George Keim, 68, and his son-in-law, William S. Ford, 40, had declared war on each other, with ongoing bickering, threats, brawls, and litigation. Their family feud raged on until an autumn night in 1923 when one of them decided to fight ire with fire. “6 KILLED AS FIRE SWEEPS FRAME APARTMENT HOUSE; WOMAN LEAPS TO SAFETY,” blared the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s front page on Oct. 15, 1923. The three-story frame house in Brooklyn was “making like Vesuvius,” with flames shooting 25 feet from the roof’s center, a Daily News reporter would recall years later. Scene of the fire from the three-story frame house in Brooklyn. The blaze broke out around 3 a.m., as 16 residents slept inside. Building owner Anna Andrews, 42, survived by leaping through a glass window from the third floor, suffering serious injuries. Residents on the lower floors also made it to safety. Once the blaze was under control, firefighters searched through the blackened shell of the once elegant home and found six charred corpses. In a room on the top floor, a dead woman and child were locked in an embrace. The woman, Ruzina Weichart, 35, was the building’s maid. The child, Marjorie Andrews, 12, was the landlady’s daughter. She lived with her family in an apartment adjacent to Weichart’s. Firefighters believed they were preparing to jump out the window together. Also dead were Marjorie’s brother Charles Andrews, 19, a local high school baseball and football star, and a cousin, Lillian Andrews, 40. Francis Fowler, 55, a businessman from Mexico who rented a room in the house, was another member of the Andrews family to die that night. Keim’s burnt body lay face down on the floor outside his bedroom. Press reports described him as a playwright, but he had made his career and his money as a builder and owned several properties in the city. Newspapers reported that his first play, a musical comedy called “Pep,” had its last rehearsal in Manhattan on the day of its creator’s death. Nothing seemed suspicious at first; old-fashioned frame houses were notorious firetraps. These large homes had been designed in an earlier era for one family. In recent years, owners had been dividing them into apartments and renting them out. “Fire menace exists in these houses because of the lack of escapes and of fireproofing about the entrances and exits,” a housing official told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle a day after the tragedy. The Eagle reported that there were at least 1,000 such firetraps in Brooklyn. But it soon became clear that, while the building may have posed hazards, someone had intentionally ignited this inferno. Fire marshal Thomas P. Brophy, known as “Brooklyn’s fire chaser” for his skill at catching arsonists, spoke to neighbors who told him about a car speeding away from the house just before the fire started. Within a day, investigators found the driver — Raymond Anderson, 22. Arrested and charged with homicide and arson, Anderson quickly cracked under the questioning. He said Ford had lured him into a plot to murder his father-in-law by setting the fire. Hot hatred was the motive. Anderson told of the feud between Keim and Ford that started after a real estate partnership went bad in 1921, a few years after Ford married Keim’s daughter, Edna. William S. Ford Keim accused his son-in-law of property theft and had taken legal action. During a hearing over the partnership, Ford grabbed his father-in-law by the throat, screaming, “I’ll kill you.” Ford’s fury snowballed, and he began badgering his friends to murder Keim with cars, knives, guns, fists, or clubs. They declined. On the night of the fire, Ford persuaded Anderson to drive him and another man to the house. At the destination, Ford and his partner took some items from the trunk — a bottle, a large can, and a rope — and disappeared into the darkness. Anderson refused to accompany them. Ford taunted him, calling him “yellow.” In moments, Anderson saw flames flicking up the side of the house. The two men dashed back and jumped on the running board. Ford bellowed, “Step on it!” Police found Ford sleeping in his apartment the next day and arrested him. Searches for his alleged accomplice came up empty and he was never found. For turning state’s evidence, the courts would later release Anderson. During his first week behind bars, Ford tried to kill himself with a razor blade. “I don’t want to live,” he told his jailers. “I tried to commit suicide. I’ll try again when I get the chance.” He was put under a suicide watch. Still, the defendant was all smiles when he strutted into the courtroom in May 1924 to go on trial for his life. Circumstantial evidence was all prosecutors had, and they relied heavily on the testimony of a man who had confessed to playing a role in the crime. In less than an hour of deliberation, the jury found Ford guilty, a verdict that meant death in Sing Sing’s electric chair. “I’ll be able to do a lot reading in prison,” he told reporters. “I’ll read history and fiction and economics, though I don’t think it will be long before I get a new trial and a new verdict.” That never happened. After several appeals, the electrocution was set for March 1925. But, unlike his victims, a deadly spark would not kill the man the press called the “arson slayer.” In February 1925, Ford cheated the electric chair by twisting up a bed sheet, suspending it from a bar over the door in the cell, and hanging himself.