Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 47

Section 2 (Chicago (Tribune Thursday, December 1, 1983 At probe son Library chief lashed for travel costs $56,000 spent 'in two trips by staff, Burke charges he uncovers U.I I). I test error By John O'Brien and Edward Baumann By Thorn Shanker LIBRARY Commissioner Amanda Rudd came under fire Wednesday after disclosing that she approved trips for 70 librarians attending a June convention in Los Angeles and another 45 who went to a January seminar in San Antonio. The trips were funded wholly or in part from a $47,000 Library Commission travel fund for 1983, Rudd told aldermen at a hearing of the Chicago City Council Finance Committee. But the chairman of the committee, Aid. Edward Burke 14th, estimated that the trips cost $56,000.

The disclosure, which comes at a time of budget problems for the library system, follows reports that Rudd's chauffeur-driven car has cost the library more than $93,000 in the last two years. RUDD CAME UNDER the most intense grilling of any city official to date in the budget hearings, fnclud-ig an accusation from Aid. George Hagopian 30th that she was "throwing money around like popcorn." Although compensation for the library conventioners varied some received time off with pay, some received air fare, some received reimbursement for registration fees and some received stipends for meals an aide to the commissioner said that "most" received air fare and registration costs. The San Antonio event was the American Library Association's midwinter convention, and 3,178 librarians from around the country attended. In past years, the' midwinter session had been held in Chicago but was moved to another city when the Illinois General Assembly rejected the Equal Rights Amendment.

Many national organizations took similar action in retali- ation for the vote. The Los Angeles meeting was the ALA annual five-day convention and it was attended by 6,681 librarians. The ALA breaks down attendance only by state and the figures showed that 480 library personnel attended from Illinois, including the 70 public library workers from Chicago. The 1982 convention in Philadelphia drew 543 from Illinois. BURKE SAID the number of public library workers who attended the conventions "was most distressing." After Continued on page 4, this section CHICAGO POLICEMEN accepted the word of a ius- pect in a 1978 arson Investigation that he and two other suspects, one of them a former Chicago policeman who now admits having set the fire, had passed lie detector Amanda Rudd: Intense grilling over travel budget.

tests cieanng inem oi involvement in the blaze. But documents subpoenaed in a federal inquiry say the suspect, Robert "Dave" Domberg, who collected $279,878 in insurance payments after his Roseland area, auto parts store burned down, never took a polygraph test and that tests given to the two other suspects proved inconclusive. Raymond Stankey, the police investigator who termed the possibility of arson "unfounded," confirmed in a telephone interview that he had relied, in writing his report, on Domberg' a surances that the three chief Domberg f- i il i.V it t'A. vUy Blacks to form own slate for county races By David Axelrod and Thorn Shanker BLACK DEMOCRATIC committeemen agreed Wednesday to fashion their own slate of Cook County candidates, while word leaked of an unsuccessful, last-minute attempt by Mayor Harold Washington to strike a deal with party regulars over their county ticket. Also Wednesday, a new volley was fired between foes and supporters of Washington, this time over the mayor's continued reliance on the political advice of Clarence McClain.

who resigned as an aide to the mayor last month when his criminal record was bared. Sources in the regular Democratic organization said Wednesday that Washington, who last week publicly vowed to make no deals with the regulars in exchange for the slating of his allies, offered an accommodation Monday but was rebuffed. McClain. working out of a room in the Bismarck Hotel, met with two white committeemen an hour before Cook County Democratic Chairman Edward R. Vrdolyak was to convene the public slatemaking session, sources said.

McCLAIN TOLD THE committeemen that the mayor was willing to support the Democratic ticket, including incumbent Richard M. Daley for state's attorney and Illinois Senate President Philip Rock for the U.S. Senate. In exchange, McClain told the committeemen, the mayor wanted Aid. Wilson Frost 34th slated for recorder of deeds, Circuit Judge Charles Freeman chosen for the Illinois Appellate Court, and another black placed on the ticket for the Metropolitan Sanitary District.

suspects Domberg, Thomas Brooks, the former policeman and a store clerk. Victor Eaton had passed lie detector tests clearing them of suspicion. In admitting to federal investigators that he doused the interior of the auto parts store with carburetor cleaning fluid and ignited it after much of the store's inventory had been removed to another Bhop, Brooks said he first disconnected the alarm and turned off the sprinkler system. STANKEY, WHO has since retired from the police department, said he included Domberg's assurances in his report without having seen the test results because he was in a hurry to leave on vacation. "I didn't want to leave the case hanging for 30 days," Stankey said.

"I kept calling him Domberg, four or five times. Then I talked to him on the phone and he mentioned that all three took the polygraph and passed. I just took him at his word. When you have a fire in a store like that, with oil and grease all over the place, well, how do you know what caused the fire? "I tried to get a crane from the Department of Streets and Sanitation to lift the roof and take a look. But they said no crane for two weeks, and I'm going on vacation in two days.

So when I talked to Domberg on the phone and he told me all three passed, that's when I wrote my report." In his report, Stankey also noted that newspaper photos of the fire that had appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times "depicted nothing unusual." ACCORDING TO the report filed by Stankey. and approved by his supervising sergeant, Earl Batch, Domberg "cooperated fully with reporting officers during all phases of the investigation." Stankey said investigators asked Domberg, Brooks and Eaton to submit to police polygraph exams, but the suspects asked instead to be tested by a private firm, John Reid Associates. "As long 'as the results would be obtainable to the reporting Investigators and the Chicago Police Department there were no objections' to this request," Continued on page 4, this section wasningion men spoke with one of the committeemen i -n by phone, confirming terms of the deal, according to the DllS CniSll HlJUfeS 10 Tntxjn photo by Fw HtnM driver were taken to hospitals for treatment of injuries. The driver, Charles Rutledge, told police he lost control of the bus when the brakes failed as he was headed southbound on Halsted Street. ffUUJ ICO.

But when the committeemen took the mayor's package back to their colleagues in Democratic headquarters on the hotel's fifth floor, the deal was rejected. Chicago Transit Authority officials examine the wreckage of a CTA bus Wednesday after it struck the stairway of a Rapid Transit station at Lake and Halsted Streets. Fifteen bus passengers and the Electronic shackles for felons give jailers a jolt "VRDOLYAK SAID, Do we trust these guyiT' and a lot of people said no," a Democratic leader familar with the deliberations recalled. "Washington already had ripped us up in public and said no deals, and then he came down 'with an offer at the last minute. It was too late." Another party leader said Vrdolyak vehemently opposed the deal.

So the party stuck with Rep. Harry "Bus" Yourell of Oak Lawn over Frost, while slating Freeman for the Appellate. Court and Ida McGowan, a black, tor the Continued on page 4, this section By Patricia Tennison AN ELECTRONIC shackle, designed to keep work-release prisoners honest by snitching if they wander too far from home, proved a washout in a recent Lake County test: If the prisoner takes a bath, the battery shorts. The unusual device would allow prisoners to stay home, "watched" by the ankle monitor that notes when they leave the house or turn off the gadget. But it failed when two of four prisoner volunteers and another person who tried the device decided to take showers.

strapped to the prisoner's ankle. It sends electronic messages to a receiver connected to the home telephone line that hooks into a monitoring computer in the sheriffs office. The computer hums along if the prisoner stays home. But unauthorized absences are noted on a printout at the end of the day, and the computer can tell if the prisoner removes the ankle device or disconnects the receiver box. What went wrong in the recent test in Lake County was the waterproofing, Goss said.

"The water shorted the battery that controls the transmitter," he said. "The machines malfunctioned within two days. After we found out what was wrong, we told the other two guys to keep one foot out of the tub," Lake County Sheriff Robert "Mickey" Babcox said. "It didn't work out as well as we expected." conceded Michael Goss, president and founder of the National Incarceration Monitor and Control Services an Albuquerque company that hasn't sold any of the devices, which are available in a 25-unit package deal for $100,000. BUT THE IDEA to still sound.

Uoss said. The 4-ounce battery-controlled device is "We're going back to waterproofing the whole box instead of waterproofing hist the transmitter Inside the box. It's stickier. It takes more time but we'll have to do it. "The manufacturer who's making them for us told me Wednesday that he'd have them ready by Monday." GOSS SAID THERE is no danger of electrocution from taking a bath while wearing the gadget, because it uses only a 9-volf battery "so low I doubt that you Continued on page 4, this section forgotten Children's Fund Donations may be sent to 435 N.

Michigan Chicago, IN. 60611 forever' Our Lady of Angels fire survivor JyT hid I I-! AO By Bob Wiedrich FOR REV. John Kobus of VUlUUon Catholic Church. Thursday is an anniversary of sorrow. On this date 25 years ago, he was a 7-year-old 2d grader in Our Lady of the Angels School in the Austin neighborhood.

It was the day on which 93 children and three nuns perished in a blazing inferno that within minutes transformed the school, packed with 1,200 pupils, into charnel house. Father Kobus' older brother, Milton, now an educator, was five years older and in the 7th grade. The brothers miraculously escaped injury, while more than a hundred surviving classmates suffered bums. "We smelted smoke," Father Kobus recalled. "We heard pupils hanging out of windows upstairs crying for help.

''I was a very scared little boy. I ran out a door into the street. Shortly after that, kids started Jumping from the windows. The children started panicking. "MEN ON THE STREET were trying to break the children's falls with their arms and their bodies.

Soma children who had escaped ran back into the building to find their brothers or sisters. "The firemen did a spectacular job. But the building was so old. And there weren't enough ladders. "Out on the street, as the crowds gathered, some of the parents were hysterical.

Many of the pupils were children of Italian immigrants. They spoke only a little English. And their parents spoke little English at all. "1 remember tome things vividly, some not so vivid-1 ly all the confusion on the streets, the cries and the screaming. I stayed until I saw my brother was safe and our grandfather came to find us.

The origin of the fire was never proved, but most investigators came to believe that it was started by a disturbed young pupil who confessed to the arson but later recanted his Btory. LESS THAN TWO years after the blaie, a phoenix of concrete, glass and steel rose from the ashes at 909 N. Avers Ave. A new school building was erected as a monument to the dead and to those who had battled to save lives at the risk of their own. A now-retired firefighter, Walter Roman, was at the Continued oa page this section i ,1 K-; Inbun pnaw Tribun pnoio by Wtfio KM Flra avctnt, 1858: Ladders extend to almost every window on the top floor of 25 tater: Rebuilt from the ashes, the school continues to operate at Our lady of me wigeis tcnooi as me Diaze is lougm on uec.

TSo3. yua n. vcrs next to Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church right. -a.