Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990 TAG: 9003280229
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
"They're angry against society. They feel a need to strike out," said John Barracato, a fire investigator and author of a book on arson. "They only want to vent their frustration. They don't care about the other people."
Gonzalez, 36, is charged with setting the fire that killed 87 patrons of an unlicensed social club in the Bronx early Sunday. Police charge he was angry with his ex-girlfriend, who worked there.
While details are lacking, accounts portray Gonzalez as a quiet man who lived lawfully but in poverty since his arrival from Cuba a decade ago. Neighbors said nothing foretold the slaughter of which he is accused.
But two blows recently shook his life: Six weeks ago he was dismissed from the Queens lamp factory where he worked, and at about that time he broke up with Lydia Feliciano, with whom he had lived for seven or eight years.
Gonzalez reportedly argued with Feliciano early Sunday at the Happy Land Social Club, where she was a coat checker. A bouncer ejected him and, prosecutors said, he left threatening to shut the place down.
Police say he splashed $1 worth of gasoline into the club's doorway and ignited it. Authorities said his shoes reeked of gasoline when he was arrested 12 hours later in his 10-by-10 foot, $80-a-week furnished room.
While Barracato could not comment directly about the case, he said arson for revenge - which accounts for about half of all arson cases - commonly is started with an accelerant such as gasoline and is prompted by a perceived offense.
"When someone gets locked into an anger stage of emotion he wants total destruction," said Barracato, a former deputy chief city fire marshal who directs the fire and fraud section of Aetna Life & Casualty Co.
While emotion incites the crime, "There's no loss of control," said Barracato, who conducted a six-year study of arsonists. "It's calculated and it's planned. They want to assert themselves. They want power, and what can be more powerful than intentionally setting a fire?"
The greatest question about Gonzalez's past is his life in Cuba, which he left in the Mariel boatlift that brought 125,000 people to the United States in 1980.
Gonzalez told U.S. immigration officials he had been jailed for three years in Cuba for an unapproved absence from the army, and had falsely confessed to drug trafficking so Cuban authorities would let him join the boatlift. After his arrival, he was detained in U.S. camps for nine months.
Cuban officials in Washington did not return telephone calls Tuesday seeking information on Gonzalez.
Barracato said many arsonists have no criminal history, but they often share other attributes: Poverty, low education, broken homes, a lack of idols, personal isolation, extreme introversion, low self-esteem.
The underclass status faced by many poor immigrants can contribute to the alienation arsonists seem to share, Barracato said. The result: Resentment, and, if pushed to the brink, an urge for revenge.
"They don't think that by that act they'll kill people," he said. "It's, `I'll get even with them.' "
Typically when it comes to revenge, said Barracato, "he could care less" about victims.
by CNB