Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 4

a iH DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE. ROCHESTER. N.Y.. THURSDAY. JUNE 13.

1991 ns id in reawak nnns iLakeside slaying 1 County wavne hVW X. (Rochester! oounry By Jack Jones and Cnromcie ROMULUS The five shots that killed a Pennsylvania man as he slept in his Cayuga Lake cottage here early Sunday echoed distantly yesterday through this Seneca County town. "It's not like when the girl was raped and her throat was cut in the cornfield just up the road here several years ago," said Susan McKee, citing the unsolved 1985 murder of Kristin O'Connell. "It just felt different," said McKee, a clerk at the Quick 'n Easy market, about seven miles from the site of the killing. i Local residents say they're curious about how 26-year-old Laurie Kellogg was able to I persuade four teen-age friends to drive with her more than 200 miles through the night i from Harrisburg, Pa.

They wonder how the five accused killers could have conceived and carried out a plan i to shoot her 43-year-old husband, Malcolm i "Bruce" Kellogg, in the head as he slept on i his cottage porch. "But right from the start, it seemed like something far away from here," said McKee. I Site of cottage I BnHfff where Malcolm LMJIr J' -lEj 'V. wmne, joum, "The other two men went in," said Graham, who walks with difficulty in a leg brace. "They ran out and said somebody had been shot and that's when we called the police," Graham said.

Graham, who often spent summer evenings talking with Kellogg across their adjacent lakefront decks, said the two men talked until 10 p.m. Saturday about Kellogg's plans to come to the cottage for a vacation this weekend, at the beginning of bass-fishing season. "There was nothing to indicate any problems at home," Graham said. "We talked to Laurie when she came here with Bruce for the Memorial Day weekend and she seemed as outgoing and friendly as ever." Graham described Bruce Kellogg as "youthful looking." However, he said that the 17-year age difference between Bruce and Laurie Kellogg had been "obvious when he first brought Laurie to the cottage about 8 years ago. "We also knew his first wife, but we heard he had gotten divorced.

It's not in this day and age." Graham said he hopes for a thorough and public police investigation that will explain what went wrong between the Kelloggs. He also hopes the investigation will sfyow how four teen-agers became involved in a murder conspiracy. "That's the most frightening thing, that four teen-agers could be talked into something like this and then travel as far as they had to come to do it," he said. i "These were only children, and I'd think they would have been too ff -J Krm SchMy Democrat and Chronicle Cayuga Lake cottage where Malcolm "Bruce" Kellogg's body was found Sunday. "It wasn't one of us and it didn't seem like a random sort of thing that we should "get scared and lock our doors about," she I Must have boat and motor.

Send picture of boat and motor." But next door to the cottage where his friend and neighbor had died, Donald Graham was struggling to understand how "four children and a young woman who had always seemed quite pleasant" could conspire to kill a man in his sleep. Graham, who had known Kellogg for 13 years, was awakened by the fatal gunshots at 5:15 a.m. Sunday. However, he went back to sleep, thinking it was another neighbor shooting at water snakes. When he talked to the other neighbor Sunday afternoon and learned that he hadn't been shooting snakes, Graham said he urged two other men to go with him to the Kellogg cottage.

Romulus Supervisor Ray Zajac, who operates Ray's Superette in Romulus, also found a Frankie-and-Johnnie morality lesson in the bizarre tragedy. "Nobody really knew these people. It's not the major topic of discussion on everyone's lips and minds," Zajac said. "But that's not to say that you better not get along with your wife," he cautioned. At Lackey's Diner in the nearby hamlet of Ovid, the lunch conversation was of yes terday's punishing hailstorms and the impact on local farm crops.

"Yeah, we've been talking about the killing," said a waitress, who asked not to be identified. "It's not the kind of thing that happens around here all the time. It's kind-of neat, I guess." Above the waitress' head, a sign read: "Wanted: Good woman. Must be able to cook, sew, clean, dig worms and clean fish. said.

At Tori's Place, a drive-in diner near Willard, patrons hovered around coffee and ash trays, scanning newspapers and sharing macabre and humorous insights. "It ought to teach all the men in the 'V world not to fool around with younger quipped a middle aged woman, who refused to give her name. Wife, teen in Romuius slaying case refuse to be extradited WHAT IS EXTE1ADITI8U? 1 J. McDowell yFROM PAGE 1A 3v 15, and Nicole Pappas, 16, were transferred yesterday to the Dauphin County Prison, where Pennsylvania officials jvill now cess them as adults, Bienk said. The status it change was made yesterday, he said, due to the alleged crime's severity and New York's ll prosecution of the teens as adults.

'w Their extradition hearings are tentatively ly scheduled for 3:30 p.m. today in Dauphin County Court bv As police yesterday tried to stitch togeth--ier the exact motive in Sunday's slaying, -b neighbors and friends remain dumbfounded that Kellogg's slaying had been allegedly bi plotted by his young wife and her four teen-fcf-age pals. A bubbly homemaker and the "bad brgeed" who lived across the street didn't 9 make likely partners, said neighbor Terri bi Nelson, who said she is best friends with Laurie Kellogg. Laurie Kellogg, a former substitute Kellogg The U.S. Constitution allows governors to petition other states ti) retrieve people they believe have committed crimes In their states, and then fled.

The process Is called extradition and Is Intended to protect the public from criminals fleeing across state lines to escape; prosecution. In most cases, the governor of the state where the crime occurred; signs an extradition warrant for the; person or persons charged. The I governor of the state to which the suspects have fled must then decide whether to approve the extradition I warrant. If a person accused of a crime waives extradition, he or she Is simply returned to face criminal charges. Denver McDowell." Two local policemen who have known McDowell since he was 13 said the teen never told them about a romance with Kellogg.

Although he had been in and out of detention centers for years, McDowell has "no history to indicate anything like this (murder) was possible he's not an organizer," said Lower Paxton Township Juvenile Officer Chuck Sheaffer, who remembers McDowell more for his good traits than his criminal record. "You'd think he's the kind of kid you want your own kids to be friends with that's Denver." McDowell, who hadn't been in legal trouble since turning 18 three months ago, often popped into the police station to say, "Hi. How are ya?" Sheaffer said. "He's a personable kid," said Stanley Holsinger, township police commissioner. "You can sit down and talk to him and think he's the kid next door." Except for 16 year-old Nicole Pappas, township police said they have had contact with the other teen defendants, 15-year-old Kristi Mullins and 16-year-old Chuck Sebe-list.

Both live in the Linglestown area. Kristi lived at the Kellogg home with her 1 -year-old child, Nelson said. Sebelist, who attended school the day after Malcolm Kellogg's death, was an average lOth-grader "One of the gang," said Central Dauphin High School principal Larry Mussoline. "I can't say a negative thing about him. Suspensions and things? No." At Monday's graduation rehearsal, dler boys, New York State Police said.

Some of the accused teens also told police Malcolm Kellogg abused his wife, whom he met when she was 16 and the baby sitter of his two children, Kevin, now 17, and Kelly, now 12, Nelson said. Malcolm Kellogg's murder also was revenge for his sexual abuse of some local teen-age girls, according to another motive offered by defendants to police. None of the motives has been validated, said Lt Thomas Kelly of Troop headquarters in Far-mington, Ontario County. "We don't have any more of a solid feeling" than before, he said yesterday. Police continued yesterday interviewing friends and relatives in an effort to pin down the murder's looming question what made five people drive nearly five hours from Harrisburg to Seneca County to shoot a sleeping man? Many residents here and in Romulus described Kellogg as a hardworking, robust and easy-going family man.

Many in this community, a prosperous crossroads, have latched onto the titillating love-triangle motive. "Fatal attraction," said one Eagle Hotel beer drinker in Linglestown. "You hear it everywhere you go," said a pinball machine player. "I think it's the heat," said a third man. Nelson discounts the sex connection.

"I think (Malcolm) was the only man that was ever in her life she was devoted, even as cruel as he treated her I think I knew Laurie well enough if she was going to chance having something like that, I don't seriously think it would have been with had been physically and hood. "She was an ear kind and gentle a friend to kids whose parents" didn't want to listen "the Kellogg house was a hangout," Nelson said. Except for one of the four teens also charged with second-degree murder in Sunday's shooting of Kellogg's husband at his family's Cayuga Lake cottage, all had known Laurie for six weeks or less, Nelson said. Denver McDowell, who police say pumped the lethal shots into Malcolm Kellogg's skull, is widely known in the town of Lower Paxton, a spralling Harrisburg suburb that includes the village of Linglestown. McDowell's reputation as a car thief and house burglar precedes his new found notoriety as a husband killer, Linglestown residents said.

"Talk about a bad seed, there it was," Nelson said. "Denver was a creep." In statements to police Monday and Tuesday by the five, there was talk of a romance between McDowell and Laurie Kellogg, a 26-year-old mother of two tod emotionally brutalized by her husband for years, Nelson said. The abuse by the domineering husband who bruised his wife and forbade her to socialize with other neighborhood women for fear she would mess around with their fiusbands, might have led the fair-skinned, J-hin brunette to want him dead, said Nel-fon, the mother of four children. A steady stream of teen-agers many of Jhem friends of Malcolm Kellogg's two children from a previous marriage were Welcomed by Laurie Kellogg to her modest jpome in a neat cul-de-sac described by local pfficials as a lower-middle-class neighbor- school personnel searched by phone for the one student missing from the 360-senior lineup "Where is Denver McDowell? No one knew," Mussoline said. His diploma will be held at the school until he or a family member picks it up, the principal said.

Harrisburg is home to the state capital and accustomed to political scandals. But not murder plots, like the one state police said was planned for at least two weeks before the shooting. "You expect stuff like this," a Kellogg neighbor said, "from Philadelphia." jScandal cripples major ftionroe drug bust; $309,000 reported missing SAHTMG0 BEFEHOAIITS FROM PAGE 1A another counterattack to use at trial. It is not uncommon for drug defendants ip claim that money was stolen or that drugs were planted, which prosecutors usually de-Oounce as a ploy to put police on the defensive. Such claims often are not proven.

The case is just the latest of about a record will not reflect the conviction. He Is not the renowned artist. Hector Perez, 28, charged with conspiracy. Status: Charge dismissed because he was not given the opportunity to testify before the county grand jury that Indicted him. Mefvln Perez, 33, charged with conspiracy.

Status: Pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fifth-degree conspiracy and sentenced March 15 to probation Cesar Vazquez, 41, charged with second-degree conspiracy. Status: Pleaded guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy, a less-serious charge, and was sentenced April 1 to five years of probation. Elisa Saez, 37, charged with conspiracy. Status: Charge dismissed for lack of evidence. Benjamin Santiago, 35, charged with second- and third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and second-degree conspiracy.

Status: pending. Nancy Rivera-Santiago, 27, charged with drug possession and conspiracy. Status: pending. Miguel Rivera, 38, charged with drug possession and conspiracy. Status: pending.

Thomas Peacock, 40, charged with conspiracy. Status: pending. Benito Padilla, 26, charged with conspiracy. Status: pending. Ramon Santiago, 48, charged with second-degree conspiracy, a felony.

Status: Pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fifth-degree conspiracy and was sentenced April 1 to one year conditional discharge, which means that if he Isn't arrested within the next year his dozen in which drug charges have been jeopardized as an indirect result of a federal grand jury probe of some members of the Rochester Police Department's vice squad. i THESE ARE NOT THE first twists and turns to the Santiago case. Already, five i of the 10 people arrested on June 4, 1990, are free. Charges against two were dropped, and three others were allowed to plead guilty to minor charges with no jail time; iqne defense lawyer said the deal was so good tfrat it was "impossible to turn down." Two of the co-defendants are said to be cooperating with prosecutors. Within the past two weeks, the district attorney's office offered Santiago a deal to plead guilty to one count of a less-serious charge and face only 1 xh to 3 years in prison.

This compares to a potential maximum of 25 years for conviction of the conspiracy and two drug-possession charges he currently faces. The drug possession charges against the five remaining co-defendants are imperiled because, as it turned out, the drugs that were allegedly found in Santiago's home were uncovered by a city vice squad investigator, William F. Morris, who subsequently has run into legal trouble of his own, Brongo said yesterday. IN OCTOBER, Morris was transferred from the vice squad and later suspended with pay. Sources have said Morris is one of several vice-squad members implicated in an ongoing investigation by federal and city authorities of possible civil rights abuses.

The majority of the officers in the Narcotics Unit have been transferred to other assignments since former police chief Cordon F. Urlacher was charged with embezzlement last October. Because Morris no longer is an active officer and is under suspicion himself, he likely will not be available to testify about the seizure of drugs at Santiago's home. For that reason, the drugs may not' be admissible as evidence and those charges might have to be dropped. IN A SIMILAR WAY, accusations cash was mishandled by police or stolen could, if borne out, make it harder'r prosecutors to introduce the money as evidence, and harder to prove the existence" of a conspiracy to sell drugs.

But Relin said it may be possible, to prove the conspiracy charge without using the money as evidence, instead relying mainly on the tapes of telephone conversations and other evidence. In light of the revelations in court yesterday, the five co-defendants' lawyers told Judge Egan they wanted more timS'to review the case. All five had been offered plea deals in the last several weeks, but all said yesterday they would reject the offers and proceed to trial, which could be several months away. Santiago, who was freed shortly after his arrest when he posted $50,000 cash as bail, appeared in court yesterday. Wearing khaki dress pants and a short-sleeve print shirt, Santiago watched ihe proceedings carefully from the back row, occasionally stopping to whisper to his.

co-defendants. Egan, who ordered the district attorney's office to turn over any additional information about the case, set the next court date for June 26. one conviction, was part of a larger operation that imported huge quantities of cocaine from Colombia. The money police confiscated was displayed proudly, stacked on a conference table. Police said they had staged the raid on the day when a courier was to take the money to Chicago to pay off Santiago's supplier.

The announcement of the arrests of Santiago, his common-law wife, his brother and seven others was the culmination of a six-month investigation involving the use of at least five wiretaps, confidential informants, covert surveillance and a small army of agents from city police, the county sheriffs office and several suburban departments. Before raiding the house, police obtained a court order to tape-record telephone conversations from Santiago's home. ULTIMATELY, THEY FILLED 64 tapes with conversations that allegedly detail drug transactions in street slang common among drug dealers. In partial transcripts filed in state Supreme Court, there are several mentions of a "million dollars" being stored at Santiago's home. On May 15, 1990, a conversation between Nancy Rivera-Santiago, the common-law wife, and an unidentified woman deals with Benjamin Santiago's absence from Rochester at a time when his alleged supplier was pressing for delivery of the payments.

Santiago was in Puerto Rico. "There's a million dollars that's around. He (Santiago) can't leave like that," Rivera-Santiago said. Two-and-a-half weeks later when the raid occurred and the money was discovered, Irondequoit police Sgt Daniel Var-renti, a supervisor at the scene, ordered Lergner to take custody of the cash with another officer present, according to Byrne's memo. BYRNE WROTE that Lergner was unaccompanied when he drove the money from Irondequoit to city police headquarters in downtown Rochester, where it was counted and kept on hand for the following day's news conference.

The memo does not say who the second officer was, or why he was not with Lergner. Lergner, a member of the Narcotics Unit of the city's Special Criminal Investigation Section for 14 years, did not return a phone call yesterday. Varrenti declined to comment Tuesday. But hours before the court date for the plea, the DA's office abruptly withdrew the offer. 4 District Attorney Howard R.

Relin not explain why the offer was made or why it was withdrawn, other than to say that "people here decided it was not an appropriate plea." That detail is just one of many about the Santiago case that local law enforcement officials are loathe to discuss. "We're not pninsr in mmment It's a map money was stolen." ADDED VACCO: "We've done everything we can to ascertain there wasn't any more money." Federal authorities are involved in the case because they invoked federal forfeiture laws and took custody of the $705,000 last fall, with the intention of distributing it to local police agencies if Santiago is convicted. The allegations of police procedural violations, the substance of rumors for weeks, surfaced this week because prosecutors are legally bound to pass on to defense lawyers any information that will help the defense case. The first official word came in a one-paragraph letter dated Monday from Assistant District Attorney Heather Byrne, who is prosecuting the case, to Monroe County Judge David D. Egan.

Copies were sent to the defense lawyers. It flatly stated that Officer Earl J. Lergner transported the money from the crime scene to police headquarters unescorted. The letter also said Lergner told another city officer, Timothy Lawler, not to photograph the money before it was transported. Lawler refused to comment on the case last night Byrne did not appear in court yesterday.

But her boss, Brongo, who appeared in her place, said his office is not conceding that the information about Lergner is fact, especially the implication that there are no photos of the money. "This reflects what was told to us second- and third-hand," Brongo said. Regarding possible photographs of the money seized at Santiago's house, Brongo said, "I have not seen them. But I am told they exist." RELIN SAID he does not believe that allegations of police procedural violations, true or not, will destroy the case against the alleged Santiago drug ring. "We think we've got a case to go to trial with despite whatever problems there may be," he said.

On June 5, 1990, the day after members of the Monroe County Drug Task Force raided Santiago's home at 336 Seneca Park Ave. in Irondequoit, authorities announced that they had "dismantled" one of the area's largest drug-sales rings. They said Santiago, who has a record of drug arrests dating back to 1975 but only 10 pending litigation. The questions should bje directed to the district attorney's office," said Lt. Michael Berkow, a spokesman for the police department.

Police officials would not react to comments by Relin and others, including U.S. Attorney Dennis C. Vacco, that there had been an investigation of the claims of missing money and no evidence of wrongdoing was found. Relin said he spoke to Police Chief Roy Irving about it and was told "they had been aware of the allegations and looked into them and most importantly, relating to Ulie money that they didn't believe the.