4A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY HAIRY KANSAN
HURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2007
INVESTIGATION
Police officer suspected in wife's vanishing
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOLINGBROOK, III — A relative of former police officer Drew Peterson reportedly helped him move a large, heavy container out of his suburban home the day his wife vanished, an allegation that sparked a furious denial from Peterson's attorney.
Peterson and his stepbrother removed the container from an
Former Bolingbrook, Ill., police sergeant Drew Peterson talks to a member of the media as he leaves his home Monday. The FBI joined Illinois State Police and local authorities Monday in the search for Peterson's wife, 28-year-old Stacy Peterson, who was reported missing on Oct. 29, 2007.
upstairs bedroom and put it in his sport utility vehicle, according to media reports that cited anonymous sources close to the investigation into Stacy Peterson's disappearance last month.
The step-
brother, Thomas Morphey, later became distraught after learning that Stacy Paterson was missing and tried to kill himself, the Chicago Tribune and The Joliet Herald News reported Wednesday.
Authorities say Drew Peterson is a suspect in his fourth wife's disappearance and have called her case a possible homicide. Investigators are also re-examining the 2004 death of Drew Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio. Police have said her death may have been a homicide staged to look like an accidental bathtub drowned.
Peterson took a day off from the Bolingbrook Police Department on Oct.28, the day Stacy Peterson was last seen by her relatives. He had been scheduled to work at 5 p.m. that day.
Peterson, 53, has denied any wrongdoing and said he believed his 23-year-old wife left him for another man and was alive.
Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky,
denied anyone helped Peterson
move any container from the home and claimed the stepbrother has a history of mental problems.
Steve Carcerano, a friend of Drew Peterson's, said Peterson told him
"I don't know what world Thomas Morphey is living in, our world, his world or if he's veering back and forth between the real world and whatever fantasy world he's living in", Brodsky told The Associated Press.
he had called. Morphey to confront him.
"He called him and said, 'Why are you say ing this stuff?' Carcerano told the AP.
A spokesman for Will County prosecutors declined to comment
on the media reports, and Illinois State Police did not return messages. There was no answer Wednesday when a reporter knocked on the door of Morphey's home.
Peterson took a day off from the Bolingbrook Police Department on Oct. 28, the day Stacy Peterson was last seen by her relatives. He had been scheduled to work at 5 p.m. that day, but called in saying his wife was missing and he had to watch the kids, according to police.
Peterson has since resigned from the police force.
The phone did ring while Peterson was gone, and the caller ID said "Stacy" the Tribune reported.
Peterson came back to the coffee shop and drove Morphey to Peterson's home. Peterson reportedly asked Morphey to help him move something from the house. After moving the plastic container to
the SUV, the two left, and Peterson dropped Morphey off at his own home, according to the Tribune.
Sharon Bychowski. Peterson's next-door neighbor, said she baby-saw Drew Peterson's children three days later, on the morning of Oct. 31, for 90 minutes. She said Peterson told her he had to visit a relative in
the hospital who had tried to commit suicide.
When Peterson returned to pick up his children, she asked how the relative was doing. "He said, 'Lost his job, lost his family.' Bychowski told the AP.
show a report of a drug overdose involving sleeping pills for Morphey around 11 p.m. on Oct. 29. He was stabilized and taken to a hospital. The logs indicate Morphey never talked to a police officer, and the Tribune reported that it was a friend of Morphey's who contacted police.
INTERNATIONAL
Teacher could be jailed for naming teddy bear Muhammad
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The country's top Muslim clerics pressed the government to ensure that the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, is punished, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie's "blasphemies" against the Prophet Muhammad.
KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan charged a British teacher Wednesday with inciting religious hatred — a crime punishable by 40 lashes — because she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad as part of a class project.
The charges against Gibbons angered the British government, which urgently summoned the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the case. British and American Muslim groups also criticized the decision.
Gibbons, 54, was arrested at her home in Khartoum on Sunday after some parents of her students accused her of naming the bear after Islam's prophet. Muhammad is a common name among Muslim men, but the parents saw applying it to a toy animal as an insult.
Officials in Sudan's Foreign
Ministry have tried to play down the case, calling it an isolated incident and predicting Tuesday that Gibbons could be released without charge.
But hard-liners have considerable weight in the government of President Omar al-Bashir, which came to power in a 1989 military coup that touted itself as creating an Islamic state.
The northern part of the country bases its legal code on Islamic Sharia law, and al-Bashir often seeks to burnish his religious credentials.
Last year, he vowed to lead a jihad, or holy war, against U.N. peacekeepers if they deployed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. He relented this year to allow a U.N.-African Union force there — but this month said he would bar Scandinavian peacekeepers from participating because newspapers in their countries ran caricatures of Prophet Muhammad last year.
Streets were calm Wednesday in Khartoum, but a pickup truck drove through the capital with loudspeakers blaring calls for Muslims to protest Friday after prayers and not to let their religion be insulted.
Sudanese Prosecutor-General Salah Eddin Abu Zaid said that Gibbons was charged with inciting religious hatred and that her case would be referred to courts Thursday.
If convicted, she faces up to 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine, said Abdul-Daem Zumrawi, an undersecretary at the Justice Ministry. The verdict and any sentence are up to "the discretionary power of the judge," he said, according to the state Sudanese News Agency.
The case set up an escalating diplomatic dispute with Britain, Sudan's former colonial ruler.
"We are surprised and disappointed by this development," said Michael Ellam, a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
He said Foreign Secretary David Miliband would urgently summon Sudanese Ambassador Omer Mohammed Ahmed Siddig and ask "for the rationale behind the charges and a sense of what the next steps might be."
"We will consider our response in the light of that," Ellam said.
Parents plead guilty to kidnapping
Julia Redd, 58, and husband Lemuel Redd, 60, pleaded guilty to custodial interference, a misdemeanor, capping the legal end of a family dispute over their daughter Juliana's choice for a husband. The plea spared them jail time. A judge immediately sentenced the parents to three years of probation and ordered them to pay $2,000, the cost of a meal that was missed on the eve of the original wedding date, along with the mental evaluation.
PROVO, Utah — A couple accused of kidnapping their daughter on the eve of her wedding pleaded guilty Wednesday to a reduced charge, and a judge ordered mental-health professionals to evaluate them for actions he called "clearly irrational."
"This is a tragedy, and it clearly
The parents had originally been charged with kidnapping their 20-year-old daughter in August 2006. The Redbs had picked up her to take her shopping to buy religious garments for the ceremony in a Mormon temple, but instead drove more than 200 miles to Grand Junction, Colo., where they spent a night in a motel.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CRIME
Their daughter has said her parents berated her on the drive, accusing her of breaking the Old Testament's Fourth Commandment, which says to honor parents. She said they called her fiance "evil and wicked."
involves, in my view, mental illness," at Dishart Judge James Taylor said.
Julianna Myers, now 21, told the judge that she is afraid of her mother and was disappointed that it took more than a year for her parents to accept responsibility.
Julianna and Perry Myers were married Aug. 8, 2006, three days later than planned — and without the Redds in attendance. A court
order has prevented the Redds from speaking to their daughter or son-in-law for more than a year. The young couple had a daughter last spring.
"We don't tell anybody where we live. We have a P.O. box," said Myers, who added that her mother "would stop at nothing" to learn where she lives.
In Britain, the Gibbons family declined to speak with The Associated Press, saying the British government had advised them not to comment.
Defense attorney Rhome Zabriskie said the parents hoped they could mend fences.
British-style education to about 750 students from elementary through high school. Most students are Muslims from affluent Sudanese families.
"Julia recognizes this is a huge mistake she's made in her life," he said.
Police in downtown Khartoum stood guard outside the school, which closed after Gibbons' arrest. It was founded in 1902 to provide
about what they did with the bear, and the entries were compiled into a book with the bear's photo on the cover and the title "My Name is Muhammad," in what teachers in Britain said was a common exercise.
Each student then took the bear for a weekend to write a diary entry
Lemuel Redd told reporters: "We have apologized, and we are sorry."
Officials at Unity High School, where Gibbons taught, say she was teaching her 7-year-old students about animals and in September asked one girl to bring in her teddy bear. Gibbons then asked the students to pick names for the bear, and they voted to name it Muhammad.
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