VOL.100, NO.43 (USPS 650-640)
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
WEDNESDAY OCT.25,1989
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
NEWS: 864-4810
Grissom loses plea in Texas Murder suspect has opportunity to file an appeal
By Lisa Moss Kansan staff writer
A Texas state appeals court ruled yesterday that Richard Grissom should be sent back to Kansas to stand trial in the slayings of three women, but a court clerk said Grissom had 15 days to file an appeal.
Myra Sands, deputy court clerk for the 5th Court of Appeals, said Grissom could ask the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal appeals court, for a "discreet review" of the 5th Court's finding.
She said she did not know whether Grissom would appeal.
Until that process is complete, Grissom will remain in custody in Texas, Sands said.
Grisonse's court-appointed lawyer had argued in a hearing Monday that an extradition order issued by a state district judge in Dallas should be thrown out because of technical mistakes.
Judge Keith Dean of the 265th District issued the extradition order Aug. 7, and Grissom's attorneys appealed the decision the same day.
Land Rower
Grissom, 28, has been in Texas since July, when he was arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
He was charged Aug. 16 with first-degree murder in the disappearances of three suburban Kansas City women. Authorities said Joan Butler, 24, of Overland Park, and 22-year-old Lenexa roommates Theresa Brown and Christine Rusch have been missing since June.
Noel Cook, Coffeyville sophomore, rows a 30-minute shift for the KU Crew "row-a-thon." Members of the crew, who have rowed non-stop since last Friday in front of Wescoe Hall, will stop the wheel on Friday. Crew members, who are raising money for the club, have to pledge $100.
Grissom also faces other charges, including forgery, kidnapping, robbery and burglary.
See GRISSOM. D. 6
Recycling plan may be postponed
By Chris Evans Kansan staff writer
A partnership dispute has delayed the beginning of a University-sponsored recycling program, the student body vice president said yesterday.
A Student Senate bill allocating funds for a campus recycling pilot program was to be introduced at tonight's Senate meeting, said Jeff Morris, the vice president. The bill was tabled until the Nov. 8 meeting because of a schism in the management of River City Recycling Co., the firm scheduled to recycle at the University.
Mark Akin and John Hebert, two co-owners of River City Recycling, told the third owner nearly two weeks ago that they wanted to dissolve the partnership, according to county records. The third owner, Kirk Devine, disagreed with his partners' terms for the break-up and filed a complaint in Douglas County District Court.
Since that time, Morris said he had received conflicting reports concerning the intentions of the three men.
He said Akin presented a packet of information for Lawrence Recycling Co., a company formerly owned by Akin and Hebert. That firm, along with City Recycling Co., made up the partnership of River City Recycling.
Later, Morris said, Devine called him and said that Akin had agreed to sell Lawrence Recycling to Devine and that the original River City building will now be available to pick up the University's aluminum cans on a daily basis.
"What I'm waiting for is to see if Mark (Akin) is ready to be bought out," Morris said. "If River City and Lawrence Recycling both want the job, what I plan on doing is to form a committee of Student Senate and Environs members to evaluate the services they could offer us.
"All I need is a company to work with us, and right now there is not a company in existence."
Neither Akin, Hebert nor Devine could be reached for comment.
Morris said that although the original plan formulated by members of Senate and Environs, a student environmental-awareness group, was compromised, the ultimate goal of an organized campus recycling program still could be carried out.
Devine's River City Recycling, said that Akin and Devine were having discussions yesterday afternoon but that he was not certain what would be decided. He declined further comment.
Mike Fuqua, an employee of
"The recycling project will probably not happen until Spring now," Morris said. "I don't know that that's such a bad thing. We'll still have a semester of a pilot program, and this summer they'll be able to compile the results of the project and set up a formal program."
Morris said he would ask senators to allocate money for on-campus aluminum can containers at the Nov. 8 meeting. That way, he said, the recycling program could start as soon as a capable recycler came forward.
Bakker fined, sentenced to 45 years in fraud case
The Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jim Bakker, the television evangelist who lost his PTL empile in a sex scandal, was sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000 yesterday for defrauding followers for his own enrichment.
"I'm deeply sorry for those I have hurt," Bakker said before he was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert Potter. "I have sinned. But never in my life did I intend to defraud."
Bakker and his daughter, Tammy Sue Chapman, shook their heads in disbelief while a federal prosecutor presented arguments. Bakker's wife, Tammy Faye, did not attend the court session.
Bakker had faced a maximum sentence of 120 years, but the judge consolidated the 24 fraud and conspiracy counts to nine and sentenced to five years on each. Bakker could be eligible for parole in 10 years.
His lawyers have said size his conviction that they would appeal, but despite defense pleas, Bakker was immediately placed in custody and was to be taken to the medium security federal correctional institution at Talladega, Ala., about 60 miles east of Birmingham. Ala.
In handing down the sentence,
Potter said, "I'm concerned about
the hundreds of letters I have here from people who say they'd do anything for him and that could include preventing Mr. Bakker from going to prison. I believe them."
Because of that, he said, "I think we are going to have to put him into captain's chair."
At that point, Bakker's daughter broke into gobs.
Jessica Hahn, the church secretary whose sexual tryst with Bakker led to the money scandal that caused him to lose control of PTL in 1977, said in a television interview that she we not satisfied with the sentence.
"I still feel like it won't add up to the years that people worked to save up money to give to PTL," Hahn said. He also broadcast on Cable News Network.
"I think he needs to spend a good part of his life trying to get that skill," she said. "He's gone on for another 10 years it would have added up to millions more."
Bakker supporter Helen Gordon said the sentence was not fair.
"Jim Bakker's no crook. The news media made him look like one," she said.
Prosecuters didn't recommend a specific sentence, but asked Potter for a long sentence and a heavy fine, arguing that Bakker hasn't assumed responsibility for his crimes. The government also asked that Bakker be ordered to repay up to $100 million
in money donated by followers.
Bakker's acting lawyer, Harold Bender, asked Potter to consider a request to prison and allow Bakker the benefit of the court's compassion and mercy.
Bakker, 49, was convicted Oct. 5 on 23 counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy for selling lodging guarantees at his Christian retreat when he knew there weren't enough rooms available.
Those who bought the lodging guarantees, called lifetime partners, sent him more than $158 million. The partners then were supposed to be entitled to three nights' lodging each year at the PTL Ministry's Heritage USA retreat at Fort Mill, S.C.
The jury, which began hearing the case Aug. 28, found that Bakker used more than $3.7 million of his followers' money to buy extravagant homes, luxury cars, jewelry and expensive vacations.
During the trial, which lasted nearly six weeks, defense attorneys called 75 witnesses, including more than 50 who were loyal Bakker supporters.
Bakker resigned from the PTL on March 19, 1987.
Prosecutors called more than 100 witnesses, including many lifetime partners who had sent money.
Graduate views massive blast
Texas plastics plant explosion seemed 'just outside windshield'
Refinery blast shakes Pasadena, Texas
By Paula Parrish
Kansan staff writer
"It was phenomenal." Howe said. It was so close to us that I thought it would be the perfect ending.
Julie Howe returned from her lunch break Monday afternoon just in time to see her workplace explode into a massive fireball.
Howe, a 1989 KU graduate, was on a marketing internship at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s Houston Chemical Complex when it exploded Monday, leaving two people dead, 22 presumed dead and 124 injured.
While searching through the smoldering remains of the plastics plant yesterday, emergency crews found a body in the disaster's second victim. But the crew needed heavy equipment before the body could be recovered.
Howe and two fellow workers were waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Jefferson Road and Texas Highway 225, less than one-quarter of a mile from the plant, when the plant exploded.
Debris from the plant was found from as far away as six miles. Before the explosion, more than 4.5 million
SOURCE: The Dailies Morning News
"I thought it was going to break the windows out," she said. "My ears popped. The pressure you fell on the car was incredible."
"I was looking to the right at the car next to us when suddenly the guy that was driving said, 'Oh, my God!'" Howe said. "I looked out the windshield and saw just a small explosion at first. And then a huge ball of flame erupted. It was like nothing you've ever seen."
pounds of plastics were produced each day at the site for use in items such as milk jugs and grocery bags.
Howe said that about three seconds after they saw the explosion, they heard
Knight-Ridder Tribune News / CAROL 71.897
"We couldn't really see because Highway 252 passes over Jefferson Road, and all we could see was a big fireball," she said.
Howe said that at first she and her companions thought that a gas station on the other side of Highway 225 had exploded.
Of the 124 people injured, 35 remain hospitalized, with six listed in critical condition.
But Howe said she and her companions still thought that it had been taken.
after they had reached the other side of Highway 225, and a policeman had turned them away
"You just don't think that the place is going to blow up," she said.
Although it is not known what caused the explosion, Bill Stoltz, Phillips environmental director, said a seal blew out on an ethylene loop reactor, releasing hydrocarbon vapor, which ignited.
"There are a hundred ways that could occur. We don't know how the ignition occurred." Phillips President Glenn Cox said.
Buford Watson, 59 city manager, dies
See BLAST. D/6
By a Kansan reporter
Lawrence police officers and Douglas County Ambulance personnel arrived at Watson's home, 1516 Crescent Road, in response to an emergency call at 11:27 p.m. After paramedics stabilized his condition at the scene, Watson was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital at 11:15 a.m. where he was admitted to the cardiac care unit.
Lawrence City Manager Buford Watson died early this morning at Lawrence Memorial Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest at his home. He was 59.
John Hiebert and Larry Hatten, physicians at the hospital.
attempted to revive Watson until he died at 1:44 a.m.
Hebert said that Watson had a blood clot in the left main coronary artery. The doctors gave Watson a dialysis dissolver, but it was unable to dissolve the artery, Hebert said. Watson had no prior history of heart disease.
He is survived by his wife, Faye,
and four sons, Mark, Phillip, Brian
 and Brent
Watson was born in Columbia, Mo., in 1830 and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri. He received a master's administration from the University of Kansas in June 1960.
Watson had been the Lawrence city manager since 1970.
Bush ready to exercise line-item veto
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush, impatient with Congress' refusal to vote him line-item vow powers, is considering casting such a veto anyway "to see if it works," spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, said yesterday.
Fitzwater told reporters that the White House was seeking legislation on which Bush could exercise a partial veto and then allow the courts to decide whether the president acted legally.
"We are looking for a vehicle that might be a suitable case, but at this point we don't have one," Fitzwater sales
Another senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely such a challenge would be mounted immediately, given the House's already-frayed relationship with Democrats.
Such a move — vetoing just one part of a bill while leaving the rest intact — would be certain to provoke a major constitutional confrontation with the Democratic in both the House and the Senate, Fitzwater said.
"We've got a lot of issues that probably wouldn't sit well with the Democratic leadership, but there is a larger question here." Flitzwater said. He said that he assumed
Some legal scholars contend that line-item veto powers are implicit in a president's authority to veto legislation; others argue against such an interpretation.
that such a veto would be challenged immediately in court.
But the subject gained new attention with a comment Monday by Vice President Dan Quayle in Chicago.
Both Bush and Budget Director Richard Darman have raised the possibility of proceeding with such a veto to provoke a court challenge.
Bush, and President Reagan before him, proposed a constitutional amendment to spell out a right to veto single items in spending bills. However, such proposals have never gotten far in Congress.
Filtwater said the administration was willing to force the issue and prompt a court case, believing that the president has such powers and should be able to exercise them.
Asked if Bush were prepared to make such a challenge now, Quayle said, "This is an issue in which he has stated a great deal of interest. And if he can find an appropriate part of a piece of legislation to test that constitutionality, I think that he would be inclined to do so."
Male body discovered in Kansas River
By a Kansan reporter
A unidentified male body was found yesterday floating in the Kansas River in North Lawrence near Burcham Park.
City and county police officers were notified about the body at 4:30 p.m. by persons in the area.
1
The body was taken to Lawrence Memorial Hospital. An autopsy will be conducted today.
Officials had not positively identified the body by midnight.