St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 37

mnii tj blues beat stars again -fr. INote is 4-1-U against the best team INnL this season, Fi Vol. 120, No. 67 1998 Sunday, March 8, 1998 5 $1.25 0 am mam "pt TT 7 HO KILLED Boeing's workers here live with fear of shutdown an Audrey Georgia man is arrested here in child porn case Missouri agency tracked suspect through Internet Vk. Cardenas? Evidence suggests that the wrong man may be serving a 45-year sentence for the killing of the Belleville News-Democrat intern 10 years ago.

JL Rodney Woidtke was convicted of the murder of Audrey Cardenas. He confessed to the charge. A judge, not a jury, decided his case. A haunted reporter: 'You have to tell me. How did she by Carolyn tuft Of the Post-Dispatch 1998, St Louis Post-Dispatch I stared into Dale Anderson's gray eyes and prayed for an answer to the question that has haunted me for a decade.

My thoughts were on those stark, colored photographs of Audrey Cardenas' decayed body lying in that Belleville creek bed. I'd worked with Audrey and was supposed to meet with her the day she disappeared. I hadn't known her long but considered her a friend. Only her killer knew how she was murdered. No one else has ever put all the details together, solved the mystery.

One day last week Anderson sat across from Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Smith and me in a meeting room at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, 111. He is serving a life sentence for killing a woman and her 3-year-old son in an attempt to frame his former supervisors for Audrey's murder. He stabbed them in the throat with a pair of steel kitchen scissors. The fluorescent lights reflected off Anderson's pale face. A stubble of whiskers covered his recessed chin.

The only furnishings in the room were a brown formica table and three chairs. Five guards stood outside in the halL They could see us See Anderson, Page A9 i I By dale Singer Of the Post-Dispatch Calboy arrived at the Maryland Heights apartment complex after his long drive from Georgia, looking forward to meeting 13-year-old Wendy. They had chatted on the Internet and talked on the telephone, and his car was filled with gifts: flowers, children's books, games, lingerie, computer equipment, cameras, even a card Wendy had sent him with her picture. But when he drove into the park ing lot late Friday afternoon, he seemed to sense something was wrong. He circled a few times, jv men got out ot his 1 car, crossed L) I Dorsett Road through rush Pharis nour traffic and hiked up a hill to an abandoned service station, in an apparent attempt to flee.

There he was arrested on federal charges and found out the truth: "Wendy" had been invented by authorities policing the Internet for child pornography. The voice he had heard on the phone belonged to a girlish-sounding Maryland Heights police officer. The man who used the computer name Calboy was identified as Michael Eugene Pharis, 38, of Al-pharetta, Ga. Pharis is the father of five children and told police his life centered around coaching Little League teams for boys and girls. He has served 18 months in prison for child molestation.

He is separated from his wife, who operated a day-care business from their home. "This guy kind of fell in love with Wendy on the Internet," Maryland Heights police Detective Joe Bova Conti said Saturday. "He wanted to know her name, her age, how long she had been on the Internet, whether she was experienced or inexperienced and would she like to see some pictures." Bova Conti said the case unfolded this way: An investigation into Internet pornography coming into St. Louis was started last month by the Mis-See Pom, Page A12 1, Dale Anderson is serving a life sentence without parole for different murders near Belleville. He killed a woman and her 3-year-old son.

By Carolyn tuft And bill Smith Of the Post-Dispatch 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch odney Woidtke has spent nearly 10 years in prison for killing Belleville newspaper reporter Audrey Cardenas a murder the state crime scene technician who worked the case says he didn't commit. Dee Heil, the technician, said he never believed Woidtke was guilty. "I do not be lieve he killed that woman," said Heil, who was in charge of collecting and analyzing This story is the result of a Post-Dispatch investigation. the evidence.

"His confession just does not fit the crime scene." Woidtke, a mentally ill 27-year-old California transient, was charged with Cardenas' murder on August 16, 1988. Even before then, Heil had told police and St Clair County State's Attorney John Baricevic they had the wrong man. Two other law enforcement officers who worked on the case have also expressed doubt about Woidtke's guilt. They are Alva Busch, another state crime scene technician, and police officer Richard Wagner, who. took Woidtke's first confession.

Robert Haida, now the St Clair County state's attorney, said he stands behind Woidtke's conviction. Baricevic now holds the county's top position of chairman of the St. Clair County Board. He couldn't be reached for comment Belleville Police Chief James Rokita was chief of detectives when Cardenas' body was found in a creek bed behind Belleville Township High School East on June 26, 1988. He says he remains convinced that Woidtke killed Cardenas.

A five-week investigation by the See Cardenas, Page A8 he says with a look reserved for dimwits. "It's a big flop." The Conservation Department has spent nearly $5 million trying to build a 150-acre fishing lake four miles east of Kennett, the hometown of Jerry Paul Combs, a former conservation commissioner. The lake, however, refuses to hold water leaving the department with a ISO-acre mud pit The History of layoffs, merger, strike keep anxiety going Bond's warning comes as a jolt News Analysis By Christopher Carey Of the Post-Dispatch Never mind that shutting down a factory would amount to the biggest plant closing in history, or that moving the work south would cost untold billions. Fear can make the illogical seem logical and the false seem real. Workers at Boeing McDonnell Aircraft and Missile Systems division in St.

Louis have been living with more than their share of fear lately. When Sen. Christopher S. Bond warned Friday that Boeing was thinking about dismantling its St. Louis operations, his words resonated with workers long after the company had reassured them.

"There is a general fear among all members, all the time, about their futures," said Gerald Oulson, president of International Association of Machinists District 837. "This was just an extra shock on top of that" The union represents about 7,000 people who build some of the nation's best-known military aircraft, including the F-15 fighter and the A-18 attack plane. Fear has been a frequent irritant, if not a constant, since the early 1990s, when the cancellation of a big fighter development program led to widespread layoffs. Next came smaller cutbacks, as McDonnell "outsourced" work to other plants with cheaper labor or ties to foreign governments. Then add a 99-day strike over job security in 1996, followed by a change in ownership last year, when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas Corp.

for $16.3 billion. Bond raised concerns about Boeing's future in St. Louis at an inopportune time. The company has been reviewing its manufacturing activities for months and has said it will announce later this month how it will consolidate production to See Boeing, Page A12 Genetically engineered crops from Monsanto Co. are changing farming and food production worldwide.

This is one of an occasional series of articles looking at this new technology. these days by something other than fallen souffles. Allen recently became Ireland's most prominent voice to speak out against St Louis-based Monsanto experiments with genetically engineered sugar beets. After seeing its first Irish experiment sabotaged, Monsanto is ask-See Monsanto, PageAl Weather Sunday: Windy with rain changing to snow. NE wind at 15-25 mph.

High 52. Low 31. Monday: Blustery with flurries. High 36. Other weather, Page B8.

http:www.stlnet.com Olill09189ii27100i hi 5 11-111 lllllliMlAtfT i 1 Monsanto's altered sugar beet is not sweet to Irish Missouri spends millions on lake that leaks To make it hold water, the state is planning a patch job it says will cost about $1 million. you've gotten so far into it, unless clearly there's no solution, you're almost obligated to go forward. "If we can get a lake for another million bucks, you go ahead. Four million, I'd say it's better to walk away." Flat lands and faults The idea to build the lake began with an inventory of the department's holdings in the late 1980s. Flush with money from the conservation sales tax, the department See Lake, Page All state is now considering legal action against the Kansas City firm that designed it.

But the department isn't ready to pull the plug on the 6-year-old project. Engineer Bill Lueckenhoff said last week it has a new fix in mind and will start work this spring. The price tag for the next round of patchwork? "Less than a million," Lueckenhoff said. Director Jerry Conley, who was not with the department when the project started, said the Combs project is a fact of life. "Once Genetically engineered plants are under scrutiny By Bill lambrecht Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau SHANAGARRY, Ireland With her best-selling cookbooks and her television show, Darina Allen is Ireland's Julia Child, with a dash of Martha Stewart thrown in.

But down at her Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Allen's cheery outlook is darkened I The Colorado I River throws a wall of water into the face of rafters. That's just one of the highlights of a journey over air, water and land through the Grand Canyon. The cost of the three-day trip: $745. Tl Gt B2 bytomUhlenbrock Of the Post-Dispatch 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch KENNETT, Mo.

Ask for directions to Jerry P. Combs Lake and the clerk at Johnson's Guns Ammo gives the local take on the Missouri Department of Conservation project. "Why do you want to go there?" Our Sunday Best mm I A $6 mil-I lion, square-foot house rules the surrounding Ladue landscape. Dennis and Judy Jones' neo-French chateau has a bowling alley, movie theater and limo garage. The neighbors don't really seem to mind.

Building BIG is going on everywhere, as 1 it historically has in iboom periods. Dl race or HITJ7.fi illlltlivil moved views on TIME of 1,282 (ages 12 for black on a than Gallup Today, of dated A suit over the biggest cancellation of a defense contract in U.S. history, the A-12, was resolved two weeks ago when a federal judge awarded Boe a Teen-agers in the U.S. have beyond their parents' race, according to a CNN poll. The poll adults and 601 teens to 17), found that and white teenagers, race is less important personal and social level it is for adults.

A poll done for USA showed that 57 percent the teen-agers had someone of a different ing and General Dynamics $1.2 billion, plus $500 million in interest Both of the contractors had their headquarters in St Louis. McDonnell is now the St Louis-based McDonnell Aircraft and Missiles Systems division of the Boeing while General Dynamics moved from here in 1992. Bl Obituaries, BlO-11 A Movies, D10 ethnic group. CI "V- I 1 Classified, I Editorials, r. I 1 A.