St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 5

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1998 www.postnet.com Trustees' reports track -decline of museum assets fc. 1 1 3 0 Museum Dog Museum is at center of case of murdered heiress Continued from PageAl the income of the trust until death and then gives the principle to the nonprofit organization named. Last year, the Dog Museum filed a civil suit when financial statements from the trustees showed that the fund lost about $800,000, Grimm said. The actual loss is substantially more, he said.

For instance, had the trust been invested in the stock "market over the past 11 years instead of being spent or otherwise -used, it probably would have grown several times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks the stocks of large companies, has more than quadrupled since 1986. The museum's suit says the trus- tees' annual accountings from 1986 through 1996 are "questionable I and reflect evidence of self-dealing, unsubstantiated and improper pay-Tments, vanished funds, excessive trustees' fees, waste of trust assets, unexplained loans, and illegal real estate deals, the suit claims. The trustees are George T. O' Neil and Robert A.

Ragosta, an accountant and lawyer, respectively. They have denied any wrongdoing or mismanagement in handling the trust. They suggested in court files that the upkeep of Lyman's Hop-kinton, R.I., property, where she had housed 58 show dogs in a $525,000 kennel, contributed to the fund's depletion. Cam Lyman met and befriended O'Neil, 65, at dog shows during the early 1980s. Lyman, a millionaire by inheritance, bred champion show dogs, as did O'Neil.

He gave her financial advice. In 1984, O'Neil and Ragosta helped her sell her home in Massachusetts and buy the 40-acre property in Hopkinton. That year, O'Neil became sole beneficiary of Lyman's will, with Ragosta as executor, according to the Providence Journal. In her final years of life, Lyman legally changed her name from Camilla to Cam and dressed as a man. The 6-foot-tall heiress sported a natural mustache, did not regularly communicate with her immediate family and never married.

Her reputed eccentricity played into the delayed discovery of her disappearance. On Sept. 2, 1986, 10 months before her disappearance, Lyman amended her unitrust, court records show. She eliminated as beneficiaries the American Cancer Society, Ducks Unlimited and the Buddy Dog Humane Society of Sudbury, Mass. Instead she made the Dog Museum of America, Laurie Skrivan POST-DISPATCH Louis County, adjusts the lighting Tuesday in the Pedigree Hall of Fame.

$220,000 from $1 million. The museum is suing the fund's trustees. I 0 Li the Dog Museum of America in St. trust fund that has dropped in value York in 1 987 after St. Louis County spent $1.3 million on improvements to the mansion and gave the museum a 99-year, $l-a-year lease.

St. Louis outbid 12 cities. The dog museum is funded by admission fees and donations. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

Admissions are $3 for adults; $1.50 for older adults; and $1 forchildrenages5tol4. A special exhibit on toy dogs and dog toys opened Nov. 29 and runs through Feb. 14. percent of the net income for herself, with payments in monthly installments until her death.

Lyman disappeared July 20, 1987. According to the Providence Journal, O'Neil later testified in probate court that he had been speaking to Lyman on the phone that day when the line went dead. The next day, he went to her house and saw she was missing and that the telephone had been ripped off the wall. But O'Neil didn't call police or her relatives, he said, because she to 3 Dog museum QUEENY rfltXH 5T 3 -n J7 Town and Country Manchester 141 POST-DISPATCH Area of detail 5X St. Louis ST.

LOUIS ffi COUNTY 1 -rv a 3 The trustees' year-by-year accounting, detailed in the suit by the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog, shows how some of the $1 .06 million was allegedly spent. Here are the highlights, as described in court documents. 1987: Cam Lyman disappeared July 20. The trustees George O'Neil, an accountant, and Robert Ragosta, a lawyer purportedly distributed $97,728 to Lyman. Moreover, $1 00,000 "seems to have disappeared," the suit says.

1988: Again, the missing millionaire supposedly got $97,728. The trustees also paid themselves $21 ,000 in fees. 1989: "The illusive Lyman" got $75,51 3, the suit says. Trustee fees in excess of $40,000 were paid. The trustees also bought a condominium for $95,000.

An additional $50,000 was paid out for attorney's fees, insurance and taxes, investigations and surveys. 1990: The trust paid $72,000 "to the still missing Lyman." The trustees lent $1 72,01 1 to a third party and took as security a mortgage on property In Providence. 1991: The trust made a payment to Lyman of $72,000. The trustees also bought appliances and paid taxes on properties in Johnston, North Kings-1 town and Hopkinton, all Providence suburbs. 1992: Lyman has been gone five years.

Nonetheless, she got paid $50,000, according to the trustees. Her property in Hopkinton, which had been listed in O'Neil's name, was transferred into the trust. The suit alleges that transaction violates both the unitrust document and federal tax code. 1993: No distribution to Lyman this year, but numerous distributions "on behalf of Cam" were made for attor- ney's fees, trustees' fees, caretaker fees and other unexplained expenses. All of the mutual funds and cash investments in the fund had been liquidated.

1994: The only remaining assets in the trust are $101 in cash, the Hopkinton real estate and the Providence mortgage. 1995: Lyman was declared legally dead, though no corpse was found. The trustees recouped only $50,000 from its $171 ,000 loan by selling the -Providence property that secured the mortgage. 1996: The Dog Museum sought an accounting of the use of the funds. The trustees reported the total value of the unitrust at $240,922.

But they also claimed unpaid expenses of between $43,000 and $50,000 for legal fees and an additional $1 0,000 for miscellaneous expenses. 1997: Police dogs detect the scent of human remains on Lyman's Hopkinton property. Investigators find a skeleton in the septic system. 1998: Medical examiner identifies the bones as Lyman's. Her death is ruled a homicide.

Source: Court files, the Providence Journal-Bulletin haul a long-distance learning room to be named in her honor. John Fisher, dean of the College of Law, said he was "simply stunned" by the donation. Jennings never went beyond high school and made about $10,000 a year before retiring in 1989. As a child she lived on a farm where they made their own soap and grew their own food. She managed to put together a nest egg by investing the rent money from a piece of inherited property.

At the modest home she shares with her husband across the Monongahela River from the university, Jennings said she never lived extravagantly. 450S North nilnol. Belleville COMPANY llllnob 62221 6,59 APR Ths above based onfy on an 2(1 down payment. 6 I origination lea Mo Pymt. of MM for lOvoara.

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Lyman's brother officially reported her missing to police in December 1988. A judge didn't find Lyman legally dead until 1995, in part to settle a legal dispute over Lyman's will, which named O'Neil as sole beneficiary of her $1.9 million in assets, and her Hopkinton estate. O'Neil eventually inherited Lyman's estate, except for the Dog Museum unitrust, and settled with Lyman's family for $2 million. Grimm said the Dog Museum first realized that the unitrust funds had been depleted when it asked for an accounting in probate court. Then the museum filed suit last year in U.S District Court in Providence.

Police weren't sure there had been a murder until last year, when two bloodhounds taken by investigators to Lyman's old property detected the scent of human remains. Investigators dug into the septic system, where they found her bones. Nearly a year later, they were able to confirm that the remains were those of Lyman and that she had died violently. his anti-Jewish remarks when meeting with journalists after Tuesday's impeachment session. "Representatives of one ethnic group have been dominant in the president's inner circle and the government during the past seven years.

I have already named this ethnic group," Ilyukhin said. "It appears to be the cause, or one of the factors that has contributed to the genocide we have witnessed." Another Communist lawmaker, Albert Makashov, caused an outcry in October when he attributed Russia's problems to Jews and used an ethnic slur. would be an independent Democrat and 6 percent said he would be Republican. Those polled by Fox NewsOpinion Dynamics were nearly equally divided about whether Santa Claus or Baby Jesus was the more recognized symbol of Christmas. The telephone poll of 517 registered voters, conducted Dec.

2-3, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Retired cleaning woman donates $93,000 to college in West Virginia Communist blames Yeltsin, Jews for genocide of Russian people 1 Merry Wright, collection manager The museum is the beneficiary of The American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog the only museum in the nation devoted to man's best friend is in the Jarville Mansion in Queeny Park at 1721 South Mason Road in west St. Louis County. The museum houses canine photographs, portraits and sculpture on three floors, along with a reference library. Rumors earlier this year that the museum would move elsewhere proved false when the American Kennel Club decided to spend $150,000 on renovations.

The museum moved herefrom New which was then in New York, sole beneficiary. The following year, the Dog Museum moved to the Jarville Mansion at Queeny Park in west St. Louis County. That year, Lyman's trust was worth more than $1 million. Lyman also replaced her former trustees from Boston with O'Neil and Ragosta in 1986.

The unitrust then had $1,058,856, which was invested in three mutual funds and two municipal bond funds, court records show. A copy of the unitrust showed Lyman set aside 8 the main ethnic groups, and not exclusively of one group, the Jews," Ilyukhin told a parliamentary panel considering impeachment charges against Yeltsin. Yeltsin has frequently reshuffled his Cabinet and his advisers over the years. Most have been ethnic Russians, although Jews and other minority groups also have been represented. The Communist Party, the country's main opposition group, has been seeking to attract a new generation of supporters and distance itself from abuses committed during the Soviet era.

But in recent weeks, party elders have expressed tradition proceedings to go forward. He also rejected claims that Lord Justice Hoffmann was biased against Pinochet. Pinochet's lawyers have now taken the highly unusual step of asking a new five-judge tribunal to overturn the House of Lords' ruling. Short of that, they want the tribunal to nullify Lord Justice Hoffmann's vote in the 3-2 ruling. "This is way beyond simply being a member of an organization, Clare Montgomery, one of Pinochet's lawyers, said of Lord Justice Hoffmann on Tuesday.

Spain's lawyer, Alun Jones, responded that Chile's petition was "an abuse of the process of your lordships' House." Pinochet's lawyers say that if they can get Hoffmann's ruling quashed, Pinochet should then be freed, since three High Court judges had ruled earlier that he does have immunity from prosecution. The High Court is the equivalent of the U.S. court of appeals and is one level below the House of Lords. An official Chilean report says Pinochet's secret police killed some 3,000 political opponents after he overthrew the elected Marxist government, Chile, however, wants him back, partly because he is a senator-for-life in the new democratic government. at a The Associated Press MOSCOW In the latest burst of anti-Semitism in Russia, a prominent Communist lawmaker accused President Boris Yeltsin and Jews in his government on Tuesday of waging 'genocide" against the Russian people.

Viktor Dyukhin, the head of Parliament's security affairs committee, claimed that liberal revisions carried out by Yeltsin's government in the 1990s had weakened Russia. "The large-scale genocide wouldn't have been possible if Yeltsin's inner circle had consisted of The Associated Press MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Cleaning woman Regina Jennings was never paid much during the 15 years she spent mopping floors and dusting classrooms at the West Virginia University College of Law. So it came as a shock to school officials when she recently donated $93,000 for what she said was the kindness shown her by faculty and students. "They always talked to me and asked me how I was doing," Jennings, 75, said Tuesday.

"They treated me extremely well through the years." The money will be used to over 1030 Woodcre.t Terr, St. Louis Mo. 63141 At Olive1-270 loans, Appro. Possible Slight Increase pF MORTGAGE British judge appears biased, Pinochet's lawyers charge 98 Serviced Based on Sales Service Fee. -Hjf.

support for several measures that recall some of the darkest moments of their rule. Communist lawmakers enthusiastically supported last month a move to bring back the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, former head of the dreaded Soviet secret police. His likeness was toppled from in front of KGB headquarters in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. Also, Gennady Seleznyov, a Communist who is speaker of Parliament's lower house, suggested that crime could be curbed by the rein-troduction of hard labor camps. Ilyukhin, the man leading the efforts to impeach Yeltsin, repeated Polled voters say Santa The Associated Press WASHINGTON Democrats and Republicans are always recruiting friends in high places, but Santa Claus would probably consider himself an independent, a poll suggests.

Nearly two-thirds of American voters think Santa Claus would consider himself an independent, while 9 percent said he would be a POST-DiSPATCH Prep Play of the Week: The Post-Dispatch film crew will cover a variety of teams, games and sports each week. You'll see highlights from our footage with the most extraordinary play being dubbed, "Play of the Week." The Post-Dispatch Prep Sports Show. Sponsored by: sports DELftlAR 6.95 APR The above It blind only on en $00,000 loan, a 20 down pymtnt I ortfllnelion tea. Mo Pymt, of 0120.48(1 JO mart. TIME TO REFINANCE Final Days! Circ.ll Gilt! Over 2.X)0 in sux'kl SilVC Oil indivuliin chiiirs, They want ruling tossed because of justice's link to group pushing for trial The Associated Press LONDON Lawyers argued Tuesday that a judge who denied Gen.

Augusto Pinochet immunity from arrest appeared to be biased because of his strong ties to Amnesty International, a key player in a campaign to put Pinochet on trial for human rights abuses. The judge is Lord Justice Leonard Hoffmann. He heads Amnesty's fund-raising arm; his wife, Gillian, has spent her working life with the group. Pinochet, 83, was arrested in London on Oct. 16 on a warrant from Spain.

It wants to extradite him to stand trial on charges of murder, torture and other human rights abuses during his 1973-90 rule in Chile. Pinochet's lawyers previously argued that he was immune from prosecution as a former head of state. But the House of Lords ruled that immunity did not protect him from charges involving crimes against humanity. In response to that ruling, Home ecretary Jack Straw allowed ex i I I t. A Choose blue, 1 burgundy or hrovvn, I 11 r-w.