The Springfield News-Leader from Springfield, Missouri • Page 9

Page edited by Jan Peterson; call 836-1199 after 5 p.m. FROM PAGE ONE WORLD Execution It wasn't Sharick killing that put O'Neal on death row NEED HOME midnight. "I don't think anybody in the family has a death wish for (O'Neal)," he says. "It's that we just wanted him out of the way so he wouldn't be able to hurt anybody else. "He is the sort of person who should be locked up forever and never allowed to be free again.

It was not a pleasant thing that they did." Not pleasant, and certainly not the kind of crime that invites expressions of mercy. Sharick was 78 when he was murdered. He lived in a mobile home on Dowell's property. On a Friday night in July 1979, Sharick apparently heard a disturbance coming from his son-in-law's home. FINANCING see us for a "mm HOME LOAN SAVINGS LOAN LSSmi 318 South Ave; LENDtS 862-5036 He confronted O'Neal and Boggs.

When the Dowells returned home, they saw lights on and found a closet door ajar. Inside the closet they found Sharick sitting in a chair. He had been hit in the head. His hands had been bound, at some point. He was shot through the chest with a gun.

Boggs was arrested two days later in Fort Worth, Texas. O'Neal was arrested two months later in Enid, Okla. He was sleeping in a stolen truck. O'Neal turned 18 during his murder trial. He said Boggs pulled the trigger.

Boggs blamed O'Neal. Both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. That is where the story might have ended. But O'Neal wasn't through killing. In February 1994, he was one of three inmates who reportedly stabbed fellow prisoner Arthur Dade to death.

O'Neal and the others drew death sentences. It's the crime for which he's scheduled to die. Boggs, on the other hand, wound up being paroled for Sharick's murder. He's barred from returning to Greene County though, as Dowell notes, there are no gates surrounding the county keeping Boggs at bay. This is what Dowell focuses on now: keeping convicted murderers behind bars for the rest of their lives.

Life in prison should mean life without freedom, Dowell says. "As far as (O'Neal's) death, the greatest satisfaction we could have is knowing that he can never get out of prison," Dowell says. "Which I guess is what's going to happen this week." Regardless of what happens regardless of whether Robert O'Neal's fife is terminated or spared the relatives of his 1979 victim, Ralph Sharick, will persevere. And they'll continue to live in the house where Sharick died. "It's our house.

It's where we live. We have lots and lots of other memories of the house," J. Larry Dowell says. "But it's still here. I don't think we ever made a decision about whether to live here.

We just continued to do it. I don't think it would be any different whether we lived here or in Albuquerque. It's still a memory." Continued from 1A 1995: Emmit Foster May 3. Larry Griffin June 21. Robert Anthony Murray July 26.

Robert Sidebottom Nov. 15. And Anthony LaRette was put to death Wednesday. "I think it's the political climate," DeSimone says, "the intense feeling that revenge is normal, and that revenge should be incorporated into public policy as a kind of healing mechanism for the community at large." J. Larry Dowell says he'll feel no such healing, should O'Neal be strapped onto a gurney and injected with poison at a minute past Veterans Hearing on Monday Continued from 1A way has turned into a battle royal," he said Monday.

Montgomery said if legislators in southwest Missouri can get together and agree on alternative sites to those included in his plan including a switch from Mount Vernon or Cabool to Springfield he would have no problem changing them. Crain and American Legion Post 125 Commander Hollis Scott said they are prepared to fight for a burial place near their homes. They were already looking into the cost of chartering a bus to Jefferson City to attend hearings on the issue. "We're going to do everything we can to get it here in Springfield, especially since the city has gone as far as it has," Scott said. The City Council is expected to hold a public hearing Monday on a bill, that would transfer the Lake Springfield land from CU to the state for the cemetery.

Wooten said once the council approves the land transfer, he and Hosmer will proceed with their legislation. Their first stop: Gov. Mel Carna-han's office. Carnahan's spokesman Chris Sif-ford said the governor has not taken any position yet on the placement of state cemeteries. "But we'll certainly look at the proposals that are out there," he said.

James Crooke one of the leaders of the effort to bring a new veterans cemetery to Springfield, said he'd prefer to stay out of any political battles. Hesaidhedoesn'tobjecttotheideaof placing a system of cemeteries throughout the state because provi sions should be made for all veterans. But that system should include Springfield because Greene County has "by far" one of the largest contingents of veterans of any Missouri county. "If there's a system to be estab lished, certainly Springfield should be the first one on the list and not omitted from the whole group," Crooke said. It won't be, Crain said with certain ty.

"Well just pick up the pieces and start battlingagain," he said. "We're going to get one here. We're going to get a Missouri veterans cemetery here." More women than men died in Kobe quake The Associated Press TOKYO Almost half of those who died in the Kobe earthquake in January were elderly, and among the elderly the disaster killed nearly two women for every man, an official report said Monday. The detailed report from the Health and Welfare Ministry con firmed earlier estimates that a large number of the 6,000 people killed in the Jan. 17 quake were elderly.

Women tend to live longer than men, which contributed to the high proportion of elderly women among the quake victims. The quake struck at 5:46 a.m., and the report said 81 percent of the victims died before noon. Another 16 percent were dead by the end of the next day as firefighters and rescue workers were hampered by broken water mains, destroyed roads and bureaucratic indecision. Death by crushing or suffocation under debris caused 77 percent of the casualties. Fires killed9percent, while the rest died of causes such as shock, lacerations and stress-related the weeks after the quake.

An unusually large number of people ages 20-24 were killed, most of them college students living in cramped, cheaply built wooden dormitory buildings vulnerable to the quake and the fires that followed..