St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 43

'A IT ti ail ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH FridatJ- i I I IXUVtMHLK 2001 hfiS Business begins on Cll Illinois ii tj ail 1 dren five an who ta McCIellan STUoday.convlMcCletlan '(Wt Illness won't hurt Jim Ryan's mam, in says Lorenzo Fayne's attorney vows to fight sentence By Robert Goodrich Of the Post-Dispatch A jury in circuit court in Belleville ruled Thursday that Lorenzo Payne, the worst serial killer ever of children in the St. Louis area, should be executed for killing four East St. Louis area girls. Fayne, 30, pleaded guilty last month of all four murders.

He is already serving life without parole for murdering a 6-year-old boy, and jurors were told they could consider that too. Circuit Judge James K. Donovan ordered execution on May 15, but that date means little. Death penalties in Illinois are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court. In addition, Gov.

George Ryan has ordered a freeze on GliC'l 1 executions because 13 cases have been overturned. Fayne showed no emotion at the verdict. Later, looking exhausted, he leaned against the wall near a courthouse elevator but had no comment as he was escorted back to jail. Prosecutors Lisa Porter and James Piper said that for Fayne, death was the only appropriate sentence. Porter ended her closing argument by telling the jury, "You are the voice of the children.

You are the voice to speak justice in this case." Defense attorney John O'-Gara argued for mercy, based on Fayne's horrendous childhood. He told the jury, "There isn't any doubt that this man is brain damaged, mentally ill and mildly mentally retarded." O'Gara added, "As a people, we don't execute people who are mentally ill, retarded and brain damaged. The Nazis did. Stalin did. But not in the United States of America." Afterward, he vowed to continue the fight on appeal.

He has handled five trials and three pleas in which the death penalty was an option, but Fayne is the MIL ODELL MITCHELL JR. POST-DISPATCH Corrections officer Larry Kaffer escorts Lorenzo Fayne on Thursday after Fayne was sentenced to death for killing four East St. Louis area girls. He is serving a life sentence for a fifth murder. "You put your heart into it," he said.

"You do the best you can and you just keep fighting." See Fayne, CS Looking for the perfect cap Bank robbery isn't a "high-class" crime as it used to be The bank down the street from my house was robbed Tuesday afternoon. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, and the police aren't saying how much money the robber got. There was a time when bank robbers had a certain prestige among the criminal class, but those days are gone. Most bank robberies today are unsophisticated crimes. The one Tuesday seemed to fall into that class.

According to the report, the robber gave a note to a teller. In the note, he claimed to have a gun. It doesn't sound like a smart crime. For one thing, robbing a bank is a federal offense, and that means no probation or parole. If the robber has no past criminal history, and didn't show a gun, and didn't get too much money all three are aggravating factors he is still looking at 33 to 41 months in prison.

Furthermore, banks have all sort of surveillance cameras so almost surely the robber is on videotape. No wonder most bank robbers are generally hapless fellows. I think of James Murphy. I visited him at the Franklin County jail five years ago. He was waiting for his day in federal court.

Dreading the day, really. It didn't look good. He was 63 years old and a career bank robber. He told me he had robbed 36 banks and had been caught every time. He wasn't caught at the scene each time.

He might have robbed three or four banks and then gotten caught at the fifth, but he was eventually charged for every single bank he had ever robbed. Here in St. Louis, he robbed the Roosevelt Bank at 119 North Broadway and got away with more than $1,000. That was on a Friday. He lost the money on the Alton Belle Casino, and went back and robbed the same bank on Monday.

He was caught at the scene. He had been out of prison for less than a month. 4 "I don't want to die in prison," he told me. He later received a sentence of 188 months. Of course, not all bank robberies are created equal.

Crime aficionados will remember the 1992 United Missouri Bank robbery. Two masked men waylaid a Brinks security guard as he was pushing a cart loaded with money bags down a basement hallway in the Equitable Building. The guard had just left the bank's basement vault. The robbers tied up the guard in a storage room and got away with nearly $1 million in unmarked bills. It was beautifully done.

Investigators never even had a description of the robbers. A couple of weeks after the robbery, I spoke with a fellow who used to rob banks when it was still a high-status crime. He did a total of 24 years in prison. At the time of the UMB robbery, he was a successful businessman. I asked him if he had been following the UMB job.

I read every word you guys write about it, he told me. He told me he didn't consider it a bank robbery. It was a Brinks job. He said he had known some guys in Leavenworth who had done a Brinks job. It is way, way above a bank robbery, he said.

You really have to know what you're doing. Who could have done it? People with inside information, he said. Somebody from the bank. Businessmen who have offices in the building. Cops.

I asked about guards. Too obvious, he said. I suggested that the robbers might get tripped up when they start to spend the money. My friend shook his head. I've got an idea these are guys who know how to spend money, he said.

Loose talk, then, I said. If I pulled off the perfect crime, I'd have to tell somebody about it. You don't understand, he told me. This is inside you. You do something like this for yourself, he said.

Then he said something else: If you're an actor and you do a great job, you can get an Academy Award. If you're a criminal, all you can get is away. Which those fellows did. I'd love to interview them, but I suspect I'll have to settle for the man who robbed the bank Tuesday. Somehow, I don't think he'll -f-gtf away.

campaign, officials say Attorney general begins treatment today; for third round of cancer By Kevin McDermott Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau SPRINGFIELD, 111. As Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan begins treatment today for his third bout with cancer, Illinois Republican Party offi cials predict it won't undermine his campaign for governor. Ryan is the GOP's leading candidate in the March 19 primary. "I don't think anyone (in the party) is really concerned" about the political ramifications, said Steve McGlynn, St. Clair County's Republican Party chairman.

"It isn't a big deal medically, and the more that's explained, the more people will come to understand that it's not a big deal politically." Jim Ryan Seeks GOP nod for governor McGlynn was among those who cited the apparent nonaggressive nature of Ryan's latest illness, Ryan announced late Wednesday that he has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins B-cell lymphoma. The cancer was found in a pea-sized nodule recently removed from behind Ryan's right ear lobe. It is treatable and is considered less dangerous than the "large-cell" lymphoma Ryan was treated for in 1996 and 1999. Ryan will begin treatment to day with the antibody Rituxan.j "Voters do know that I've been sick twice," Ryan said Thursday. "I don't think it will have too much of an impact on my campaign or my ability to! serve." But his campaign is clearly taking the political ramifications seriously.

Ryan invited questions about his health dur ing news conferences Thursday in Chicago and Springfield. His doctor joined him at the Chica go event. "When you're running for ad office like attorney general, of. especially governor, I think people have a right to know1 about your health," Ryan said. V.

See Ryan, C6 make some pretty hard decisions," Lewis said. If Westhoff refuses to step down, Lewis will ask the full board to take action, he said. "If it comes down to it, I will ask the other board members to meet, and if we have to fire him, we will," Lewis said. Area legislators are pushing for Westhoff's resignation to keep the tourism bureau from folding and to preserve state funding. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs notified the bureau a week ago that it was cutting off state funds.

About half the bureau's budget, or about $380,000, comes from the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. As a result, all of the bureau's existing money was frozen in an escrow account, stopping the bureau from operating except for staffers who are volunteering at the Fairview Heights office. See Tourism, C7 first to receive that sentence. O'Gara expressed surprise that the jury reached its decision after only three hours. Jamie Fielder, an employee with Kaiser Electric of Fenton, prepares one of the lights that were hoisted into position Thursday next to the north leg of the Gateway Arch.

Work on the project began this summer. '7 1 5 ODELL MITCHELL JR. POST-DISPATCH Mike Hutcheson of Belleville looks over caps Thursday at the hat sale at Emmanuel Assembly of God in Cahokia. The hats were donated to the church to use as a fund-raiser by Larry Lindhorst, who got them from his friend Dave Jump, the owner of the Bee Hat Co. building in St.

Louis. The sale continues today and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Proceeds will go to the New York City Backstoppers.

Tourism bureau chief is asked to resign after agency loses state fimding 1 11 41 Ll-i Bf IUuminated Arch could serve as feast for the eyes Thanksgiving is the target to throw the switch By Robert W. Duffy Of the Post-Dispatch It's getting to be the time of the year when competition for creating the most brilliant lighting display becomes intense in communities across the region. This year, however, one new display is guaranteed to be the brightest, most prominent and most authentically monumental. That's the lighting of the Gateway Arch on the St. Louis riverfront.

If all goes well, the switch could be thrown on Thanksgiv- Money could be restored if Westhoff steps down, state official says By Shera Dalin Of the Post-Dispatch The head of the Southwestern Illinois Tourism and Convention Bureau was asked Thursday to resign in the wake of the agency's loss of state funding. David E. Lewis, board president of the tourism bureau, asked Mark A. Westhoff, the bureau's president and chief executive, to resign within two weeks. Lewis said Westhoff agreed to consider the request.

Westhoff declined to comment. "Things have been happening pretty fast, and now it's to the point that we have had to J.B. FORBES POST-DISPATCH fixtures. The first arrived on Thursday. The remaining fixtures are scheduled to arrive Saturday and to be installed Saturday and Sunday, Easton said, i If all proceeds as planned, the first test will be Monday night, Easton said.

See Arch, C7 ing. Gary W. Easton, superintendent of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which in-cludes the Arch and its grounds, says he's optimistic about letting there be light on Thanksgiving. That's dependent, however, on the arrival of the 44 lighting.