(WBBM/STMW) – The town president of west suburban Cicero is calling for the death penalty if two men accused of setting a fire in the community last month are found guilty.
Cicero Town President Larry Dominick is expected to issue a statement during today’s town board meeting.
Prosecutors allege building owner Lawrence Myers hired maintenance man Marion Comier to set fire to the building in order to cash in on an insurance policy.
Seven people were killed in the blaze.
Myers, 60, of the 3200 block of S. 50th Ave. in Cicero, and Comier, 47, of the 5300 block of W. 30th Place in Cicero, are each charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated arson, according to a release from the Town of Cicero.
The two were ordered held without bond by Judge James Zafiratos on last Friday morning at the Maywood courthouse.
Myers owned a struggling building in Wisconsin and had the fire set in Cicero to help his financial situation, prosecutors said. The Wisconsin property had been vacant and on the market for several months, and he was not able to make the mortgage payments.
In a conversation taped Feb. 19 by an informant wearing a wire, Myers is heard talking about Comier after the blaze, prosecutors said. He allegedly said the fire was supposed to be set when the children were in school.
It was unknown who Myers was talking to.
Prosecutors read from a transcript of the conversation: “I told him to do it in the afternoon before the kids came home from school. I told him I’d give him $3,000 … I told him not to hurt anybody.”
Myers also repeatedly said he planned to take the insurance money and flee to West Virginia, where he would live without a mailbox or telephone so nobody could find him, prosecutors said.
“[Myers] was afraid Comier would hurt himself doing it,” Asst. State’s Atty. Mary Lacy said. “And he said ‘I’m surprised [the investigators] didn’t pick up the smell of gasoline [inside the house]’.”
On Feb. 16, three witnesses came forward after hearing the men talking about the plot, authorities said.
The pair was taken into custody March 3. That night, Myers was taken to the hospital to get his prescription filled when he confessed to a detective that he told Comier to set the fire to offset financial troubles, prosecutors said.
Cell phone records also indicate Comier made a call to Myers on the morning of the fire to say, “It’s done,” prosecutors said.
Comier mixed gasoline and oil to hide the smell and lit the fatal blaze, authorities said.
The fire killed Sallie Gist, 18; Gist’s two children, Rayshawn Reed, 3, and newborn Byron Reed; her twin siblings, Elisha and Elijah Gist, 16; her boyfriend, Byron Reed, 20; and family friend Tiera Davidson, 19.
Their deaths, in a small apartment packed with a dozen sleeping people in a building that was home to more than 20 in three units, restarted questions about crowding in apartments in Cicero.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
