The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 1

Valley, Hoover win in softball Tournament ccversja in Spcrti Savoring the flavors of Italian ice creams Ctltti recifts cnTciiy! IT WEATHER Partly sunny and mild today, high around 80. Clear and cool tonight, lows in the 50s. Sunny Thursday, highs In the 70s. Sunrise: 6:01 a.m. Sunset: 8 41 p.m.

Details: I4T Ann Landers 2T Crossword 6T Mowes 4T Business. 5S Editorials. 1AA Obituaries OM i Classified 7T Letters 15 Sports 5T Lotteries 2T TV schedules. 6T Stye Des Utomes -A CY7 Sf i ill i I 1 -v I If IV 1 SECTION Copyright 1991 Des Moines Register and Tribune Company A Gannett Newspaper Watching and THE NEWSPAPER IOWA DEPENDS UPON Des if' i i ii .1 5 Price 35 1 It Site! 8 By JONATHAN ROOS Rtslstar Staff Wrlttr The next group of state employees to receive layoff notices probably will include doctors and nurses, engineers, scientists and other professionals, state officials said Tuesday. The second round of layoffs, which could be announced in a couple of weeks, also is expected to include more managers and supervisors.

There may even be a third and fourth wave of layoffs, leaving no state agency untouched. On Monday, Gov. Terry Branstad announced that 851 employees would be trimmed from the state payroll, and the number of layoffs could climb to 1,900 in the weeks and months ahead as his plans unfold to reduce the size of state government. Many of the 851 workers receiving layoff notices this week are blue-collar, technical and clerical employees. Most also work under collective bargaining contracts, and their salaries are paid from the state general fund, which has been plagued by deficit spending and cash flow problems.

Professional, Managerial Although Branstad said no final decision has been made about additional layoffs, the next batch could number several hundred. The second phase of layoffs would affect primarily those workers paid from the general fund who do not belong to bargaining units professional and managerial employees, said Bill Snyder, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Personnel. In the Department of Natural Resources, for example, the next round could include engineers, scientists, supervisors and field staff, said Jim Combs, a division administrator. "The plans are not approved yet. Right now we're looking at options and trying to put things together," said Combs, echoing the comments of other state government administrators.

Round two also is expected to affect some of the educators who fill professional slots at the Department of Education. Nursing consultants and staff physicians also could be among those who feel the impact of additional layoffs at the Department of Public Health. More DHS Layoffs More layoffs also are in store for the Department of Human Services, which accounted for 350 of the 851 workers affected by Monday's layoff announcement. Should an additional 1,000 or more state workers lose their jobs, "we would continue to have our propor- LAYOFFS Please turn to Page 10A profissiijii Carrole and Gladys Spoon, left, and Gertrude Ellers, right, all of rural Lacona, spend a pleasant Tuesday morning on Lacona's main street watch- ing the stream of RAGBRAI bicyclists. The Spoons were waiting for their daughter and son-in-law, Carolyn and John "Pat" Dorrian, to pass by with the pack of cyclists.

(Pat Dorrian is the mayor of Des Moines.) For more RAGBRAI stories and photos, see Metro News, Page 1M. i Inmate's story of Gosch is true, his lawyer asserts Moines, Iowa, Wednesday, July 24, 1991 BOB NANDELLThe Register father, met with Bonacci, "and started getting chills." "I believe he believed him," De-Camp said. "He seemed sincere," John Gosch said recently. Noreen Gosch, the boy's mother, said Bonacci "knows incredible things." Johnny Gosch, then 12, disappeared in West Des Moines on Sept. 5, 1982, while delivering the Des Moines Sunday Register.

"When things need investigating here, they will be investigated," said West Des Moines police Lt. Gerry Scott. He said there were no plans to interview Bonacci. DeCamp said Bonacci knows a lot about the abduction of Gosch, and he said he'll try to prove it. "We're going to call everybody's bluff.

Either Bonacci and I go down in flames or somebody starts doing some serious investigating," said GOSCH Please turn to Page 7 A TttHtVMMIWTHE waiting I I v- i vvxt Yitzhak Shamir He's optimistic Baker is meeting Asian foreign ministers. Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said it is premature to predict Israel's response to the U.S.-designed peace formula, but he cited "a promising situation." Until recently, Israeli leaders expressed great skepticism about the motives of Syria, Israel's most implacable foe. Shamir cautioned that disagree- MIDEAST Please turn to Page 7 A The magazine's report was news to state disaster and military officials, who said they had never given a lot of thought to the possibility of a Soviet spacecraft settling to Earth in an Iowa hog lot, cornfield or shopping mall parking lot. James Van Allen, the eminent space physicist at the University of Iowa, said he, too, was unaware of any Soviet plans for landing endangered cosmonauts in this neck of the woods. Van Allen said, however, that he could see a certain amount of common sense in making the Midwest part of an emergency landing plan by the Soviets.

"You're not likely to hit anybody, but you probably would be within half a mile of someone who could help you," he said. Currently, two Soviet cosmonauts, Anatoly Artsebarsky and in CI Terry Branstad Hints at pension fund loan Budget panel is told to spare no sacred cows By DAVID YEPSEN Raglstar Staff Wrlttr Gov. Terry Branstad told a task force Tuesday it must spare "no sacred cows" as it looks for ways to save money. The governor promptly kicked one sacred cow when he suggested that the committee see whether the state could borrow short-term money from the state employee pension fund instead of selling bonds. Branstad also suggested the state turn over to private business some of its wholesale liquor business.

Branstad made his remarks at the opening session of a task force of prominent Iowans he has gathered to suggest ways to cut spending. David Fisher, the chairman of the Governor's Committee on Government Spending Reform, mentioned some other sacred cows of Statehouse politics when he asked whether Iowa State University needed to own WOI-TV, a commercial television station, and whether tuition grants ought to be provided to students at private colleges. He also asked whether Iowa needed 99 counties that were "designed for horse and buggy days." He questioned whether the state universities were being run efficiently, noting that universities around the country were BUDGET Please turn to Page 12A Severed heads, parts of bodies found in home From Register Wire Services MILWAUKEE, WIS. A handcuffed man flagged down police, said he'd been attacked, and led them to an apartment where they found many pieces of human bodies, including three heads in a refrigerator, authorities said Tuesday. The man who lived in the apartment allowed the patrolmen to come in.

He was taken into custody late Monday after police found body parts, a barrel of acid and a dresser full of photographs of mutilated bodies. Ella Vickers, 31, who lives next door, said she and her husband had smelled a repugnant odor for some time. "We've been smelling odors for weeks, but we thought it was a dead animal or something like that," Vick- fx Shamir: Israel may plan for poaco talks JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (AP) In his most optimistic assessment yet of chances for peace, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on Tuesday welcomed Syria's readiness to talk to Israel and said: "I think we are approaching the start of negotiations." Shamir, who has not yet responded officially to a U.S. plan for peace talks, likened the Syrian change in position to the dramatic change of heart that led Egypt's Anwar Sadat to come to Israel and make peace. He said he hoped peace talks could begin within two months.

Shamir's comments came in a closed meeting with a delegation of U.S. prosecutors visiting Israel. The White House said Tuesday that President Bush hopes agreement can be reached on a Middle East peace conference by next week's superpower summit in Moscow. Secretary of State James Baker said he expected a reply from Israel shortly, according to diplomats in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where By FRANK SANTIAGO RMlsttr Staff Wrlttr A Nebraska inmate has provided details about the abduction of Johnny Gosch that only someone with firsthand knowledge could have had, his lawyer said Tuesday. Inmate Paul Bonacci's account "did not match up 90 percent, not 95 percent, not 98 percent, but 100 percent," John DeCamp said.

"I'm convinced this kid is telling absolutely the truth. He never varied on the time. He gave a description of Johnny's pants, names on his shirt, scars on the body." DeCamp said he became suspicious of a Gosch connection when he read a transcript of a psychiatrist's interview with Bonacci in which an "incident" involving a newspaper carrier was mentioned. DeCamp said Bonacci didn't identify Gosch by his full name. "I went to the library and checked on Johnny Gosch.

I wrote to the Gosches and told them I don't know if there is any validity, but the dates coincide and he talks about someone from Iowa." DeCamp said John Gosch, the boy's Sergei Kirkalev, are staffing the Mir space station, whose orbit car-" ries it across Iowa roughly twice a day. Should the fliers be forced to abandon the space station, they could return to Earth in the Soyuz craft that took them into space. The craft, which weighs about as much as a Volkswagen, uses rockets to slow its descent and parachutes to break its final fall. "It's designed to allow people to land fairly comfortably," Van Allen noted. Aviation Week Space Technology said the Soviet Union's contingency plans for landing stricken space vehicles in the United States date back at least to 1975.

The magazine said the area covered by the plans includes the Dakotas, Minnesota, much of Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin, and parts of Illinois, Montana and Wyoming. If in danger, cosmonauts could drop in for Iowa hospitality By LARRY FRUHUNG Rtoltttr Staff Wrlttr Iowans who have absolutely run out of things to worry about may wish to consider the latest issue of the magazine Aviation Week Space Technology, which reports that this and eight other north-central states are candidates for emergency landings by Soviet space-; craft. The latest issue of the magazine says an analysis of radio transmissions indicates that the north-central plains of the United States would be the third choice of Soviet cosmonauts in case of problems that forced an emergency landing. First choice would be Kazakhstan in Central Asia, where returning Soviet space pilots normally land. Second choice would be the east coast of the Soviet Union, and third choice would be a broad area of the American Midwest from Montana to Wisconsin and Illinois, Aviation Week Space Technology reported.

13) BODIES Please turn to Page 11 A i.