. |
| The Tribune's copyrighted story said Judge Cilella promised an investigation of the report the boy signed an eight-page confession under questioning by John E. Reid, a nationally know expert on lie detectors. |
| It quoted Cilella that if the confession is found to be accurate, the boy should be taken into custody. The story added that Reid confirmed he had talked with the boy Friday, at the request of the boy's parents and that he had given a lie detector test to him. But Reid refused to comment on his findings. The boy was not identified. |
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| The Tribune said it had obtained information the boy, in his confession, told of setting fire to the Roman Catholic elementary school about 3:45 p.m. Dec. 1, 1958, causing a holocaust in which pupils and nuns died minutes before classes would have been dismissed for the day. It was Chicago's worst school fire. |
| It said the boy was among a group of 5th graders who were led to safety minutes after discovery of the fire, which trapped most of its victims on the second floor of the school at 909 N. Avers, Ave. on the city's northwest side. |
| The Tribune said the boy had started the blaze by tossing lighted matches into a cardboard waste barrel near a stairwell in the basement of the school. |
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| He told Reid that he did so because he hated school, rebelled at the authority of teachers, liked to hear the sound of fire sirens and to watch fire engines race along the street. |
| The Tribune added it was told the boy, now an 8th grader in a west suburban school, admitted setting at least 12 other fires in Chicago and the suburbs, some as recently as last fall. |
| Here is the boy's story: |
| At 2:45 p.m. on a cold and icy day, the boy asked permission to go to the washroom from his second flour classroom. At the time he was 10 years old. |
| The boy, the Tribune was told, went to the basement of the school and looked into the chapel to make sure that no one was there. Then he approached the stairwell and saw a large barrel made of cardboard with metal rims which was used by the school janitor to collect waste paper. |
| The boy reportedly told Reid that he threw several lighted matches into the barrel. He had obtained the matches at home when he went there for lunch. |
| When flames flared from the paper filled barrel, the youngster said, he stood back, then returned quietly to his classroom. He mentioned the fire to no one. Had he, many lives might have been saved. |
| He told Reid he believed the fire would he discovered by the janitor before it “went too far,” |
| When the fire was discovered and smoke began to filter through the upper story of the old school building, the boy and five other pupils were trapped in the classroom with their teacher, he said. |
| He related a dramatic tale of how the teacher hurled him from the window because he was too frightened to jump. |
| This story was contradicted by the teacher, Miss Pearl Tristano. |
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| Miss Tristano led her class to safety shortly before the heat of the fire blasted through the ceilings of the second floor classrooms and killed many of the children at their desks. |
| The boy said that after the fire he calmly walked to the home of a friend where a Cub Scout den meeting had been scheduled. He said he was told there by the friend's mother the meeting had been canceled because of the tragedy. |
| Then, he said, he went home. |
