St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 21

SECTION 1985 EditorialsPage 2 CommentaryPage 3 BooksMusicThe ArtsPage 4 ObituariesPage 4 General NewsPages 5-6 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Book On EnglemaM I Finally Closed IVAI.II.I..mMIJi;.U.IjJ.I.IIJ..M,.h 1 Convicted mur- I i tt derer Glennon E. A Engleman is at i iff left. Above, James Bullock. Below, Sophia I I Barrera.

-I I ut i Right, Ronald A I Ml Above, his par- I -1 ents, Arthur and AT7 V)l 1 i Gusewelle. Left, i Barbara WV yCYJZ 'J 'M XfHc Gusewelle Boyle, VJ I i fsTiW convicted of mur- lJ Ik -nJ y4 sjtf der in Ronald I Final Chapter Ends With Guilty Pleas By Bill Bryan Of the Post-Dispatch Staff THE BOOK IS CLOSED on Glennon E. Engleman. The final chapter was written June 19 when the former dentist from south St. Louis pleaded guilty to committing three callous, calculated murders in Madison County.

As far as prosecutors and law enforcement authorities are concerned, no more murders will be blamed on Engleman, who treated the working class and socialized with those less educated than he. Engleman, will spend the rest of his life locked up in the Missouri Penitentiary; he will not stand trial again. Seven deaths have been linked to Engleman. Investigators had thought at one time that the number could be as high as 12. But on the basis of interviews with Engleman's former associates and others close to him, authorities are confident there are no more.

The seven murders: -VOne in 1958 that remains unsolved but nevertheless is undeniably connected to Engleman. One ruled accidental but actually a disguised murder, according to court testimony. Two In the St Louis area for which Engleman was convicted and sentenced to two 50-year prison terms. Three in Illinois. The highly publicized murder of James Bullock, who was shot near the Art Museum in Forest Park on Dec.

17, 1958, is not considered closed by St. Louis homicide detectives. Nobody got enough evidence to file formal charges against Engleman, and authorities have no reason to believe they ever will. BUT AFTER ENGLEMAN'S recent guilty pleas in Illinois, Capt. Robert Richters, commander of the homicide division, thought the timing might be right to see if Engleman wanted to confess to killing Bullock.

When Engleman was told that homicide detectives wanted to speak with him, he reverted to the cocksure style that everyone has come to expect Richters said that Engle-manjiad replied: "Tell them they're a hell of a bunch of nice guys, but that's where they can go straight to hell." Bullock's killing is virtually a carbon copy of the next five deaths linked to Engleman. Each Involved a woman close to Engleman who profited financially by the death; only the seventh murder differed in this respect. Engleman "had the ability to exercise control over some people, particularly women," said Rick Buckles, an assistant U.S. attorney who got the first conviction of Engleman. "He seemed to mesmerize people; he seemed to cast a spell over them." The Bullock case At the time Bullock was killed, he had been married for six months to Engleman's former wife.

She got $64,500 in life Insurance benefits as a result of her husband's death and later invested $15,000 in a dragstrip near Pacific. Engleman was a shareholder and director of the dragstrip. Bullock's widow later remarried and moved to another state. The death of Eric Frey The second case connected to Engleman was the mysterious death of Eric Frey, who was killed Sept. 26, 1963, in a dynamite explosion at the dragstrip.

Frey was a partner with Engleman in the operation. After the explosion, Engleman was the first person to reach Frey, who was in a well. Engleman pronounced Frey dead; based on the dentist's statement the death was ruled accidental by the coroner in Franklin County. Frey's widow, Saundra, was a step-niece of Engleman by marriage. She got $37,000 in life insurance benefits as a result of her husband's death and later invested $16,000 in the dragstrip.

In one of Engleman's trials many years later, two witnesses one of them a lifelong friend' of Engleman testified that the dentist had boasted that he had murdered Frey. The Peter Halm murder The third death in which Engleman has been implicated was the murder of Peter Halm of Kirkwood, who was shot in the back with a rifle on Sept. 5, 1 976, in a wooded area Vv, 'sl'lt--' ytjr w'rT- limiinTi inn i 1 I iiinf jfimt'ilViiMMMMMimwriiiwMrM'MwJ Wayne CrosslinPost-Dispatch Police officers are shown at the scene of a car bombing in 1980 in which Barrera was killed. Buckles added: "All kinds of things moti-' vated him. There was always money involved, but there was something more.

He' seemed to enjoy the chase the the carrying out." Detective Steve Alsup of the St. Louis Po-, lice Department's bombing and arson squad said that on secret tape-recordings Engle-! man knew nothing about, "He would always justify that the person being killed wasn't a very good parent, or citizen, or something else." "He said he was ridding society of an undesirable." The Barrera killing The seventh killing the car-bombing death of Sophie Marie Barrera on Jan. 14, 1980 was different from the six earlier deaths in that it had no conspiracy involving a woman who would benefit by the death. Barrera operated a dental lab; at the time of her death, she was suing Engleman for $14,500 in unpaid bills. Although money was an obvious motive, an intense hatred for Barrera may have been even more of a compelling force in driving Engleman to assemble a bomb, authorities said.

"He would work himself into a rage just by talking to himself about her," said Alsup, the detective. The bombing proved to be Engleman's undoing. The dentist's third wife, Ruth, became frightened. "She realized that if he got angry at her, she could be next," an investigator said. Although Engleman and Ruth were divorced, they saw each other frequently.

Ruth went to the authorities and agreed to wear a hidden microphone and have her home 'bugged' in an effort to catch Engleman. Agents of the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau recorded several conversations that later helped convince juries of Engleman's guilt. Engleman was convicted of capital murder in the Barrera killing and sentenced to 50 years without parole. Prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier, now the U.S. attorney for eastern Missouri, sought the death penalty.

But Dempsey read passages from the Bible to the jury, saving Engleman's life. THE MAN WHO ACTUALLY placed Engleman's bomb under Barrera's car has never been brought to justice. But authorities said they know who did it; they simply have been unable to get enough evidence to charge him. "It's all an incredible story," said Buckles. Summing up Engleman's personality perhaps best of all is Dempsey the man Engleman called "my legal beagle." "I think, 'What a waste of a first-class If all that energy and talent had been channeled in other directions, he would have been marvelously successful.

"No, his motives were not money. He would treat people for nothing, and there were acts of kindness and charity in his background. "I think probably his desire to control individuals was his driving force to make all the little dummies walk in line and sing at the same time." Tobacco and Firearms Bureau. "He looked worn down," said McGarvey, who probably knows more than any other investigator about Engleman. "He seemed resigned" to pleading guilty, McGarvey said.

"He was more complacent. I had never seen him like that before." Despite his manner, Engleman's pleas stunned many, who believe that the admissions went against his character. "He floored me," said Nick Miranda. "And I know him better than anybody." The pleas surprised even Richard B. Dempsey, Engleman's former defense attorney.

"It was not in the nature of the man," Dempsey said. "I was flabbergasted." Engleman pleaded guilty of murdering Arthur Gusewelle and his wife, Vernita, on Nov. 3, 1977, and then murdering their son, Ronald Gusewelle, on March 31, 1979. The elder Gusewelles were shot to death in their farmhouse outside Edwardsville. The son was shot through the heart and beaten with a hammer.

The muder took place in his garage; his body was then driven to East St. Louis. AUTHORITIES ALLEGE that the three killings involved a conspiracy between Engleman and Ronald Gusewelle's wife, Barbara. Engleman and the woman had met about 1960, when she lived in an apartment over Engleman's home in south St. Louis.

Prosecutors argued that the killings had been designed to allow Barbara Gusewelle to inherit more than $500,000 from the Gusewelle estate and life insurance policies on her husband. Barbara Gusewelle who now uses the surname Boyle was convicted in April of a murder charge in her husband's death. She is serving a 50-year sentence. She was acquitted of murder charges in the killings of her in-laws. Engleman pleaded guilty to the killings rather than stand trial and face the death penalty.

He was sentenced to three concurrent natural life sentences, to run concurrently with the two 50-year terms he is serving in Jefferson City. Ankney was upset with the Madison County prosecutor's agreement with Engleman not to seek the death penalty in exchange for the guilty pleas. "The only reason to indict him was to hang him," said Ankney, who was prevented from seeking the death penalty in his prosecution because Missouri had no death penalty law at the time Halm was murdered. The six deaths attributed above to Engleman are usually categorized as "murder-for-profit" schemes. But the woman beneficiary always profited more than Engleman.

Money was not the only motive in driving Engleman to kill, authorities say. "This man was killing for the excitement" said Ankney. "He enjoyed taking on the police and the lawyers." near Pacific. This time, Engleman did not escape prosecution. Halm had been lured to the spot by his wife, Carmen Miranda Halm, who had known Engleman since she was a child and had worked for him as a dental assistant.

Halm's widow testified that she and Engleman had planned her marriage in 1975 to Halm so that he could later be killed for his insurance money. She and her brother, Nicholas Miranda, collected about $60,000 in life insurance and other benefits. Carmen was granted immunity from prosecution for her testimony against Engleman, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison without parole. Engleman "had some kind of a hold on Carmen," said Gordon Ankney, who prosecuted Engleman in that case. "I'll never forget the sadness of Carmen Halm.

She wasn't a killer, but he got her involved through manipulation." The Gusewelle deaths When Engleman appeared in June in court in Edwardsville to enter his guilty pleas, he had the pasty, ashen look of a man in prison. But more than that he had the appearance of a man who had given up, says Bill McGarvey, a special agent with the federal Alcohol, African nations gained independence in the 1960s. In the late 19th century, when Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Portugal laid claim to chunks of Africa, they found a continent fragmented by a multiplicity of tribes and clans and some 2,000 languages. At a conference in 1885 in Berlin, the European powers formalized their claims. The pact imposed arbitrary boundaries for the continent in some cases dividing tribal lands in half and, in others, thrusting together in one territory ethnic groups that had warred for centuries.

The division of the Horn of Africa, for example, put ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Somalia waged wars with Kenya in the 1960s and Ethiopia in the 1970s to try to regain parts of what it considered "Greater Somalia." In another instance, the boundary between Kenya and Tanzania cut right through the homeland of the Masai tribe. WELL INTO THE ERA of independence, Military Coups, Tribal Loyalty: Roadblocks To African Stability ropean history has been dominated for centuries by warfare along ethnic lines. They ask why African history should be any different. In such times of turbulence, the armed forces come to the fore.

Considerably more than a third of Africa's 50-plus nations are led by soldiers. allegiance to tribe has been a stronger bond than allegiance to nation. Kenya's president Daniel arap Moi, was expressing the sentiments of many African leaders when he declared recently that tribalism was a cancer responsible for much of the continent's chaos. But some African academics note that Eu Inside Simon Katzenellenbogen, an economic historian at Britain's University of Manchester, says colonial powers had exacerbated tribal tensions through a strategy of divide and rule. Most African nations were unprepared foi independence, lacking "a strong and stable economic structure that was necessary tc underpin political structures," he said.

This has caused the armed forces to become for millions of youths in Africa what the professions, business and elective politics have been in the industrialized West the pathway to power. "THE BASIC WEAKNESS of civilian institutions means the military is often able and likely to take over power," said Richard Jeffries, a historian at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. "The motives as to why people stage coups vary from the various political ambitions of military officers, to the tribal ambitions that might feel threatened, to nationalist reasons," Jeffries said. By James R. Peipert Associated Press Writer NAIROBI, Kenya THE LATEST UPHEAVAL in Uganda highlights two major problems that continue to afflict Africa two decades after the overthrow of colonial rule military coups and tribalism.

Uganda's armed forces toppled the civilian government of President Milton Obote on Saturday and drove him into exile. The coup was preceded by more than a month of infighting within the armed forces between Obote's Langi tribe and the Acholi tribe, to which those that led the coup belonged. The scenario was a familiar one on a continent that was carved up by European colonial powers with little regard to tribal dominions and where dozens of military strongmen have come and gone since most MAKE POLLUTERS PAY: Congress should ignore the cries of special interests and strengthen the Superfund. COMMENTARYPage 3 YOUNG POWER: British vocal star Paul Young gives a high-octane performance at the American. BOOKSMUSICTHE ARTSPage 4.