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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Suspect tied to killings
Thursday, Sept. 5, 1985
United Press International
LOS ANGELES — The accused Night Stalker has been linked by a fingerprint to the throat-slashing murder of an elderly woman attacked in her home in June 1984, extending his alleged reign of terror to more than a year, the Los Angeles police chief announced yesterday.
Chief Daryl Gates also said detectives were trying to link Richard Ramirez to killings and other crimes as far back as 1981, and were following up on calls from "a wide array of people who've been attacked by someone resembling this individual."
He said a single fingerprint of the defendant matched those found on a window screen at Jenny Vincow's ground floor apartment in the Eagle Rock district. The 79-year-old woman, who died from several stab wounds and a slashed throat, was found dead by her son.
Noting that Ramirez, 25, was charged with petty theft in Pasadena in 1981, Gates said police now thought the suspect had lived in the Los Angeles area since that time.
He would not specify how many unsolved cases, including rapes,
burglaries and auto thefts, were re-examined, but said more fingerprints checks were being made.
San Francisco police said yesterday they were looking for links with three more slayings, two sisters killed in February and a man shot to death in June.
Ramirez, who earlier had been linked by Los Angeles police to a total of 16 slayings, has so far been formally charged with two murders — one in a Los Angeles suburb and one in San Francisco — and with 11 lesser crimes.
Gates also told reporters that Ramirez had been stopped twice by police this summer, but was not arrested. "He was the Night Stalker composite drawing,"
He said Ramirez ran away June 15 after being pulled over on suspicion of driving a stolen car. He said he was stopped again on Aug. 26 — just one day after the Stalker's last known attack and five days before his capture — for allegedly driving a motorcycle without a license.
Gates said, "but 'i'd be hesitant to criticize the officer involved."
Investigators, meanwhile, sent a group of sheriff's cadets with metal detectors to hunt for a black pistol that Ramirez is thought to have stolen. The dramatic run through East Los Angeles just before his capture Saturday.
Authorities say the weapon is crucial to connecting Ramirez to some of the slayings earlier linked to the Night Stalker.
Another group of cadets searched an area near Glendale and recovered six items near a freeway on-ramp. Officials would not say what the items were or what crimes they might be linked to.
Ramirez, held under maximum security, is also suspected of about two dozen other attacks, most recently the attack in suburban Mission Viejo when a man was shot three times in the head and his fiancee was raned.
Orange County prosecutors, noting the severity and number of charges either filed or awaiting filing in other jurisdictions, said they would probab- ited a couple of weeks before filing their attempted murder charges.
Smoking may cut some cancer risks
United Press International
BOSTON — A study suggests heavy cigarette smoking may reduce the risk of uterine cancer in post-menopausal women, but researchers said yesterday that the risk of smoking far outweighed any benefit it might have.
By his estimates, six of every 100,000 women who smoke might be spared of dying from endometrial cancer. On the other hand,
A study of 1,230 women with cancer found that postmenopausal women who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day were half as likely as non-smoking women to develop endometrial cancer. The endometrium is the lining of the uterus.
The study findings were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine and in an accompanying editorial, Dr. Neel S. Weiss of the University of Washington said that women who smoke "cannot take much comfort from this."
180 of 100,000 women smokers, or 30 times as many, are expected to die from lung cancer.
Endometrial cancer and other cancers of the female reproductive system are thought to be related to the hormone estrogen. Smokers seem to have lower levels of estrogen than non-smokers.
Doctors speculate that cigarette smoking has some sort of counter effect on whatever is increasing the risk of cancer, which the researchers think is estrogen. This speculation is bolstered by findings that post-menopausal women who smoke excrete less estrogen in their urine than their nonsmoking counterparts.
"The data suggest that women who smoke heavily may have a lower risk of endometrial cancer than non-smokers," the report concluded. "The present findings do not have direct public health importance because cigarettes, overall, have serious deleterious effects."
Rare variety of gonorrhea could spread
United Press International
The outbreak, which occurred from February to November of 1983 was of a form called Neissera gonorrhea, which is rare in the United States.
BOSTON — Federal health experts warned yesterday that an outbreak of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea in Durham, N.C., may be the precursor of "a major problem in the United States."
Because few state health departments test for this rare form; doctors at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said the veneer might spread out of control before it was recognized by local experts.
"Unless surveillance and control measures are adopted ... N. gorgerhea may become a major problem in the United States," said the report; published in this week's New Engl. land Journal of Medicine.
Heart patient stable making fast recovery
If health-care workers waste time ineffectively treating the disease, it may spread out of control, the CDC report said.
United Press International
TUCSON, Ariz. — The world's youngest artificial heart patient is recovering so fast, he may be strong enough during the next five to seven become a candidate for a donor heart, doctors said yesterday.
Michael Drummond, 25, assistant manager of a Cottonwood, Ariz., supermarket, was listed in stable condition and his vital signs improved, said Nina Trasoff, spokeswoman for the University of Arizona Medical Center.
Dr. Mark Levinson, a member of the hospital's artificial-heart team, reported Drummond was making "rapid progress."
"He wants to live." Trasoff said. "He's directed all of his attention to getting well enough to just walk out of here."
He was so improved that Trasou said she hoped she would be able to interview him and give a transcript and audio tapes to reporters. But Drummond said he wasn't up to talking about his ordeal because he wanted to use all his energy for his fight for survival, she said.
She said Drummond probably was uncomfortable with all of the publicity he had received.
"Yesterday was the first day he actually watched news coverage and became aware of what a public figure he's become."
Drummond received a plastic Jarvil-7 heart in emergency surgery Aug. 29 when doctors decided he had
only 48 hours to live without the operation. He had been listed in critical condition until Tuesday when his status was unreached to stable.
He suffered from cardiomyopathy, a deterioration of the heart muscle that kills about 100,000 Americans each year.
The mechanical device was implanted while doctors searched for a donor human heart. He was the sixth victim in the world to receive the Jarykish耳
Trasoff said Drummond's blood pressure was stable, his kidney function had improved and the dehydration he suffered was gone.
"He's eating three meals a day." Trasoff said.
She said Drummond had gotten out of bed to walk again and was exercising his hands with a ball and weights.
The intravenous tubes all have been removed from the patient except for one, which continues to supply the anticoagulant heparin, which is infused to prevent the possibility of stroke.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has given approval to the university to implant Jarvik-7 in up to 10 clinical cases as a temporary life-saving measure. But FDA Within Grigsby said there would be no problem it is a donor heart could not be found for Drummond.
VARSITY
"We're certainly not going to say 'take it out' if there's no replacement heart," he said in Washington.
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