A general alarm fire on March 25, 1971 in the Theater Block building at the corner of Main and West Water streets marked the start of a 13-month period of suspicious fires in Wakefield. The fire caused extensive damage to upper floor offices. The auditorium of the Wakefield Cinema was spared fire damage although the lobby sustained heavy water damage. (At the time of the fire, the movie theater was showing a double feature of “Rio Lobo” with John Wayne and “Twisted Nerve,” a British thriller starring Hayley Mills.) The adjacent Cataldo’s Pharmacy was also damaged by water from firefighting efforts. A brick fire wall prevented the fire from spreading to the Diskay discount department store. The first floor barber shop owned by Paul DeFelice sustained only minor water damage.
One Wakefield firefighter, Robert Sullivan, suffered several broken ribs as a result of a fall inside the building. (Lt. Sullivan, father of current Fire Chief Michael Sullivan, would perish three years later in a fire a few blocks away at Ames Drug Store on March 11, 1974.) The series of suspicious fires stopped on April 29, 1972, when Wakefield Police patrolman Earle Lawson was arrested after being spotted inside a closed downtown business. Lawson, a 1964 graduate of Wakefield High School, was sentenced to nine years in MCI Concord after admitting to setting seven of the fires, including the Theater Block fire.