Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 1

4 yf Cubs' Palmeiro confident Sports, 1D Jackson Illiteracy fought in work place Business, 1H MLY STATE $1.25 Volume 34, No. 31 10 sections, 98 pages Copyright 1988 JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI SUNDAY April 10, 1988 wmmmmmammmiamiBmt fews Murder sprees make somewhere else seem somewhere near Violence happens 'anywhere Domino effect upheaves state's small towns and any time residents learn March 8 Suspect: Lee Allen Three dead, two wounded. Benton County- 7TT Corinth I I Batesville March 10 Suspect: Roy Wilcutt Three dead, one wounded Hamilton community in Benton County, where a killing spree started and spread to Corinth 30 miles away. "But something like this happens and, man, it makes you wonder." In a three-week period in small towns last month: Sign painter Lee Allen, 41, of Walnut on March 8 killed his girlfriend in Hamilton and a neighbor before driving to Corinth and gunning down a stranger on the street, police say. Two others, a neighbor and a motorist, were wounded.

Retiree Roy Wilcutt, 76, of Batesville on March 10 shot and killed his stepgrandson and a stepgranddaughter's friend and wounded his stepgranddaughter, police say. As son Lee Wilcutt arrived home, the elder Wilcutt killed himself. Woodcutter Otha Johnson, 33, of Shubuta, is charged with slaying his mother and stepfather in the Clarke County community of DeSoto on March 22. Police say he then traveled to nearby Shubuta and killed his wife, stuffing her body into the trunk of a stolen car. "You would think this would be a quiet, peaceful place.

This See Murders, 9A By WILLIAM RABB and LEE RAGLAND Jackson Daily News Staff Writer! An elderly man puts a bullet through two family members and a friend before shooting himself in the head. A 41-year-old sign painter screams of "devil worshipers." Two days later, his girlfriend, a neighbor and a stranger on the street are gunned down in a rampage. A woodcutter spends three weeks in jail for a simple assault charge. Within 24 hours of his release, his mother, stepfather and wife are shot dead. All three multiple murders happened in small Mississippi towns in the last month.

Somewhere else is suddenly somewhere near. "It's coming home to us now," said Bethel Dilmore, 72, of Batesville, where three people died in a double murder-suicide last month. "You hear about it around the small towns more and more." "I moved out here five years ago to get away from everything and breathe the fresh air," said Grady Gowdy of the -Jackson fast life." "If he made it in Chicago, surely he could make it down here," said neighbor Eloise McLaughin. Or so one would think. James was gunned down on March 22 at his blue cinder-block home just off U.S.

45. The 78-year-old former policeman was shot in both shoulders, the chest and head with a gun. His pajama-clad body was found in the bedroom. His 57-year-old wife, Mary James, was found dead in an adjoining room, shot three times. See Violence, 9A By LEE RAGLAND Jacksoo Daily News Staff Writer DESOTO Henry James faced danger every day as a policeman patrolling one of Chicago's toughest housing projects.

James died a violent death, shot four times in his own home. The scene was this friendly Clarke County community of 200. His grave-site sits under a cedar tree in Center Ridge Cemetery. "He wanted to come back home and live peacefully," said Martha Brady, who had worked with James in nearby Shubuta. "He felt like he had lived the I i TDe March 22 Suspect: Otha Johnson Three dead 4 Cole retains Democratic mtktL.t j.

r-i fit! -VilL, 0 N. 1 A chairmans hip js.v ,..1: More consistently, they mounted an effort to show that Mabus, who won election by a narrow margin in November, was trying to retool the party bandwagon into his own political steamroller. "I certainly felt that way, and I'm a longtime supporter of the governor," said executive committee member Leslie Scott of Jackson, a white who voted for Cole on Saturday. By passing over Cole for Thompson, who was known by few party regulars, Mabus "indicated that he didn't want to work through the party organization and its experience," Scott said. "He wanted to pick someone who was basically outside of that." In recent weeks Mabus, while publicly keeping tight-lipped on the topic, has waged a steady, low-visibility campaign to convince party members that the move was a matter of allegiances, ideology and fund-raising ability.

Thompson was cast as the ship-shape pro who helped Mabus' well-heeled, re-See Democrats, 10A By JOE OHEEFE Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer State Democrats snubbed Gov. Ray Mabus' pick for chairman of the Democratic Party on Saturday, dealing Mississippi's new governor a symbolic blow in an insider battle for party control. In a 56-41 vote, executive committee members selected longtime party activist Ed Cole as chairman of the state party over Mabus-backed candidate Billie Thompson of Tupelo. Cole, speaking before a rapt crowd of party regulars in the Sheraton Regency Hotel, said of Mabus: "I want him to accept that he belongs to our party and that our party does not belong to him." The struggle for the party's top slot began in January, when Mabus confirmed he was attempting to replace Cole, the nation's only black chairman of a state party, with Thompson, who is white. Cole supporters reacted to the proposal with occasional, but shallow, charges of racism.

4 "a TOM ROSTERThe Clarion-Ledger Jackson Daily News Newly re-elected state Democratic Party Chairman Ed Cole stands Mabus had nominated and supported Billie Thompson of Tupelo for among well-wishers moments after his victory Saturday. Gov. Ray the post. Party vote sends message to Mabus ANALYSIS revealed a lack of insight into how protective Mississippi blacks are of hard-fought gains in the political arena. The election of Cole, the 43-year-old assistant to U.S.

Sen. John C. Stennis who has built a reputation as a party fence-mender, became a rallying point for an unusual coalition that included Jesse Jackson blacks and George Wallace whites. Cole, in a low-key, matter-of-fact pitch for support, talked Saturday of his work with Stennis and the late U.S. Sen.

James Eastland, a staunch segregationist. "Some say that represents old guard. I say to you those acts indicate I am part of the change we have experienced in the last 20 years," he said. But the broad-based coalition that elected Cole may have been a one-shot effort. "It is not the kind of coalition that will be held together on other issues," said Democratic activist Leslie McLemore, dean of graduate studies at Jackson State University.

y. L. By DAN DAVIS Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Gov. Ray Mabus and his tightknit inner circle like to point to his election in November as a message from Mississippi's voters. Saturday, it was Mabus who got a message when state Democratic Party leaders rejected his choice for party chairman and re-elected Ed Cole.

"My daddy was a farmer, and he said that sometimes you have to hit the mule upside the head to get his attention," Cole said minutes after the party's executive committee handed him a 56-41 victory over Mabus' nominee, Billie Thompson of Tupelo. The fight for party control began in January when the reform-minded Mabus tried to nudge out Cole, a black, and install Thompson, a relatively unknown white woman, as party chief. The governor's selection of Thompson has been a mystery to party insiders since it was revealed earlier this year. "Billie Who?" became the dominant question of the party. Even Steve Patterson, who served as party chair- man from 1984 until November, was in the dark about Thompson.

"I wouldn't know her if I saw her. I've never met her or heard of her in my life," he said recently. It was symbolic that when she got up to make her nomination speech Saturday, one of the first things Thompson told the 96 participating committee members was, "My name is Billie Thompson." To many, Mabus' support of Thompson was indicative of the blind spot he has developed for the black support that launched him into the governor's office. It is estimated that more than 90 percent of the blacks who voted cast their ballot for Mabus who narrowly edged out Republican Jack Reed of Tupelo. The governor's opposition to Cole clearly was not racially motivated Cole supported former Gov.

Bill Waller instead of Mabus in last year's gubernatorial primary. However, Mabus' support of Thompson Billie Thompson of Tupelo, Gov. Ray Mabus' nominee for state Democratic Party chairman, and party Chairman Ed Cole talk Saturday after Thompson was elected executive vice chairman of the state party. See Mabus, 11A INDEX Yazoo flood control opponents wary of project benefits and channel work along the Yazoo River and its Moore is looking into the benefit-to-cost ratios in order to formulate a position, said Special Assistant Tim Waycaster. Mabus is waiting to be briefed by Moore before deciding what, if any, ac tributaries in the eastern Delta and the Big Sunflower River and Steele and Black bayous to the west.

The Big Sunflower and Steele-Black Bayou projects are being built through the Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge, Leroy Percy State Park and a 16-mile stretch of private land where all the property owners are against the work as planned. The Yazoo work, particularly what's known as the Upper Yazoo Project, has encountered resistance from landowners as well as a group of state and national conservation organizations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Wildlife Conservation and the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service oppose the work unless substantial woodland acreages are bought to replace those they say will be destroyed.

acre, when the average in Bolivar County is 23 bushels and we've got tremendous, great, irrigated land." Until now, opposition to the Yazoo projects primarily has focused on land condemnation and the effects of drainage on waterfowl populations. Danny McDaniel, a Jackson lawyer representing a group of hunters and landowners opposed to the work, said that if he's able to prove the corps' projected benefits are inaccurate, the legal impact would not be great, even though the group is considering filing suit to halt the work. "The reason it's significant is, the worse the ratios are, the worse the projects look to Congress," McDaniel said. Benefit-to-cost ratios are used to prioritize projects and obtain federal funding. The group McDaniel represents has asked state Attorney General Mike Moore and Gov.

Ray Mabus to call on the corps to halt work until a series of public hearings is held on the Yazoo projects. By ALAN HUFFMAN Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Opponents of a $1.3 billion group of Yazoo River flood control projects are trying to flank the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the issue of economic benefits. "There's just no way they can come up with the benefits they've alluded to," said Greenville accountant Rogers Varner, who worked as a staff engineer for the corps' New Orleans District from 1977 to 1984. "From experience doing benefit-to-cost ratios over and over, I call tell you we massaged numbers left and right, up and down until we could figure out a way to make it work.

We could always come up with something to make the benefit side more." Cleveland accountant John Yurkow, another project opponent, said the predicted benefits "are based on fantasyland yields for farmland. They're talking about soybean yields of 96 bushels to the tion he will take, a spokesman lor his oitice saia. Proponents of the Delta projects say they would lead to economic development in the mostly agricultural area and reduce flood damages to farms, homes and towns. The area is subject to backwater flooding from the Mississippi River as well as runoff from the Delta and north Mississippi hills. Corps officials say the benefits of the work are unassailable.

"The ball game is not arguing economics," said Michael Logue, spokesman for the corps' Vicks-burg District "Determining benefits is not an exact science, but we've got such a high benefit-cost ratio we could be off by 50 percent and it wouldn't matter." The projects are liberally peppered throughout the Yazoo basin, but primarily consist of levees Ann Landers 3E Books 3F Bridge 5E Business 1H Classified Comics Insert Crosswords 2F Deaths 2B Entertainment 7F Health Science 1C Horoscope 5E Jumble 2F Leisure IF Opinion 4,51 Perspective II Southern Style IE Sports ID State 'Metro IB TV Week Insert WEATHER Chance of rain. High 75. Details, 14A. i i See Yazoo, back page this section 1 1 vKWMimii tr'tntiN imvil rrmrartf w.m simTmyM ft ft-.