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

Flood Adds ToNeediness The Great Flood of 1993 has left a legacy of tightened resources for families in trouble. We tell the stories of 1 0 of this year's 1 00 NEEDIEST CASES EVERYDAY 1C The 'Banks' Of The Mississippi Pictures and story show how six groups seeking gambling leases propose to set up shop on Laclede's Landing. ST. LOUISREGION ID ST. LOUISREGION Eclipse Offers Night Sky Show 7D STYLE PLUS Choosing Your Calendar Motif is SPORTS Getting A Handle On NFL Tickets if SILO POST-asKr Copyright 1993 SUDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1993 VOL.

115, NO. 332 FINAL 5-STAR YSHrll(dl FmM MOSS ODD Body Of Girl Discovered In Wildlife Area -V -1 1 Wendi FitzgeraldPost-Dispatch Jon Bone, step-grandfather of Angie Marie Housman, stands outside the girl's home in St. Ann, after hearing that a body found Saturday in St. Charles County is almost certainly hers. Denise Hedges Flight attendants' leader Leader Of Strike Relies On Calmness By Susan Hightower AP Business Writer EULESS, Texas Her gaze is wide and steady, her speech thoughtful and deliberate, her broad smile in ready reserve.

The only sign of strain in leading 21,000 scared and scattered flight attendants in a strike against American Airlines is noticed in Denise Hedges' hands, when she twists and wrings her papers or a napkin. "I don't operate in a panic mode," said Hedges, 46, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, in the midst of the recent five-day walkout. "The way that they teach the kids to stop, look and listen before going to railroad tracks it's a good policy to have unless you're in a burning building." The flight attendants' union began a strike against American on Nov. 18 in a contract dispute involving pay, health See ATTENDANTS, Page 12 By Kim Bell Of the Post-Dispatch Staff The 10-day search for Angie Marie Housman ended Saturday morning when a deer hunter found the child's body near a wooded ravine in the August A. Busch Wildlife area in St.

Charles County, police say. "Our worst fears have materialized," said Sgt. Robert Lowery deputy commander of the St. Louis Major Case Squad. "We feel very confident this is Angie Housman.

I'm about 100 percent convinced it is the right girl. Now this is a homicide investigation," he said. The hunter found the body of the 9-year-old St. Ann girl at 11:15 a.m. on a bitterly cold day, just west of Miller School Road near Highway 94 and just south of U.S.

Highway 40 (Interstate 64), police said. Debbie Skaggs of St. John, Angie's aunt, said police told her that Angie had been shot in the hand. "They said she had to have been killed by someone she knew," Skaggs said. Skaggs is the sister of Angelo D' Andrea, Angie's biological father.

D'Andrea is a mechanic in the moving business, Skaggs said. "He's fallen to pieces," she said. "My brother will not stop until he finds out who did this." At 4 p.m., Angie's stepfather, Ron Bone, and other family members left the St. Ann police station and hurriedly got into a car. Bone's hand shook violently as he held a cigarette in the back seat.

"We can't talk," said Bone, 34. The girl was last seen about 4 p.m. Nov. 18, a Thursday, when she hopped from her school bus and walked north on Wright Avenue toward her parents' duplex. Almost from the outset, police thought the girl had been abducted as she walked the half-block from the bus stop to her home in the 3500 block of Wright Avenue.

Lowery, a Florissant police sergeant, declined to say how the girl died or what she was wearing when her body was found. He said he didn't know whether the girl had been sexually assaulted. "We don't have any suspects," Lowery said. "We hope the crime scene will give us some." While police say they're certain Angie's body was found, they still need to make a positive identification through an autopsy and other See SLAYING, Page 10 Discovery of body gave police officers a "sick feeling" 10A Mother Shot, Baby Thrown 1 In Creek Bedf i Body Found -J- A ST CHARLES COUNTY Rd. BUSCH WILDLIFE AREM SCALE i tfu 0 "its.

Vst. I By Michael D. Sorkin Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Venus Adams wasn't a police informer. But somebody thought she was, and that's why he shot her to death and threw her 6-month-old son into a creek bed to die from the cold, police said Saturday. "It was revenge," said Sgt.

David Glenn of the St. Louis County police. "He suspected her of informing about him, but she in fact did not." The suspect said he killed the baby "because there was no one left to care for him," Glenn said. See VICTIMS, Page 10 1 iiA if. Angie Marie Housman Disappeared 10 days ago 1 mo.

i Post-Dispatch Map Chemical Misuse Makes Land A Valley Of Death' INDEX Business 1-8E Classified 1-52G Everyday 1-1 6C Movie Timetable 9C News Analysis 1B.4B Obituaries 14-15D Real Estate 1G St. Louis 1-16D Sports 1-16F Style Plus 1-4S Travel 1-6T EDITORIAL PAGE By Bill Lambrecht Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau 1993, St. Louis Post-Dispatch CONSTANZA, Dominican Republic This region's lush mountains and valleys with their bountiful plantations once stood as an agricultural showcase among developing countries. Today, farmers call this land the "Valley of Death" all because of the abuse of pesticides. Here's what a visitor encounters along the road to Constanza: Crops covered with swarms of whiteflies resistant to pesticides.

A vegetable packing plant that closed after exports to the United States became contaminated with chemicals still sold, Thomen says. "In our country, whoever has the money controls what goes on, not the government," Thomen says. In the mid-1980s, Dominican agriculture was hailed as a model for the Caribbean. The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) successfully promoted Dominican exports of melons, oriental vegetables and "non-trlditional" crops.

The Dominican economy was growing. Since then: Shipments of tomatoes to the United States have declined to 2.5 million pounds in 1992 from over 17 million pounds in 1986, according to Department of Commerce records. See PESTICIDES, Page 6 Police prevent doctor from testifying about pesticide dangers in Dominican Republic 6A chemicals and pests became uncontrollable. Stories of farm workers dying from pesticides. "We've about killed the goose that lays our golden eggs," says Antonio Thomen, director of the Dominican National Commission for the Environment.

Thomen travels the countryside checking on President Joachin Balaguer's ban on several dangerous pesticides. Emotions run so high on this issue that Thomen packs a pistol for protection. The decree isn't working. Three farm stores visited by Thomen are selling paraquat, a much-abused herbicide included in the ban. It is one of several prohibited PROMISE PERIL Good Start For The 103rd Share With The 100 Neediest 2B WEATHER St.

Louis' Strict Rule For Rape Victims Let Accused Man Go Free Flurries Ending The eyes of a woman two days after she was allegedly raped in St. Louis Aug. 7. Police arrested William Harbour three days later, after an alleged rape in Warren County. FORECAST Sunday Morning flurries, high Wind nofth 5-15 mpr Cloudy overnight, low 28.

Monday Partly cloudy and warmer. High 47. Other Weather, 8B U.N. Spending Helps Somali Very Little 1 1993, Los Angeles Times MOGADISHU, Somalia The United Nations' mission to feed and rebuild Somalia has spent more than $300 million in the last six months on its 29 foreign armies and profit-seeking First World contractors. But the armies have failed to restore peace, and the contractors have done little to reconstruct Somalia.

The United Nations' most costly and ambitious operation was once billed as a historic blueprint for the United States and the United Nations to define a new world order of peacemaking and national reconstruction. But the operation has spent most of those millions on itself. In the process, businesses from Canada to Saudi Arabia and from Sweden to Texas have reaped huge profits on $6.50 fast-food pizzas, a $9 See SOMALIA, Page 12 Friends Indeed POST -DISPATCH WEATHERBIRO By William C. Ltiotka Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Police found William Harbour sitting on a bed his face and arms splattered with blood as they burst into room 207 of a Best Western motel in Foristell, Mo. Squad cars had raced there one night last August after a sobbing 13-year-old told Warren County deputies: "Bill raped me.

If I didn't have sex with him, he said he was going to beat me." Three days earlier Harbour had been arrested on suspicion of beating and raping a woman in a warehouse district in St. Louis. But Harbour was released after the victim failed to visit the prosecu tor's office within 20 hours of his arrest a move that shocked her. Carol Jones, the woman who said she had been raped, complained that she was emotionally and physically unable to go to the Municipal Courts Building in downtown St. Louis the day she was attacked.

The incident, critics say, underscores flaws in the St. Louis circuit attorney's policy of making crime victims tell their story to a prosecutor in person before warrants are issued. That's not required in St. Louis County and Kansas City. But in St.

Louis, if the victim doesn't show up to talk to a prosecutor, the suspect is freed. That's what happened -vith Hah enough for me to change our position that our policy is not the right policy," said Joyce-Hayes. Carol Jones her real name has been changed to protect her identity sees it differently. "If they hadn't released him," Jones said, "the little girl wouldn't have been hurt." 'I Got In The Car Willingly7" Carol Jones is 44, single and an See APES, Page 13 bour, who later attacked the teenager in his car on a dead-end road near Wright City on Aug. 10, police say.

Warren County Sheriff Michael Baker said the 13-year-old would never have been raped if the circuit attorney's detention policy were less rigid. The case haunts St. Louis Circuit Attorney Dee Joyce-Hayes, who said she hated to hear about the alleged attack on the teen-ager, who knew Harbour through her relatives. But one unique instance is not 0 3.