Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 5

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1995 THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS PAGE 5 A battered woman or a scheming one? Lj desperate. 1 1 The boyfriend who'd 1 1 ArrActAri frr hunt Lucille Buzzeo's boyfriend did, indeed, get out of jail the next day. But he didn't show up at her doorstep. He turned himself into the cops. Three hours after being released from a grueling week in jail, Philadelphia firefighter Kennedy Wilson showed up at Central Ddetectives with a sleeping bag and asked to be locked up overnight.

He said it was the only way he could prove he wasn't trying to kill Lucille Buzzeo. flight attendant, said Wilsou started beating her two months after she moved into his Center City apartment earlier this year. In August, neighbors called police, who arrested Wilson after noting Buzzeo had visible injuries. A month later, after what Buzzeo said was pressure from fire union officials, she dropped the charges. But three days later, she said, Wilson attacked her again.

He was re-arrested and she got a pro-tection-from-abuse order to keep him away. And then it began: Wilson would get arrested, make bail, and be rearrested almost imme-See PORTER Page 29 domestic-violence case. "I thought, based on everything that I'd seen, that it was time to take action," said commissioner Timothy O'Brien. "The only way to stop him was to set a significant amount of bail to assure the safety of Miss Buzzeo." But a judge subsequently lowered bail to $75,000. And now, Buzzeo told me, there was a court hearing scheduled for the next day at which she was sure her boyfriend would be freed.

"Do I have to be dead to make my point?" she said, railing at the court system that kept releasing him. turn Lucille Buzzeo, 39, a former Wj mi a i they'll find them when I'm dead." One bail commissioner considered the situation so dangerous that he set bail at $1 million, the highest he'd ever required in a IF 5 i 4 lit. ing her up was about to get out of jail and she was sure he was going to kill her. He'd been arrested six times in the previous two weeks for threatening or assaulting her, she said, in what police told her was the worst case they'd ever seen. Each time her boyfriend got out on bail, Buzzeo said, he came after her again.

"He wants me dead," she said in spiraling hysteria. "I've written letters and put them all over the apartment so Homicide unit probing boy's disappearance by Nicole Weisensee and Joe O'Dowd Daily News Staff Writers Ke'shaun Vanderhorst's disappearance took an ominous twist yesterday. "We believe there's a possibility of foul play," said Sgt. Larry No-diff of the Homicide Division's special investigations unit. Police had 1 launched an investigation into the 2-year-old boy's disappearance after being informed that his mother, Tina Vanderhorst, had told two of her children that they Coston wouldn't see Ke'shaun again.

Vanderhorst, 31, told police earlier this week that the Department of Human Services had tak-en Ke'shaun. A DHS spokeswoman said they did not have him in custody. However, Lisa Coston, 28, who watched Ke'shaun at her day-care center on Willington Street near Master, said yesterday that Vanderhorst had told her a different story two weeks ago. Coston said Vanderhorst showed up on her doorstep about 1 p.m., had obviously been drinking and was very distraught over the recent breakup with her boyfriend, James Simmons. When Coston asked her where Ke'shaun was, Vanderhorst told her his father had him.

The father wasn't identified. Vanderhorst stayed for about ft i 1 I i I i if JIM MacMILLAN DAILY NEWS Sgt. Larry Nodiff conducts a search of Tina Vanderhorst's North Philadelphia apartment "She doesn't let that baby get out of her sight," he said. "Everywhere she went, she took that baby." Three of Vanderhorst's children died as infants during the 1980s one of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and two of other natural causes. Yesterday, the medical examiner's office pulled the records of the three children-to begin looking into their deaths.

Vanderhorst was arrested Monday for violating her parole. She had been in the Muncy State Correctional Institution on drug charges. Police said she had been caught with drugs. Staff writer Jack McGuire contributed to this report. "1 Hi 1 i 1 would only pay if she was going to school, Coston said.

Police are looking for Simmons, who had lived on Allegheny Avenue near 16th. He left that address in August and owed about' $1,000 in rent, a source there said. Homicide detectives questioned Vanderhorst last night. Detectives searched her apartment on 17th Street near Master in North Philadelphia yesterday and the grounds outside, but found nothing, Nodiff said. Ellis Horton, 68, Vanderhorst's landlordT said he hasn't seen Ke'shaun in three weeks.

His brother-in-law saw her last week without Ke'shaun, which was unusual, he said. an hour and then left, after Cos-ton gave her money to buy food, Coston said. "She gave me a big hug and a kiss," Coston said. "She told me she'd come back and bring Ke'shaun to see us." Coston said she doesn't believe Vanderhorst would hurt Ke'shaun. "She was a good mother," she said.

"She wouldn't do any-, thing to harm him." Vanderhorst stopped taking Ke'shaun to day care about a month ago because she became distraught over her breakup with Simmons and quit attending a cooking class, Coston said. She was getting public assistance to pay for day care, but it Ke'shaun Vanderhorst, age 2.