The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 111

SOUTHLAND Cos Angelee (Times JENNY: Parents Mount Search for Assailant Who Shattered Girl's Life 14 Part II Sunday, January 10, 1988 The other is the sallow, twisted young woman left in the tragedy's wake. Jenny Pratt is making progress these days. Her parents say the girl's memory is returning day by day. On a visit home from the Through it all, however. Crisafi has stuck by his suspicions, saying he has the right suspects but simply lacks that last shred of proof.

"These are not Mexican Mafia," he said. "These are little punks who have money, who can go out and buy drugs, who aren't supervised home each day. the couple realize that she will make the most progress in the hospital. Each day, Jenny undergoes intensive therapy. She is relearning math with flash cards.

She also is steadily regaining the use of her hands. Her parents hope she will begin to learn to walk again in a few months. But for now. her legs are in full-length casts that are progressively stretching out her seizure-wracked muscles. During a recent visit, she sat in her wheelchair, a red zipper purse on her lap filled with everyday articles she is becoming familiar with again a writing pen, a bar of soap, a hair brush.

When a photographer asked to take a picture, she flashed a dazzling smile, holding it until the clicking stopped. She read for a few visitors from a new book, "Where the Bear?" When the photographer, who en tertained her by barking like a dog and trumpeting like an elephant, said goodby, Jenny looked up. "You're the nicest person I ever met," she said. "Bye. Have fun." Diane Strom said the doctors have said Jenny could regain 85 of her former mental and physical capacity within the next decade.

A hard road of therapy lies ahead. "If I didn't have it in me that she'll be better, I don't think I could make it." Diane Strom says. "If you lose hope, you don't have anything left." Jenny's friends visit occasionally, but it's hard for them. "You see Jenny now and she doesn't know who the hell we are." said Sydney Stanger. "You hope that one day she'll remember.

These are the best years of her life. She's going to be 17 soon. She should have a driver's license. She should be having fun." 'It's so hard when you know who it was, but you're missing one little piece of the puzzle. Just about anyone you talk to says they know who did it.

I think there's hundreds of people now who know who did Garry Strom "LIGHTNING STRIKE" by Robert Taylor by their parents, whose parents could care less about them. All these kids are 16 or 17 going on 30." Several of the youths Crisafi suspects of participating in the incident are still students at San Dieguito High School. In the weeks and months since the accident, rumors about who was involved spread like wildfire through the student body. "Everyone had a pretty good idea of who did it," said Lightbody, a junior at the school. Lightbody was so sure, in fact, that she decided to make a point.

Accompanied by Penny Pratt, Jenny's 17-year-old sister, Lightbody says she stole up to the house of the teen-age youth she suspects of throwing the board. They tacked a poster to the front door bearing two sharply contrasting photographs. One is a tan and smiling Jenny before the accident. rr Drunk hospital on Christmas Day, she recognized the house for the first time. Her speech, slurred until a few months ago, is now practically back to normal.

"It seems like she gets better each week," her mother says. "But the better she gets, the more she realizes what she's incapable of." In November, she was transferred to Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas, a few miles from her parents' house. Medical bills in the past nine months have mounted to about $400,000. The Stroms say most of the total will be paid by insurance, but that coverage is expected to last only 10 more months. "I don't like to think about it," Diane Strom says, gazing off wistfully.

"I feel like Scarlett O'Hara: I'll think about it tomorrow." Though Jenny pleads to come Driving? who had taken some personal possessions from Croft's apartment. The board-throwing incident, Crisafi suspects, stemmed from that argument. On Aug. 13. Crisafi and another private investigator confronted Croft and demanded that he talk about the accident.

During a subsequent tape-recorded interview, Croft revealed the names of three people he saw in the white pickup, including the teen-ager who threw the board, Crisafi said. After that apparent confession, Crisafi called Carlsbad police. But when Byler interviewed Croft that same day, he recanted, saying he never got a glimpse of the suspects' faces. Croft said Crisafi used threats of jail to force him to talk. "I was so scared, I just made up a name, which I shouldn't have done," Croft said last week.

"I told them someone I thought maybe could have done it But I'm not going to point the finger at someone unless I really know. And if I knew, I'd tell, I swear to God on a Bible." Lie Detector Test Byler said Croft subsequently took a polygraph test and passed it. "The tactics the private investigators used in interviewing him were totally unacceptable," Byler said. "You don't take a victim of a crime and threaten him. Basically, I fell that the value of what they obtained and the way they obtained it was worthless from an investigative standpoint." Byler also rejected criticism from the Stroms that police manhandled the board that hit their daughter, smearing fingerprints that might have led to an assailant.

He said the 2-by-4 was "processed as a weapon in a serious crime" and that no fingerprints were found, primarily because "we're dealing with a rough -textured, worn piece of wood." "Any inferences that we have done less than our best on this is not true," Byler said. "It's a difficult case. What happens is that rumors just start flying. We've been going around for months tracking down rumors and fourth -or fifth-hand accounts of who did it. But as far as something to build a case on, it's not even close." Croft, meanwhile, complains that the gossip floating around town has labeled him the villain.

"Instead of being a popular guy, I'm now the bad guy," said Croft, who is trying to make it now as a construction worker. "This is like rumor capital. I've never seen a little beach town so rumored out. "If someone was out to get me for some drug thing, it would have been way more professional, not a lot of rookie kids on a truck." i 7 mm 3 minute RECORDED LEGAL HOTLINE explains ihc laws and where to turn Tor help. imt Continued from Page 13 al a small shop in the commercial beehive along nearby El Camino Real to give her boyfriend money to buy food or pay for gas, friends said.

When Christmas rolled around, she lavished him with gifts, they said. Different Story Croft, meanwhile, paints a different picture. "She used to come over a lot," he said. "We were like brother and sister, it was that close. "This whole town, every guy, every surfer, goes out with younger girls," he said.

"It's not like I'm the only one who does it." Moreover. Croft said he and Jenny steered clear of any involvement with drugs. As part of his probation. Croft is subject to drug tests several times each month. Croft said.

On April 25, after a particularly testy run-in with her parents over Croft, Jenny got a ride from a girlfriend to his apartment in La Costa, the upscale community on Carlsbad's southern flank. As midnight approached, the couple began their fateful ride back to Jenny's house on a motorcycle borrowed from a friend. As they slowed for the intersection of Rancho Santa Fe and Oli-venhain roads, the white pickup filled with teen-agers roared up from behind. Croft said he never saw it coming. "1 never saw the stick.

I never saw who was in the truck, it went by that fast," he said in a telephone interview last week. "When I saw Jenny, I was freaking out crying. I wish to God it was me instead of her." When Diane and Garry Strom arrived at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, doctors told them that Jenny was brain dead and would probably live only a few more hours. The couple say they never gave up hope, even during the weeks the girl remained in a coma, attached to a jumble of life-support equipment. Eventually, Jenny came around, but the damage to her brain prompted her body to contort into a fetal ball.

Only weeks of tedious therapy began to correct the problem. As Jenny began to make progress, she was transferred to Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, her parents making the 100-mile round trip each day to be by her bedside. The couple's woes were compounded when Garry Strom left his job last fall as an assistant vice president with a financial services company after a run-in with his bosses over the hours he was able to put in. The family has survived since on savings, the help of friends and on what cash Garry can make doing odds and ends around the neighborhood. As the weeks ticked by, the Stroms became increasingly troubled that Carlsbad police were not making more headway on the case.

"It's not like the TV programs," Garry said. "Unless it's someone like the governor's daughter, it doesn't seem that you get the attention or focus it deserves." Investigator Hired During the summer they hired Louie Crisafi, a private investigator with San Diego-based Investigators Intelligence Network, and were almost immediately pleased with the progress he seemed to be making. Crisafi quickly developed a theory that he continues to expound-that Croft was the target of the 2-by-4 and Jennifer Pratt simply got in the way. According to Crisafi, the boyfriend was in a fight shortly before the accident with a teen-age friend A limited edition collector print signed by four distinguished P-38 pilots. Jay Robbins, Gerald Brown, John Mitchell and Rex Barber If It's Happening In Business We're There.

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