Fury, Tears and 4-Year Term in Deadly Blaze

In a courtroom filled with rage and sorrow, the band manager whose nightclub pyrotechnics display set a fire that killed 100 people was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison.

Many in the crowded chamber -- friends and relatives of victims of the February 2003 fire in nearby West Warwick -- were furious that Daniel M. Biechele did not receive the maximum sentence of 10 years. Biechele, 29, pleaded guilty this year to 100 counts of misdemeanor manslaughter.

Diane Mattera let out a shriek and crumpled into the arms of her husband, Raymond. Their daughter, Tammy Mattera-Housa, perished at 29.

As Biechele was led away in handcuffs, Patricia Belanger stood and shouted at his parents, “You get your son back after four years!” Belanger, whose daughter Dina DeMaio died in the fire on her 30th birthday, said, “Our children are never coming back.”

After listening for two days as 50 family members described the anguish they had suffered since the fast-moving blaze leveled the Station nightclub, Biechele rose Wednesday to make his own statement.

Sobbing so hard that at times he could not speak, Biechele told the court: “I don’t know that I can ever forgive myself for what happened that night. So I can’t expect anyone else to. I never wanted anyone to be hurt in any way. I never imagined that anyone would be. I would do anything to undo what happened that night and give them back their loved ones.”

Biechele was the manager for Great White, a heavy-metal band whose fireworks display was an opening-act trademark. When he set off the pyrotechnics at the Station, sparks ignited the club’s acoustic foam ceiling and walls.

More than 400 fans were packed into the small wooden roadhouse. By the time they realized the flames were not part of the act, it was too late for many to escape.

Survivors said thick, acrid smoke quickly filled the club, making it difficult to locate exits. The building burned to the ground in minutes.

Bodies were found near the main entrance “piled like cords of wood,” a prosecutor said. In addition to those killed, more than 100 were injured. Many required months of hospitalization.

The conflagration was the worst fire in Rhode Island history, and one of the country’s deadliest nightclub disasters. In a state with just over 1 million people, the tragedy struck hard. Even among those who were not directly affected, everyone, it seemed, knew someone who had been touched by the fire.

“The devastation wrought by the conduct of the defendant is unparalleled in our state’s history,” prosecutor Randall White told the court. “The suffering is endless, and the extent and depth of the pain is bottomless.”

White urged Superior Court Judge Francis Darigan Jr. to impose the maximum 10-year sentence available under the deal Biechele struck when he pleaded guilty. Biechele did not have a permit to set off fireworks at the Station, White said, and in lighting the pyrotechnics in a foam-insulated room, “he ignored common sense, and he ignored it in a very, very egregious way. A child could have foreseen the harm and potential harm that eventuated.”

He added: “The scope of the harm caused by this defendant is something so staggering as to be incalculable. If this isn’t the case that deserves a serious sentence of misdemeanor manslaughter, what one is?”

But Darigan said he took into account the fact that Biechele had no prior criminal record. The judge said Biechele had shown “genuine and heartfelt remorse” for his role in a crime that Darigan called “unintentional homicide with no malice aforethought.”

Darigan told Biechele: “The greatest sentence that can be imposed on you has been imposed on you by yourself. That is having to live a life, an entire life, knowing that your actions were the proximate cause of the deaths of 100 people.”

Nightclub owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian recently had installed the foam insulation after neighbors complained about noise. Michael Derderian’s manslaughter trial is set for July. No date has been set for the trial of his brother Jeffrey, also charged with manslaughter.

Leaving the courtroom, Belanger struggled to control her anger. Her daughter was a waitress at the Station. Belanger is raising the son, now 11 years old, her daughter left behind.

“Of course he is getting away with murder,” Belanger said of Biechele. “Four years for 100 lives he killed? It’s a joke.”