Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 1

Wisconsin State Journal City Editor: David Stoeffler, 252-6130 WISCONSIN Obituaries MONEY 3B 4B 8B 1B LOCAL Saturday, May 20, 1995 Borchardt jurors quit for night Jury deliberates four hours in murder-for-hire trial of Jefferson woman By Richard W. Jaeger Regional reporter JEFFERSON Jurors deliberated for nearly four hours Friday before retiring for the night in the murder-for-hire trial of Diane Borchardt, a Jefferson High School teacher's aide. Deliberations in the case were expected to resume today. Earlier Friday the jury, selected from St Croix County in northern Wisconsin because of publicity in Jefferson, heard the attorneys give their closing remarks. Borchardt, 46, is accused of hiring three teen-age boys to kill her estranged husband, Ruben Borchardt, for some $20,000 in insurance proceeds and two cars and some rings.

Diane Borchardt. Vest, a member of Diane Borchardt's high school study hall, testified to several meetings with her in which she asked him to help "get rid of or find someone to get rid of her husband. He also testified receiving money from her on the day before the murder. Jackson attacked that evidence, calling it unbelievable that he couldn't remember the amount of money in that exchange. "That's because there wasn't any," Jackson said.

Jackson told jurors they should consider other possible scenarios in the murder, including the idea that the trio went to the Borchardt home to burglarize it after finding out from Diane Borchardt the value of the property. There was testimony that she showed divorce papers to Josh Yanke. Jackson went on to challenge Vest's story, accusing the young man of "putting the blame on a school teacher," saying it might have been something he had seen on television, referring to the story about a Connecticut school teacher who had enticed one of her students to kill her husband after having sex with him. Jackson also blamed "society," saying it is no longer unusual for young people to go out and kill without any reason. Assistant District Attorney David Wambach attacked Jack son's remarks arguing "the defense woud have you believe this was a murder by misadventure." Wambach also challenged Jackson's suggestion of a burglary or robbery, asking why two of the three teens.

Vest and Yanke, would go to police and confess that they "were a part of a murder-for-hire killing" and not a burglary gone awry. Wambach went on to call the defense theory "murder by favor; or maybe murder by "You are not to search for doubt," Wambach charged. "You are to search for the truth for Ruben Borchardt," he continued, hesitating as he lifted a pic ture of Ruben Borchardt from beneath his podium and showed it to the jury. 'You are not to search for doubt. You are to search for the truth for Ruben David Wambach Assistant District Attorney The three, Douglas Vest Jr, 17; Michael Maldonado, 16; and Josh Yanke, 17; have been convicted in Ruben Borchardt's Easter 1994 murder.

In a rambling review of the state's evidence, Diane Borchardt's attoney, Robert Jackson of Oklahoma City, attacked the testimony of Vest, the state's only witness making a direct connection between the killing and Thompson expects cigarette tax bill Associated Press Gov. Tommy Thompson said Friday he would not be surprised if the Legislature sends him a bill calling for a cigarette tax increase. "But it's not going to be 50 cents a pack," Thompson said, referring to a proposal Wednesday by three Republican legislators to increase the excise tax by that amount Whether he signs the legislation into law depends on how big an increase and where the revenue would be spent, Thompson said. They said the extra $157 million in annual revenue would offset state government's medical expenses for welfare recipients, and help pay the Legislature's plan to increase state aid to public schools by $1.2 billion by 1997. A 50-cent boost would make Wisconsin's the highest cigarette tax in the nation at 88 cents a pack.

Two men arrested for robbing elderly Two men suspected of robbing an elderly Boscobel couple after tying them up Thursday were arrested in Milwaukee Friday morning, Grant County sheriffs officials said. Jon Cantwell, 23, and Todd Lagers-trom, 26, were arrested around 8:30 a.m. and jailed on robbery, burglary and false imprisonment charges stemming from Thursday's incident, officials said. Officials Friday night couldn't provide any details on the arrested men, such as where they live, or how they were found and arrested. According to the Boscobel police department, the two entered the home of a married couple, both 72, around 8 a.m.

The two men tied up the couple and forced them to lie on the floor while they ransacked the house for money, police said. 1 "fee- UW surgery made civil, first-rate Folkert Belzer cleared hurdles By William R. Wineke Wisconsin State Journal Whenever the UW-Madison Department of Sur gery is mentioned these days, the department name is linked with laudatory adjectives. It is bes( known as one of the world's premier organ transplant centers, but its surgeons also have national reputations in equally important but less exotic specialities. When Dr.

Folkert Belzer was recruited as chairman of the surgery department in 1974, the department's reputation was far more modest "At the time, it was not considered to be the best job. We were located in the old hospital on University Avenue. We had no parking. We had no air conditioning. The salaries weren't the highest," Belzer recalls.

"The urology unit had four beds and two toilets. So physical conditions weren't good. But, the positive side was that there were no real barriers to developing an outstanding Grads gravitating to primary care For years, health policy experts have been wringing their hands about the fact that too few doctors were choosing primary care practices and too many were choosing exotic specialties. There are some preliminary indications that things have changed, however. This year, 58 percent of the 153 graduating seniors of the UW-Madison Medical School have chosen residencies in pediatrics, general medicine and primary medicine.

A year ago, 55 percent of the seniors chose primary care residencies. Nor is the Wisconsin experience an isolated phenomenon. Nationally, 55 percent of graduating sen Belzer Slain officers honored iors this year are going into primary care. What makes all this significant is that it was just a couple of years ago only about one of three young doctors The department had no division of plastic surgery. It had no faculty practice plan: A UW surgeon who performed hundreds of operations a year was paid the same as one who performed few surgeries.

Belzer, 64, will retire July 1, and there is absolutely no question that he developed an outstanding surgical department He pioneered the transplant service here he specializes in kidney transplants and built the UW into the third-largest transplant center in the country. He recruited dozens of outstanding surgeons to the university Drs. Hans Sollinger, the pancreas surgeon and Munci Kalayoglu, the liver surgeon, are examples and the surgical team has some of the world's best success rates. "The first criterion for being in this department is that you must be an outstanding surgeon," Belzer said. "I believe deeply in research but, if you need a coronary bypass operation, you don't care how many National Institutes of Health grants the surgeon has, you care whether he or she is an outstanding Belzer's commitment to research is more than administrative.

In 1987 he developed what is now Please see BELZER, Page 2B Above: Uniformed law enforcement personnel at the Capitol Friday present a wreath during a ceremony in honor of officers who died in the line of duty. Gov. Tommy Thompson, Attorney General James E. Doyle Jr. and Milwaukee Police Chief Philip Arreola spoke to the crowd of several hundred.

The fifth annual Wisconsin Law Enforcement Memorial Day also marked the groundbreaking for a Capitol Square memorial. Right: As Thompson and others spoke, about 10 women carrying placards protested the removal of a statue of Miss Forward from the site where the memorial to police is to be placed. The statue of Miss Forward is to be placed inside the statehouse, protecting it from the weather. Slate Journal photosCAROLYN PFLASTERER Stoughton celebrates its heritage at Syttende Mai WILLIAM chose primary care. WINEKE The predictions were whhmmh that things would get worse.

Instead, apparently, they are getting better. Dr. Philip Farrell, interim dean of the UW-Medical School, said he is gratified by the student preferences because "we have recently revised our curriculum to emphasize primary care medicine." But what the school did wasn't terribly dramatic. It put young doctors in better touch with practicing physicians in the field, and made some other relatively minor changes in curriculum. What the Medical School did not do was resort to coercive measures to force its students to choose primary care.

The fact that more young doctors are choosing primary care specialities won't, in itself, solve the problems facing medicine. Even if more than half the students choose primary care year after year, it will still take decades to change the overall mix of primary carespecialist doctors. What the UW-Medical School experience does indicate, however, is that young people who study medicine really want to be doctors. If their training programs emphasize contact with practicing physicians, the students, apparently, will be motivated to emulate them. Wineke covers religion and medicine for the State Journal.

Telephone: 252-6146. Visitors fill up Information The hardanger (pronounced exhibit is part with rommegrot, sotsuppe and lefse JjBE of Syttende Mai, Stoughton's three-day celebration of the Norwegian Constitution signed in 1814. South of Madison on Highway 51, the city has held Syttende Mai each May since 1952. Before that the festival was held on and off from 1868 until World War II. As many as 100,000 people are expected to attend the festival this weekend about 10 times the population of Stoughton.

On Friday, the locals and tourists made full use of the marvelous weather, strolling happily among the exhibits, demonstrations, brat-and-burger tents and sales. Over at the Mandt Lodge, the Sons of Norway were getting ready for their lunchtime smorgasbord, which starts at 10:30 today. Pearl Elvekrog, a former qieen of Syttende Mai, said they Syttende Mai continues today and Sunday in Stoughton. south of Madison on Highway 51. A detailed list of events is available at exhibits and booths throughout downtown Stoughton; admission buttons, which will get you into most events, are $2.

have enough food to serve 1,000 people. She ticked off a mouthwatering menu, including specialties such as rommegrot a porridge served with butter, cinnamon and sugar; and sotsuppe a thin pudding loaded with raisins, prunes, raspberries, lemon and orange slices. "And lefse! Good grief, I've got to remember the lefse," she said. Across the street at the senior center, a lefse-making demonstration was about to end. Ruby and Mike Hauge guessed they'd madtabout 120 of them By Elizabeth Brixey Regional reporter STOUGHTON You can't cheat at hardanger you'll get caught, says Donna Olson.

The hardanger embroidery instructor was minding the exhibit at the Stoughton Senior Center Friday and setting the laity straight "It is not a difficult skill, but it is a perfectionist skill," said Olson, describing the delicate form of openwork that started in Norway about 200 years ago. "You do not make errors," she said surely, "because when you get to the point of cutting the threads the stitches must be lined up or it will all fall apart" Slate Journal photo1 ROGER TURNER WISCONSIN Fri. Supercash: 5-8-11-17-30-31 Odds at matching all six numbers tor $250,000: 1 in973.B96 Fri. Pick Three: 0-2-3. Odds of matching all three numbers for $500: 1 in 1.000 Poworbafl and Megabucks numbers are drawn Wednesday and Saturday nights.

The estimated Powerball lackpot tor the next drawing is $50 million. The estimated Megabucks jackpot is J5 2 milNon For the last drawing numbers, dial 1608) 266-7777 IUJNOIS Fri. Pick Three Midday: 0-3-8; Pick Three Evening. 8-2-2; Pick Four Midday: 9-2-3-2; Pick Four Evening: 9-4-4-1; LittkLotto: 6-9-18-22-27; Est. Lotto $8 numon.

'( Dianne Anderson of Stoughton shows an example of hardanger embroidery to Otti Ney, a visitor from Sutter Creek, at Syttende Mai Friday in Stoughton. In the background is Linda Peterson of McFartand.j.