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Though the fire was never investigated as a hate crime, the city’s response reflected the homophobic climate of the time, said Perez. No arrests were made, and Nunez killed himself in 1974, LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana President Frank Perez said. The prime suspect in the fire, a gay man named Roger Nunez, was removed from the gay bar earlier in the evening, and later confessed to friends he set the fire in anger.
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Before the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, the UpStairs Lounge fire was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ individuals in U.S. LeBlanc’s family gathered with nearly 200 others for an interfaith memorial service and second line parade to honor LeBlanc and others on the 45th anniversary of the fire June 24. Skip Bailey and his mother, Marilyn LeBlanc-Downey, honor his uncle, Ferris Jerome LeBlanc, who was killed in the UpStairs Lounge fire. The family didn’t know LeBlanc was even in New Orleans at the time of his death, or that he had died. LeBlanc, an openly gay man, was one of 32 killed when an arsonist set fire to the UpStairs Lounge on June 24, 1973. In 2015, LeBlanc-Downey and her son, Skip Bailey, found their answer in a Google search.
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NEW ORLEANS – For 42 years, Marilyn LeBlanc-Downey questioned the fate of her older brother, Ferris Jerome LeBlanc, who disappeared from their home near San Jose, California, in the early 1970s.