The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 13

LATIMES.COM AA3 CALIFORNIA ANorthern California man serving 68 years for a home invasion robberyis likely to be the first inmate released from state prison on under a controversial law passed last year meant to save the corrections department millions of dollars in treating and guarding medically incapacitated inmates. On Wednesday, the Board of Parole Hearings granted an application from Craig Lemke, 48, who in 2006 broke into an elderly home, bound them with duct tape and robbed them of money, jewelry and firearms. Under the law, inmates are eligible for medical parole only if so disabled paralyzed, in comas, hooked up to ventilators that they no longer pose a credible threat to public safety. Officials would not provide details of medical condition, citing health privacy laws. Lemke is the second inmate to have a medical parole hearing under the law signed by former Gov.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in September. Last month the board denied the first request, from a convicted rapist paralyzed in an assault by other inmates, saying he remained a threat because he can still speak. Aspokeswoman for the federal receiver in charge of inmate healthcare said the state will save between $750,000 and $800,000 per year in security costs alone if Lemke is paroled. what it costs to post guards around the clock on inmates who are so sick they require care in hospitals outside of prison walls. If prisoners are paroled, the medical costs would shift to their families, if they can afford to pay, or to other government programs if they cannot.

The expense of guarding the patients would be eliminated. Should a medical condition improve, the law requires that he be sent back to prison to finish his sentence. Last March, authorities had identified 25 medically inmates being treated at outside hospitals who were candidates for parole. The offices predicted Californians would pay more than $50 million to treat them this year, between $19 million and $21 million of that for salaries, benefits and overtime. About half of those inmates have since been moved back into prison, receiver spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said on Wednesday.

The cost of treating patients at outside medical facilities is also falling, she said, because of a new contract with the hospitals. The cost of providing security on the outside typically two guards and one supervisor per inmate has not changed, Kincaid said. In addition to medical parole candidates in hospitals, there could be thousands of inmates inside prison sick enough to qualify, Kincaid said. The question is whether their sentences will disqualify them. Nobody sentenced to death, or serving life without the possibility of parole, is eligible.

The parole board still has 120 days to finalize their decision on Lemke. The board will hear two more cases on Thursday, and two next Friday. jack.dolan@latimes.com TO SAVE MONEY, INMATE MAY BE FREED Serving a 68-year sentence, a man is set to be released under law. Jack Dolan reporting from sacramento To the tearful joy of military family members and the admiration of civilian onlookers, the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson returned to San Diego on Wednesday after a seven-month deployment that included the at- sea burial of Osama bin Laden. like watching a piece of history float said Nicole Palazzolo, 29, of Port Huron, as she watched from San Harbor Island.

guys and girls, the real deal. If you believe me, ask Bin The 5,500 crew members had been ordered by Navy brass not to discuss the burial with reporters, lest details leak out that could further inflame tensions between the U.S. and the Muslim world. But Rear Adm. Samuel Perez, the strike group commander, told reporters that the morale was sky- high after the burial mission was completed.

think everybody was pretty he said. The Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered carrier was in the north Arabian Sea last month when Navy SEALs confronted and killed the Al Qaeda leader in his Pakistan hideout. His body, after DNA testing, was airlifted to the Vinson and quickly buried at sea. Family members and other well-wishers began to arrive at North Island Naval Air Station at 5 a.m., many carrying signs and small American flags. Some had traveled from across the country to seethe homecoming; one family came from Maine, another from Alaska.

When the carrier entered the bay and emerged from the morning mist about 9 a.m., a cheer went up in the crowd, estimated at 1,500 people. Sailors and Marines whose wives had given birth during the deployment were allowed to disembark first. seen pictures of him, but nothing compares to seeing him in said Roy Dye, a seaman apprentice holding his born Feb. 14. an amazing feeling.

There a day that went by that I think about my wife and my One baby, awaiting his father, wore a bib: Meeting My Hero for the First Tourists lined San Harbor Island and watched tugboats help the ship maneu- verinto its berth across the bay. The Adventure Hornblower, a tour boat, glided along nearby so passengers could see the ship come in. Louis Dufor, 67, of New Orleans sat in a chair on Harbor Island, taking pictures of the arrival and the balletic maneuvers of the tugboats. time one of those ships comes back, it gives us achance to thank all those guys who are out there protecting he said. this was the ship that buried Bin Laden makes it even The deployment included successful assignments to disrupt piracy in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, training exercises with the forces of half a dozen allied nations, and 95 days of combat air missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Capt. Bruce Lindsey, the skipper, dismissed the plans of Fallbrook, diver Bill Warren, who has said he plans to lead an underwater expedition to find and photograph Bin body. sure need a heck of a lot of Lindsey said. have to live a long tony.perry@latimes.com Mark Boster Los Angeles Times SAN DIEGO HOMECOMING: Cheering families and others greet the crew aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson as it pulls into its home port after a seven-month deployment.

Sailors who were at sea when their wives gave birth were allowed to disembark first. Carrier returns to welcome San Diego-based ship Carl Vinson buried Osama bin Laden at sea, among other missons Tony Perry reporting from san diego weeks after Ramona went missing. He sometimes bunked with a friend in a mobile home on a ridge top within viewof the construction site. The bridge is soon to be torn down, replaced by a new one nearby which makes this a particularly good time to search, police said. he was in San Quentin he told other inmates he had victims no one would ever said Santa Barbara Police Chief Cam Sanchez.

said no one would ever tear up the Sanchez spoke to reporters as the dogs and their handlers methodically paced the bare dirt at the base and scrambled through brush on its embankments. The Australian shepherd, chocolate Lab, border collie and golden retriever worked independently and all four alerted in the same area. hoping and praying that some great things come out of said Sanchez, a former Los Angeles Police Departmentho- micide detective. deserves some kind of closure, whatever that might mean to Sanchez said police wouldhave to further analyze the canine findings before deciding whether to excavate at the site a process that could take weeks. A similar effort The search for Ramona Price began nearly 50 years ago, but only now do police feel they may be getting close.

The 7-year-old girlvan- ished on Sept. 2, 1961. Santa Barbara authorities disclosed this week that she may have encountered Mack Ray Edwards, a serial killer who worked in the area and confessed to killingsix Southern California children. On Wednesday, four specially trained dogs found what police are calling area of near a bridge spanning U.S. 101in Goleta.

about as strong a reaction as we could have expected to said Lt. Donald Paul McCaffrey, a police spokesman. Ramona lived on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, several miles down the 101from the Winchester Canyon Road bridge. Edwards was a heavy- equipment operator who helped build the bridge, which opened just a few to find another of presumed victims failed in 2008 after crews conducted digs near the 23 Freeway in Ventura County. The four dogs and their handlers were from the Canine Specialized Search Team, a volunteer group affiliated with the Santa Clara County Office.

Finding remains half a centuryold is not an impossible task, said Lynne Englebert, one of the directors. She said the dogs have located buried remains around the world, including some at an archaeological site in Czechoslovakia that probablywere more than 1,500 years old. Recently, the dogs located some 300 unmarked burial sites in the old eastern Sierramining town of Bodie near the California-Nevada border. Ramona disappeared as her parents were packing up for a move to another home in the Santa Barbara area. Awitness saw her talking to a man who had stopped his 1950s-vintage Plymouth on the road where she was walking.

Ramona got in the car. She was never seen again. Edwards had a 1950s Plymouth, Sanchez said. A sketch made at the time was darn to 1970 booking photo at the Los Angeles County jail. He turned himself in and confessed to six murders after an aborted kidnapping of three young sisters in the San Fernando Valley.

Edwards bragged about committing as many as 20 murders but is not known to have mentioned any in Santa Barbara. In 1972, before investigators could check out his claims, he hanged himself with a TV cord in his San Quentin cell. Santa Barbara police did not focus on him until about four years ago, when Weston DeWalt, a Pasadena writer, alerted them to his research. It was DeWalt who discovered work on the bridge. parents are dead, but an older sister survives.

Police would not release her name. But Sanchez said the 60-year-old woman remains devastated by the loss of her sister. On Wednesday, a few Santa Barbara residents gathered at the bridge to watch the dogs work. They talked about the search for Ramona in 1961, a massive community effort that involved Boy Scouts, military helicopters and police officers from all over the region. Shirley Robles, 76, lived in ahouse just behind the one to which Ramona was about to move.

Robles, whose two children were young at the time, remembered police searching her home, hoping that Ramona might simply be playing hide-and-seek. was a very frightening she said. steve.chawkins Search for girl missing since 1961narrows Four specially trained dogs find an of near a bridge in Santa Barbara area. Steve Chawkins reporting from goleta, calif. Anne Cusack Los Angeles Times METHODICAL: Adog searches near U.S.

101for the remains of Ramona Price, 7, who disappeared in 1961. CMYK.