University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Oct. 1. 1970
13
Teamster Members Charged After Violent Truck Explosion
SPRINGFIELD, MO. (UPI)—Two Teamsters members were charged late Wednesday with second-degree murder after a sniper's bullet exploded 21 tons of dynamite aboard a truck on a mission for a firm struck by the union.
The blast ripped a 100-foot crater in a highway and disintegrated the vehicle and its driver.
Charged were Gerald Lee Bowden, 27, his wife Sharron Lynn, 27, and Bobby Lee Shuler, 29, all of Joplin. Police said Bowden and Shuler both were employed as truck drivers for Tri-State Motor Transit Co. of Joplin, one of the nation's largest haulers of explosives. The firm has been struck by the union since Sept. 15.
Wednesday's blast site was 10 miles west of here on I-44.
The FBI entered the labor dispute after trucks owned by the firm were fired upon earlier. Sniper fire damaged another Tri-State truck Tuesday night.
The explosion destroyed a farm house nearby and shattered windows in downtown Springfield, 10 miles away.
"It's an incredible sight to see," said Ernest DeCamp of Springfield. "The truck is just no where. It's gone. It was blown to bits."
The truck, leased to Tri-State Motor Transit Co., of Joplin, Mo., was hauling its 42,000 pounds of dynamite to a lead mine in Boss, Mo. The driver killed in the blast was John A. Galt, 48, of Oklahoma City, who was making his first trip for the trucking firm.
The company said Galt was a veteran driver who had traveled two million miles in his truck without an accident.
In addition to the two Teamsters members held, one woman, apparently injured by the explosion, surrendered at a farm house near Ashgrove, Mo.
Two men and another woman were arrested in nearby woods. All were identified as being from Joplin.
Sheriff Mickey Owens of Greene County, the former baseball star, said a seventh suspect was being sought.
A car believed used by the sniper was found abandoned near the scene of the explosion. Its windows were shattered, its interior bloodspattered. Police theorized a rifle found in a nearby field was dropped by the fleeing sniper.
Norman Hopkins, 22, Wichita, Kan., driver of another truck traveling ahead of the vehicle that was destroyed, told police he a muzzle flash as he passed the spot where Galt's truck disintegrated
Hopkins refused to talk with newsmen, but state troopers said he told them the sniper apparently shot at him first. Bullet holes were found in Hopkins' truck.
"He said he looked up in his rear view mirror after he saw the muzzle flash and there was just a ball of fire," troopers reported.
Tri-State is one of the nation's largest transporters of explosives. Most of its 800 drivers are based in Joplin. About 200 are based in Lexington, Ky., and fewer than a dozen work from in Olympia, Wash.
The FBI entered the labor dispute after several trucks owned by the firm were fired upon earlier. A truck operated by Tri-State had sniper fire strike its radiator Tuesday night.
A farm house one-half mile from the scene was demolished by Wednesday's explosion, which also damaged a candy shop and two gasoline stations in the area.
"My home is destroyed," said Ralph Baldwin, owner of the farm house. "The windows are out. The door's blown in. The floor's buckled."
Pornography Report Criticized
WASHINGTON (UPI) Disavowed in advance by the Nixon Administration and disputed by three of its own members, the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography Wednesday recommended repeal of all laws against distributing explicit sexual materials to consenting adults.
"There is no warrant for continued governmental interference with the full freedom of adults to read, obtain or view whatever such material they wish," the commission said.
The 17-man panel, created by Congress in 1967, said laws against distribution of pornography to young persons should include only pictorial material, because the risk of harm to juveniles from written matter does not justify its prohibition.
But the commission recommended enactment of state and local laws forbidding public displays of sexually explicit pictorial materials and approved in principle the provision of the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act outlawing the mailing of unsolicited advertisements of a sexually explicit nature to those who object to receiving them.
The majority report said it found no evidence that pornography was a significant cause of crime, sexual deviancy or severe emotional disturbance in adults of youths.
Nevertheless, it called for a "massive sex education effort" among adults and youths involving the family, school, church and other agencies.
The reports' contents had been nearly all leaked in advance. Attorney General John N. Mitchell said Aug. 22 that "the commission is not associated with the Nixon Administration. If we want a society in which the noble side of man is encouraged and mankind is elevated, then I submit pornography is surely harmful."
"Its purpose should be to contribute to healthy attitudes and orientations to sexual relationships so as to provide a sound foundation for our society's basic institutions of marriage and family." the report said.
In the minority report, two clergymen and an attorney charged the American Civil Liberties Union, which they said advocated free distribution of pornography, had gained control of the commission through its
chairman, William Lockhart, dean of the University of Minnesota lawschool, and its general counsel, Paul Bender, both of whom are ACLU members. The ACLU denied it.
One of the three dissidents,
attorney Charles H. Keating Jr. of Cincinnati, President Nixon's only appointee on the commission created during the Johnson Administration, asked Congress to investigate the panel.
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BSU Statement
The Black Student Union desires at this time to openly declare its support of the Lawrence Branch of Concerned Black Parents (LBCBP). As the only viable community-based black organization, it has developed successful means of dealing with problems of the black community. Unfortunately, its efforts and the efforts of the BSU have been continually subverted by Leonard Harrison and a group run by former University of Kansas students known as the Colonized African Students (CAS). The use of the name of the Lawrence Branch of Concerned Black Parents in connection with the Rick Dowdell Liberation School is an example of the misuse and abuse of our people by those reputed to be "liberators." This liberation school receives no support in any fashion from either the LBCBP or the BSU.
Also, we wish to make it extremely clear that until this time the BSU has issued no statement whatsoever to the Kansan or to any other publication during this school year. All statements issued under our name were made by the CAS without BSU authorization.
Again, we declare our support for LBCBP and in no way aid or support Lenonard Harrison or his counter-revolutionary CAS, whose principal leaders are Gary Jackson, Monty Beckwith, Ken White and Jake Mumford.
LaVerta Murray BSU Chairman
Fred McIntosh Vice Chairman
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