The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 4

3w Thursday, April 9, 1992 The Philadelphia Inquirer NJB5 Bucks boy spends another birthday on list of missing, with grandmother Tuning in to music business JZ -i'A Jk V- -UP- 1- I ir iiiUMf A 1 3 SiA Th Philadaipt. Inqunr RICK BOWMER Saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. signs an autograph for senior Mark Johns, 18, before a workshop at the performing arts school. Then last fall, Davis sent Bucks County Judge Ward Clark, who once handled her custody case, a tape of her asking John if he wanted to come home and if he missed anyone. Harman is convinced John was forced to respond no to both questions.

"It just made me angry that she's once again trying to influence people with her story," she said. Davis, a former committeewoman and civic gadfly, was acquitted of shooting her boyfriend and dumping his body in a South Philadelphia housing project in 1978. She became attached to John after Harman and her 2-year-old son moved in following Harman's separation from her husband. Saying her daughter used drugs and mistreated the boy which Harman denies Davis, who had changed her name from Constance Harman after the trial, won temporary custody of John in 1982. After two years of legal wrangling, Harman was awarded primary custody of John, with Davis getting to visit on weekends.

It wasn't enough. So one day while John was playing outside his house with a friend, Harman says, Davis picked him up and disappeared for nine months. The two took in Disney World, Hawaii, British Columbia and North Carolina, among other places. Always on the move, John didn't attend school but was tutored by his grandmother, family members said. After Harman got John back, Bucks County Court revoked Davis' visiting rights and issued a warrant for her arrest for interfering with the custody of a child.

She went into hiding while John resumed his normal routine of school, friends, skateboarding and swimming. Meanwhile, Davis is still apparently trying to bargain her way home. Two weeks ago, a man who said he was a friend of hers called another daughter, Wendy DeSantis, with the same offer Davis made to the FBI. DeSantis told him no deal. But as the second anniversary of John's kidnapping approaches, Harman says there may be room to negotiate.

As a show of good faith, she said she would like to hear from John, either in a letter or phone call. After two years, all she knows of his life is that he's getting tall, just like his mother, a tidbit gleaned from the mysterious caller. "Sometimes I look at his picture when he was younger and mine at the same age," Harman said with a smile. "He probably looks just like me now." it takes to make it," he said. "If I music is what you decide to make your career, you cannot let someone else change what you want to do." The event was sponsored by the Philadelphia Music Alliance, which serves as an advocacy agency for both commercial and nonprofit musical groups in the city.

One of the goals the group is hoping to realize in the not-so-distant future is to establish a NARAS chapter in Philadelphia. Seven cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta and Chicago) have chapters. Greene said he planned to meet with PMA executive director Teri Doke and other area musical figures to discuss the issue. "Philadelphia is a great musical town," he said. One reason the city has not established a NARAS chapter, however, is that it lacks the presence of a major record company and the large number of music executives that would bring to town.

done. And the Philly saxophonist, himself a Grammy winner, was right. Another student, Noah Farber, 17, junior, presented his credentials in much the same manner as the girls. He's a classical pianist from Mount Airy, and Farber, too, would like to make music his life. "Since 1 was 2 or 3, I have been playing the piano," Farber said.

"I was playing before I could talk." The seminar, Farber said, has given him hope that he can find a way to make a living through his music. "I see the people up there have done it. It's possible," he said. DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes) was once in the same position as the students who clamored for his attention and autographs as he walked into the South Philadelphia school. He graduated from John Bartram High in 1982, and 10 years and two Grammys later is an established star in rap music.

"Basically, determination is what if Tracy Davis, grandmother of John Minieka, is being sought on a charge of kidnapping. his return. After her television appearance, Harman was swamped with calls from people nationwide who said they had seen Davis and John. So far, none of the leads has panned out. As a measure of their growing despair, the family recently consulted a psychic, who said he gets the "impression" that Davis and John are very close by, that Davis is living with a younger man and that John is in school under an assumed name.

There have been few other clues in the last 22 months. One of the most frustrating aspects of the ordeal has been dealing with local police and the FBI, said Harman and her family. They say the FBI has taken little interest in the case because they consider it a domestic dispute. "I've told them about things that they've refused to follow up on," complained Holly Harman. "They say, Well you do know who he's with.

Well, yeah, we know who he's with, but that doesn't make it right." Bensalem police and FBI have refused to comment on the investigation. Last summer, Davis wrote a melancholy letter to the FBI saying she missed her children and would bring John home if she got custody and charges against her were dropped. The FBI did not respond, according to John's mother, who has a copy of the letter. "GREAT SPRING By Kevin L. Carter INQUIRER STAFF WRITER They sat for almost an hour yesterday, these students at the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, listening to a panel of musicians, managers and record executives tell them what they have to do to make it in the business.

you do not have a burning desire in your heart you should not go into music," said Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which hands out Grammy Awards every year. "Our business has no place for people who are not driven to stay in it-" The students, who sat raptly, at least by the standards governing the behavior of high school students on a'gorgeous spring day, took in this advice at "Grammy in the Schools," a daylong school assemblyseminar. And when the adults were done talking, the teenagers acted on the panelists' advice. Right then and there. Queuing up behind one of two microphones set up for questions in the school auditorium, members of the student body, showing fire and desire, asked questions and offered to demonstrate their talents.

(Liz Fields, 17, a senior at CAPA and a member of an all-female vocal quintet called Collage, got that chance. Fields and her groupmates, cognizant that her school has already given birth to Grammy winners Boyz II Men and Mercury recording artists Small Change, are hoping to become famous, too. So, after the first half of the seminar ended, she got her group together and kicked off "Lift Every Voice And Sing." "Beautiful," exclaimed Grover Washington Jr. after Collage was Firefighter By Julia Cass INQUIRER STAFF WRITER A volunteer firefighter was charged yesterday with setting a fire in the Pennsauken Kmart store where he worked, authorities said. Stanley Kasprzak, 19, of Pennsauken, used a Scripto Aim lighter, normally used to light barbecue charcoal, to set two fires in a storage area of the Pennsauken Kmart on the Airport Circle near Camden at 11:30 a.m.

yesterday, according to Camden Savitz's bail t', SAVITZ from B1 chiatric hospitals. Built in 1841, the 243-bed hospital offers specialized treatment for a variety of mental disorders and age groups. Adolescent patients at The Institute are kept in a separate, locked unit from adults. Century said. And the hospital has treated other patients with pedophilia as well as AIDS patients with mental illnesses without incident, she said.

Ehrlich contended that the hospital was not secure enough to hold Savitz or to keep him away from adolescent and young-adult patients. Obviously irked by the remark, the judge warned Ehrlich not to "create the specter" of a pedophile on the loose. 1 1 1 a charged in Kmart blaze "SUPER LOW PRICES" "ST0REW1DE SALn-Prices Good Thru 41592 By Kathy Boccella INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Tracy Davis always looked forward to her grandson John's birthday. Every year she threw a big party for him at her spacious Northampton Township house. She always bought the biggest presents, the most spectacular birthday cake.

Sometimes she fought with her daughter, John's mother, who accused her of being too possessive of the boy. But that didn't happen this year. Davis, who relatives say is obsessed with her grandson, didn't have to share John with his mother when he turned 11 yesterday. And that, the same relatives say, is the way she always wanted it. It will be the second birthday that John Minicka has spent away from home apparently with his grandmother.

And apparently on the run. On June 13, 1990, Davis broke into her daughter's Bensalem house in the middle of the night, cut telephone lines and took the sleeping boy, police say. She is wanted by the FBI and Bensalem Police on charges of kidnapping and interfering with the custody of a child. "She used to say she wanted to raise John for herself," said John's mother, Camela Harman, a 30-year-old assistant banquet manager from Bensalem. Her four daughters and former husband all say that Davis, a former politician who was charged with, and acquitted of, murder in 1977, has deluded herself into thinking that she must protect John from his mother.

They say it is a fantasy, that John was happy and well cared for with Harman. "She wasn't Mary Poppins," Holly Harman said of her sister. "But not many working mothers are. They can't stay home and bake brownies every day. My mother didn't understand that." Davis, 59, a blond woman who frequented singles bars, took John once before, in June 1988, according to family and friends, and disguised him as a girl as they traveled the country for nine months.

Then Holly Harman spotted them at her grandmother's house in Bensalem and snatched John away. Family members say they're unsure where funds are coming from to finance her trips. Now Harman and her family have stepped up efforts to find her son, a former honor student, telling their tale on the Maury Povich Show in October, making posters with his picture and offering a $1,000 reward for UJ Nikon Zoomolbuch 400 Totally automatic 35-70mm power zoom lens Advanced Smart Flash and red-eye reduction mode Multi-Point Carefree Autofocus Lightweight, compact design Nikon N5005 Exclusive Nikon Matrix Metering System Advanced autofocus system Focus Tracking Built-in flash covers a 28mm wideangle lens Nikon zoom-touch 800 "Trouble Free Picture Taking" "HEW" TO 37 to 1 05mm Power Zoom Image Size Selection Three Auto Focus Modes Auto Exposure Control Advanced Smart Flash Self Timer NIKON USA 1 YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY ON ALL PRODUCTS OLYMPUS OOSuperZoom300Q weatnerproor. uitra-compacx. A longer built-in zoom S3 33 Precision Orvmput 3X 38-1 10mm power joom lenl tor long range photos up close Weatherproof for outstanding outdoor versatility Goes anywhere wrth its ultra-compact sue and weighs only 10 8 or.

Perfect lighting in any situation wrth full function auto-flash that includes Auto-S red -eye reduction, auto, flash off and fill in modes RETAILINDUSTRIAL NEW AND USED EQUIPMENT TRADE-INS ra 33 MIDCITY EAST THE BOURSE 5TH AND MARKET 627-3688 10-6 mm BODY ONLY wmixjmmm building was cut and the store remained closed yesterday. It was not known when the store would reopen. Williamson said that Kasprzak, who was arrested about two hours after the fire, had begun working at the store very recently. He was a member of the Highland Volunteer Fire Company, Pennsauken Station 1106. She said officials did not know why he set the blaze.

He was charged with aggravated arson and defying the public trust as a firefighter, she said. $4 million boys, were that Savitz had purchased one boy's underwear; had performed oral sex on two others, and had "attempted to" have anal sex with a fourth, but did not. The judge, however, said he was concerned that at least one boys had told authorities that he had asked Savitz if he had AIDS, and Savitz said he did not, even though he had been diagnosed in June 1991. Abramson also said that a roommate of the defendant's told authorities that Savitz spoke of having had sex with as many as 500 boys, and that some of the alleged encounters occurred after the defendant knew he had AIDS. LaCheen said his client never had anal sex with boys after learning he had AIDS.

Mimm WM'JUUWW'IIIU'iUMWl Of, OH ABOUT APRIL 6.1992 WHITE HORSE ROAD WILL BE CLOSED TO ALL TRAFFIC tm AlTtPHATE ROUTES problems were inevitable. That's not much comfort to Nancy Matlosz, who owns the Best Little Hair House. Said Matlosz: "This guy from the county said that people would have to walk in, and that's not good. I have walk-in clientele, and I didn't have much today, and when I did, they were disgusted with the way they had to get there." if 1 i i 1 i. County Prosecutor's spokeswoman Elizabeth Williamson.

"He called police, and when they arrived, he told them where the fire was," Williamson said. The store was evacuated after the fire broke out. Firefighters from three companies were called in to battle the blaze. It was declared under control about 30 minutes later. Williamson said two employees were treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation.

Power to the lowered to "Are you in a better position to assess the risk than the hospital itself?" he asked the prosecutor impatiently. Wittels said $505,000 of Savitz's assets was tied up in his pension and profit-sharing plan, and not easily available. Wittels said he doubted Savitz's brother could post $400,000 more for bail. Samuel Savitz could not be reached for comment yesterday. In court, LaCheen protested that the case had been overblown by the media and the District Attorney's Office because Savitz had AIDS.

And, he said, "There are no allegations that Savitz performed any acts that could have conceivably transmitted AIDS." LaCheen said the charges, based on statements from four teenage Road," a side street. Prinz said signs would be put up on Poplar Avenue, another side street, indicating that local and business traffic is allowed. Poplar and several other streets in the area were blocked yesterday with barricades. Charles J. DePalma, Camden County public works director, said yesterday that he understood that the construction was causing trouble, but that ij tf K.

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v.r orc on 4. "i SpkwI to Thalnquirar TAMMY McGINLEY The view isn't too pleasing, but Jennifer Hopkins says that so far construction hasn't had much of an effect on business for her employer, 2 West Hair Design. The work is expected to last about 60 days. Progress strands Voorhees shops V00RHEES from B1 said. Jon Prinz, project manager for Richard Pierson Construction Sicklerville, which is doing the work, said he hoped the problems would ease soon.

"There will be an alternate route to the businesses," Prinz said. "There won't be any police action now stopping them from using Kirkwood.