The Jackson Sun from Jackson, Tennessee • 1

E99SI I rat Union fastballer piles up wins Ed Jones calls order on horses premature Racism slowly eases its hold Page 1E Page 1D Page 1B Hijackers jjj till man, Girl's grandfather sticks to belief she will be found release i By Delores Ballard Sun senior writer 1 1 17 early a year after Marlena Childress disappeared in 1 I still answers his phone with the message, "Thank you 1 1 i or i-amsnms v5 for calling the Strickland residence and the Marlena hotline." LaWade Strickland still has yellow ribbons tied to the front doors of his shoe repair shop in Mayfield, where a "find Marlena" poster bravely campaigns to keep local 0, A dramatic confession that she killed Marlena. Her later statement that she'd made up that story under pressure. The crisscross of stories and suspicions almost escalated to a feud between the families of Marlena's divorced parents, Pam Bailey and Kevin Childress, last year. Fingers were pointed, lies were accused. One side dared the other to take truth serum.

The public, once willing to wade the Obion River to help a distraught family find their little girl, grew tired of the sideshow the Marlena case became. They lost interest. With no body and no physical evidence to make charges stick against Pam Bailey, 23, her case never went to trial. The charges still are lodged against her, but until someone comes up with some evidence that she harmed or helped to harm Marlena, Bailey isn't likely to have a day in court. "As long as she's under indictment," says Assistant District Attorney Jim Cannon, "the case can remain open indefinitely." No statute of limitations applies, Cannon said, and the case is in interest in the search alive.

Hopes keep struggling to the surface, fighting their way up through the layers of discouragement, disappointment and despair. Hopes have Sun photo by Delores Ballard LaWade Strickland keeps the Find Marlena campaign alive on the doors of his Mayfield, shoe shop. Marlena, his granddaughter, disappeared from her Union City home a year ago. through the whole bizarre series of Childress episodes: Marlena's abrupt disappearance on a Thursday afternoon last April 16. The desperate search.

Her mother's sudden, PLO official's talks raise hope LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) The hijackers of a Kuwaiti jumbo jet with 53 people aboard killed one of their captives Saturday and threatened to kill more unless the plane was refueled, government officials said. The hijackers later freed a sick passenger, the 58th person released from the 112 who were aboard when the plane was seized Tuesday. There are believed to be at least six hijackers. A senior Palestine Liberation Organization official met four times with the hijackers Saturday, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the deadlocked negotiations. The Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 was hijacked on a flight from Bangkok to Kuwait and forced to land in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, where 57 people were released.

It left Iran Friday and landed in Larnaca after being refused permission to land in Lebanon and Syria. Cypriot officials identified the slain man as a security guard on the airliner. But the Kuwait News Agency quoted the Persian Gulf state's information minister, Sheik Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah, as saying the victim was one of three military men returning from a vacation in Thailand. The agency quoted unidentified officials as saying the released man is a 32-year-old Kuwaiti Shiite Moslem named Fadel Abdel-Rassoul Leeri. A Kuwaiti of that name was listed as a passenger.

Cypriot government spokesman Akis Fantis said the man's release "was a sign of goodwill by the hijackers." Soon after his release, officials at the airport near Larnaca said the hijackers radioed the tower with an English statement reiterating their demand that Kuwait free 17 terrorists, all but one a Shiite Moslem, convicted there for a chain of bombings in 1983. The remaining passengers are believed to be Arabs, including three members of Kuwait's extensive royal family. Please see HIJACKING, next page. "active, open and under investigation." He did not say what leads investigators are following. Union City Police Chief David Rhoades is out of town on Naval Reserve maneuvers and unavailable to comment.

Meanwhile, time's swift passage Please see MARLENA, Page 3A. Family holds keys to case, neighbors say By Delores Ballard Sun senior writer rSf 19 A) 3lrirfQ Union City ttnch.i2m.iW "-5eld site of Marlena Childress' fsT) JL disappearance April 16, 1987 rfol 1 Obion River Kentucky y-pufton Area where river was dragged -v 1 Tannoccao I bdy aft6r mother 1 Ufrn claimed she killed daughter 7RThDresden (tS Mayfield, Ky. Obion I Ov Where Marlena's mother, Pam JcZ Bailey, now lives. revive the child and threw her body in the Obion River. She soon took back that story, saying it was forced from her under pressure.

Since then, theories on Marlena's whereabouts have put her everywhere, including the bottom of that river. The family, while disbelieving she could be dead, fears the public accepted Pam's confession as fact and withdrew its attention from the case at that point. Certainly, public interest has waned, says Carolyn Pearce, who runs a small grocery store a couple of blocks from the corner where Marlena disappeared. "Every once in a while they'll ask if I've heard anything new, and I haven't," she said. "That's just about the extent of it." Please see OPINION, Page 3A.

UNION CITY Where is Marlena Childress? Theories are numerous, but the least popular is that the 5-year-old, who disappeared here last April 16, is dead. Her grandfather, LaWade Strickland, says he'll be the last to believe that. She could be in Saudi Arabia, he says; she could be in Mexico. But of one thing he's sure: "She's alive as she can be." People in Union City generally believe Marlena is alive somewhere, too, and that Pam Bailey, her mother, is "not telling the truth." Union City doesn't look like a town haunted by fears of a child abductor. Children out of school on spring break last week played freely in the Sun graphics by Gregg Bender Marlena as a missing child, she abruptly told a private investigator she had hit Marlena in a temper fit, then panicked when she couldn't city park and on the sidewalks without supervising adults hovering near.

Two months after Bailey reported Inside Books 5C Insight 1E 1C-7C Business 6E-7E Living Republican trods hard road toward tax reform Classified 5B-16B Movies Magazine Crossword 5C Opinion 2E 2C Record such as food, household items and clothes, Dear Abby Deaths 2B 2D 1D-8D 2B Scoreboard' By Julie Wright Sun capital bureau Education 3B-4B Sports Rain Most also agree that tax reform itself is just a matter of time. Their opinions vary on when and how the reform will materialize. Critics of the state's taxing system keep reform in the public eye. In March, Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based group, released a study that said only Mississippi puts a bigger share of the tax burden on the poor. Tennessee's poorest people give up about 9.3 percent of their income in taxes; the richest pay about 1.6 percent, the group said.

The poor spend a larger percentage of their income on taxable goods, start on a path toward abolishing all state and local taxes, replacing them with flat-rate income and sales taxes. The House Judiciary Committee already approved the resolution, but it's not expected to have an easy time with the finance panel. Copeland knew Friday he didn't have the votes in the finance committee to pass his resolution, but he intended to spend much of the weekend lobbying committee members. Most lawmakers give Copeland's measure little chance of passage, but most agree with his premise that the state's tax system needs re-working. than wealthier people.

Copeland's proposal might not satisfy 'that group's concerns about the state's unfair burden on the poor, but he says it's the only truly equitable way to tax. Copeland, a longtime tax reform proponent, wants a constitutional amendment to abolish all state and local taxes, replace the revenues those taxes generate with flat-rate sales and income taxes, and permit no changes in the rates or types of Please see TAX, next page. Cloudy, continued warm today. High in lower 70s. Rain tonight.

Low in upper 40s. Rain and cooler Monday. High in upper 50s. Details on Page 2A. NASHVILLE David Copeland isn't exactly tilting at windmills with his proposal to abolish the state's taxing system and start from scratch, but he acknowledges success is not immediately within his grasp.

"My role, at this point, as much as anything else, is educational," said Copeland, a Republican State House member from Chattanooga. Copeland will ask the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee Tuesday to Stae-Sine taverns trigger unending violence home free when they cross a state line. Often they're right. Deputies are often miles from the state line when the violence erupts and by the time they arrive the suspects are across the line. Sheriffs on both sides of the line depend on each other when the call goes out.

Without the cooperation of sheriffs in Hardin and McNairy counties in Tennessee, Alcorn and Tishomingo in Mississippi and Lauderdale in Alabama, fighting crime would almost be impossible, sheriffs say. "It does pose a problem living at the state line," Lee said. "There's a lot less activity going on compared to 20 years ago, but then there's fewer beer joints and no bootlegging. "It's a problem that's always going to be here." send a man around the back door and wait in case they try to run. It gets pretty rough sometimes." About 30 percent of the yearly arrests in McNairy County may involve people from Mississippi, said McNairy County Sheriff Robert Lee.

In Hardin County, 25-30 percent of the people arrested may be from Alabama, said Davidson. Meanwhile, about 20 percent of the arrests in Mississippi in one year might involve Tennessee residents. "We've had two beer-joint murders since I've been sheriff where the victims and the perpetrators and the majority of the witnesses were from Mississippi," said Lee. The line itself hinders sheriffs' efforts to fight the crime. Criminals think they're would begin In the bars and often were settled outside with a blast from a gun.

Today, about 15 taverns are open in Hardin County, many near the state line. McNairy County holds about 10 bars. While McNairy and Hardin county sheriffs say there's less crime today, on Friday and Saturday nights the line still lives up to its reputation. "Sometimes we'll get a call about a fight and there will be two women on the floor fighting with about 25 to 30 people standing around watching," said Hardin County Sheriff Sammie Davidson. "They'll be pulling hair, scratching and screaming," Davidson said.

When the deputies walk in a smoke-filled joint, "everyone screams, 'Here comes the law, Davidson said. "Sometimes we'll By Wlnslow M. Mason Jr. Sun reporter SAVANNAH Hardin and McNairy county residents near the state line live in an inescapable hotbed of crime that won't die. Fueled by a string of taverns that pull in thirsty souls from Mississippi's dry counties, the Tennessee-Mississippi state line sparks a firestorm of violence and crime that officers, since before McNairy County's legendary Sheriff Buford Pusser, con- tinually battle.

The state line's violent reputation was born in the 1930s, according to McNairy County historian Bill Wagoner, when laws prohibiting beer and whiskey spawned the joints that haunt sheriffs today. Fights Tennessee pwO I Savanna!) Sslmec I I I 1 McNairy Hardin I L. QuMi Mai Alcorn I Mississippi I 3 i fa Sun graphics by Q.J. Yadamec to-.