St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 1

On Today's Editorial Page The Foil-Sofe Failure: Editorial Bark Now, Bite Later: Editorial fPIU FINAL Stock Market Up Closing Prices Pages 22D and 23D yini VOL. 93 NO. 54 1971, St. Loull Pott-Dispatch WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1971 80 PAGES 10c Home Delivery $3.50 ft Month Trie Detective, Killed In Drue Maid SIL post-a SPAT Appeal For Bus 'f Subsidy Suspect W. lhL.i i i i -i-, vv i-sSs vKV? o' 'wli' VACANCY ON THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL: South Vietnamese infantrymen, their weapons at the ready, peering into the entrance of a bunker along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.

The structure had been abandoned by North Vietnamese regular soldiers. (UPI Telephoto) Huge Red Supply Losses Reported On Laos Trail SCENE OF FATAL SHOOTINGS: The interior of the apartment at 6152 Waterman Boulevard where a detective and a narcotics suspect were fatally wounded in a raid last night. The view is through a broken panel of the door to the apartment. The suspect fired from the sofa at right when officers entered the room. (Post Dispatch Photo by Renyold Ferguson) One of the bases was said to be north of Highway 9, the main incursion route and the other to the south.

Each is 10 miles inside Laos. A South Vietnamese Ranger base six miles inside Laos was overrun last week with heavy casualties. Three helicopters were shot down yesterday, increasing to 29 the number of U. S. helicopters reported lost on both sides of the border in the 17-day-old drive into Laos.

At least 40 Americans have been killed, 15 are missing and 26 wounded in the crashes. The big U.S. base at Quang Tri in the northern zone came under rocket attack late to- From Post-Dispatch Wire Services SAIGON, South Vietnam, Feb. 24 American air strikes have wiped out huge North Vietnamese war stockpiles on the Ho Chi Minh trail, including about 800 tons of ammunition, more than 120 caches of supplies and weapons and 330 vehicles, the United States Command said today. It reported also four fuel pipelines cut.

Two South Vietnamese bases inside Laos came under sharp attack late today in a new upsurge of fighting. Six more American helicopters were shot down or damaged in the action around the bases, but no details were available, the accounts Detective Melvin Wilmoth and a suspected narcotics pusher were fatally wounded last night in an exchange of shots in a raid by narcotics officers at an apartment at 6152 Waterman Boulevard. Wilmoth, 28 years old, died about 1:30 a.m. at Deaconess Hospital of massive internal hemorrhaging. His assailant was identified by his fingerprints as Bernard Weiss, 23, originally from Dol-ton, 111., a Chicago suburb.

Two occupants of the apartment were charged with narcotics violations after officers confiscated a quantity of heroin, marijuana and narcotics paraphernalia. Four others were arrested but later were released. Wilmoth, who lived at 4442 Tarlton Drive, Mattesse, was on temporary assignment with the narcotics section under a department program intended to familiarize officers with the drug problem. Wilmoth, an eight-year veteran of the de-partment, normally was assigned to the Special Operational Deployment Division, afield operations unit. Seven detectives participated in the raid, which occurred at 8:25 p.m.

It was planned as a result of recent purchases of LSD by a police informant from tenants of the apartment, police said. Police said Detectives Paul Lee and William McNabb had gone to the rear of the apartment building as Wilmoth and Detectives Darrell Ruediger, Gary Woods, Glenn Vaughn and Robert Marbs remained outside the front entrance. A group of four young men went into the building and entered the apartment on the first floor where the LSD purchases had been made. The five detectives followed them inside, with Wilmoth and Ruediger in front of the other officers. The sheriff's office in Dolton told the Post Dispatch that Weiss had been arrested three times for traffic violations twice for speeding and once for running a stop sign.

He paid a fine in each case. Warrants were issued this afternoon charging James A. Watson, 24, and Miss Diana Grimes, 18, with possession of narcotics. The charges are based on a purchase of LSD from Miss Grimes a week ago by a police undercover agent in the presence of Watson, police said. Police said Miss Grimes shared the apartment with Watson.

Both were still being held this afternoon. The four young men whom detectives followed into the apartment were released today after warrants were refused because of insufficient evidence. They were identified as Jack Buckmiller, 17, of 7630 Cars-wold Drive, Steven Ebert, 18, of 7540 Carondolet Avenue, and Mike F. Kirkpatrick, 17, of 7552 Parkdale Avenue, all of Clayton, and Andrew Shinkle, 18, of 22 Upper Ladue Road, Ladue. At a press conference in police headquarters this afternoon, officers explained that they had the apartment under surveillance after having made the narcotics purchase from Miss Grimes in Watson's presence.

Police said they knocked on TURN TO PAGE 5, COL. 1 Blood Offered Detective night, Associated Press correspondent William Barton reported. He said the shelling hit the outer edges of the base and lasted about half an hour, but there were no reports of casualties or damage. Quang Tri is temporary headquarters for the U.S. Twenty-fourth Corps, the parent unit directing American activities in support of the Laos drive.

The U.S. Command reported also air attacks on three more missile sites in North Vietnam that it said threatened U.S. B-52 bombers attacking the Ho Chi Minh trail. For the seventh successive TURN TO PAGE 11, COL. 7 Consumer Office In White House By JAMES DEAKIN A Washington Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch WASHINGTON, Feb.

24 -President Richard M. Nixon today set up a new office of Consumer Affairs in the Wnite The Bi-State Transit System, faced with a deficit of more than $2,500,000 in' the next fiscal year, will be forced to increase fares or reduce services sharply unless it receives subsidies from Missouri and Illinois, officers of the Bi-State Development Agency warned yesterday. Prospects for help from the Missouri Legislature appeared bleak, however. The fare increase, if required, would be at least 5 cents, and services could be reduced by as much as 10 per cent, Robert S. Knapp, Bi-State board chairman, said.

The basic fare now is 45 cents, among the highest in the country. The House yesterday turned down a proposal to appropriate $750,000 for planning and development of a a i 1 -1 i mass transit system that would be tied closely to the bus system. The House has repeatedly rejected Bi-State's request for capital improvement funds. Bi-State's financial plight was underscored by the Bi-State Der velopment Agency Board of Commissioners when it adopted a tentative 1971-72 budget with a deficit of $2,531,600. The budget projects revenues of $23,215,000 and expenses of $22,522,000, leaving an operating surplus of $693,000.

However, payments on Bi-State's debts and to the depreciation reserve fund are $3,224,600, leaving a deficit of $2,531,600. In adopting the deficit budget, the board violated the trust indenture under which Bi-State Transit System operates. The indenture requires that a balanced budget be adopted. W. C.

Gilman transportation consulting firm, recommended that the a adopt the budget with the stipulation that operating subsidies be obtained within 120 days. If outside help is not obtained, Bi-State will be forced to increase fares or reduce service, Gilman said. "Our only recourse was to adopt a deficit budget, but adopt it as a tentative budget," Knapp explained. "If we don't get help within 90 days, though, we will be in serious trouble." In the first 11 months of this fiscal year, Bi-State has run up a deficit of $1,098,702 and has a projected deficit of $1,140,600 for the 1970-71 fiscal year. Its new fiscal year will begin Monday.

Yesterday's action by the House does not eliminate the possibility of funds for mass transit being approved in this regular legislative session. The funds could be restored by the Senate. The issue then would TURN TO PAGE 18, COL. 5 Food Prices Down .3 Fct. Retail food prices in the St.

Louis area dropped .3 per cent in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was the third month in the last four that food prices have declined here, the bureau said. All grocery prices combined now are 1.1 per cent less than they were a year ago. Fruit and vegetable prices led the decline, dropping 2.2 per cent in price from December to January. Meats, poultry and fish cost 1.5 per cent less than the month before.

Cereals and bakery product prices dropped .1 per cent and the price of dairy products was unchanged from December. Prices for eggs, margarine and similar ingredients rose 1.2 per cent. Warmer Official forecast for St. Louis and vicinity: Fair to partly cloudy with a warming trend through tomorrow; high today in the mid 40s; lows tonight 30 to 35; highs tomorrow 50 to 55. Clear to partly cloudy and cool Friday and Saturday; lows from the 20s to low 30s; highs in the 40s; Sunday, mostly sunny and colder with lows in the 20s Cross Examination OfCallevEnds ftv I Detective Melvin Wilmoth Killed in drug raid Bernard Weiss Dead youth identified na, radioed him twice in the attack to ask why his platoon was not moving faster, and he was instructed to "get rid" of the people who were slowing him down.

The platoon leader said he asked Paul Meadlo, one of his men, if he knew what to do with a group of civilians. "He said he did, and I told him to get moving. I meant to get the people on the other side of the ditch." "You didn't mean for him to kill them?" the prosecutor asked. "Not if he could get 'em on the other side of the ditch." "Why were they being moved at all?" "We wanted 'em to go through the mine field," was the reply. Defense attorney George W.

Lattimer's interrogation brought out the fakery involved in some of the body counts of enemy dead in Vietnam, "The desirability of i body counts was impressed on us," Calley said. "The Americal Division, being new, wanted to TURN TO PAGE 4, COL. 1 Opposition Inhibiting Apartment Planners By ERIC L. ZOECKLER Of the Post-Dispatch Staff LAST OF A SERIES For Fuller Brush Co. salesman Ed Welage, it was perhaps the most important sales pitch he ever had delivered.

He was understandably nervous, because this time he was not selling brushes. He was attempt ing to persuade Supervisor Lawrence K. Roos and the St. Louis County Council to turn thumbs down on a proposed low-density eown house complex to be built not far from his modest home near Ballwin. In doing so, Welage joined the growing ranks of those who have stood up to their elected officials to protest loudly and collectively againse the continued proliferation of apartments in the county.

The very existence of the protests, many government of i- TURN TO PAGE 18, COL. 1 House to co-ordinate all federal activities in the field of consumer protection. Mr. Nixon appointed his special assistant for consumer affairs, Mrs. Virginia H.

Knauer, as director of the new office. Mrs. Knauer, former director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Consumer Protection, has been presidential assistant for consumer affairs since April 1969. The upgrading of her responsibilities was announced by the President in a message to Congress on consumer problems. Mr.

Nixon informed Congress in the message that he had signed an executive order creating the new consumer office as part of the Executive Office of the President. Mr. Nixon proposed two ma- TURN TO PAGE 14, COL. 1 "Local people, out-of-towners, all willing to rush right over. Busy as all get-out, but it's heartwarming to get such a response," wrote the night telephone operator at Deaconess Hospital in a memorandum to her daytime successor.

She was describing the flood of telephone calls answering an appeal for blood for Detective Melvin Wilmoth, fatally shot in a drug raid last night. Wilmoth was admitted to the hospital's emergency room at 8:45 p.m. after the shooting in an apartment at 6152 Waterman Boulevard. Four or five pints of blood were given the officer, 28 years old, in the emergency room as attendants attempted to stop massive bleeding. Wilmoth was shot in the abdomen a little below his waistline.

A bullet severed the common femoral artery and the iliac vein. The vein and artery were repaired after Wilmoth was taken to the operating room shortly before 11 p.m. The first of three shipments of blood from the Red Cross arrived by taxicab after 11:30. At 12:15 the Police Department put out a call to its 136 radio cars for more Type O-negative blood. "We got well over 1000 calls," said an officer on Command Post duty this morning.

"When a policeman gets shot, it doesn't take long for other policemen to hear about it, with or without radios." Other radio stations picked up the appeal, and persons who wanted to donate blood tele- TURN TO PAGE 4, COL. 2 Halts Hank Holdup, Gets Traffic Ticket CARDIFF, Wales, Feb. 24 (AP) When he saw a bank being robbed, Stewart Prosser jumped from his truck, grabbed a shotgun from one tripped up the other and returned to find a parking ticket on his truck. Yesterday, a judge awarded the truck driver $120 for his act of "conspicuous courage." Police tore up the parking ticket and apologized. The robbers got 14 years.

IS en Index Page Editorials 2E Everyday Magazine 1-12F Financial 21-23D Obituaries 3C Sports 19-23A Want Ads 4-12C-18A Privy On Lawn In Clayton Causes Furor BY HARRY WILENSKY National Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch FORT BENNING, Feb. 24 Prosecution cross examination in the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. ended today after six hours of sharp interrogation.

In reply to questions from Capt. Aubrey M. Daniel, the prosecutor, Calley admitted firing into a ditch filled with unarmed women, children and old men and shooting five individuals as his platoon swept through the South Vietnamese cillage of My Lai. He denied, however, any premeditated intention to kill the villagers. Calley flatly contradicted previous witnesses who had testified that he killed or ordered the execution of more than 100 unresisting civilians.

Under martial law, conviction on the charge of premeditated murder is punishable by death or life imprisonment. The start of today's session had been delayed for an hour while Col. Reid W. Kennedy, the military judge, conferred with members of the jury, opposing attorneys and Calley. There was no explanation for the conferences, except a comment from a defense spokesman that there had been an unusual development.

Calley, who is accused of premeditated murder in executing 102 women, children and old men, has admitted that he fired into a group of villagers who had been herded into an irrigation ditch. But he insisted that he was following orders to kill everyone found in the village. He persisted in referring to the civilian inhabitants of My Lai as "the enemy," having testified earlier that he considered Vietnamese men, women and children to be enemy soldiers. "When you entered the villa what were your men doing?" the prosecutor asked. "My men were firing, sir." "What at?" "The enemy, sir." "At people?" "At the enemy, sir." "Did you see any women?" "I don't know, sir.

I didn't discriminate." "What do you mean, you didn't discriminate?" "They were all the enemy, and they were all to be destroyed, sir." Calley said his company commander, Capt. Ernest L. Medi KSL mv A3lthxI I 1 xn ,11 ir-- UkA -1 Vf" ft ti-' ux xxrr; yW' pkfx and highs in the high 30s. Temperatures MASS TRANSIT Iin State House By PATRICK STRICKLER Of the Post-Dispatch Staff A quiet old neighborhood in Clayton is buzzing these days about something that many folks usually do not discuss in public. The subject is a privy that has been built on the front lawn of the historic Hanley House in the 7600 block of Westmoreland Avenue.

Residents of homes in the neighborhood find the outhouse "offensive to the sensibilities," in the words of one woman who has lived there for 50 years. Clayton bought the mansion in 1968 and is restoring it to the way it was when Martin F. Hanley built it in 1855. Restoration plans call for the location of a privy on the northwest corner of the lawn, which means the unpainted wood shed stands about 10 feet from the sidewalk along Westmoreland. "I just think it's unsightly, don't you?" the woman asked as she pulled back the curtain in her living room window and peered at the privy.

She and other residents ques- TURN TO PAGE 4, COL. 1 1 a.m. 31 2 a.m. 29 3 a.m. 28 4 a.m.

27 5 a.m. 25 a.m. 25 7 a.m. 24 8 a.m. 27 9 a.m.

31 10 a.m. 35 11 a.m. 38 12 noon 42 1 p.m. 46 2 p.m. 50 3 p.m.

51 Clayton to its original state, foreground. Some neighbors moved. (Post-Dispatch Photo) including the privy in the demand that the privy be AN OUTHOUSE AND AN UPROAR: The historic Han-ley House (background) in the 7600 block of Westmoreland Avenue, which is being restored by the City of POST GISPATCM WEATHER BIRO mra I o.r Other Weather Information on l'aee -i.