New York arsonist who set fire that killed a Chicago firefighter 46-years-ago heads back to prison for arson. Syracuse Fire Department joins Firefighter Joseph Carone's family in court for sentencing of Alan Norcutt.
Read more about the fire that killed Firefighter Joseph Carone Sr.
Sixty-three-year-old Alan Norcutt will likely spend the rest of his life in jail. But it isn’t for the fire he set as a 17-year-old in December 1964 fire that killed Chicago firefighter Joseph Carone Sr. It also isn’t for the August 1963 Chicago rooming house fire that killed two men. Norcutt served time for a string of 36 fires in Chicago but was released in 1979.
Norcutt is going back to prison for a relatively small fire he set in a storage trailer in Syracuse a little more than a year ago. The Syracuse Fire Department made sure Joseph Carone Sr. wasn’t forgotten in all of this. Firefighters, and the chief of the department, were in the courtroom to support the fallen firefighter’s family.
“You are a dangerous and violent man. You should spend the rest of your life in prison,” Onondaga County Judge Anthony Aloi told Alan Norcutt after declaring him a persistent felony offender under New York’s three-strikes law.
Aloi said that if that maximum sentence amounts to a death sentence for the 63-year-old Norcutt, it was appropriate given the defendant’s background.
About two dozen Syracuse firefighters and fire department officials were on hand – in dress uniforms, some wearing white gloves – for the more-than-two-hour-long proceeding in which Aloi addressed the prosecution’s request to sentence Norcutt as a persistent felony offender and then did as asked.
Fire Chief Mark McLees also was present in a suit and tie. As he emerged from the courtroom following the sentencing, he was hugged by the daughters of the firefighter who died in the 1964 fire in Chicago.
Rose Carone Benson and Cheryl Carone Matthews said they came back to Syracuse for today’s proceeding to see what would happen with Norcutt. They and their two brothers were in town for Norcutt’s trial in September.
“I’m just glad it’s all over,” Benson said, calling the turnout of Syracuse fire officials “wonderful.”
McLees said he welcomed Aloi’s decision to remove Norcutt from the community’s streets for the safety of the members of his department who put their lives in jeopardy every day responding to fires.
The fire chief said Norcutt’s conduct “flies in the face of all of our lives and our efforts to go home safely every day.”
