VOL 100, NO.7
(USPS 650-640)
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING 864-4358
TUESDAY
SEPT. 5, 1989
NEWS: 864-4810
Parents haven't given up hope for return of missing KU grad
By Derek Schmidt Kansan staff writer
A waist-high evergreen named the Joan Marie grows near the front door of the Wichita home of Ralph and Jada Butler.
Joan Butler
The tree is named for the Butlers' 24-year-old daughter, who disappeared from her Overland Park apartment June 18.
"It's here where I can see it every day to keep Joan tops in my mind," Ralph Butler said.
Family friends planted the tree after Joan disappeared. It is both a memorial and a reminder that hope remains.
And that leaves hope for the Butlers.
Rickie Burke lawyer. Joan is one of three missing women police allege were murdered by Richard Grissom Jr. The other women are Christine A. Rusch and Theresa J. Brown, both 22, who shared a Lenexa apartment. The Johnson County district attorney has declined to specify what evidence led to the three first degree murder charges filed against Grissom, but no bodies have been found.
'Superb student'
Joan graduated from Wichita's Bishop Carroll High School in 1983 and entered KU that fail. Her choice
of universities came easily, Ralph Butler said.
"There's something magical about KU, and also it's the school that Dad graduated from." he said.
Joan lived in Corbin Hall as a freshman and pledged the Delta Delta Delta sorority that year. She moved into the sorority house as a sophomore, but left it the next year.
"She didn't feel she had the privacy she needed to do the studying she was doing. The study was important to Joan, many people said.
Joan, little people. "Joanie was a superb student," said Larry Johnson, professor of advertising who taught Joan her senior year. "You knew she was absolutely with you all the time."
By her junior year, Joan knew she wanted to work in advertising, Ralph Butler said. She sold advertising that year for the University Daily Kansan.
Joan had always been close to her father, but her interest in advertising brought them even closer. He is a sales representative at a Wichita television station.
"She was always coming from an agency point of view and I'm always from a TV point of view," Ralph Butler said. "I'm the seller, and she would have been the buyer. We had some pretty heated discussions on things like that."
Jana Butler looked forward to Joan's visits home during college weekends and later during breaks at work. When Joan or her sister, Julie, now a junior at KU, came home, their mother used her skills as a florist to leave fresh flowers in their rooms. Joan preferred roses.
"She would sneak a snack," Jada Butler said.
During her senior year, Joan's advertising career took off. She was part of a student team under Johnson's guidance that produced an advertising campaign for Payless Cashways. Johnson said the plan was "probably the best media plan the department had ever produced."
At the same time, Joan heard about an internship offered by Valentine-Radford, a Kansas City, Mo., advertising agency. She called the agency, asked for an interview and received an internship with the company.
when Joan graduated, Valentine-Radford asked her to take a permanent job. But she returned to Wichita
See BUTLER, p. 6
Andrew Moriett/KANSAN
Kansas running back Tony Sands heads for the end zone during the Jayhawks' 41-17 victory against Montana State. Sands scored a second time in the game on this 11-yard, third-quarter run. See story, page 9.
Get out of my way
Potter Lake turtles keep ducks away
By Chris Evans Kansan staff writer
Some of KU's most prominent quacks have disappeared from campus.
Hungarian delay leaves E. Germans in cold
Each spring, Potter Lake has been home to a number of ducks. This year, the ducks made no appearance. They had to give way to a scaler, greener pond dwellers — the anaposing turtle.
Jodi Wente, receptionist at KU's animal care unit, said her department received numerous telephone calls last spring from people who wanted to know the whereabouts of the ducks.
She said she told callers that the ducks spend the winter months at O'Connell Youth Ranch, a boys' home on the outskirts of Lawrence. Usually, animal care unit personnel bring the ducks back each spring. This spring, they did not return the ducks because snapping turtles which bite the ducks' feet inhabit the lake, Wente said.
"We couldn't justify putting them back with that threat," she said. "It's a little inhumane."
Nancy Schwarting, who has operated on injured ducks from Potter Lake, said turtles in the lake could badly hurt the ducks.
"If a snapping turtle gets a hold of a duck, it can practically never the foot," she said. "The amputation is basically finishing what is already nine-tenths done."
"I didn't know that this happened," she said, referring to the removal of the ducks. "I's a little bit ill. I really think they should be out there. There are better ways to handle the situation than taking the ducks from the pond."
Schwarting said that perhaps the turtles should be removed from the lake. However, Wente said that her supervisors told her removal of the turtles was not a viable option.
Despite the danger to the ducks, Schwarting said she disregarded with the decision to remove them from the lake.
"We don't know of any ways of removing snapping turtles," she said. "They're underwater and hard to detect."
"Don't care that if the University wanted to find someone to get them out, they could hire someone," he said.
Joe Collins, zoologist at the Museum of Natural History, said that although snapping turtles were underwater and were sometimes hard to detect, trapping them was not an impassibility.
The Associated Press
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Thousands of East German refugees waited in tent camps in a cold rain yesterday for passage to the West, which apparently was being delayed by anger in East Berlin caused by the mass flight and Hungary's role in it.
A well-placed Hungarian official told The Associated Press privately that his government was reluctant to authorize the mass transport to West Germany until it could placate communist allies in East Berlin.
There is need for further talks with East Germany, he said.
Interior Minister Istvan Horvath was quoted yesterday as saying it might be weeks before 4,700 East Germans fleeing their repressive homeland could leave Hungary for the West.
East and West Germany must reach an agreement in the matter, and this could take "perhaps a month, or one and a half." Horvath said in an interview with Stern, a Hamburg weekly.
Stern released the interview to other news organizations in advance but did not say when it was conducted. A spokesman for the West German Foreign Ministry said he knew of no change in the Hungarian position.
Wolfgang Wagner, a Red Cross official, said Sunday that the refugees would begin leaving this week, causing speculation that Hungary would risk East German displeasure, but that Hungary was waiting to gather as many refugees as possible in hopes of making the transit a one-time operation.
East German refugees began fleeing to the West through Hungary after the liberal communist regime in Budapest decided in May to remove barbed wire and other obstacles from its Austrian border.
Outside one of them, West German diplomat Gunter Mullack told reporters that Bonn awaited only the word from Budapest to start the caravan westward through Austria to new camps in Bavaria.
Unseasonably cold weather, accompanied by drizzling rain, has increased pressure on Hungary to move the East Germans out of the five makeshift camps.
► See related story p.7
West Germany gives the refugees automatic citizenship and generous help in starting new lives.
This would be the largest single transfer of East Germans to the West since the Berlin Wall was built in August 1961, and would be an unprecedented case of cooperation between a Soviet bloc and NATO nation to resettle citizens of another Eastern European nation in the West.
Temperatures dropped to the low 40s overnight and were in the low 50s yesterday morning, keeping many refugees inside their temporary shelters.
More than 800 new arrivals registered yesterday with Red Cross officials managing the four camps in Budapest and a fifth camp that opened Friday at Zanka on the shores
of Lake Balaton.
The lake is popular with the one million East German tourists who visit Hungary each year. As many as 200,000 East Germans are thought to be in the country, and Miklos Nemeth, the Hungarian premier, has said 20,000 may want to go to West Germany.
Reporters are barred from the camps, but refugees who emerged spoke of mounting frustration with delays in travel to the West, which had been expected to begin during the weekend. Some have been in the camps more than four weeks, and a few were said to be ill because of the bad weather.
Vacationing East Germans began crowding the West German Embassy in Budapest in July, damanding passage to West Germany. So many people arrived that the mission was closed last month.
Hungarian officials said solving the problem was up to East and West Germany, but Communist Party president Nezzo Rusy told a visiting West German politician last week.
The reform that spurred the refugee crisis was Hungary's decision last spring to endorse the 1951 U.N. convention on refugees.
East Germans seldom are granted permission to travel to the West, but visiting neighboring Hungary was a simple matter and East Germans by the thousands began using it as a route to Austria and the West.
Budapest's decision clearly embittered the East Germans, whose hard-line leaders have been increasingly critical of reforms in Hungary and its moves toward a multiparty democracy.
that the East Germans would be allowed to go West. That in effect breaks Hungary's 1969 agreement with East Germany to return those caught trying to flee.
More than 6,000 have crossed into Austria since Hungary began dismantling the frontier barriers. East Germans who make it to Austria are given papers for West Germany.
Escape through Hungary to Austria peaked in late August.
Officials identify body found near Stull
By Jim Peterson Kansan staff writer
Officers are basing the identification of the body on the physical description, a healed broken nose and a small scar on the foot of the victim. Teaselink said.
Local law enforcement officials said yesterday that they were 90 percent certain they had identified the partially clothed body of a woman found Friday inside a cuvetted soil of Stuhl.
Scott Teeselink, Capitol Area Major Case Squad (M-Squad) press officer, the M-Squad had focused on leads surrounding Nika Sanchez, 1510 Pennsylvania St., but wouldn't have a positive identification until
"We are 90 percent sure who the victim is," he said. "Due to the holiday, certain contacts are unavailable. We can't get the fingerprint and dental records we need until things open on Tuesday."
He said Sánchez was last seen on the evening of August 24 walking
today because of the Labor Day holiday.
Teeselink said the M-Squad was asking anyone who knows Sanchez to call the M-Squad at (913) 841-7210.
south of U.S. 40 on County Road 13, the paved road to the Clinton Lake dam.
The M-Squad is made up of law officers from Douglas, Shawnee, Jefferson, Jackson, Pottawatomie, Wabausee and Osage counties who are called upon to investigate major crimes occurring in the seven-county region.
This was the first time the M-Squad
had been activated in Douglas County, he said.
Douglas County Sheriff Loren Anderson said at a Saturday press conference the death was being labelled a homicide because "no one would intentionally put themselves in that position."
He said the body was found in a state of advanced decomposition lying face down in a steel culvert, 30 to 36 inches in diameter, beneath Douglas County road 1400 N, $ \frac{1}{2} $ mile from the Shawnee County line.
Nilsa Sanchez
Recyclers choke on plastics and newspaper; uses are few
By Steve Buckner
Kansan staff writer
This article is the last in a four-part series.
Recycling, a seemingly perfect process that pays consumers, saves industry and spares the environment, is in some cases ahead of its time and in other cases a victim of its own success. And it exists despite a sometimes non-committal public attitude.
Even a "win-win" proposition can have a downside.
A large part of the problem is the type of material being recycled. Aluminum cans and glass bottles can be recycled and made into the same containers repeatedly. The same is not necessarily true for plastic and newspapers.
"We used to do plastic,but the
problem is it downgrades," said Mark Akin, co-owner of River City Recycling, 716 E. Ninth St. "A milk jug can't become another milk jug."
Howard Wilson, owner of Can-Man Recycling in Manhattan, said he had a semi-trailer full of plastic that he had not been able to sell. He said the concept of recycling plastic had
caught manufacturers unprepared.
He remains mildly optimistic about the future of recycling plastic: Wilson said he expected progress in the next two years in the form of recycled plastic products such as sign posts, bumper guards and 2x4 and 2x6 'decks' for outside decks.
"It's so new, the plastic industry is behind the times for recycled products." Wilson said.
But cost remains a deterrent. Equipment to density aluminum cans costs $40,000, but similar equipment to handle plastic costs $250,000. Wilson said. Therefore, there is a dearth of recycled plastic goods in 1969.
"It's great to recycle, but it don't matter a tinker's damn without a market for it" he said.
Another problem with plastic is that many different kinds exist, and
Newspaper shares plastic's problem of a limited recycled market. The supply of newspaper is much greater than demand, recyclers said. "The market is extremely narrow for newspapers," said Kirk Devine, co-owner of River City Recycling. "The Los Angeles Times is the only
recyclers can't tell them apart, Wilson said.
Packer Plastics, 2330 Packer Road, is in the process of putting a recycling emblem and product code on manufactured items, said John Landgrebe, recycling coordinator. Packer Plastics has had some difficulties developing products from recycled plastics because of a lack of a market and the high cost of molds, he said.
However, a local company is doing its part to clarify its products.
major daily using recycled fiber."
Wilson said that he stopped buying newspaper, and that he receives half the volume he was getting, or 60,000 pounds a month. He said the market for newspaper could be helped if the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and the state Legislature mandated that part or all purchased paper be from recycled paper.
Such legislation was passed recently in Missouri, said Alan Bigger, assistant superintendent of building services at the University of Missouri. He said the law required purchasing agents to set goals for buying recycled paper that would reach 10 percent of all purchases by 1991 and 60 percent of purchases by 2000.
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A final part of the recycling equation is individual participation.