St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 8

11999 www.postnet.com ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1999 AM Portrait of a serial killer Jurors in dragging death trial are average Texans, shocked by killing Serial Mlm officer. One is retired. Most are Baptists; most are married with children; most have hobbies like hunting, fishing or gardening that get them out of the house; and most believe honesty and respect are the most important values to teach a child. Their pop culture choices are as wide-ranging as the marketplace of ideas.

The last movie they saw ranged from "Parent Trap" or "Die Hard" to "Shakespeare in Love." The juror who saw that movie offered a quick review: "great." Their favorite TV shows vary from "MASH" or "Law and Order" to "Jerry Springer," but most seem to prefer the nonfiction aspect of the Discovery Channel, news magazines and cooking shows. All keep their cars clean of bumper stickers and say the people they respect the most are the people closest to their hearts their spouse, parents, pastor or friends. One juror listed himself as one of the three people he most respects. Support for death penalty Most support the death penalty. "Do the crime, do the time," one juror said.

"The death penalty is here for a reason: If you take a life, give a life." But a few have mixed emotions and are unsure if they can send a criminal to the death chamber. "I possibly could accept it, under undeniable circumstances, if that is what law dictates," one told the court. "However, I have to be able to judge myself and my decision in an irrevocable way for the rest of my life." Nearly all said they wanted to serve on the jury that will decide whether King, 24, who prosecutors say is a white supremacist, killed Byrd as a hate crime. If convicted, King could be sentenced to death by lethal injection. The jury is composed of six white men, five white women and one black man.

State District Judge Joe Bob Golden has ordered the names and photographs of the jurors protected from public disclosure during the trial. Testimony is scheduled to resume Monday. Emotional reaction Gray said the strong emotional reaction that nine jurors had after learning of Byrd's murder does not present a conflict of interest for them. "I think everybody in the world would have the same kind of reaction to this type of crime," he said. "It's not a legal disqualification to have a feeling like that.

If so, you could never get a jury in a bad murder case. "Having a shocking, emotional response to a crime does not mean that you've formed an opinion on a defendant being tried." Indeed, all 12 jurors told the court they believe a defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But one legal expert said the jurors' initial reaction to the crime will not be left at home when they begin to deliberate. "People end up carrying their first reaction into the jury room," said David Dow, a University of Houston law professor who specializes in the death penalty and constitutional law. "I will be surprised if the jury doesn't convict him," Dow said, because of "the fact that they are anxious to serve, and Number 2, the fact they admitted to having a strong reaction." Dow said it is common for potential jurors to say they can lay aside their emotions and judge the defendant on the facts.

But, in reality, jurors have trouble doing that, he said. "What the surveys also indicate is that most people believe that when somebody is arrested, he probably did what he was arrested for," Dow said. "So, I think juries pay a lot of lip service to the presumption of innocence, but it is not necessarily genuine." And, because statistics show few white defendants are sentenced to death for killing a black person, Dow said he believes King may receive a life sentence from this jury. "In Texas, you can count the number of white death row inmates who were sent there for killing a black on one hand," he said. Most support the death penalty, want to judge John William King Cox News Service JASPER, Texas Every day, they slip silently into swivel chairs in a stained-glass courtroom to hear more chapters in the bloody tale that shook America's soul last summer.

These are the 12 Jasper County residents who must decide whether the white man across the room dragged a black man behind a truck until his head was sheared off. The jurors in the trial of John William King keep solemn faces, save for an occasional scowl or yawn. They did not give much away during the first week of testimony, which ended Friday. But nearly all of them already have divulged to the court their horror and hurt over the gruesome death last year of James Byrd Jr. The 12 jurors shared their thoughts with court officials in face-to-face and written interviews before being chosen to judge the man accused of instigating what is believed to be one of America's most brutal race killings.

I was saddened because no one deserves to die in that manner," one juror told the court. "It made me mad, sad and ashamed," said another. 'I thought it was awful," said a third. The jurors reacted much like the rest of the nation. And, in many other respects, the mostly middle- age jurors appear to represent mainstream Texas.

"They are good, normal, hardworking folks," said Guy James Gray, Jasper County district attorney. "The system has worked for them. They all have had good jobs and a permanent residence." They are paper mill workers, office workers, teachers, homemak-ers. One is a state government employee. Another is a 7 Dale R.

How the murders are linked According to Robert K. Ressler Flag flap is called defense unidentified woman found near Summerfield was murdered. Anderson's problems at the public aid office continued through June 1988 when he was suspended and later fired for canceling the cases of clients without their knowledge, for being disruptive and for refusing to follow orders. Povolish and Cardenas were killed in July 1987 and June 1988. "During every case, he's got some kind of conflict going on in his life," Ressler said.

A killer's personality Ressler said neither Woidtke nor Bowman have the type of personalities that would link to them to the Cardenas, West and Jany murders. Both men are what Ressler calls "disorganized offenders," who, if they killed, would have acted without a plan and left evidence behind. Ressler believes Woidtke's paranoid schizophrenic condition would have prevented him from planning anything in his life, much less a murder. He was homeless, Ressler said, and couldn't even plan for his own shelter or food. When someone lured Cardenas into the overgrown creek on June 19, 1988, she had to have been told something convincing enough to make her voluntarily walk in the creek for 120 feet with her killer, as the footprint evidence suggests, Ressler said.

"If she was fantasizing that she was going to break a big story, and Anderson said, 'Hey. I'll walk you down and I'll show you something that will blow your mind down in this creek she probably would have gone," Ressler said. "But the way Rodney Woidtke looked, being homeless and everything, if she'd seen him, she'd be running the other way." Moreover, someone as disorganized as Woidtke would never have gone back to the crime scene and argued with police the day Cardenas' body was found, Ressler said. Woidtke first became a suspect and was arrested when he appeared near the creek bed on the day Cardenas' body was found. "Police are saying that because he came back to the crime scene, he was the killer," Ressler said.

"That's a lot of bull. He would be long gone." Anderson had the kind of personality that would draw him back to the crime scene, Ressler said. Anderson has repeatedly said in interviews that he was sitting in his car on the school parking lot that day watching Heil collect evidence. Bowman, like Woidtke, also had a personality that precluded his planning a crime, Ressler said. His crimes show he acted spontaneously without attempting to cover his tracks, traits that show he was a disorganized personality, he said.

Weeks after Jany's disappearance, Bowman got in an argument with a woman at a laundromat because she wouldn't give him change. Drunk and high from marijuana, Bowman dragged her to his car kicking and screaming, drove off and let her out blocks away. Bowman said he grabbed the woman because he feared she would tell police that he had accosted her. Whoever abducted West and Jany carefully planned those acts, Ressler said. West was less than a block from her home when she disappeared.

Witnesses saw her walking down her street, then saw a full-size, late-model car. When the car was gone, so was West. None of the witnesses heard West scream or saw the driver get out of the car. A disorganized criminal, like Bowman, would have dragged her into the car, and her screams would have attracted the witnesses' attention, Ressler said. Jany was taken from a well-lit and often-visited automated teller machine in downtown Belleville.

No one heard or saw anything. "What they did in these cases was match these suspects to the crime scenes because they were convenient," Ressler said. Sgt. Robert Miller, the St. Clair County sheriff's deputy who took Bowman's confession, said he is still convinced of Bowman's guilt.

"I have no doubt in my mind that Bowman killed those two people," Miller said. "Anderson killed one person and they want to say he did every crime." Justus, the county sheriff, said he hopes some day Anderson will tell about of all of his crimes. "Maybe as he gets older, if he gets some kind of illness that could take his life, he may want to tell it all," Justus said. "I don't see that happening right now." In Monday's Post-Dispatch: How Gregory Bowman was sentenced to life in prison for two murders that some believe he didn't commit. But communist banner angers many immigrants Reuters News Service LOS ANGELES A Vietnamese-American who enraged his community by hanging a Vietnamese flag and a poster of the late communist leader Ho Chi Minh in his store said Friday that his detractors did not understand his rights as an American.

"The Vietnamese community in this country must understand that freedom means we are all free to express our opinions," said Truong Van Tran, owner of a video store in the "Little Saigon" neighborhood of UURIE SKRIVAN POST-DISPATCH Anderson All of the bodies were concealed. All were found relatively close to the areas where they were abducted. All were murdered by a so-called "organized" killer. There was little or no physical evidence found at any of the crime scenes. No defensive wounds were found on any of the victims, indicating the killer was in complete control of his victims.

Povolish frequently went to the home of her boyfriend's parents, who lived across the street from Anderson's parents. A person who knows Anderson said Anderson spent long periods watching Povolish and her boyfriend working on a car. Anderson attended Cardenas' memorial service. It is unclear whether Anderson was at any of the other victims' funerals. If Anderson was not involved in the murders, it is not likely that he would have "so many connections with so many missing and murdered women," Ressler said.

Control freaks Ressler said Anderson had other traits common to serial killers. He was obsessed with being a cop and even told others, including his parents, that he was a police investigator. Ressler said many serial killers want to be police officers because they crave control. David Bcrkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, was a security guard, and John Wayne Gacy often posed as a police officer. "That's how a lot of these guys get control over their victims," Ressler said.

At the time of every murder, An-. derson was having serious problems in his job. That was the most telling factor indicating Anderson was a serial killer, Ressler said. Such stress frequently causes serial killers to act, he said. When West and Jany were murdered, Anderson was having problems as a jailer at the St Clair County Sheriff's Department.

He got caught sneaking a gun into the jail and was later fired. But if Anderson killed all the women, how does Ressler explain the eight-year gap between the second murder, in 1978, and the third, in 1986? Ressler said such an interlude isn't uncommon as stress and the urge to kill subside during certain periods. He believes Anderson may have stopped killing because his job at the welfare office satisfied his need to control women, who were forced to follow his di- rections to get their benefits. Anderson began running into trouble with his supervisors in the fall of 1986, about the time that the Scientists slow light speed to 38 mph, imagine communications applications All victims were young women with similar physical characteristics (all were small and most were dark-haired). All are believed to have been strangled.

All are believed to have been abducted in or near Belleville. All were taken from the point of their abduction to another location and then killed. All of the victims were moved after they were killed. "He's putting himself there. He's writing it in his diary and he's admitted going to her apartment," Ressler said.

"He talks about Cardenas' married boyfriend. He read the damned letter off her kitchen table." The letter from Cardenas' boyfriend, telling Cardenas that he was going back to his wife, was found on Cardenas' kitchen table after she disappeared. The police also found a mysterious school identification card from Mexico with the picture of a young boy named Jorge Compos Cardenas in Anderson's wall safe. Anderson explains that he got the card on the night of Cardenas' murder from a man who he said had witnessed Cardenas' abduction. Police were unable to locate the owner of the identification card.

Last year the Post-Dispatch found him working for a railroad in Juarez, Mexico. He said he had no idea how Anderson got the card, which he believed he lost while living illegally in Texas. He said he had never been to Illinois. Audrey Cardenas had lived in Texas all of her life. Ressler believes Anderson took the card from Cardenas to keep as a "souvenir." Serial killers often take such mementos photos, rings and other personal items from their victims.

In the safe, police also found two other files filled with newspaper clippings one on the Povolish case, the other on the killing of the unidentified woman near Summer-field. "How can (the police) look past the fact that this guy's keeping files on all of these missing and murdered women?" Ressler asked. Anderson had even more direct ties to the women, he said. Anderson had gone to church with West at the Union United Methodist Church in Belleville, where she sang in the youth choir. Both were parishioners.

Anderson's family knew the West family. At the time of the Jany killing, Anderson had made evening visits to see his ailing father in the same hospital where Jany worked evenings. Anderson worked at the Belleville public aid office where Povolish went every month to keep receiving her benefits. It is unclear whether Anderson was her of freedom it a "public nuisance that violated his lease. But Schumann changed her mind Feb.

10, calling the display "indisputably offensive" but protected under the free speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Tran has been greeted at his store by a crowd of protesters each day since then. He was struck in the face during one confrontation and taken into protective custody by police on two other occasions. A small group of protesters followed Tran to his press conference Friday, waving the yellow and red flag of the former South Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Vietnamese communism, led North Vietnam's successful struggle to unify the country and defeat U.S.-backed South Vietnam. Heart disease spreads in developing nations Reuters News Service CAPE TOWN, South Africa -Heart disease and strokes are on the rise in developing countries as rapid urbanization encourages poor diet, smoking and less exercise, scientists said Thursday. "There is a growing concern globally about the epidemic of cardiovascular diseases in developing countries," Srinath Reddy, professor of cardiology in New Delhi, told journalists during a three-day conference in South Africa on the epidemic. Reddy said 80 percent of all cardiovascular deaths occurred in the developing world and said the epidemic accounted for 25 percent of all deaths in developing countries a figure he expected to rise to between 40 and 50 percent by 2020. Clearly this is going to place great public health and economic burdens on these countries," Reddy said.

Reddy said the rise of these diseases was largely due to an increase in life expectancy and a change in lifestyle propelled by rapid urbanization encouraging the consumption of fatty, processed foods, less exercise and more smoking. Tony Mbewu, the executive director of research at South Africa's Medical Research Council, said the relatively affluent white population in South Africa had seen heart disease peak in the 1980s and since dip as awareness improved. But the mixed-race and Indian population was seeing rates soar only now and the black community was just beginning to Westminster, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles. "Most people in the Vietnamese community do not speak their mind because they are afraid that they will be attacked by other people in the community," Tran said at the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, whose attorneys are representing him. Tran touched off more than a month of boisterous, sometimes violent demonstrations in January when he he hung the poster and flag inside the store, then wrote letters to a local newspaper calling attention to them.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Barbara Tarn Nomoto Schumann in January ordered Tran to remove the flag and poster, calling future. She envisions improved communications technology, television displays, even night-vision devices. The research, conducted at the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge and Harvard University and described in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, isn't something that can be replicated in a home workshop. The laggard laser moves through a high density group of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate, created when matter is cooled almost to absolute zero, 'the lowest temperature theoretically possible. That is 459.67 degrees below zero.

Now that the scientists have reduced the speed of light to 38 mph, they believe it's possible to slow it 1,000 times further to a crawl. "A human could move faster than that," said Stanford University's Steve Harris, who participated in the project. "But a human couldn't move through a Bose-Einstein condensate, I'll tell you that." sciatica, research finds ed with sciatica, pain from the sciatic nerve usually just in the buttocks and thigh, but sometimes all the way down to the foot. Dr. Patrick C.A.J.

Vroomen of Maastricht University Hospital in the Netherlands reported his findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. "We found no evidence that bed rest is an effective treatment for patients with sciatica," Vroomen said. The Associated Press BOSTON A moonbeam zips to Earth in little more than a second. Scientists have managed to slow the speed of light to a leisurely 38 mph, a pace that would get a highway motorist pulled over for driv ing too slow. Light normally moves through a vacuum at about 186,000 miles a second.

Nothing in the universe moves faster, and Albert Einstein theorized that nothing ever will. But a Danish physicist and her collaborators trimmed that speed by a factor of 20 million. "We have really created an optical medium with crazy, bizarre properties," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, whose team accomplished the feat in slowness by shooting a laser through extremely cold sodium atoms, which worked like "optical molasses" to slow the light. While slow-speed light now is just a laboratory plaything for top physicists, Hau believes practical applications are not too far in the Bed rest does no good for The Associated Press NEW YORK Add sciatica to the sorts of back pain that shouldn't keep you in bed. A week or two in bed used to be routine treatment for any sort of aching back.

But over the past IS years, doctors have learned that many types of backaches get better just as fast if people go about their normal activities. Until now, that hadn't been test.