Daily Sitka Sentinel from Sitka, Alaska • Page 5

Hickel Signs Bills On Victims' Rights, Bears Daily Sitka Sentinel, Sitka, Alaska, Tuesday, June 18,1991, Page 5 By MATT KOHLMAN Associated Press Writer JUNEAU (AP) A "victim rights" bill and legislation to expand the McNeil River bear sanctuary were among six measures signed into law Monday by Gov. Walter J. Hickel. The victim rights bill allows victims of violent crimes to attend closed court hearings involving juveniles. It also expands the victims right to testify at sentencing.

Another section of the measure withholds names of sex-crime victims from public records. The victim's identity could still be found out during trial or other public court hearings. House Bill 100, sponsored by Rep. Dave Donley, D-Anchorage, becomes effective in 90 days. The governor also signed a measure that will permanently ban felons convicted of violent crimes from carrying concealed weapons.

Other felons will have to wait 10 years instead of five after serving their sentence to get a concealable weapon. Donley is the prime sponsor of HB104, which also prohibits firearms on school grounds. Another bill signed into law is designed to protect brown bears that might gather at a new fish ladder near the existing McNeil River bear sanctuary. The bill expands the McNeil sanctuary by 29,000 acres, including the new fish ladder and much of the Paint River watershed where the new fish will spawn. The measure also creates a new game refuge adjoining the sanctuary.

The $3 million ladder is intended to develop a commercial salmon run for the Lower Cook Inlet. Construction is expected to begin this summer. HB306, sponsored by House Speaker Ben Grussendorf, D-Sitka, becomes effective upon completion of the fish ladder. In other action Monday, Hickel en- dorsed Senate Bill 145, a measure that allows non-profit groups to buy state land to use as cemeteries or dumps. He approved SB3, a bill that requires social workers to conduct a face-to-face interview with an alleged victim before closing an investigation into elderly abuse.

And he signed HB158, legislation that exempts university faculty in engineering, architecture and land surveying from a new stale licensing requirement. Hickel also signed into law six measures on Saturday that will: --Change some standards for state distribution of land to municipalities. HB143 makes the land-selection process fairer and limits the state's broad power over the process, said Rep. Eileen MacLean, D-Barrow and bill sponsor. --Provide dependents of Alaskan soldiers who died in the Persian Gulf War with free tuition at the University of Alaska.

HB96 affects dependents of Army Sgt. David Douthit of Soldo tna, the only Alaska reported killed in the war. --Impose a mandatory minimum penalty for joyriding. SB 105 calls for a three days in jail, a $250 fine and restitution for stealing a car and driving it merely for pleasure. --Define who qualifies as a 'sponsor" for Alaska Housing Finance Corp.

loans. SB64 does not change the policies of the state-owned lending agency. --Require any new ferries built for the Alaska Marine Highway System to be equipped to contain and clean up oil spills in state waters. Under SB 165, part of the oil response fund can be used to pay for building a new vessel. --Extend inheritance and transfer of stock provisions under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act until June 30, 1992.

HB96 is in response to changes in the federal law. Former Fairbanks City Clerk Given Choice of Jail, Service FAIRBANKS (AP) A former Fairbanks city clerk was sentenced Monday to 160 hours of community service after she pleaded no contest to charges of falsifying public records and misusing public property. The sentence was a choice handed to Carma Roberson by Superior Court Judge Mary Greene. Roberson, 54, was given the option of the community service or serving 20 days in jail. She faced up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $5,000 on each of the two misdemeanor counts.

Greene said a number of factors contributed to her decision to allow Roberson to select a punishment in lieu of jail time. "There was the lack of seriousness of the crime, and the fact that she had no personal profit motive, and that she had no prior record or involvement with the criminal justice system," the judge said. Roberson's lawyer Dick Madson said he saw the case differently from the judge, but "wasn't dissatisfied" with the sentence. "The gist of the case was that people were overpaid, but there are no limits to her discretion on that," he said. "I have a hard time finding criminal conduct in that." The sentencing ended a nine-month legal battle during which the state brought but eventually dropped more serious theft and bribery charges '91 Cassette, HD Bumper, Sliding Rear Window, Cloth Seats, On-Olf Road Tires, Engine Oil Cooler, Skid Plate DN $264 per mo '91 Ex Cab Short Box 4x4 350V8, Cassette, Sliding Rear Skid Plate, Tilt Wheel, 245x16 On-Off Road Tires Much More! CALLTODD 1-800-767-1985 '91 Mazda Ton, 4x4, HD Bumper, Antilock Brakes DN $199 per mo Geo Storm '91 Voyager Van $13 3 AM-FM Cassette, Rear 7 Pass.

Tilt Wheel Defogger, Floor Mats Air Conditioner DN $1 99 per mo DN $249 per mo '91 4 Dr. Toyota Prizm Loaded DN $199 per mo. '91 Geo Metro Low Down $155 per mo. RULING AUTO CENTER 1-800-767-1985 ASK FOR TODD Fautenberry Confesses To Killing Juneau Man against Roberson. The stale accused Roberson of stealing more than $500 from the city during elections between 1987 and 1990, abusing her authority, forcing one election worker to hire her daughter, as well as falsifying payroll documents.

Assistant District Attorney Pat Doogan; in sentencing briefs, estimated that Roberson paid her daughter Maria more than S85 an hour for 10 hours of work during the election, while paying friend Bess Wilkey $100 an hour for two hours of work. New Arrivals Baby Boy McKeirnan Samuel Ford McKeirnan was born 8:55 a.m. June 17 at Sitka Community Hospital. At birth, the infant weighed 8 pounds and was 21 inches long. The parents are Kelly and Tim McKeirnan of Sitka.

The mother works at the Channel Club and the father is employed by the Alaska Pulp Corp. Samuel is the couple's second child. Sitka Hospital Kelly McKeirnan and her baby boy were admitted to Sitka Community Hospital Monday. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) John Fautenberry has confessed to two more murders, including the stabbing death of a Juneau miner. While that makes six killings in four states the drifter has admitted to, Fautenberry says he's horrified at being labeled a serial killer.

He also said prosecutors are threatening to send him to a state seeking the death penalty because he is delaying his homicide trial here in Alaska. During a three-hour interview Saturday at the state prison in Juneau, Fautenberry, 27, told the Juneau Empire of a four-month killing spree that ended with his arrest in a Juneau hotel room in March. He talked of an abused childhood, an uncontrollable rage at the world, and the events that led to the death of six people, including that of 39-year- old miner Jeff Diffee, whose body was found in his Juneau apartment March 9. Fautenberry also confessed to the murder of 26-year-old Richard F. Combs, who was found stabbed to death in a hobo camp near Roseburg, in September 1984.

Fautenberry was shackled with leg irons, his wrists manacled to his waist. The 6-foot-2, 245-pound man appeared comfortable, eager to tell his story, the Empire reported. In a telephone interview in April, Fautenberry told a Cincinnati television reporter he had killed four other people in Oregon, New Jersey and Ohio between November and February. He is charged with homicide in those stales. Alaska is the only state in which Fautenberry is charged that does not have the death penalty.

Ohio investigators have been trying to tie Fautenberry to a string of prostitute slay ings at truck stops, but the former long-distance truck driver denied involvement in any but the six murders to which he has confessed. "I sit during the day and each and every moment of the past six monlhs comes back into my head. It's like the Twilight Zone," he said. "People like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy -these are people I read about when I was a kid. I'm right up there with them now I guess and it's weird, embarrassing," he said.

Fautenberry insists he doesn't fit the FBI profile of a serial killer. He said he doesn't receive sexual gratification from the killing, performs no hears no-voices, doesn't torture his victims or return to the scene; of theTcrimes. Only one of his victims has been female. He kills because he is angry, he said. Resentment builds inside him and an uncontrollable fury is triggered by an incident in which he feels he is unfairly treated.

In Diffce's case, Fautenberry said he had been fired from his job aboard a fishing boat. He met Diffee at a bar where the Juneau resident offered to let Fautenberry stay at his apartment. "We were drinking and we continued to drink through the night. The only thing that was going through my mind the whole time I was drunk was what I had already done lo those four other people in the past few months. I kept picturing it and I guess I felt at the time it was inevitable that (Diffee) was going to be killed.

That's pretty sick," Fautenberry said. Diffee was beaten and stabbed more than a dozen times. Fautenberry said he stayed in Diffee's apartment until the next night. He then returned to his downtown hotel room and called his former girlfriend in Portland. "I had a feeling that the phone was tapped and part of me subconsciously wanted it to be over," he said.

"It had to stop, but after a while I couldn't stop." Police arrested him that night. He is being held at the state prison in lieu of S3 million cash bail. Anger from being fired from a logging job in Oregon provoked his first killing, Fautenberry said. He met a hobo, Richard Combs, in a park in September 1984, hours after he had been fired. The two began drinking.

"The drunker I got, the more I thought about the fact that I got fired for an unjust reason. It just pissed me off and I guess I took it out in the wrong way," Fautenberry said. Combs was stabbed in the neck and his body found near a freeway off- ramp. Fautenberry said that when he woke in an abandoned building the next morning, he fled. "I blanked it out of my mind, I didn't want it to be true.

I didn't think I could do something like that. I thought if they haven't caught me yet, maybe it didn't really happen," he said. Another man, already imprisoned for arson and burglary, confessed to the Combs murder. The inmate has since recanted and the Roseburg, district attorney's office is trying to decide what to do about the manslaughter charges against him, said Roseburg Police Lt. John Hodgson.

When Fautenberry's mother died a few months later, he felt it was God's retribution for the murder, he said. "I took the blame on myself and 1 was furious. I lost it. I took a knife one night and started carving pieces of flesh out of my chest," he said. Fautenberry said the five years between his mother's death and the beginning of his 1990 killing spree were the most productive of his life.

He went to a technical training school, earned good money as a trucker, and met a woman in Portland "who settled me down," he said. It was the breakup of that love affair and the loss of his truck driving job in November 1990 that ignited him again, he said. "I reacted like an animal does when you trap him. I fought my way out. In my mind that meant take no prisoners, leave no witnesses.

It was wrong, if I could turn the clock back I would," he said. Fautenberry has admitted killing five people since November 1990. --Don Nutley, a 47-year-old Texas tourist, who was shot to death at a target range near Mount Hood, Ore. --On Feb. 1, Faulenberry said he killed Gary Farmer, a 27-year-old truck driver, in a New Jersey truck stop.

--Two weeks later, he shot and killed Joseph Daron near Cincinnati, a 45-year-old insurance executive who picked up Fautenberry hitchhiking. --In late February, he and then shot to death 32-year-old Christine Guthrie, a Portland bank teller. --A few days later, he flew to Juneau and later killed Jeff Diffee. In each case, he stole bank or credit cards, drivers licenses, watches, and other items from his victims. Fautenberry spoke of an abused childhood dominated by a cold and often absent stepfather.

He said his first memory was of his father stabbing his mother in the leg with a fork. He hated his stepfather, a Navy seaman he describes as cruel, brutal, and egotistical, a man he said attacked him with a baseball bat and was rarely home or sober. Fautenberry also said he is being threatened by the Juneau District Attorney's office with trial in one of several death penalty jurisdictions outside Alaska that are seeking him for trial. District Attorney Richard Svobodny said Monday that if Fau ten berry's trial in Alaska, which is scheduled for mid-July, is unreasonably delayed for a year or more, he would surrender Fautenberry to another state for trial there. Fautenberry's attorneys are on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Sorry, no styrofoam or plastic (except for PET pop and liquor or HDPE milk bottles) in the recycling bins. TO BE WED Alvin Helm and Barbara Puckett, both of Sitka, will be married 1 p.m. Saturday at the First Presbyterian Church. A reception will follow the ceremony in Latta Hall. (Photo provided to the Sentinel) Hickel Touts Plans for Water Line to California JUNEAU (AP) Gov.

Walter J. Hickel poured out his big-projects philosophy to a group of officials and engineers in town Monday to talk about the proposed water pipeline from Alaska to drought-stricken California. Police Blotter The following calls were received by Sitka police by 8 a.m. today: June 14 At 5:24 p.m. a Halibut Point Road resident complained he had heard dogs at the animal shelter barking 'constantly" for the past three nights, keeping him awake.

June 17 Police are investigating the theft of a jewelry box. A resident surrendered a cat to the animal shelter. At 2:56 p.m. police were unable to locate three young boys reported to be acting in a suspicious manner in back of a Lincoln Street business. At a-resident said iron beams sticking out into the sidewalk at Lake and Seward steels.

Police helped the owner move the beams back from the sidewalk. At 4:18 p.m. officers told children setting off firecrackers on Kogwanton Street of the restrictions and risks involved. At 6:22 p.m. police told the Katlian Street resident who was having trouble getting a tenant to pay his rent that she would have to pursue the matter in a civil court.

At 8:34 p.m. an Edgecumbe Drive resident reported some kids had caused S75 damage to some mailboxes. At 8:43 p.m. a Halibut Point Road resident reported cars were being driven' erratically on the Benchland Road. At 11:23 p.m.

police told a resident playing loud music to be quiet. At 11:53 p.m. officers told a Sawmill Creek Road landlord who wanted a tenant removed that he would have to pursue the matter in a civil court. Junelg At 1:02 a.m. a taxi driver reported there was a "problem brewing" on Katlian Street.

Police found an intoxicated man, but he was able to care for himself. He was waiting for a friend, who soon came along and walked away with him. At 2:35 a.m. police advised the man having a party in his apartment to keep the noise down or he could be arrested for disorderly conduct. "We can go to the moon on a thought.

Why can't we get the water to California," Hickel said. "The project's credible. It's doable, and necessary." Hickel spoke for most of the 90- minute meeting with officials from Los Angeles County, and engineers from Hour Daniel the California company that supplied a free study on the mile sub-oceanic pipeline. The report, released last week, said the pipeline could be done but at a cost of SI50 billion. Hickel disputed the figure, saying it could be cut in half.

He invited the engineers up to Alaska where he advanced his ideas. The report studies the cost of laying four 15-foot-diamcter concrete pipes on the ocean floor from the two states. Hickel instead suggests two plastic or fiberglass lines that could be dropped from a barge. A lightweight pipe carrying freshwater would float in the surrounding saltwater, he said, and would have to be anchored down io ihc The would be the mouth of Southeast Alaska streams and pumped down to which is suffering its fifth year of drought. What will Alaska charge? "You just give me the price of a Coke for 20 million persons and give you that value in water every day," Hickel said.

The governor compared the project to building the Great Wall of China, trans-Alaska oil pipeline, Panama Canal and the pyramids of Egypt. "We as a civilization need big projects," he said. Tom Tidemanson, director of public works for Los Angeles County, picked up on the analogies. He likened the idea to the initials stages of the nation's quest to visit-lhe moon, with little to go on but vision. Mas Fukai, chief deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, said a revised feasibility study using up-to-date technology will be commissioned.

Meanwhile, a July 22 hearing in Los Angeles is scheduled by the Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional agency studying the proposal. Emergency Calls At 1:10 p.m. Monday an ambulance was sent to 501 Baranof Street and a person was transported to Sitka Community Hospital. AUTHENTIC MEXICAN FOOD HOMEMADE PIZZA A Summertime Deal of Our Own! With each Medium or Large Pizza you order for delivery or pickup you receive ONE FREE 6-PACK of your choice (Coke, Diet Coke, Root Beer, 7-Up or Orange). For Los Amigos dining-in customers receive a FREE PITCHER of pop with each medium or large pizza.

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