St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 1

A 3 AUG 11 1996 JULIUS IKE siiAnnOiJ 10 Vaulting Interest Games give gymnastics a boost SPORTS IF EVERYDAY The Mirny Season In Review ic REGION Weekday Church Gets Popular id STYLE PLUS Making Shade In Urban Garden is 25 years of broadcasting, ti to vai uii ictio Getting to know Channel 4's anchor 4 1 -) iui 15 3-STAR SUNDAY, AUGUST 11, 1996 (4) VOL. 118, NO. 224 Copyright 1996 For the last 21 years, the mother of slain VISTA volunteer Laura Michele Dinwiddie has asked St. Louis detectives whether they had any new leads in solving her daughter's murder. The answer was always the same until recently.

7 i i I I I I 3 I I 1 Laura Michele Dinwiddie, 23, had Janet Dinwiddie, has never Chris Pappas learned that Nathan "Danny" Williams mouoH a I nine (rnm hot- hnma iven up hope that police one of the men police had was questioned by police rnoyeu 10 i. louis irom ner nome would one day find the questioned many years ago nearly four years after the in Connecticut fresh out Of college, person who stabbed her about the murder was now murder. Now in prison on a She was a volunteer who worked daughter to death in March, serving a life term for a rape charge, Williams says innAV c. A 1975. Her letter to police in brutal rape.

Pappas got a he was there when Laura Wltn inner-Cliy cmiaren. bne Uvea in June pr0mpted detectives big surprise when he talked Dinwiddie was stabbed, an apartment near Hyde Park. to take a fresh look at the to the man in prison. case. Reports Generate Optimism In Party NEWS ANALYSIS SAN DIEGO (AP) A jolt of enthusiasm ran through Republicans swarming to this convention city from reports of Bob Dole's choice of a running mate.

"Jack Kemp, like few others I know, can truly electrify," a GOP leader said. Party members hailed the former housing secretary's vigor and years of effort to expand the Republican base while preaching the tax-cutting mantra as an inspired mix for the campaign. "With this decision, Bob Dole just made Bill Clinton's vacation a little less restful," exulted House Majority Leader See ANALYSIS, Page 7 1996, New York Times News Service RUSSELL, Kan. Bob Dole settled Friday night on Jack Kemp, the 61-year-old former congressman from Buffalo, N.Y., and periodic political nemesis to Dole, to be his vice presidential running mate, aides to the former Kansas senator said. While Dole campaign press secretary Nelson Warfield said he could not confirm Kemp's name to reporters late Friday night, he confirmed that Dole had made a call to his top pick, that they spoke for 15 minutes.

"Bob Dole made the call and got the answer he was looking for," War-field said. "We've got a veep." Despite the widespread confirmation that Kemp was chosen, the campaign was determined not to spoil the element of surprise that Dole had wanted. But Warfield made some football analogies Kemp was a one-time quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and made references to a "very upbeat, positive, energetic" conversation, using words that are associated with Kemp. Late Friday, Scott Reed, the campaign manager, began telephoning those who had been in the running but had not made the final cut. War-field said there were between six and 12 calls.

Dole planned to present Kemp on Saturday at a ceremony here in See DOLE, Page 7 "olice Close In On '75 Slayin, Mother's Letter Rekindles Search For Murderer Of VISTA Worker By Bill Bryan Of the Post-Dispatch Staff I VERY FEW YEARS a letter from Connecticut, handwritten with a mother's anguish, arrives at the St. Louis Police Department's On March 4, 1975, a worried woman went to an apartment at 3933 North 21st street to check on her friend and co-worker, Laura Michele Dinwiddie. Michele, as she was known to family and friends, had failed to show up for work that day. The co-worker opened the door and was horrified to see Dinwiddie's nude body on the floor. The victim, 23, had been stabbed twice in the chest and once in the abdomen.

Her throat had been slashed. Dinwiddie had not been raped, but probably only because she had resisted, police said. Dinwiddie had come to St. Louis in the spring of 1974, eager to help the less fortunate as a worker for Volunteers In Service To America. VISTA was often referred to as the domestic Peace Corps.

Michele Dinwiddie went from a well-to-do, comfortable environment in Greenwich, to a second-floor, three-room apartment in a four-family brick flat on North 21st. The low-income neigh-See MURDER, Page 1 1 Ei very case can benefit from a different and fresh perspective maybe some things have changed. If DAVID HEATH, homicide commander see if some sparks were still left?" Heath asked himself. The mystery has now taken one of Heath's most tenacious detectives to a prison in Farmington, where a rapist, Nathan D. "Danny" Williams, is locked up until 2039.

And, for the first time in a long time, police and the Dinwiddie family are optimistic about finding the killer. homicide office. "I've not given up," the woman writes. "I still have hope." It's been 21 years since Janet Dinwiddie's youngest daughter, Laura Michele was slain in her St. Louis apartment while working as a VISTA volunteer.

The killer or killers were never found, and eventually case number M-75-44 was stored with all the other stacks of unsolved murder files. The mother's most recent letter, in June, caught the attention of Capt. David Heath, the homicide commander. Heath was moved and, at the same time, his curiosity was aroused. "Why not stir the coals of a long-dead fire and umnist Christine Bertelson recalls shaking Bill Clinton's hand 4B Reform Party: Ross Perot and Richard Lamm seek the third party's nomi- nation beginning Sunday 4B Dole's Hope: The greatest convention of all time projects him into the White House IB Wife's Role: Campaign strategists believe Elizabeth Dole will help him bridge gender gap IB San Diego-bound: Col Drug Flash Point At Border Casts NAFTA In Sobering Light illustrates the challenge of opening the border to greater trade with a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement while closing it to the growing flood of illegal drugs and immigrants.

"It's a balancing act between the free flow of commerce and the ability of the government to interdict contraband aliens or narcotics," said Rudy M. Cama- See BORDER, Page 10 packages. The man tried to bolt, but Bickers quickly subdued him. Just a routine bust on a typical day at San Ysidro, the world's busiest border crossing, where 4,500 people an hour or about 40 million each year test the nation's front-line defenses against drug trafficking and illegal immigration. A day at this massive, hectic, 24-lane border crossing used to open the trunk, but he got out real slow, and you could tell he didn't want to do it." The car, which was in a long line of vehicles waiting to clear U.S.

Customs, was about 2 feet inside the United States, and as the man walked to the back of the vehicle, Bickers planted his stocky frame on the border. The driver popped the lid. There, neatly stacked to the brim, was 576 pounds of marijuana in white, brick-sized By John Ward Anderson 1 996, The Washington Post SAN YSIDRO, Calif. U.S. Customs Inspector Robert Bickers pointed to a white Honda Accord and ordered the driver to open the trunk.

The well-dressed, middle-aged man stepped out of his car. That was his first mistake. Bickers said, "He has a latch inside that he could have WEATHER PCs Power-Hungry Partly Cloudy Computer Users Add Memory To Run Programs As Worldwide Oversupply Cuts The Cost Of Chips FORECAST Sunday Partly cloudy with a southwest breeze. High 87. Cloudy overnight.

Low 68. Monday Chance of storms. High 89. Other Weather, 8B INDEX ArtsEntertainment 3C Business 1-8E Classified 1G Everyday 1-14C Movie Timetable 13C News Analysis 1B.4-6B Obituaries 10D St. Louis ID Sports 1-14F Style Plus 1-4S Television See TV Magazine Travel 1-8T' EDITORIAL PAGE The Republicans Convene Gambling, Gifts And Government 2B cost $550 in February and $300 in May sells for $150 today.

Not surprisingly, consumer demand for RAM has shot up. Computer owners who thought they could only afford to add 4 or 8 megabytes of RAM now shop for increased virtual muscle. Four megabytes cost more in February than 16 do today. "Our sales probably have quintupled over last year," said Larry Malashock, owner of Software Plus in Creve Coeur. "Corporations are dramatically increasing the number of chips they are purchasing." The price drop comes at a good time because new software especially those for the Windows 95 operating system demands much more memory than earlier, less-advanced programs.

Your home computer should have 16 megabytes See MEMORY, Page 10 By Dan Mihalopoulos Ot the Post-Dispatch Staff It's a problem as old as that clunky PC collecting dust in your basement. A personal computer can become obsolete because new programs may require more memory to run than last year's cutting-edge computer can handle. Adding more memory, however, costs more money. Now there's a loophole: record-low prices for expanding your computer's random-access memory. This may be the best time ever to bolster your home or office computer's RAM the computer's primary work space.

Prices for computer memory chips have plummeted this year. RAM costs 50 percent less than it did three months ago at Softwaire Centre in Clayton's business district. A 16-megabyte memory chip that POST-DISPATCH WEATHERBIRD Ifrti Illfcln I i -i- Dispatch chips. Larry WilliamsPost Random Access Memory (RAM) RAM prices have plummeted. 09 189V 7 100' 111 3.