Two-year-old Wayne Dixon and his grandmother Phyllis Peaches were killed in fire in the 3400 block of West Madison when someone burned down the church next door in 2006. Their deaths were ruled homicides, but the case was never solved. | Sun-Times file photo
By SAM CHARLES
Chicago Sun-Times Wire
The names of Chicago’s youngest murder victims are often indelibly etched into the city’s collective memory: Hadiya Pendleton, Jonylah Watkins, Tyshawn Lee.
Their stories, despite similar endings, stick out in a city that routinely sees more than 450 murders each year.
But few know Wayne Dixon’s name.
The 2-year-old and his grandmother were among three people killed in their sleep on the West Side in 2004.
It was a brisk Sunday night, not terribly cold by Chicago standards. Some snow lay on the ground and a healthy southerly breeze swept across East Garfield Park.
The normally trigger-happy West Side community slept soundly and not a single shooting was reported anywhere near 3415 W. Madison St. all day.
But that night–Feb. 8, 2004–someone burned down a church.
The extra-alarm fire spread to the apartment building to the west and, ultimately, took three lives. The killer was never caught and a triple homicide that claimed the lives of a 2-year-old boy and his grandmother would go, essentially, unnoticed by the public after authorities took longer than usual to declare the deaths homicides.
The charred remains of a church (left) and an apartment building in the 3400 block of West Madison were demolished. The murders of the three people inside have never been solved. | Sun-Times file photo by Brian Jackson
Chicago Fire Department records show the first 911 call came in at 11:45 p.m.: Fire at the First Upper Room Missionary Baptist Church, a two-story storefront cathedral with apartments on the second floor.
By the time fire crews arrived 13 minutes later, flames were leaping from the first and second floors.
The Rev. Willie Moffett had bought the property 10 years earlier. To its east was a two-story funeral home; a four-story apartment building with a bar on the ground floor stood to the west.
The fire had already found its way to the neighboring apartment building through a light shaft on the second and third floors. It wasn’t slowing down. Residents—some of whom said they heard no smoke detectors—were climbing out windows onto the church’s tenuously stable second-story roof.
No potential witnesses were awake or nearby at the time.
Tom Garrity, one of the first firefighters on scene, was ordered to the church’s rear entrance, where smoke seemed to be heaviest. Garrity would later tell investigators that as he walked to the back, he saw a man—white, dressed in civilian clothes—coming from the church yard.
He identified himself as a police officer: Craig Dunderdale of the then-elite (since disgraced and disbanded) Special Operations Section. He told Garrity he saw the back door open and, when he poked his head inside, fire was everywhere.
He didn’t tell Garrity—and wasn’t asked during the later investigation—what he was doing there by himself at that hour, only that he arrived a minute or two before fire crews. In a subsequent interview, he said that after he saw a patrol car at the front of the building, he decided to go to the back.
Dunderdale could not be reached for comment on this story.
Despite the Special Operations Section’s dubious record, Dunderdale's name was never called before the Chicago Police Board and he remained a police officer as of February 2015.
“A lot of fire in there,” Dunderdale told Garrity.
A single set of footprints in the snow could be seen entering and exiting the rear door, Dunderdale said. Those footprints led to the funeral home, investigators said.
The deadbolt was never set and there were no signs of forced entry.
Alfonso Waters, owner of the funeral home, had been in negotiations with the Rev. Moffett to buy the church, and would later tell investigators he wasn’t home when the fire broke out. Only he, his family and three employees had keys to the funeral home.
Reached by phone this week, Waters said he was not at the funeral home that night, and didn’t remember anything about the fire.
On top of being one of the first firefighters on scene, Garrity was one of the first inside, leading a hose through the back door.
He told investigators that after walking through the open steel door to the kitchen, he saw two distinctly separate patches of flame—a small rubbish fire to his left and “a circle of fire” on the floor ahead at the base of the door to the main church area.
The odor of natural gas filled the room. Three of the four burners on the stove were on, but there were no visible flames. The fourth burner was broken. Another firefighter turned them off after he smelled gas.
Gas Company workers shut off the gas in front of 3415 W. Madison so crews can search for the body of 2-year-old Wayne Dixon the day after an arson fire in 2004. | Sun-Times file photo by Brian Jackson
Though the church still had gas service, its electricity had been terminated 11 days before the fire.
Garrity extinguished the two fires and walked through the door, which was starting to burn near its top, to the main church area. He later said he and his crew took seven or eight steps in and, again, saw separate fires on both sides. Flames were moving vertically, with no fire to connect them.
The second floor was “heavily involved,” and Garrity and his colleagues were told to get out after only a few minutes. They were ordered to take a defensive position outside. Nine more fire engines and 10 ambulances would join them.
Fire department records say that by 1:35 a.m., a detective from the police Bomb and Arson Unit was on scene. The fire was stubborn and moving suspiciously fast. Investigators would later determine three separate fires were started in the church: two on the ground floor and one above.
The roof and fourth floor of the apartment building at 3417 W. Madison would also partially collapse, as would the second floor of the church. The funeral home was all but untouched.
By the time the fire was out, two people were confirmed dead, five others hospitalized, and 20 more displaced. Two firefighters were also injured.
The next day, one person was still unaccounted for: 2-year-old Wayne Dixon. Wayne and his 6-year-old brother, Elijha, lived in West Englewood with their mother, but were spending the night at their grandmother’s apartment in the building west of the church.
Their grandmother, Phyllis Peaches, 45, was one of the two confirmed fatalities.
Wayne’s mother, then-23-year-old Lynette Peaches, told reporters the day after the fire, “My son is gone now. ... It doesn’t make a difference where he is, as long as his soul is safe with God.”
At the time of the fire, Lynette Peaches was pregnant with a third child.
James Love, another resident of the apartment, was the second victim, identified through dental records. His autopsy sheet at the Cook County medical examiner’s office shows the manner of death was changed from natural to accidental to, ultimately, homicide. Phyllis Peaches’ death was also ultimately ruled a homicide.
Before the search for Wayne could get under way, demolition crews had to remove a substantial amount of debris. But those crews couldn’t get started until Peoples Energy stopped a gas leak, which wasn't completed until about 2:30 p.m.
Peter La Manna, the assigned fire marshal, was forced to use a lift to examine the charred remnants from the outside, because the building’s structural integrity was so compromised. Both the church and the apartment building were later demolished.
From La Manna’s perch, 2-3 feet of debris could be seen covering parts of the partially collapsed fourth floor of 3417 W. Madison. It was necessary to use a crane to clear it as crews searched for the missing boy.
A city building inspector needs assistance from the Chicago Fire Department to view the charred remains of two buildings burned by an arsonist in 2006. Three people died in the blaze. | Sun-Times file photo by Brian Jackson
Later that afternoon, Wayne was found. In his end of the day report, La Manna wrote: “At approximately 1545 hours, the crane removed a bucket of debris from the northwest bedroom of the fourth-floor apartment, lowered it to street level and a small child approximately 2 or 3 years of age was found. The child was naked except for a diaper.”
Wayne was missing some skin on his hands and the top of his forearms, but otherwise was not burned. Soot clogged his nose.
His death, like the deaths of his grandmother and Love, was attributed to carbon monoxide/smoke inhalation, the medical examiner’s office later determined.
But Wayne’s death, unlike the other two, was ruled a homicide immediately.
Three days after the fire, demolition crews had made enough progress that investigators were able to walk through the building's remains and collect evidence for forensic testing.
Another fire marshal noted “irregular burn patterns on the floor adjacent to the interior door leading to the church area and along the west interior corner wall” that showed “no visible signs of communication.”
The Bomb and Arson Unit collected samples of hardwood flooring, debris and ash. A canine unit was brought in, but had no luck. A plastic gallon container, nearly full of an unknown liquid, was found in a gangway near the church’s rear door, but investigators determined it had been there before the fire started.
By Feb. 11—three full days after the fire—authorities still could not contact the Rev. Moffett for an interview. They were, however, ready to definitively say the fire was no accident.
“This fire was the result of person/s unknown who ignited the available Class ‘A’ combustibles with an open flame ignition source.”
Investigators also couldn’t rule out the use of an accelerant. “Observed on the second floor flooring at this location was a burn pattern indicative of a flammable pour.”
Fifteen days after the fire, investigators got in touch with Waters by phone.
“Mr. Waters related that he, his wife, and a female member of the church whose name he can’t remember, and two other males, one named Smith and the other he wasn’t introduced to, were escorted throughout the first floor of the church. When asked, he related that only he, his family and staff are key holders, three additional holders.
“This interview was abruptly halted as he related to the [fire marshal] that city building inspectors were present looking at his building.”
In November 2004, Waters would finally buy the former church at 3415 W. Madison from the Rev. Moffett. In 2010, he would also buy the land at 3417 W. Madison. Today, both properties are home to a fenced-off parking lot for the funeral home.
As of February 2016, no arrests have been made in the arson or the murders of Wayne Dixon, Phyllis Peaches and James Love. The investigation remains open.