St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 19

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH INSIDE NEWS ANALYSIS: Now comes the hard part for Mexico putting NAFTA into effect 13B EDITORIAL: Governor does the right thing by staying Lloyd Schlup's execution 14B LETTERS: Is the case really closed on the Kennedy assassination? 15B OBITUARIES 48 WEATHER 16B T. LOUISREGION SECTION SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1993 CHRISTINE BERTELSON Judge Questions Gambling Ordinance Change In Lease Not Spelled Out By Joe Holleman Of the Post-Dispatch Staff An ordinance that would allow Floyd War-mann to have a gambling lease on the St. Louis riverfront is on shaky legal ground, a circuit judge said Friday. Circuit Judge James R.

Dowd of St. Louis said at a hearing Friday that the disputed ordinance appears to violate the city charter because it does not clearly say what would be changed in Warmann's current lease to allow gambling. Dowd made his comments at a hearing on a suit filed by a group of aldermen against Mayor Freeman Bosley Comptroller Vir-vus Jones and the city. The aldermen allege that the ordinance violates state law and the city charter and, therefore, should be voided. Dowd said he probably would rule on the suit on Dec.

1. Julian Bush, who is representing Bosley and the city, conceded: "It's a lousy ordinance, it wasn't drafted properly. But the issue is whether it is a valid ordinance." Dowd then told Bush that he could file legal arguments to bolster his position. "But I'm not convinced right now that you're in compliance with the city charter," he said. The ordinance would allow Bosley and Jones to amend Warmann's current lease to allow gambling.

Warmann probably will sell the lease to Argosy Gaming which wants to buy Warmann's riverfront operations, St. Louis Concessions for $41.8 million. Dowd said the charter requires that an ordinance that amends an existing ordinance must include the entire section to be amended. "The reason for that is so the average citizen can pick up the ordinance and know what the heck their elected officials are voting on," Dowd said. Dowd said the Warmann ordinance "is only telling us in half-sentence blurbs how it's changed." Should Dowd void the ordinance on Dec.

1, it would end the legal challenge the aldermen began on Oct. 1. They filed suit, contending the Warmann ordinance was faulty because it did not contain Warmann's financial commitments to the city in the lease. Instead, the commitments were in letters to the city. A ruling by Dowd against the ordinance would put the Warmann issue back to the When Information Stops Being Free LET'S GET one thing straight: I am not a computer Neanderthal.

I've used a computer at work for years. Well, OK, it's a word processor, not a computer. That should prove I know the difference between a real computer and a mere word processor. I also have a computer at home, on which I process words and play Carmen San Diego. I thought that made me computer literate.

Then I talked to my friend Simon Igielnik. Simon is a nuclear physicist by training, director of medical computing at Washington University by trade, a Hood's discount shopper by avocation and hands-down one of the best brains I know. Simon is one of those people you meet them, now and then, at lumberyards, and (hardly ever) at universities who can explain complicated subjects in clear, simple English without making you feel dumb. At least I have never felt dumb during one of Simon's boiled-down explanations of complex subjects: the crisis, how air conditioners and H-bombs work or beginning stages of the aldermanic process. There are two new Warmann proposals before aldermen.

One puts Warmann's letter commitments in the lease; the other also asks for Warmann to give the city 90 percent of his $4 1 8 million Argosy payment. If city attorneys can persuade Dowd not to void the ordinance because of the city charter question, then Dowd would rule on Dec. 1 on another pointthe aldermen argue that the ordinance violated state law by not providing just compensation to the city. Dowd said he was inclined to rule against the aldermen on that issue. "But we may not even get to that point," he said.

Dowd also chided the two sides for not reaching a settlement. "If everyone put their egos in their pockets for a half an hour, I think this all could be settled," he said. Schoolgirl Abducted Near Home Pupil, 9, Left Bus, Vanished During A Half-Block Walk By Kim Bell Of the Post-Dispatch Staff After school, 9-year-old Angie Marie Housman would usually enter her house in St. Ann, set down her blue-and-white book bag and share stories about her day. "She's always proud about what she'd make in school," her mother, Diane Bone, said Friday.

"She'd come in and say, 'Look She is always happy. Very outgoing. She'd always tell me if she was going to a r- tjSt I 31 who's got the best deal in town on surplus toilets. This time, he was talking about public access to information, the information highway and the place they intersect: libraries. As a librarian, computer nerd and smart "rrcj Ox friend's house." That didn't happen Thursday.

Angie apparently was ducted between her bus stop and home a half-block away, police say. St. Ann police used dogs and helicopters with infrared sensors Friday to search for her. A pupil at Riten-our's Buder school, Angie was last seen about 4 p.m. Thurs L.T.

SpencePost-Dispatch A pleasure boat stands grounded by low water at Venetian Harbor, a marina near Portage des Sioux. The Army Corps of Engineers dropped the water to relieve flooding and allow for levee repairs. Bottoming Out Angie Housman Boaters Harbor Concern Over Alton Lake's Low Level Mississippi River between Winfield and the Melvin Price Locks and Dam, and the Illinois River between Grafton and LaGrange Locks and Dam. It's popular with sailors and boaters who cruise the rivers in sight of the Great River Road. The area on which the Corps lowered the water lies between Grafton and the Melvin Price Locks and Dam 20 miles south.

Corps computers projected that lowering the Alton pool would draw down 1.5 inches of backwater each day from bottom land along the Illinois River. At the height of the flooding, some of the land stood 6 feet under water. "Every inch counts when you are pumping thousands of acres," said Maj. Greg Kuhr, chief of levee repair operations. Dave Busse, a hydraulic engineer with the corps, said that to keep barges running, the corps tries to maintain the water stage at Grafton between 14.2 feet and 16.2 feet.

See LEVEL, Page 3 By Judith VandeWater Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Harbor owners' spirits and boaters' hulls are dragging bottom on Alton Lake, near Grafton. Late last month, the Army Corps of Engineers began dropping the water level on part of the lake so that flooded bottom land could drain into it. Draining the bottom land would make levee repair easier on the Illinois River, which flows into the lake at Grafton. Harbor operators at Alton Lake say the water dropped too much up to 3.5 feet between late last month and early this month. Warren Spielman, chairman of the Alton Lake Harbor Association, said, "That is serious, because the average harbor is not that deep, maybe 5 or 6 feet at the most." Spielman is also president and principal owner of Venetian Harbor, a 165-slip mari- Valley Park residents get relief as Meramec River retreats 3B na near Portage des Sioux.

Spielman said that when the corps dropped the water level late last month, some of the docks at Venetian Harbor went aground. The hulls and rudders of some boats sank into the muck. "We don't know what damage they sustained," Spielman said. Venetian Harbor docks boats valued from less than $10,000 to $400,000. The low-water levels have prevented workers from pulling some of the larger boats out of the water for winter storage.

Spielman is disappointed that the water level in Alton Lake had to be lowered but doesn't fault the St. Louis District of the Corps of Engineers. Alton Lake isn't really a lake at all it's just a name for the scenic stretch of the person, Simon is worried. He is worried about people having to pay for information that should be free. He is worried about He is worried about people who may never find the on-ramp to the information highway Neanderthals like me.

In a nutshell, the problem is this, he said. Many books and government documents, once stacked on library shelves, are now found only on computer disks or in on-line databases that charge users subscription andor hourly andor per-item fees. Big computer companies (Mead, Apple, etc.) are taking what was once considered public information, adding convenience features and selling it. Government agencies may soon follow suit. As more and more information becomes accessible only by computer, if you do not own one or the money to tap into on-line services, you ARE a Neanderthal.

Until the 1960s, there was a widely held notion that information was and should be free, Simon said. Anybody who wanted it could go to the public library and get it. It wasn't really free, of course. All those leather-bound books were expensive, but someone else paid for it. "Free" public libraries were the legacy of Andrew Carnegie, the Pittsburgh philanthropist (1835-1919) who put millions of his steel fortune into books.

But during the Reagan era, the era of privatization, that strongly held notion of public information began to weaken. One by one, the public sources of information have gone private. Take Lexis, the legal research service. In the past, cases of public law were put in books and shelved in a law library. Anyone could go to the shelf and pick up the book for nothing.

"You can still go to a legal library and look it up, but pretty soon that won't be a possibility," Simon said. Instead, a legal researcher would have to pay a high hourly fee to get the same information in convenience packaging from a computer. We began to feel old. Checking up on a bill before Congress? Check into a toxic dumper? Want a Securities and Exchange Commission file on your favorite stock? The fastest and soon the only way to get the information may be by computer. "There is a whole world of people charging for this kind of information," Simon said.

"The democratic issues here are significant. To have someone charge for information about running your own democracy is a scary combination. If you are John Q. Public, and you are trying to fight the establishment that puts you at a very strong disadvantage." While the haves are tooling down the fast lane on the information highway, computers plugged into databases from their homes or offices, what will be the fate of the library, I asked him. It will become the access road to the information highway, he said, but keep its more traditional functions.

"It's still a warm place out of the snow," Simon said. "Students will continue to use it as a study hall and a place to meet girls. Ours has a candy machine." Feeling decrepit by now, I decided to visit the St. Louis Public Library downtown. I was relieved to find real people, with actual books in their hands.

I dropped in on Anne Watts, who is in charge of government documents. She offered some reassurance. Yes, the public library will train Neanderthals who need to use popular databases like ERIC (education), Dun and Bradstreet (business), Psychological Abstracts and newspaper files. The first $10 worth of on-line searches done by the public is free. Library staff also can search a topic for you.

"We're completely committed to making sure the public has access to public information," she said. "But it's going to be a battle." As I left, I handed a book on computers to the woman at the checkout desk. She stamped it and handed it back. A book, I thought to myself. How quaint.

Postal Service Bars Executive Head Of Forsythe Group Inc. Also Loses State Real Estate License day when she hopped from the school bus and walked north on Wright Avenue toward her family's duplex eight houses up. Police don't think she ever made it home. "Right now, we're handling it as an abduction because of her age, and the length of time she's been missing." said Sgt. Jim Mantle of the St.

Ann Police Department. "She's not the type who just takes off." Mantle said Angie's disappearance might be connected to an attempted abduction in Maryland Heights on Nov. 8. Then, a man grabbed an 11-year-old girl who looks similar to Angie just after she got off her school bus about 3:50 p.m. He pulled her into some bushes along a road, but she managed to break free.

Police were still looking for that man Friday and distributed copies of a composite sketch to police officers who set up roadblocks in St. Ann near Angie's home. Angie was last seen carrying the blue-and-white Christian Hospital Northeast book bag and wearing blue jeans, white tennis shoes and long pink coat with hood. She is about 5 feet tall, 65 pounds, with blue eyes, brown hair and a scar on her chin. See GIRL, Page 4 Police Grasp For Clues In Slaying Of 5 Tm Taking It A Day At A Mother Says By Margaret Gillerman Of the Post-Dispatch Staff As Beverly Mosby prepared Friday to bury her second murdered child in two years, police reported little progress in finding the killers of Jeff Mosby in one mobile home near Madison and of four men suspected of selling drugs in the next trailer.

"You've got to keep the faith to get through this," Beverly Mosby, 54, a nursing home housekeeper, said in an interview. "I'm taking it a day at a time and asking the Lord to give me strength." Her daughter, Robin Boyd, was murdered in Madison in 1991, apparently in a domestic dispute in which her boyfriend took his own life, she said. Beverly Mosby described her slain son as a good man who tried to take care of his girlfriend, her two young children and the child they had together. The girlfriend was away when the killing took place, but the children were present and apparently witnessed it, detectives said. "I guess they must have had some type of conscience, they didn't hurt the kids," Mosby See KILLINGS, Page 2 helm's personal actions led to Forsythe's problems.

In its petition to a state administrative hearing, Nixon alleged that Wilhelm twice made a "material representation" in Wilhelm arranging the deal. Nixon said that the state would have had to By Tim O'Neil and Robert L. Koenig Of the Post-Dispatch Staff David A. Wilhelm, whose company admitted lying to the U.S. Postal Service in a downtown building deal worth $7.4 million, has been barred from doing business with the Postal Service.

He has also surrendered his state real-estate broker's license. Wilhelm is president of Forsythe Group which bought the 555 Washington Avenue Building on Dec. 16, 1991, for $4.1 million from an affiliate of Mercantile Bank. The group sold it to the Postal Service later that day for $12.5 million. Of the added balance, $900,000 went to pay a lien on the property.

On Sept. 10, 1992, the company pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to two felony counts of lying to the government. The government said the company claimed that another party was interested in buying the building for a price higher than the Postal Service paid. In its plea, the company admitted no competing buyer existed.

One year ago today, the court fined Forsythe $250,000. The plea in federal court involved only the corporation, no individuals. This week, Wilhelm, 49, of Ladue, signed a debarment agreement with the Postal Service that prohibits him, Forsythe or affiliated companies from doing business with the Postal Service until Jan. 15, 1996, his attorneys said. On Nov.

9, he signed an agreement with We would never have agreed to anything saying that Mr. David Wilhelm did anything improper, ff PETER T. SADOWSKI, attorney the Missouri Real Estate Commission to surrender his real-estate broker's license. The commission also revoked Forsythe's corporate broker's license as part of that agreement. Wilhelm and Forsythe cannot seek new licenses for five years.

On Sept. 9, the federal General Services Administration barred Wilhelm, Forsythe and related partnerships from doing new business with the federal government until July 21, 1994. The administration operates and maintains most federal buildings. Peter T. Sadowski, one of Wilhelm's attorneys, said that Wilhelm admitted no wrongdoing in surrendering his license.

The license allows a person to charge fees for arranging real-estate transactions. "Forsythe already admitted wrongdoing, but we would never have agreed to anything saying that Mr. Wilhelm did anything improper," Sadowski said. Attorney General Jay Nixon, whose office handled the license case for the Real Estate Commission, said the state alleged that Wil prove that, but the agreement ends the state's case. Richard K.

Mersman HI, another attorney for Wilhelm, said Wilhelm no longer needs a real-estate broker's license. "He will continue to be a real-estate investor and developer, and you don't need a license to go buy a building," Mersman said. "He just can't represent himself as a broker and collect commissions." As for the Postal Service, Mersman said, "Mr. Wilhelm did only one deal with the Postal Service. I don't think he's contemplating another one." U.S.

Rep. William L. Clay, chairman of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee, has urged the Postal Service to sue Wilhelm and Forsythe to recover some of the sale proceeds. Sadowski said the Postal Service debarment is silent on that issue, but, "I don't expect anything like that." A spokeswoman for the Postal Service in Washington declined to comment.