The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 21

AUGUST 16, 2003 THE BOSTON GLOBE City Region B5 OTHER OBITUARIES Obituaries Page B7 John Tevnan, 82, attorney, advocated for rights of poor GLOBE STAFF SUAREZ Pam Berfield (left) was congratulated outside court yesterday after Steven S. Caruso was convicted in her sister's death. Handyman guilty in bombing death By John Ellement GLOBE STAFF CAMBRIDGE Minutes after she wept, Pamela Berfield was ec- static. "We got him! We got him!" she said yesterday, after a Middlesex Superior Court jury convicted Steven S. Caruso of first-degree murder for killing her sister, Sandra Berfield, with a package bomb sent to the woman's Everett home on Jan.

20, 2000. But the 48-year-old Medford handyman's defense team denounced the verdict as a "perversion of the justice system." Caruso's court-appointed lawyers, Stephanie Page and Larry Tipton, said that prosecutors and police had fabricated some of the evidence used against their client. They also said that Superior Court Judge Charles M. Grabau and prosecutors had prevented jurors from hearing "objective facts" that they said would exonerate Caruso. "We don't fault the jury," said Page, who verbally sparred with Grabau before the judge sentenced Caruso to the mandatory penalty of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

"They did not know what the prosecutors knew." According to the defense lawyers, the evidence would have undercut the prosecution theory that Caruso had killed Berfield out of obsession with the 32-year-old waitress who spurned his advances after they met at a Medford restaurant where Caruso was a regular customer. Caruso was imprisoned for several months in 1998 and 1999 after being convicted of harassing Berfield. The conviction rested in part on videotape showing a man vandalizing Berfield's car. Page said a defense specialist who reviewed the tape said the person in the image was 3 or 4 inches taller than Caruso. She also said that a defense handwriting specialist had concluded that Ca- STEVEN S.

CARUSO Life term without parole ruso could not have written a threatening note Berfield found before she was murdered. Members of Berfield's family spoke passionately while giving victim-impact statements that left Pamela Berfield in tears. "The happy memories are many, but the nightmares cloud our thoughts," Pamela Berfield and her husband, Alan Meagher, said in a written statement submitted to the court. "The nightmares of her not being able to live her life without the fear that someone was following her." Berfield had turned to the courts for help, but at the time only those involved romantically could get criminal restraining orders. After her death, the Legislature passed what her family calls "Sandy's Law," making it a crime to harass another regardless of whether there are romantic ties.

Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, speaking to reporters after the verdict, said that Sandy's Law is one of two positive developments to come out of the Berfield murder. The second was Caruso's conviction, she said. "There is no doubt in our minds that Sandra Berfield was murdered," she said. "Steven Caruso was the perpetrator of that murder." Caruso's conviction will automatically be reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Court. Found in sister's arms: Death seen as homicide By John McElhenny GLOBE CORRESPONDENT A woman found dead on the floor of her West Roxbury apartment in the arms of her disoriented sister was apparently strangled after a loud fight, authorities said yesterday.

Workers found the woman, Monica S. Lacasandile, when they entered her apartment Thursday to replace the windows. Interviewed yesterday, the workers said they had found Lacasandile and her sister lying next to each other on the floor, with overturned lamps and broken glass strewn on the floor around them. "There had clearly been a struggle," said one worker, who declined to give his name. Boston police, who did not identify the surviving sister, said yesterday that they were investigating the death as a homicide.

Lacasandile, 45, who is from the Philippines, was found just before noon, when workers opened the door and found her lying dead next to her sister, who was moaning softly, eyes open but unresponsive. The sister's arm was draped around her dead sibling, according to a second workman, who also refused to give his name. Dave Shaw, a spokesman for the state's chief medical examiner's office, declined to say how Lacasandile died because of the investigation, but one law enforcement official said she had been strangled. Lacasandile's sister was admitted to Brigham and Women's Hospital with injuries that were By Laura Levis GLOBE CORRESPONDENT John E. Tevnan Sr.

of Dorchester, a World War II veteran and a trial attorney who advocated for the rights of the poor, died of complications from 1 lung surgery yesterday at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton. He was 82. The son of a Boston police officer, Mr. Tevnan was born in Brighton and went to English High School, where he was active in theater.

After graduating in 1939, he worked for several years and enlisted in the US Army in 1942, serving in Europe during World War II in the Third Army, 13th Battalion, and 551st Artillery Division. "He always said the Army took him a callow youth and made a man 1 of him," said Francis M. McLaughlin of West Roxbury, a friend for 42 years and an economics professor at Boston College. After being sent to officer candidate school where he earned the rank of captain, Mr. Tevnan served in England, France, and Germany.

His unit marched from Normandy to Munich and was at the signing of the Armistice on V-E Day in 1945. After the war, Mr. Tevnan served in the military government in Germany. He retired from the Army a lieutenant colonel after 38 years of service in active duty and as a reservist. Mr.

Tevnan attended Boston College upon returning from the war, graduating in 1951 with a degree in English literature. He was the first Boston College student to receive a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of London. He received a master's degree from Boston University in 1961. In 1957, he married Mary (Cornwall), who died three years ago. Prior to beginning his legal career, Mr.

Tevnan worked in the office of development at Boston College as a staff executive, and as assistant dean of the Graduate School of Business. In 1970, he Howland Shaw Warren, 93; bank executive, loved sailing By Noelle Barbosa GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Howland Shaw Warren's affection for sailing started as a young boy and never ended. He began by sailing the waters of Buzzards Bay, and later navigated his favorite sailboat, Caboose, through the Boston Harbor Islands and built dories in the basement of his Nahant home. "He had the sea in his blood," said his daughter Deborah of Andover. "There was not a window in our house where you couldn't see the sea." A resident of Nahant since the 1950s, Mr.

Warren, 93, died July 29 at the Jesmond Nursing Home there. Mr. Warren was born in Cambridge in 1910. He graduated from Harvard College in 1932 and in 1935 from Harvard Law School, where his father was a professor. In 1942, Mr.

Warren joined the Navy and served in Sicily and the Pacific. He married Margaret Holyoke (Turner) in 1946. The couple had three children. For nearly four decades, Mr. Warren worked as an attorney and kind of guy where you just didn't ask him personal questions, 1 because he never asked them of 00 JOHN E.

TEVNAN SR. was appointed assistant to the vice president of development at Bent- ley College. Described by friends and family as "private about his personal life," Mr. Tevnan graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 1971 and became a member of the Massachusetts Bar in 1972. "I was a very close friend and I didn't even know he was going until he already graduated," McLaughlin said.

"He was the HOWLAND SHAW WARREN servatory of Music. 1 By 1982, Mr. Warren had resigned from all of his boards and wrote of himself: "Elderly trustees frequently become a nuisance." Mr. Warren was a member of the Tavern Club, a group of amateur playwrights, for many years. He enjoyed creating comedies, his daughter said.

He was also a member of the Boston Athenaeum. In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Warren leaves a daughter, Sarah Cassar of Malta; a son, Shaw of Cambridge; a sister, Mary (Warren) Murphy of New York; and 15 grandchildren. A service will be held later. you." Heavily involved in local civic affairs, Mr.

Tevnan was a member of the Cedar Grove Civic Association, president of the Ashmont Neighborhood Association, director of the Citizens for Boston Schools, a member of the Suffolk University Law School Alumni board, and the St. Ambrose School Board. He was an active member of the John P. McKeon AMVETS, and a regular lector at St. Brendan Church in Dorchester.

He leaves three daughters, Anne M. "Nancy" of Dorchester, Jane Tevnan Blanchard of Duxbury, and Claire E. Edmondson of Minneapolis; three sons, John E. of South Weymouth, Charles R. of Dorchester, and Thomas P.

of South Boston; and nine grandchildren. A funeral was held Wednesday and burial was at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Dorchester. Moshe Carmel, Israeli general, 92 ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM General bank executive. He was vice president and counsel of Old Colony Trust Company, trust counsel of First National Bank of Boston, and counsel at Herrick and Smith law firm in Boston. With a green thumb for growing pine trees, Mr.

Warren regularly planted seedlings in the yard of his Mason, N.H., farmhouse. He would transplant them in Nahant or give them away as gifts, said his daughter. He was especially fond of white pines, and planted several in his Nahant yard. Mr. Warren enjoyed building and operating amateur radios, and he would communicate with people from around the world.

His license plate displayed the same letters as the call letters he used for his radio, his daughter said. "His whole study was overrun with gadgets. He loved building contraptions and making them work," she said. "He liked the challenge of connecting with people." From the 1950s to the 1980s, Mr. Warren served on the board at many institutions, including as a trustee of Children's Hospital and treasurer of the New England Con- Moshe Carmel, who led the Israeli army's capture of Haifa and the northern Galilee region during the 1948-49 Mideast war, died Thursday in Tel Aviv.

He was 92. General Carmel was born in Minsk in what was then Poland and is now Belarus, and he moved to British Mandate of Palestine in 1924 at 13. He was active in Jewish military activities against Palestinian Arabs from the mid-1930s and was imprisoned by British authorities between 1939 and 1941 for his activities on behalf of the Hagana, the Jewish military force that predated Israel's creation in 1948. As commander of the northern front during the 1948-49 Mideast war, General Carmel was responsible for Israel's capture of the northern cities of Haifa and Acre and the Galilee region. He retired from the Israeli army with the rank of general in 1958.

General Carmel served as a member of Israel's Knesset from the late 1950s through the early '70s, and was transport minister. Rev. Walter Ong, 90; traced the history of com communication described as not life-threatening. Dorothy Shea, 81, who lives beneath Lacasandile's apartment, yesterday said her ceiling is thin and she can hear her neighbor's phone conversations. Shea said she was awakened late Wednesday night by loud noises in the apartment above.

"It certainly sounded as though the contents of the whole apartment were being thrown around," Shea said. "Someone was angry, very angry, but then it quieted down, so I didn't call 911. I thought it was over." Lacasandile, who has lived i in the apartment for three or four years, was very close to her sister, who visited her at least twice a week, Shea said. The two often had breakfast together after Lacasandile finished her 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.

shift as a nurse's aide, Shea said. A half-dozen people who live in the three-story apartment building on Grove Street said in interviews that residents tend to keep to themselves. Dan Abbott, 26, a hotel worker who lives next door to Lacasandile, said he occasionally said hello to her in the parking lot, but that that was the extent of their conversations. Shea, who has lived in the building for a decade, said she would never call police about another resident, unless they called for help, even if there were loud noises coming from their apartment. "You could be very embarrassed if they were just redoing a tea tray," she said.

By Mary Rourke LOS ANGELES TIMES LOS ANGELES The Rev. Walter J. Ong, a Jesuit priest and a leading scholar in the field of language and culture who traced the transition from oral to written communication in his more than 20 books, died Tuesday at St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights, a suburb of St. Louis.

He was 90. In his writings and lectures, Father Ong explored the development of communication from its preliterate beginnings to its current reliance on radio, television, and the Internet. He was fascinated by the transition from one form of communication to another. He used ancient stories such as Homer's "Odyssey" to demonstrate that preliterate cultures relied on "oral thought," in which the storyteller might contradict himself and the story itself might change over time until it was written down. He contrasted oral tradition with the written, using the works of Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle to illustrate the change.

A written text relies on a set of ground rules for logical reasoning, as well as a consistent use of terms, to communicate information. The two traditions influenced cultural values, Father Ong pointed out. Although an oral society places a high value on communal memory and the elders who are the main link to history, a literate one focuses on individual reasoning and introspection. The rise of technology introduced other changes. In a hightech culture, a person reads a novel and imagines a movie in his mind.

The Internet blurs people's exterior and interior worlds. Virtual reality is no longer a private matter. Father Ong's meticulous research on those developments helped lay the foundation for an understanding of modern media culture. Some of his research corresponded with the work of his famous teacher, Marshall McLuhan, whose interest in the history of the GET OFF HOME DELIVERY OF THE GLOBE FOR THE FIRST 12 WEEKS. verbal arts in Western culture inspired Father Ong to pursue his own studies.

He was McLuhan's student in graduate school when he completed a master's degree in English at St. Louis University. McLuhan was a faculty member from 1937 to 1944. (Father Ong went on from there to earn a doctorate at Harvard University.) Although McLuhan became a pop-culture guru in the 1960s "global village," his term for the interconnectedness of the world by mass media, is now included in Webster's Dictionary Father Ong remained a scholar's scholar. His writing style was dense and complex, not easy to grasp.

His ideas were subtle and cumulative, not catchy. His most highly regarded book, for example, is titled "Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World" (1982). "Ong is the sort of guy the experts read," said Thomas J. Farrell, whose book "Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies" (Hampton Press, 2000) has helped make the priest's work more ac- cessible. Born in Kansas City, on Nov.

30, 1912, Father Ong said he knew he wanted to be a priest from the time he was in high school. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1935 and was ordained in 1946. He spent most of his teaching career in the English department at St. Louis University. He taught courses in Renaissance literature, his specialty, along with a range of others.

He also lectured at Oxford University, Yale Divinity School, and a number of other top schools around the world until he retired in 1991. Despite Father Ong's academic achievements, "he was first and foremost a priest," Farrell said. "He said daily Mass at 5:30 a.m., regularly heard confessions, and wore cleric's garb wherever he went." Father Ong's academic work only strengthened his belief in God. "God created the evolving world, and it's still evolving," he told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in March 2002.

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