The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 4

A-4 The Ortaodo Sentinel. Monday. September 21. 1992 1 1 i it- -ifi-. i Tiffin ii itt nTi rfr.i Ex-banker: U.S.

knew of loans to Iraq ASSOCIATED PRESS rrS sir Bonnie gets less fierce, more distant Little change in the hurricane's strength or direction is expected through jday. MIAMI Hurricane Bon- -e. a threat only to weakened somewhat as it drifted with vp winds of 85 mph into ool Atlantic waters far iYom land, forecasters said. At 4 p.m. EDT.

the second hurricane of the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season was centered at latitude 37.0 north and longitude 55.5 west, or abimt 625 miles east-northeast of Bermuda. It was drift i cj mirth-northpast at fi mnh. JSfcV ATLANTA The former branch manager of an Italian-owned bank who admitted illegally loaning billions of dollars to Iraq has alleged that government officials knew about the scheme. But Christopher Drogoul didn't name any government or banking officials aware of the loans, and a prosecutor denied the allegations. The comments were made in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes.

Drogoul said the U.S. and Iraqi governments and officials at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro made him the fall guy in what he said was a well-known plan to loan Iraq billions for weapons and food. "Certainly, I would have to say that the intelligence community monitored our activities from the outset. There was general knowledge in Washington and in the financial community," he said. Drogoul's lawyers have made similar arguments in court, claiming the bank's executives in Rome were aware of his activities and that U.S.

officials approved the scheme as part of a pre-Gulf War policy of extending aid to Iraq. Drogoul, former manager of the BNL's Atlanta branch, pleaded guilty in June to 60 counts of bank fraud in connection with the scheme to lend $5.5 billion to Iraq. But Drogoul last week told a judge he wants to withdraw the plea. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Acting U.S.

Attorney Gerrilyn Brill told 60 Minutes that Drogoul masterminded the scheme alone, against the orders of bank officials in Rome. "Mr. Drogoul is a con man. He is a criminal," Brill said. She also denied any knowledge of the bank's activities by U.S.

authorities. Drogoul was indicted last year. Money lent by the bank was used in part to fund Iraq's military buildup before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, congressional critics RED HUBERv'SENTINEL i Little change in strength or direction is expected through today. National Hurricane Center forecaster Miles Law-I rence said. Bonnie became a named storm before dawn Friday when its top winds reached 39 mph.

and at one point Sat-! unlay it had winds as strong Gibson (from left), Davis, Apt, Lee, Jemison, Mohri and Brown (in rear) were members of a successful and historic mission. Endeavour's landing experiment is a real drag ENDEAVOUR from A-1 as 90 mph. Storms become hurricanes when sustained winds reach 74 mph. Tropical weather systems sometimes die as they lose energy moving over colder waters, but others combine with ocean storms to menace Canada and Europe. The season's first hurricane, Andrew, struck the Bahamas, Florida and Louisiana, causing more thai $20 billion in damage and becoming the costliest natural disaster ever in the United States.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June through November. dent the showers wouldn't come near the runway at landing time, and controllers decided to bring Endeavour home at 8:53 a.m. Gibson and Brown fired Endeavour's large maneuvering engines while the shuttle was still over the southern Indian Ocean. During the next hour, it swung northeastward past Australia, over the Pacific Ocean, Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the Gulf of Mexico and reached the west coast of Florida at about 8:44 a.m. Endeavour passed over Crystal River, Orlando and Titusville treating residents to twin sonic booms along the way before landing at KSC.

Endeavour now will be prepared for a January flight to ferry a communications satellite into orbit. NASA's next shuttle launch, that of Columbia, is tentatively set for Oct. 15. make sure all goes as planned. Endeavour's landing, its first at KSC and the shuttle program's 12th on the ditch-surrounded strip, came an hour and a half later than originally scheduled.

Ground controllers waved off a 7:19 a.m. landing attempt because they were worried rain showers 30 miles east of KSC over the Atlantic Ocean would move over the runway. NASA rules prohibit shuttles from leaving orbit if rain is within 30 miles of the landing site. Raindrops striking the shuttle as it flies at hundreds of miles an hour would rip apart the fragile, heat-resistant tiles covering the or-biter. By 7 a.m., however, forecasters were confi frogs, two carp, 7,600 flies, 30 fertilized chicken eggs and 180 hornets.

Sunday's landing itself was also an experiment of sorts. Just before Gibson brought the nose wheels down, pilot Brown popped open a red-and-white drag chute to slow down Endeavour as it rolled down the KSC runway. In the previous two drag chute landings Endeavour in May and Columbia in July the chutes were opened after the nose wheels were already on the ground. NASA eventually wants to pop the drag chute as soon the main wheels are down, but engineers are easing into that procedure to Mother of slain dentist outraged, calls acquittal 'a miscarriage of justice' would preclude him from being able to drive, much less fire a shotgun. Virginia Larzelere followed through with the plan at her husband's funeral, prosecutors said, medicating Jason to the point that he appeared helpless.

She later sent him out of town. Virginia Larzelere's conviction in February did not stop the story from taking twists and turns. A private investigator once employed by Virginia Larzelere said he had evidence that a hit man had been hired and that neither Jason nor Virginia were guilty. Sean Somewille of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. LARZELERE from A-1 for nine years until recently.

"We're going to try to build this family together." Of their immediate plans. Jason Larzelere joked: "We're going to Disney World." The father and son left for an undisclosed location, a precaution Mathis said he was taking because of death threats made against his son. Mathis, a computer programmer, previously said he hired William Lasley, a West Palm Beach attorney, to give his son "one last chance." The verdict left Jason Larzelere's accusers and adopted family wondering what happened. The teen-ager was adopted by Dr. Larzelere at age 12 after his mother's remarriage.

Lucille Larzelere, the murdered dentist's mother, said she listened to Jason's acquittal in disbelief. "We felt it was a miscarriage of justice. We felt there was overwhelming evidence," Lucille Larzelere said. "We don't think the jury was able to put all the evidence together." Virginia Larzelere's first-degree murder conviction in February and the possibility that she may receive the death penalty does little to console the family that jus to bolster her claim that a hit man who had killed the dentist was after her, police said. When investigators arrested Virginia and Jason Larzelere in May 1991, stories of drug selling and lavish spending began to emerge.

Former lovers of Virginia came forward and said she had sought someone to kill her husband as early as 1989. One of her former husbands said he was mysteriously shot. Evidence showed Virginia Larzelere had taken insurance policies out on Norman Larzelere's life worth $2.1 million. Meanwhile, her son Jason had graduated from a private school and become part of a stylish, nightlife scene. He drove expensive cars and wore stylish clothes.

Authorities said Jason was the gunman, but Lasley had charged in Jason's trial that the state's two key witnesses, Steve Heidle and Kristen Palmieri, had killed the dentist. They both denied participating in the killing. Investigators said Jason had become the gunman in a complicated plan that was supposed to eliminate him from suspicion. They said Jason feigned illness that tice has been done, Lucille Larzelere said. Virginia's sentencing had been delayed until after her son's trial.

"There's no way whatever sentence is imposed on Virginia can make up for what's been done to our family," she said. "This today is just another real blow." Dorothy Sedgwick, the prosecutor, left the courthouse without knowing why her prosecution failed. "The jury actually sent a note out to the judge saying that they did not want to be interviewed," Sedgwick said. "So we really don't have an idea what happened." Lasley said he won the acquittal by proving to the jury that one of the state's main witnesses was the likely killer. "There was never any evidence that Jason did this," said Lasley, who also was waiting for Jason's release at the DeLand jail.

The case started with the dentist's death on March 8, 1991. A masked gunman chased the dentist through his office in the southeast Volusia town of Edgewater and killed him with a single shotgun blast fired through a closed door. In the days following the murder, Virginia Larzelere, 39, gave conflicting descriptions of the gunman in what prosecutors said was an effort to mislead investigators. At one point, she went so far as to hire a bodyguard Sell It FXst With a Classified ad. Call 420-5757.

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Along the way, Cornett became Miss Winter Park and then Miss Florida. She also joined three other singers to form the contemporary Christian group Area Code, which has released one album, One Big World. The music is described as Christian pop-dance, targeted at ages 13-25. Her singing abilities helped her land a spot as Ariel in the Voyage of The Little Mermaid attraction at Disney-MGM Studios in Walt Disney World. Although her talents run the gamut, friends say it's her commitment to battling AIDS that distinguishes her.

The subject is close to her heart, they say. Some of her friends are infected with the deadly virus. Cornett said she has never been tested for the AIDS virus. At Sunday's press conference, Cornett said she would like the federal government to increase funding for AIDS research. But she said society must take the first steps toward finding a cure because government doesn't have all the answers.

Her "ultimate goal," she said, is to form a group of drama and theater students whose performances would "give AIDS kind of a hopeful message. If we can bring some lightness into it, it would be very motivational and very educational." It's an idea similar to Voices, an AIDS-related extravaganza produced by Michael Thompson, a fundraiser with the AIDS Resource Alliance. Thompson got to know Cornett when she started working at Walt Disney World last December, and he persuaded her to lend her talents to Voices. He says Cornett's winning the crown may go a long way toward raising AIDS awareness. "There are folks who are never going to accept it the tragedy of AIDS, who think it's the gay plague and that those who get it deserve it," Thompson said.

"I think Leanza will go a long way to helping people accept it. Maybe they'll listen to this ideal that we've crowned." Sentinel wire services were used in this report. MISS from A-1 "We have to start with ourselves, and that is going to be my main point as I go out. "The other celebrities have certainly played a more important role," she said. "I'm just going to add to that.

This is an issue that everyone needs to be educated about." Friends and associates say Florida's first-ever Miss America practices what she preaches. Since last summer, Cornett has volunteered at the Serenity House Pediatric AIDS Foundation, an adoptive house for HIV-infected children in Orlando. She also helps with the Hope and Help Center of Central Florida, an AIDS counseling group in Orlando. "She has brought in tapes and sung songs to the kids," said Charlene White, owner of Serenity House. "She's very animated.

She cheers the kids up. It's like a little ray of sunshine when she comes in. "We've all been rooting her on," White said. "We may be losing a physical volunteer here, but we couldn't ask for anything better. For her to represent us, the AIDS community, we couldn't ask for anything more.

This is a dream come true." Cornett became the 66th Miss America after she was chosen by a panel of celebrity judges from among 10 semifinalists, nine of whom were from the South or the Midwest. It's a long way from Big Stone Gap, where Cornett was born, to the $1,000 Miss America rhine-stone tiara, the $35,000 in scholarships and the new Corvette. She moved to Florida eight years ago and studied communications and English at Jacksonville University for two years. Winning the Miss America crown seemed almost preordained, friends say. Cornett entered her first pageant in Jacksonville, where she was named Miss in 1989.

"She was really involved at school," said Shanie Harnett, who roomed with Cornett at Jacksonville University. "Everybody had her picked for a Miss America. She was confident and so poised. She always said, 'Yeah, She's real down-to-earth. She's not afraid to walk around in sweats and a T-shirt and no makeup." Custom Draperies, 00 Decorator on Staff: Helen Barco, Orlando, FL Executive Offices: 1 1929 East Colonial Drive, Suite 194 Orlando, FL 32826 M3M Includes expert decorating advice in the comfort of your home Creative ideas and fabric samples for Custom Made Draperies, Top Treatments, Pleated Shades, Bedspreads, Reupholstery and morel Serving the Industry for 68 years.

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