[1][2] The Beverly Hills Supper Club was a major attraction, less than 2.5 miles (4 km) outside Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River in Southgate, Kentucky, on US 27, near what would later become its interchange with Interstate 471.

[3] In 1967, organized crime figures Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman and Samuel A. Tucker sold The Beverly Hills Country Club to Joseph E. Cole, Sam W. Klein, Carl Glickman and two other men (one of whom has been linked to New Jersey mob boss Gerardo Catena),[4] who, in 1974, sold to the Richard Schilling family.

In 1971, the club had reopened under the then-current owners and management[5] and was considered an elegant venue that attracted top-notch talent and affluent clientele.

[10] It was decorated throughout with highly flammable carpeting and wood wall paneling;[9] event rooms also used wooden tables and supports, as well as tablecloths, curtains, and a variety of other small combustible materials.

[10] In addition, the majority of the paths of egress in each event room led not to the outside of the building, but to a variety of narrow interior corridors and service spaces.

[10] Employees outside the exits attempted to pull guests to safety, but the crush of bodies as those behind pushed upon those in front became so solid that no amount of strength could free most of them.

The building's confusing design often led to a set of doors opening into a bar area that funneled frantic guests into a dead end.

[10] Temperatures in the Cabaret Room soared into the thousands of degrees and even firefighters, weary and dehydrated, were soon unable to safely attempt any further rescues.

[8] The magnitude of the blaze was such that firefighters did not have the flames under control until around two o'clock that morning; parts of the building continued to burn until May 30, two days after the fire began.

[15] The investigation into the fire found the following deficiencies, as enumerated by The Cincinnati Enquirer:[8] This was the first lawsuit to use the concept of "enterprise liability" and one of the first disaster suits to be brought as a class action.

[17] Richard Whitt of the Louisville Courier-Journal was awarded the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Local General or Spot News Reporting for his articles on the fire.

"[18] In a letter dated July 8, 2011, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway ordered a retired Kentucky State Police forensic specialist to return 30 boxes of color slides taken in the days after the fire, including pictures of the club's basement during the aftermath, which the forensic specialist had taken personal possession of following his retirement from the State Police.

[24] Author Robert D. Webster, along with co-authors David Brock and Thomas McConaughy, in their 2012 investigative history Beverly Hills Supper Club: The Untold Story of Kentucky's Worst Tragedy, alleges that the fire was actually set deliberately by the mafia, in retaliation for the Supper Club's owner's refusing to sell the venue to them.

[25][27] Brock's allegations had previously been presented to Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear in 2008 by a group called "the Beverly Hills Survivors for Justice".

This Review Team's final report on the matter described the allegations as "a very tiny shred of evidence of arson and a huge mountain of conjecture, unsupported speculation, and personal opinion" which "fall[s] many miles short of the kind of proof that would be needed to justify a ... re-investigation ..."[28]