The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 1

At-large Tag fee Lehier Rivas, an; alleged drug kingpin Columbia, is reportedly being in a Talladega prison. The Justice Department favors the at-large election of the Calhoun County Commission chairman. A proposal by Anniston Mayor Bill Robison seeks a license plate fee to help pay for a new bus system. Region9A t3 AMIAM ft A Region9A Clfe Star (USPS 03440) copyrighted 1M7 Publlthlng Co. Friday, Feb.

27, 1987 Price 25 Cents 'Alabama's largest home-owned newspaper'. Vol. 108, No. 58 Anniston, Ala. Tltae Contents Canulldated Marie Hilley saga PatC rw 3s- Qt v(l I II rrsZ a If ends mi i Star llluilratlon by Stephen Kvntcrf prices surged 0.7 percent in January.

Details Pagr6B. WEATHER: Forecast calls for a cold, wet weekend. Details Page 9B. Business 8B 10-11A Calendar 7A People in the Comics 7B news 12A Dear Abby. 12A Sports 1-6B Docket 12A 10A 4A SI rafts la lour atcUoaa -By matt, S4 pagst la (oar MeUoa: Hxs Fugitive found ill, soon dies By MURPHY EVANS and JOHN RONNER Star Staff Writers Audrey Marie Hilley's last flight from justice ended Thursday, barely a mile from the Blue Mountain mill house where she was born.

Soaking wet, muddy, delirious and near death, she was found on a back porch beside the old Louisville and Nashville Railroad. A mile and a half away, those same tracks once picked up goods from the textile miii in which her parents worked a lifetime and from which she emerged to become one of the most famous murderers in Anniston history. MRS. HILLEY'S story, which received nationar attention for-Wi" bizarre mix of poison, murder and masquerade, ended in the rain and the cold of a drizzling February afternoon on the Old Gadsden Highway. Authorities theorize that Mrs.

Hilley who once eluded capture for more than three years in an odyssey that took her from Florida to Vermont to Texas may never have left the Anniston area in the four days since she slipped away from a downtown motel. Apparently alone in the woods with only light clothing, Mrs. Hilley may possibly have endured as many as four nights of cold, wet and windy weather with lows in the 30s and 40 degrees. THE EXPOSURE was so severe that Sue Craft, the woman who found Mrs. Hilley, failed to recognize her, even though the two women grew up a block apart and attended the same elementary and high schools.

"I really didn't like looking at her. She was scary," Mrs. Craft said Thursday afternoon. "There were spots of mud on her face. Her bangs were stuck, to her forehead.

She had long fingernails, like she had never wrung out a mop. She had thin hands, and the little finger on her right hand wouldn't straighten out. It was bent double "She was so dirty. She talked like her tongue was thick. I thought She was mentally retarded I'm not saying that's not.

her. I'm saying that didn't look like her' MRS. CRAFT had last seen Marie Frazler (Mrs. Hilley's maiden name) in person in 1950, when she graduated from Anniston High School. Marie graduated in 1951.

In the last 37 years, Mrs. Craft had (Please see Marie, Page JA) Iran and then the report shows absent-mindedly backed into an appeasement policy he said he never would adopt. In his State of the Union address last month Reagan asked that the affair be put behind him, an impossibility because it will be revisited in congressional, investiga SltrPhM bytewOrat PORCH Barbara Thomaton stands on her back porch, looking at the shoe Audrey Marie Hllley left behind and the plastic sheeting a ted to cover her. RMG physicians unable to revive famous patient dispatched a two-man ambulance to the back porch of Barbara Thom-ason's home on the Old Gadsden Highway in north Anniston. When they arrived, the rescuers found Mrs.

Hilley sitting against the wall of the house, partially covered by a plasUc sheet brought by neighbors. She was still conscious when the ambulance arrived, but soon went into a brief convulsion on the scene, lost consciousness, and afterward was completely unresponsive, rescue workers said. "Her skin was cold, wrinkled and wet, as exposure will cause," said Rescue Squad spokesman Benny Hulsey. MRS. HILLEY suffered a cardiac arrest on the ambulance's arrival at (Please see Hospital, Page tA) By JOHN RONNER Star Staff Writer For more than three hours Thursday afternoon, doctors at Regional Medical Center's Emergency Room worked to save the life of Audrey Marie Hilley, who was on fuU life support after suffering a heart attack possibly brought on by her exposure to February's cold.

RMC spokesperson Linda Barnes said the doctors' efforts were abandoned at 5:06 p.m. and Mrs. Hilley was pronounced dead, apparently a victim of hypothermia. That condition an extreme lowering of the body temperature may have brought on the heart attack she suffered just as an ambulance was delivering her to the hospital. At 1:39 p.m., the Anniston Rescue Squad, summoned by police, had iifti J.I' i Ins-do today's Gter 'Reagain9 next chapter Donald Regan intends to quit.

Page 12A fr Arms were shipped from AAD. Page 5A it Related Tower Report stories on Page 6A. DEATHS: Spencer Barnes and Mrs.Sarah Kirklin, both of Anniston; Mae Tlllie and Mrs. Lillian Lorene McRight, both of Jacksonville; Charles Wayne Jones of Fort Payne; Paul Stone Duncan of Cedar Bluff; and Elbert Martin "Pete" Blalock Jr. of Rome, Details Page 7A.

CONSUMER PRICES: The government, revising its principal cost-of-living gauge to better reflect how Americans spend their money, said today that consumer tions ahead and in the judicial proceedings that loom on the horizon. That next chapter, the president can't change. What he should change, the report says, is his practice of letting others dominate the running of foreign policy. It poses this question in Latin: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guardians? "The NSC (National Security Council) system will not work unless the president makes it says the commission's report. "By his actions, by his leadership, the (Please see Next, Page 6A) By HARRY F.

ROSENTHAL Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON Clearly, what the Tower commission is asking of Ronald Reagan is that, at age 76, he -abandon the hands-off style he honed to a fine point in eight years as a governor and six years as the president. It tells him to start paying attention to the job and notes bluntly that he might not find himself in the fix his administration is in had he done so before. The report looks back, to the recent years of clandestine involve- ment with Iran, and not forward to the two years remaining in Reagan's term in which he will try to put the episode behind him. Reagan was the presidential candidate whose campaign made a virtue out of his toughness, who criticized the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, for his weak dealings with.