Skip to main content
The largest online newspaper archiveArchive Home
St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 3
A Publisher Extra® Newspaper

St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 3

Location:
St. Louis, Missouri
Issue Date:
Page:
3
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

In Brief st Icuisweditesday 3A Sept. 28, 1983 5A, 1C, 4-5C Additional local news on pages 4 7 1 if i 1 1 I I Park. Busch was accompanied by a judging on Page 5C. Crowd Greeter August A. Busch Jr.

greeting the crowd Tuesday night at the National Charity Horse Show at the Greensfelder Recreation Center in Queeny Campus Panel Backs Degree For German Monsanto Co. Head Joins Gvic Croup Richard J. Mahoney, president and chief executive officer of Monsanto has been elected to active mem- Mahoney bership of Civic Progress. The president of Civic Progress, Charles F. Knight, chairman and chief executive officer of Emerson Electric also announced today that former Monsanto chief executive John W.

Hanley has been elected an emeritus member of the civic organization. Mahoney, 49, recently succeeded Hanley as Monsanto's chief executive. Civic Progress is a civic organization, most of whose members are chief executive officers of large companies with corporate headquarters in the St. Louis area. Mahoney joined Monsanto in 1962 and held various sales, marketing and management positions before his election as president of the company in 1980.

He assumed the additional duties of chief operating officer in 1981, and became chief executive officer Sept. 1. Mahoney is a member of Washington University's board of trustees, the chancellor's council of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and the advisory board of St. John's Mercy Medical Center.

In addition, he is vice president of the board of managers of the Central Institute for the Deaf and chairman of the employee division of the 1983 St. Louis United Way campaign. Israeli Campaign Honors Clergyman, Union Officer The Israel Histadrut Campaign honored Msgr. John Shocklee, executive director of human rights for the St. Louis Archdiocese, and Winnie Lippman, retired manager of the Missouri-Mississippi River Valley District Council of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, with its humanitarian award at its Tribute Dinner Tuesday.

Dan Gale, Histadrut Midwest director, said that Shocklee was being honored for his service to humanity and the community and Ms. Lippnfan for achievements in the labor field. Proceeds from the fund-raising dinner will go to support six scholarships to the Afro-Asian Institute in Tel Aviv, Gale said. Histadrut provides medical, cultural and social services and vocational training to all segments of Israel's population, Jewish and Arab, and seeks to maintain relationships with labor unions in many countries, Gale said. Clay's Son Is Front-Runner For Legislative Nomination William L.

Clay son of the U.S. representative from St. Louis, is expected to be officially selected Friday to run for the 59th District state representative seat recently vacated by Nathaniel Rivers. Democratic committeemen and committeewomen from the 1st, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 26th and 28th wards in St. Louis are scheduled to make their selection Friday morning.

Under state law, Democratic and Republican committeemen and committeewomen from the district select a candidate to run for the vacated post. Candidates from the two parties will face each other in a special election is scheduled for Nov. 8. Young Clay currently is the only candidate from either party who has announced his intention to run for the seat. Bill Advanced To Allow Downtown Sales On Sunday The aldermanic Legislation Committee approved a bill today that would allow stores in the downtown area to open on Sundays.

The committee approved the measure by a 7-2 vote, after hearing about an hour of testimony on both sides of the issue. Supporters of the bill said they favored it because it would make downtown retail stores competitive with suburban shopping malls. But opponents said the measure would be unfair competition to stores in various city neighborhoods. Aldermen voting for the bill were: Daniel J. McGuire, D-28th Ward; Geraldine Osborn, D-15th Ward; James P.

Signaigo, D-2nd Ward; Albert "Red" Villa, D-llth Ward; Joseph Beckerle, D-13th Ward; Samuel Kennedy, D-18th Ward; and Aldermanic President Thomas E. Zych. Voting against the measure were: James F. Shrewsbury, D-16th Ward, and Timothy J. Dee, D-17th Ward.

i 11 By Jan Paul Of the Post-Dispatch Staff A committee at Washington University has recommended that the board of trustees award an honorary degree to West German President Karl Carstens when he speaks to a university-sponsored dinner Oct. 7. The decision was made Tuesday after two hours of deliberations. Faculty members had protested against giving Carstens a degree because of his affiliation with the Nazi Party during World Warll. Carstens has been invited to deliver the keynote address at the university's annual Founders Day dinner Oct.

7. He will be visiting the United States to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first German immigration to this country. During a 2'2-hour closed meeting Tuesday afternoon, the honorary-degree committee heard statements from a faculty member and a student and reviewed several letters before deliberating the issue. It then decided overwhelmingly by voice vote to recommend awarding a doctorate of law degree. The recommendation is to be presented to the board of trustees for approval at its next meeting, which is scheduled the day Carstens Bonn in 1948.

A university spokesman said the honorary degree had not been contemplated when the Jewish organizations were asked about the propriety of Carstens' speaking on campus. Some students speculated that the organizations' responses might have been different had they known that a degree was involved. Stanley L. Paulson, a professor in the philosophy department, addressed the committee Tuesday before the vote. He said he expressed views shared by 26 other faculty members who had signed a letter sent to Danforth.

Paulson said he was deeply concerned that Carstens had been invited to be the keynote speaker at a major university function. He hastened to add that he would not deny Carstens the right to speak. But Paulson told the committee that it was doubly distressing that an honorary degree had been proposed. "It's an affront to the sensibilities of many people here on the campus who feel very strongly about this," Paulson told a reporter later. "He was indeed a member of the storm troopers, the SA.

He applied for Nazi Party membership in 1937, at the age of 22, and was picked up as a party member in 1940. SI LOUIS POST-DISPATCH ami Wayne CrosslinPost-Dispatch niece, Sallie Wheeler. Results of "The case is not against Carstens the man. It's just a matter of the symbolic import of these aspects of his past. The way the facts about his past are perceived by many on the campus should have, and did not, play a significant role in the decision to invite him and, indeed, award him an honorary degree." Richard Bland, a law student, told the committee that conferring a doctorate on Carstens would be condoning his past Nazi involvement.

That, Bland said, would be "undermining the very values that our society and this university stand for." Bland said he would encourage students and faculty members to boycott the Founders Day dinner. He also said students would continue to gather signatures in opposition to the awarding of the degree. Douglas Freeman, a member of a Jewish organization on campus, submitted a letter to the committee asking that the degree be withheld. He is chairman of Va'ad, the student government of B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation of St. Louis.

Freeman said in an interview that he thought Carstens lacked credentials to merit the honor. In addition, evidence about his Nazi affiliation should weigh against the honor, Freeman said. To Miss Brown's family, Prante said, "I can't expect you to believe me, but I hope in your sorrow you may understand that I want to say I am sorry for your loss of Karla. But I cannot accept any responsibility for her death." Weber said after the hearing that he still believed that Prante should have been sentenced to death. But he said the judge's decision was "within the bounds of a reasonable sentence in this case." Miss Brown's sister, Donna Judson, of Hayfield, said, "Karla's famify believed that Karla's life was a lot more important than 75 years of John Prante's.

But we feel it was justice, and we can accept that. We were all in favor of the death penalty. We had discussed it as a family, and we decided that it was right for what he did to my sister." Weber had told the judge that Prante killed Miss Brown after she rejected a sexual advance. Weber said Prante had stalked Miss Brown and had gone to her home to rape her. When she fought Prante, Weber said, Prante became furious and beat her, inflicting two skull fractures, a broken jaw and deep facial cuts.

Prante then tied her hands behind her, strangled her with a man's sock and dumped her head-first into a barrel of water. Her body, nude from the waist down, was found by her fiance. On Webbe I've always hated gangsters. I've locked them all up." Berner said he had not pressured Doherty to send the affidavit. "We discussed the matter afterwards after all the publicity had come out about his letter and John elected to clarify it," Berner said.

Berner said he thought Doherty had used "bad judgment" in writing the letter but added that no disciplinary proceedings against the detective chief would be considered. Doherty is "a professional policeman; he's a hard-nosed cop," Berner said. "I think he just wrote the letter because he knew some members of the (Webbe) family from years past." Doherty's letter was written on an official Police Department letterhead July 20 to U.S. District Judge Edward Reed Jr. It said in part: "I have been the chief of detectives for the past 12 years, with the department for over 40 years, and in this time we have never found Mr.

Webbe (to be) anything but a good citizen of the community." 1 I .1 Young Woman's Killer Spared Death Penalty will speak. The committee is made up of 19 board members, professors and students. Chancellor William H. Danforth was present at Tuesday's meeting but is not a member of the committee. He had said last week that he would support a decision to award the degree.

After the vote, Danforth's office issued a three-page statement summarizing the deliberations and decision. It said in part: "Dr. Carstens has been a successful and distinguished political leader and an academician. (He) is head of state and therefore represents the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany, which after the disastrous 12-year Hitler regime has become a stable democracy and a responsible member of the world community "Youthful political affiliations should not cloud one's reputation for the rest of one's life. Individuals can redeem themselves and prove good faith and action." The statement also quoted from letters solicited by Danforth from various Jewish organizations.

The organizations called Carstens a nominal member of the Nazi Party and noted that he had been cleared of any charges by the Denazification Tribunal in --jf -A mmX tw Vi i-i fan John N. Prante Gets 75 years because Prante had no significant history of criminal activity. The judge said he felt revulsion toward the crime and the fact that its brutality showed no compassion by the killer. But he said those emotional reactions failed to warrant the death penalty. 'J i A Weber had argued that Prante had enough criminal activity in his past to eliminate that ground for rejecting the death penalty.

Weber told the judge that Prante had used and sold drugs; had threatened to shoot two friends and had fired a shot into the ceiling on one occasion; and had a record of several disciplinary punishments while in the Navy, including a 30-day sentence in the brig. Prante's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Neal Hawkins, said those incidents did not constitute enough of a criminal history to fit the requirements of the death penalty law. Hawkins also noted that Prante had not been in any trouble between the date of the crime in 1978 and his arrest last year. But Judge Romani invoked the state's extended-term law. He found that the crime had involved "exceptionally brutal and heinous behavior," which would have allowed him to impose life in prison without parole or a term up to 80 years, twice the normal 40-year maximum.

The judge noted that Miss Brown had "the right to live her life to the fullest that was taken away at the age of 22. The court feels that the things that were done to this victim before, during and after her death are brutal and heinous things that should not occur to any human being." Prante read a 10-page statement to the judge in which he charged that Hawkins had been given insufficient help by the public defender's office in preparing a defense. Webbe in a court document filed last Livingston said that after the federal subpoenas arrived, Doherty had responded to "strong suggestions" from the Police Board and had signed an affidavit that was filed with the court Friday. In the affidavit, Doherty said he had assumed Webbe's associations with organized crime were already well-known and that his letter did not represent an official response from the Police Department. "I was definitely not asking for clemency," Doherty said today.

"It was a character letter, simply telling them Webbe's activities in St. Louis. What he did across the country I have no knowledge of. I could have gone on to what his associations were, but I know the government knows more than I do about his background." He said his letter has been misinterpreted. "I have always hated gangsters," he said.

"Anybody who knows my record knows that. The federal govenment should know how I cleaned this town up of hoodlums. "I'm still a policeman. I will be till I die. By Charles Bosworth Jr.

Of the Post-Dispatch Staff A judge in Madison County Circuit Court has decided against sentencing John N. Prante to death for the killing in 1978 of Karla L. Brown and instead has imposed a 75-year prison sentence. Prante, 34, of East Alton, maintained his innocence Tuesday at the sentencing by Associate Judge Charles V. Romani Jr.

In an emotional statement delivered before the i judge announced his decision, Prante asked not to be sentenced to death. "Judge Romani, I give you my life, but you cannot have my soul I pray I will not have to give my life for the guilt of another person," Prante said. Prante, an unemployed barge worker, was convicted of murder by a jury in July. Miss Brown, 22, was beaten, strangled and dumped into a barrel of water in her basement in Wood River in June 1978. Evidence against Prante included experts' conclusions that his teeth could have made the bite marks found on Miss Brown's neck.

State's Attorney Don W. Weber sought the death penalty for Prante, saying the law obliged him to seek the ultimate penalty for such a "brutal, heinous, cold-blooded, premeditated murder." Judge Romani said he had decided against imposing the death penalty now administered in Illinois by lethal injection U.S. Court In By Robert L. Koenig and Virginia Hick Of the Post-Dispatch Staff St. Louis Chief of Detectives Lt.

Col. John A. Doherty and the attorney for the St. Louis Police Board will travel to Reno, with police intelligence files on Sorkis J. Webbe Sr.

in answer to federal subpoenas. Police Chief John F. Bemer said in an interview Tuesday night that he had made the decision to send the files after consulting with members of the Police Board and John C. Livingston, the board's attorney. Earlier Tuesday, police officials had discussed the propriety of releasing the confidential files.

Tuesday night, Berner said: "John Livingston is going to Reno with whatever we have that mentions Sorkis Webbe's name. We have nothing to hide but we have to be circumspect in our dealings with the court on this matter. In an interview today, Doherty said that he felt he was being put on trial in the case and that his long career, due to end with his Nevada To Get Police Files Lottery Number The winning number drawn Tuesday in the Illinois Lottery Daily Game was 528. The number in the Pick-Four game was 0104. retirement in January, is under a cloud.

"I don't know what I'm going to testify to," he said. "I'm willing to testify to the best of my knowledge, but I don't know what they're going to ask me. I haven't seen the files on Sorkis Webbe Sr." The subpoenas were issued at the request of Marvin Rudnick, a special attorney with the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force based in Los Angeles. They seek police intelligence files on Webbe as well as testimony by Doherty. Webbe, a lawyer from St.

Louis, was convicted June 18 by a federal court jury on two counts of filing a false federal income tax return to conceal a kickback scheme involving the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The subpoenas are for Webbe's sentencing hearing Monday in U.S. District Court in Reno. Doherty's testimony was sought after he sent a letter to the court expressing support for Webbe and praising him as a "man of character in our community." Several U.S. congressmen and three judges also had sent letters to the court in support of Webbe.

But Doherty qualified his comments on Corrections A bill passed by the Legislature requiring use of automobile safety seats for children under 4 years old will go into effect Jan. 1. A story in Tuesday's editions incorrectly stated the bill would become effective today. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. serves the states of Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.

A map in Monday's editions incorrectly showed the company serving Louisiana..

Get access to Newspapers.com

  • The largest online newspaper archive
  • 300+ newspapers from the 1700's - 2000's
  • Millions of additional pages added every month

Publisher Extra® Newspapers

  • Exclusive licensed content from premium publishers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  • Archives through last month
  • Continually updated

About St. Louis Post-Dispatch Archive

Pages Available:
4,205,101
Years Available:
1874-2024