The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 13

The Boston Globe Monday. May 21, 1979 13 Economy Page 15 MIKE BARMCLE Gas? Depends who's talkin The thieves that nobody will arrest next Sunday and Monday, during the holiday weekend. Despite widely divergent views on whether there is a "real" gas shortage and what caused it observers on all sides agree on one thing: Californians have a lot to do with the current situation. supply," said Ken Black of the Bay State Gasoline Retailers representing 1100 of the Commonwealth's estimated 3500 stations. "There's gas if you look for it You may have to wait a little bit for it" he said.

He advised motorists to buy on weekdays. He expects only about 15 of the stations in the state to open Stations Mere open, but you had to look "With all the confusion, many people do not believe there is a shortage. They don't understand," said Harold J. Keohane, director of the Department of Energy's Boston office. "How can you discuss if a gas shortage is possible when you've already got one in California?" One oil company spokeswoman characterized that state as "a society hysterically dependent on the automobile." "California set off panic buying," said John Buckley, head of Northeast Petroleum Industries and chairman of a newly appointed Department of Energy advisory committee on home heating oil He said many California service stations exhausted their gasoline allotments for April and closed for a few days before the end of the month.

When the stations reopened with their May gas allotments the buying surge began, according to Buckley. "California uses a billion gallons of gasoline a month. In the first two and a half days of panic buying, Californians bought 200 million gallons 20 percent -of the month's supply," he said. GAS, Page 20 Federal officials, state officials, oil company spokesmen, independent experts, service station operators everyone has something different to say about gasoline. The situation at this point is there is a great deal of confusion about exactly how much gasoline is coming into Massachusetts for resale to motorists," said Harriett Stanley, of the state Energy Office, in an interview last week.

"No one knows exactly how much has come in. "Meanwhile the public has become alarmed," said Stanley, who spent last week working on the state's soon-to-be-announced emergency gas conservation program. Adding to that alarm are increasingly tight supplies due to reduced gas production and increased customer demand, higher prices at the pumps, horror stories about panic buying in California, and forecasts that many Massachusetts' stations will close during much of Memorial Day Weekend, the start of the summer tourist season. Adding to the problems, government and industry experts fear, are millions of motorists who are hoarding gasoline by topping off their tanks. "Do not top off your tanks, because there is Scattered reports from elsewhere in New England indicted that earlier predictions about the number of stations that would be open yesterday they ranged from a low of 25 percent in Rhode Island to a high of 64 percent in Vermont were also accurate.

Along major highways, Hoover said, gasoline was generally in good supply. Every other station was open along Connecticut's Merritt Parkway system while all stations were open on the Massachusetts Turnpike. "I think you'll see the real story next weekend," Hoover said, when drivers will be facing the Memorial Day holiday. New Englanders had to do a bit of locking around for an open gasoline station yesterday, but were generally able to find one. Richard Hoover, executive director of the American Automobile said a spot check of his agency's radio-equipped service trucks about 4 p.m.

yesterday indicated that earlier predictions were correct and some 40 percent of Massachusetts gasoline stations were open. Where there were limits on purchases, Hoover said, drivers were generally able to buy $5 worth. Hoover said the truck crews were finding nearly every other station in metropolitan areas open and about 35 percent in suburban areas. 5 die as Navy copter crashes in N.H. field iyif v.

if 1 LONDONDERRY, N.H. A US Navy helicopter crashed in a "ball of fire" in an open field here yesterday morning killing all five crewmen aboard. The Navy identified the victims, all married men who live in the Norfolk area as Lt. Cdm. Lynwood H.

Duncan, 34, originally of Greenboro, N.C.; Lt. Cdm. James P. Hogan, 34, of Davenport Iowa; Lt. Paul L.

Mellott, 31, of Funkstown, Airman Michael J. of and Airman Paul J. of San Jose, Calif. The HH2-Delta helicopter, known as the Seasprite, disintegrated in an explosion when it hit the ground in a sparsely populated section of Londonderry at 9:35 a.m., officials said. Dan Pevear, 21, who was inside a house 100 yards from the crash scene, said he heard the chopper engine sputter and die.

Then "all of a sudden, we heard it hit, and there was an explosion," he said. Phyllis O'Brien, who also lives nearby said, "We thought it was going to take the roof off the house it was so loud. The whole house and the windows vibrated. It sounded like it was going to land right on top of us." Charred debris scattered across the field. Only the helicopter tail section carrying the letters NAVY remained intact, police said.

A Navy spokesman, Lt. Commander James Lowis at the Norfolk, Naval Air Station, said the Seasprite crashed shortly after taking off from Westover Air Force Base where it had refueled. The aircraft, assigned to the Light Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron 30 HSL-30) in Norfolk, was on a training mission enroute to the Naval Air Station in Last week, while sitting in a federal courtroom listening to a big stiff named Tony Ciulla do an impersonation of a weasel, I became bored with the rehearsed testimony and went out into the halls to wander. Courthouses and hospital emergency rooms are two sites that cater to human beings in critical condition. A few floors below Tony Ciulla and the race-fixing trial, I bumped into an acquaintance who is waiting to find out whether the government is going to charge him with interstate car theft He had just been in a room with his lawyer and a government lawyer and by now he was sick because, of course, both lawyers were doing their best to scare him; one, out of his money, the other out of his freedom.

"How long have they been after you?" he was asked. "Off and on," he answered, "about three years. I bought a couple big Caddies to put on my lot, and it turns out they came from the parking lot of Three River Stadium in Pittsburgh. "How the hell did I know they were stolen? The guy I bought 'em from had the titles and everything. Except they weren't the right titles for the cars I bought Now' they're trying to say I'm the head of a nationwide stolen car ring." Downstairs, near the WANTED posters, the paper was for sale.

There was a story on the front page about maybe having to pay 90 cents for home heating oil this winter and, inside my head, was the thought that the bosses of the oil companies should be upstairs getting processed for a trip to Danbury federal prison. But even if you had all the lawyers in the goverment working for you against Shell, Mobil and Exxon, they would probably not even know where to begin looking. Car theft is simple compared to the extortion of the oil monopoly. "Do you have subpoena power over the company records?" Ed Markey, a congressman frpm Maiden who is upset about all the lying, was asked. "No, not really," Markey answered.

"What we really need is a thing called 'vertical accountability' telling us how much the oil companies are putting into refining, production, marketing. The government has never deemed it worthy to make that analysis. "We regulate local utilities like Mass. Electric, and we allow the major utilities, the multinationals, to operate unregulated. We allow them to escape the hard, tough scrutiny.

We put more money into enforcing and regulating local home heating dealers, small gas station owners than we do into enforcing and regulating the multinationals, And all we have to go by are their numbers and figures. It's crazy." Carter, the incompetent town manager who sits in the White House, does nothing; clearly, because he comes from the boom town of Plains, Ga. population 1500 and does not understand what it is like to freeze. Or pay prices that amount to blackmail; prices you would not pay unless someone had a gun on you or had something you could not live without. Mondale, the No.

2 man, is a good fellow who does understand. But Carter won and, therefore, he probably tells Mondale that he knows more. The people keep getting lies instead of a break. Prices continue on their absurd path toward national bankruptcy. And the greedy oil barons steal with both hands.

"They told us that if we allowed oil to be decontrolled that we would have as much as we need, and the average price hike wouldn't be more than a nickel. Now we have shortages and look what happened to the prices," Eddie Markey was saying. "It's an international shell game they're playing with us. And under the President's plan the worst that will happen to the oil companies will be a huge profit and the absolute worst will be an outrageous profit. "Under Carter's plan," said Markey, "starting on June 1, they're going to be allowed to increase the price on old oil, oil already drilled for, already paid for; instead of $6 a barrel, they're going to be able to charge $13 a barrel.

Now where is the incentive to drill new wells in that? "It's estimated they'll have $15.4 billion in new revenue because of this between now and 1985. And under Carter's windfall profit tax, they'll pay taxes of $1.6 billion on that new money. That's a tax rate of about 9 or 10 percent. "I think Jimmy Carter just has a fundamental mis-perception of the needs of the people of this country," Eddie Markey was saying. "The people who are getting hurt are the working-class men and women.

And Carter promised us he'd reform the energy system. And he promised us he'd do something about hospital costs. And these are the major corporate areas where he hasn't done anything. And when there's an oil price increase or a serious illness in someone's home, that does more to affect a person's optimism about their lives and their children's lives than any marginal tax decrease that might come about because of a Proposition 13." (UPI photo) Air Force personnel carry away body of one of five Navy reservists killed in helicopter crash in Londonderry, N.H., yesterday, Weymouth antinuclear protesters urge reopening of Edgar station town's tax rolls much of it appeared to be a buildup for the Clamshell Alliance's demonstration against the company's Pilgrim nuclear plants next month. State Rep.

Richard Roche (D-Springfield), a member of the Legislature's Energy Committee and a former nuclear power plant worker, told the gathering nuclear power industry is on the ropes. The way to finish them off is to force Boston Edison to adopt alternatives to Pilgrim." "Although it's in their interest to close Edgar," said Ted Dimon of the Clamshell Alliance, "it's not in ours. The broader issue is stopping Pilgrim 2 and nuclear plants all around the country." Dimon moderated the meeting along with Carol King of South Weymouth, a member of the recently-formed Edgar Energy Alliance. construct a second nuclear power plant at Plymouth. State Sen.

Allan R. McKinnon (D-Wey-mouth) termed the Pilgrim 2 plant "a $2-billion white elephant that is not needed when we already have a power plant that can do the job." Barry Feldman, a Clamshell Alliance economist, recounted the studies Boston Edison did prior to shutting the Edgar station last year. "The whole time," Feldman said, "they never considered anything but how quickly they could shut it down," even though, he said, Edison's own engineers recommended keeping the coal-turned-oil plant running through 1991. Although the rally was focused on bringing pressure on Boston Edison to reopen the Edgar Station its closing, Selectman William B. Barry noted, had taken $38 million off the By Michael Kenney Globe Staff Antinuclear activists and Weymouth residents rallied yesterday to urge the reopening of the Edgar power plant rather than the construction of the Pilgrim 2 nuclear power plant.

The rally, held in a natural amphitheater next to Weymouth's town hall, attracted some 150 persons, about evenly divided between Clamshell Alliance activists and local residents, most of them young people. Speakers from both groups traced a connection between Boston Edison's decision to close the 55-year-old Edgar station in North Weymouth, once New England's largest power plant, and its announcement that it would need to "'(l i liv BSSKW4StafaSa.uMMH. Defense lawyer says there's another suspect Conn, mass murder trial beginning Lottery Numbers Saturday's number: 6954 Saturday's payoffs KxactOrdw Any Ordf All 4 digits $5274 All 4 digits $220 First or last 3 $738 First 3 digits $123 Any 2 digits $63 Last 3 digits $123 Any 1 digit $6 Above payoffs based on $1 bet. Previous Mass. drawings Friday 6908 Tuesday 5123 Thursday 5348 Monday 4248 Wednesday 19l7 N.H.

number for Saturday: 9742 fense to reject a certain number of prospective jurors without giving any reason. In criminal cases, lawyers usually are allowed 18 such challenges. Williams said he will request "substantially" more because of "widespread publicity in the case." He said the judge in the New Haven trial of Guillermo Aillon, who was accused of a triple murder, tripled the number of peremptory challenges. Williams said the case itself, as the trial progresses, will hold many surprises. Acquin earlier confessed to the crime, but Williams said he will prove in court that the confession was signed under duress.

"I think a close look at that document, when it comes into evidence, will be pretty persuasive that it's notftustworthy," he said. "That sWte-ment was squeezed out of Lome Acquin." Williams has asked Judge Walter Pickett Jr. to move the trial to another city, saying pretrial publicity will preclude finding any impartial jurors. Pickett denied the motion. "I think it will be very difficult if not impossible" to find an impartial jury, Williams said.

"The feeling in that community seems to be very strong. We'll get a better idea of that when jury selection begins." He said when he first agreed to take Ac-quin's case, for which he will be paid a maximum $75-a-day as a public defender, he received "many, many, death threats. "I have felt ever since then that Waterbury is not the place where this case should be tried," Williams said. The one motion he said he would make in court today was a-fequest for more peremptory challenges, which allow the prosecution or de United Press International WATERBURY, Conn. The defense lawyer for Lome Acquin, accused of the largest mass murder in Connecticut's history, claimed yesterday he knows of at least one person who could have killed the nine victims.

"I expect before the trial is over to suggest at least one person and perhaps more than one," Williams said in a telephone interview from his New Haven home. He declined, however, to name the alleged suspect. Acquin, 28, a former Maine roofer, is accused of the July 22, 1977, murders of his foster brother's wife, Cheryl Beaudoin, 29, her seven children and a 6-year-old girl visiting the family in Prospect. Jury selection was today in Water-bury Superior Court. STANDOFF After more than an hour, an anxious cat was still waiting in the relative safety of a tree but so wa the dog below.

(Globe photo by David L. Ryan) rrn i ililn.