Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 21

I 1 ft i .5 I Sections (Chicago (Tribune Thursday, December 1, 1983 Du Peso A AT son The parties are over, court rules Wauconda 'church' cited for violations of liquor law he uncovers test error By John O'Brien and Edward Baumann private affairs held at the house. He said that he was a minister of the Universal Life Church and contended that the house was a church. "This effectively closes down any and all gatherings at the Sholls' property," said Joseph Waldeck, Sholl's attorney. "I would like to appeal." Sholl said, but he conceded that he might not be able to afford it. Sholl called the private parties harmless fun.

"I did everything I could to make this socially and morally acceptable to the community," he said. But Barents and neighbors complained that le parties corrupted the young and were a nuisance. WEDNESDAY'S ruling came in response to a complaint filed by the state's attorney last year alleging that Sholl was violating a 1981 court order limiting the parties to less than 50 persons and prohibiting him from selling liquor, said Margaret Mullen, an assistant state's attorney. After that order was issued, Sholl aid extensive remodeling to meet the fire code, had hosts supply liquor and spent $30 to become a minister of the Universal Life Church, The Universal Life Church was begun in California in the 1960s and has been used by persons seeking exemptions from the draft and from tax laws. But Mullen argued that even a church must comply with building codes and that holding the parties constituted a commercial activity run for money rather than a church activity.

Serious violations of the building code remained, she said. Block said that having hosts supply liquor was a device to circumvent the few because Sholl was collecting an admission charge at the door. By James Kane A $395,000 MANSION In Wauconda, described by its owner as a church but labeled a "party house" by authorities and neighbors, was ordered shut Wednesday by a Lake County Circuit Court judge. Judge William D. Block issued a summary judgment in favor of allegations by the state's attorney's office that parties held at the house were in violation of liquor laws and building and zoning codes.

There was no need for a trial because of facts admitted to in pretrial depositions by David Sholl, who opened the house in 1979, Block said. SIIOLL AND his wife, Nancy, charged $8 per person for admission to birthday parties, wedding receptions and other CHICAGO POLICEMEN accepted the word of a suspect 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: i i wearing mem 01 involvement in the blaze. But documents subpoenaed in a teaerai inquiry say the sus- David Sholl: "I would like to appeal" ruling prohibiting parties. v- if pect, 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's assurances that the three chief Domberg 2d Democratic slate promised by black group By David Axelrod and Thorn Shanker ltJ.

Mi 1 1 r-, 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 shop, 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 Ithe Department ofl 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 Times "depicted nothing unusual." ACCORDING TO the report filed by Stankey.

aa4 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," Stankey's report said. Sgt. Batch, who Is on sick leave from the department. told The Tribune he signed his name to the "unfounded'' report submitted by Stankey because he "relied" on- Continued on page 4, this sectloa utmuinAiit committeemen agreea 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. Washington then spoke with one of the committeemen by phone, confirming terms of the deal, according to the sources.

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. "VRDOLYAK SAID, 'Do we trust these 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 op-posed the Ca Ka nai4u nfifrtW TT. 11 Bus crash injures 16 Tntua phMo by Frank Hm 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. 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 wiv (fait OkUlA WIU1 IVC, IUXI I XU5 lUUTCU VI Continued on page i. this section By Patricia Tennison when two of four prisoner volunteers and another person who tried the device decided to lake showers. "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 detil for $100,000. BUT THE IDEA Is stlU sound, Goss said. The 4-ounce battery-controlled device is 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 prison er 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, Goes said. "The water shorted the battery that controls the transmitter," he said. "We're going back to waterproofing the Continued on page 4, this sectloa 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 Forgotten Children's Fund Donations may bo sent to 435 N. Michigan Chicago, IN. 60611 forever' Our 1 Ju I if' I if- i i'i 7 4 I I 1 1 I Si' 1 1' i By Bob Wiedrich FOR REV! John Kobus of Visitation Catholic Ctrarch, Thursday is an anniversary of sorrow. On this date 23 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 92 children and three nuns perished in a blazing inferno that within minutes transformed the school, packed with 1,200 pupils, Into a 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 burns. "We smelled 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.

Some 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. "I remember some things vividly, some not so vividlyall 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 story. LESS THAN TWO years after the blase, 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 Fire scene, Ladders extend to almost every window on the toD floor of 9K uanr lalr Tribun pfxxo by ttim KM 3 Bor Rebuilt from the ashes, the school continues to operate at 909 N. Avers next to Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church right.

Our Lady of the Angels School as the blaze is fought on Dec. 1, 1958. Continued on page this sectloa 1.