The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 6

QTIte iPfiilaklpfiiaKnquircr Section Parents protest special-education cuts at Ziegler Elementary. B2. Weather, B17. Councilman: Kick out Mary Mason. B3.

News in Brief B2 The Scene B2 Saturday, October 21, 1995 CiycRegiom Jurors adjourn without verdict Mother says she gave her boy away According to police, she said a stranger came to the door offering to care for the 2-year-old. 77777 i if "Mp HI 7 77 A woman is charged with murdering a boy who threw eggs at her. The jury will continue today. By Andrew Metz INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT After more than seven hours of deliberation, the jury in the Lynnewood Gardens murder trial last night adjourned without a verdict. At 10 o'clock, Montgomery County Judge S.

Gerald Corso sent the jurors home, asking them to return and continue their deliberations at 10 a.m. today. In the small Montgomery County courtroom, two mothers had wait The Philadelphia Inquirer RON CORTES At the bedside of Anna Minnick, 86, friend Pepie Merenda (left) talks with Lauren Ellison (right) as Maryanne Morris observes. Now, nurses make more house calls To cut costs, care is shifting from hospitals to homes. Nurses are on the road.

By Jeff Gammage INQUIRER STAFF WRITER The mother of a missing 2-year-old North Philadelphia boy has told police that she gave the child to a stranger who appeared at her door and offered to care for him. Tina Vanderhorst made the statement while being questioned Thursday night by homicide detectives, who had searched her home for the second time this week seeking clues in the child's disappearance, police officials said yesterday. Vanderhorst, 31, told investigators that late in the afternoon on Monday, Sept. 25, a woman knocked on her door, saying she had heard Vanderhorst was having trouble caring for her boy, Ke-Shaun. The woman offered to take the child and tend to him.

Vanderhorst said she turned her child over to the woman, believing the stranger could better care for her son, police said. Vanderhorst said she did not know the woman and has not seen her since, investigators said. One Homicide Division supervisor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said detectives were split on whether to believe Vanderhorst. Some think it's too improbable to be true. Others think that Vanderhorst, who had previously left the child in stores and at homes around the neighborhood, could have given the boy away.

Vanderhorst previously told police that a worker from the city's Department of Human Services came to her apartment in the 1400 block of 17th Street and took Ke-Shaun. Police, See MISSING on B4 ed and prayed as day turned to night and rain fell outside. Anjanette Williamson, a 27-year-old mother on trial for murder in the shooting death of a 17-year-old Mount Airy boy after he pelted her with eggs, i iu Anjanette Williamson Before she could finish with the pills, Ellison had to wait for Minter's pharmacy to deliver refills twice. Then Morris gave Minter a shot to help her bones absorb more calcium and checked her temperature and blood pressure. And Ellison changed the dressing where a cyst had been removed.

After about an hour, the nurses were ready to leave. "Don't forget to take your medicine, now," Ellison said. She held the pill box beside Minter's bed and pointed to one of the compartments. "Your next pills are these." She stood at the door. "OK, Mrs.

Minter, I'll see you tomorrow." See NURSING on B4 By Staccy Burling INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Lauren Ellison and Maryanne Morris sat at Yvonne Minter's dining room table, 26 pill bottles spread before them. Slowly, Ellison counted out the pills long green ones, yellow triangles, clear reds, rose-colored ovals, big orange circles and dropped them into compartments in a flat plastic container. The med organizer was segmented by days of the week and times of day to help Minter, who has lupus and a host of other ailments, remember when to take her medicine. Around the corner in the kitchen, a mouse was struggling in a sticky trap on the floor. A few feet in the other direction, Minter, 54, of West Oak Lane, lay curled on a hospital bed in her living room, gazing at her television screen.

Sometimes, amid much groaning, she grabbed the triangular bar above her bed to shift positions. Ellison, a home care nurse with the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Philadelphia, checked and rechecked her work while Morris, a new employee in training, went over the medical charts. This, increasingly, is nursing in the 1990s. It is not a woman in a crisp uniform bustling about a big city hospital. It is two women in street clothes in a sick woman's dining room, a commode sitting near neat shelves of knick-knacks.

clasped her thin hands and seemed to pray the jury would understand the fear she said gripped her the night she shot Desmon Hayes from her Lynnewood Gardens stoop. Head lowered, son and husband at her sides, Ernestine Hayes appeared to pray as well: that a jury of eight women and four men would convict Williamson of murder. "God is the final judge," she told her sobbing son Andre. Williamson, a child-care worker, is charged with third-degree murder and related offenses. If convicted, she could face l3Vi to 25 years in prison.

The prolonged night of jury deliberations followed a week of testimony and a day of emotional closing arguments in which Williamson's attorney pleaded with jurors to put themselves in his client's place. "What if that was you on the porch?" the defense lawyer, James E. Colleran Jr. asked jurors. "The door is locked.

The people you love most dearly in the world are upstairs. You can't even turn your back to get inside your apartment. "In today's world, this could have happened to each and every one of you." Testifying Thursday, Williamson recounted the events of April 12, when in a fear-induced panic she See WILLIAMSON on B3, Panel suggests Nigro bow out of police inquiry It cited a conflict. The judge, a high-court candidate, has FOP backing. He'll consider the request Monday.

scenario where the appearance of impropriety to the public by the continued involvement of Judges in certain cases may require that the Judge voluntarily recuse himself from the matter," wrote commission lawyer Richard L. Scheff. "Unfortunately, such a scenario may exist here." The commission wants to question the officers during public hearings into the August 1994 death of DeJesus, a North Philadelphia tow-truck operator who fell into a coma and died after he fought with police dur-See NIGRO on B2 system to an appointive one based on merit. "That's why we're for merit selection. I don't like being placed in these positions over and over again," said Nigro.

The commission's request delivered late Thursday to Nigro's chambers at City Hall focuses squarely on the issue of how Pennsylvania's judicial-election system puts judges in a tough spot when it comes to deciding cases during a political campaign. "Our elective system creates the nal Order of Police, the union representing 6,200 police officers. And he made a campaign appearance at the law firm of Montgomery, McCracken, Walker Rhoads, which represents the commission and contributed $5,000 to his campaign. Nigro, a Democrat who is one of four candidates running for two seats on the state's high court, said in an interview from Erie where he was campaigning that the case is another example of why he favors changing from a judicial-election I. By Emilic Lounsberry i INQUIRER STAFF WRITER The Police Advisory Commission has asked Common Pleas Judge Russell Nigro to consider disqualifying -himself from deciding whether six police officers should be required to testify at the stalled inquiry into the death of Moises DeJesus.

The commission lawyer, citing Ni- gro's candidacy for the state Supreme Court, said any decision by the judge might appear to be influenced by the election. With the case emerging as a political hot potato, Nigro said yesterday that he would hold a hearing Monday on the request. The crux of the dilemma is that Nigro was endorsed by the Frater Dog owner acquitted of race-bias charges The woman, who is white, was accused of siccing her dog on a black man walking by her Camden home. Defense casts witness as a 'mob wannabe' Philip Colletti was subjected to intense cross-examination. Afterward, John Stanfa spoke.

By George Anastasia and Emilie Lounsberry INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS John Stanfa spoke yesterday. The usually taciturn mob boss, on trial and facing a potential life sentence on racketeering charges, looked over at reporters at the end of another round of testimony in U.S. District Court and gave what sounded like a positive assessment of the peared that Stanfa was pleased with the lengthy and often pointed cross-examination of confessed hit man Philip Colletti. Colletti, 36, spent nearly five hours fending off questions challenging the accuracy and credibility of his testimony and the content of his character. The racketeering case against Stanfa and the others centers on the violence surrounding a 1993 mob ney, Michael J.

Milstead. Then she turned and, across the partition between the spectators' seats and the attorneys' table, she embraced her boyfriend, Joe Chaim-berlain, 45. "I can finally wake up after a year and a half," said Bentley, still weeping. "It's been like a nightmare." Had she been convicted, Bentley would have faced up to 10 years in jail. Bentley was accused of causing another kind of nightmare for Muse, 37, who, like Bentley, lives in Camden's Fairview section.

Muse had been out fui a kvaik uu iim cmciiiouu ui Sdtul'-See VERDICT on B3 By Douglas A. Campbell INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Lisa A. Bentley, who is white, was found not guilty yesterday in Camden County Superior Court of ordering her dog, Old Yeller, to attack Edward Muse because Muse is black. A predominantly white jury of nine women and three men, who had listened to four days of testimony, presented their verdict to Judge Norman Telsey at 4 p.m. after deliberating for six hours.

When the forewoman replied "not guilty" to the final of four counts being read by a courtroom officer, r- Uk.UUk), uic mutual Ui A1VC, sobbed quietly and hugged her attor The Philadelphia Inquirer ED HILLE I i Rntlv hiior laor Mirhqpl Miktonrt after hporinn tho nrit-ni iiWw verdict. Most of the jurors in the ethnic-intimidation case were white. war wltn what federal authorities have described as the "Joey Merlino faction" of the unrlprurnrtH trTf? his reputed underboss and codefendant, Frank Martines, are charged with ordering a series of mob hits on Merlino and his day events. "Just remember," Stanfa said as a federal marshal was fastening handcuffs on his wrists Hpfnro looHitirY him --o away. "This is a two-way street.

It's not always one way." Stanfa, 54, had said little to the news media since the opening day of the trial four weeks "Just remember," -i Oldllld IUIU reporters. "This is a two way street." Flap over strip club is latest for official Colletti has admitted that he was one of the shooters in the Aug. 5, 1993, gangland ambush that left Michael Ciancaglini dead and Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino wounded. He has also testified about his involvement in dozens of other murder plots aimed at Merlino and his associates. On Thursday, Colletti testified that he frequently went out on the streets "hunting" members of the Merlino organisation with Stanfa codefend-See TRIAL on B2 ago when he told a reporter, "Once in a while you get it right." He has sat stone-faced through most of the testimony, occasionally conferring with his lawyer, Jack Myers, or with some of the other lawyers in the eight-defendant case.

While it was not possible to ask him to explain his comment the marshals guarding the defendants limit their contact to occasional nods and fiellos to family members and friends in the courtroom it ap At the time, she was representing clients who were seeking rulings from an office that approved or rejected zoning permits, Levin said. Antico supervised that unit, he said. No one has suggested that the woman's clients received any special treatment from the office under Antico's control. Antico, 55, did not respond toa telephone message. A 30-year veteran See on B3 By Peter Nicholas INQUIRER STAFF WRITER A top Licenses and Inspections official who was rebuked this week for actively promoting his son's strip club is also facing questions about his ties to a businesswoman with whom he was once intimately involved and who worked on behalf of applicants for permits, city officials laid.

Earlier this week, Frank Antico was stripped of his power to regulate the city's adult cabarets following reports that he has supported his son's plans to open a topless bar in South Philadelphia. Mayor Rendell said Antico's actions posed a clear conflict of interest and referred the case to the city's inspector general. It's the second Antico case that has crossed the iaspector general's desk in recent years. Commissioner Bennett Levin said this week that when he took the job in 1992, he learned that Antico had a relationship with a woman Levin described as an "expeditor" a person hired by the private sector to move permits swiftly through the bureaucracy. Levin said he confronted Antico about the matter, and the longtinr.L&l official confirmed that he and the woman had an intimate relationship..