Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 15

I Fort Worth Star-Telegram TarrantTexas Page 15 Section 1 Thursday PMOctober 5 1989 The Coast Guard continues its search for missingcrew members ofthe fishing boat that hit a gas pipeline in the Gulf Page 19 No poisons found inwax museum secretary's body BY JANICE JOHNSTON Fort Worth Star-Telegram DE SOTO No arsenic or other poisons were found in the exhumed body of former wax museum secretary Lori Williams private investigator Bill Dear said yesterday Despite those findings Grand Prairie police said they will continue a week-old investigation into the death of Williams Dear at a news conference at his De Soto office also announced a $100000 reward for information lead ing to an arrest and indictment in the October 1987 strychnine poisoning death of Patsy Wright co-owner of the Wax Museum of the Southwest Wright was supervisor to Williams who died in September 1984 A 1984 autopsy showed Williams died of viral pneumonia as a complication of surgery to remove her appendix which appeared normal said Dr Reg McDaniel chief pathologist at Dallas-Fort Worth Medical Center in Grand Prairie The second autopsy after Williams' body was exhumed Sept 12 revealed nothing new "There was no arsenic" said forensic pathologist Jeff Barnard who performed the recent autopsy "There was no strychnine There were no poisons that we know as poisons that were detectable" Barnard Dallas County's deputy medical examiner said he had no plans for further tests "I don't have any indication that she was poisoned based on my autopsy findings" Barnard said to draw a link between the incidents and a Lewisville man suspected of taking a financial ledger from the museum two weeks after the fire But after holding Stanley Poynor 23 for more than three days under a $100000 bond Grand Prairie police said they had no evidence linking Poynor to any of the other incidents and he was released on $500 bond Grand Prairie police opened a file on Williams' death about the time Poynor was arrested said Deputy Chief Rick (More on WILLIAMS on next page) Dear hired last spring by Wright's family to solve her death has been looking for links between the two deaths and a fire Sept 9 1988 at the wax museum Arlington police said yesterday that Dear has not provided them with new information on Wright's death "From what we have seen from Mr Dear there is nothing new" said Arlington police spokesman Dee Anderson "We're all running in the same circles here" Last week Dear tried unsuccessfully FORT WORTH Officials identify victim of accident Officials have identified Milton Boggess as the man who was killed in a one-vehicle accident Monday The 55-year-old was driving west in the 10000 block ofiacksboro Highway when his pickup hit a curb The truck flipped over and Boggess was thrown out of the cab He was taken via Carenite to Harris Methodist Fort Worth where he was pronounced dead at 2:50 am Toddler Brakes described as unsafe gets liver FORT WORTH 29-year-old man killed in car-truck accident A 29-year-old man was killed and another injured Tuesday night when a car collided with a flatbed truck in the 2600 block of US 287 Francis Corsaro of Arlington died of internal injuries to the head and chest according to a police report He was pronounced dead at 11:06 pm Another man Calvin Lee Houis 23 is listed in good condition at Harris Methodist Fort Worth A Ford Taurus driven by the victim collided with Houis' truck which had been following a sweeping truck on the left side of the highway in surgery FORT WORTH Man 26 being held in robbery slaying A 26-year-old man is being held pending an investigation of a capital murder charge in the 1988 robbery and shooting death of Charles Champine The man is being held in Tarrant County Jail in lieu of S100000 bail Champine 29 of Fort Worth was found March 17 1988 inside a residence on the 1400 block of Langston Street identified as a drug house police said He had been shot 30 times with an automatic weapon Truck not fit for road US Inspector says Associated Press AUSTIN The soft drink truck involved in a school bus accident that killed 21 students near Mission had brake problems so severe it would have been ordered off the road in any state except Texas a federal safety official has told the Austin American-Statesman Lee Dickinson a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said three of six brakes on the Dr Pepper delivery truck involved in the crash were not properly adjusted "If it had been pulled over on the road (fora traffic violation) or at a truck weigh station and inspected it would have been taken off the road" in any state but Texas Dickinson told the American-Statesman in a copyright story On Sept 21 the soft drink truck collided with a Mission school bus carrying 8 I students and sent the bus into a water-filled pit Twenty-one students died and the other 60 were injured in the incident The day after the accident Dickinson said visual inspection of the brakes failed to support the driver's claim that the brakes had failed prior to the accident Dickinson said federal truck safety regulations were not in effect in Texas at the time of the collision He said (More on BRAKES on next page) 7tigt77- it: -r: -E 4' A --4: I -z-- i -m -1 01 i te r- 7 4 r'''' i- A 17110Or4: i 4 4 -t 1 1- 1 1 1r i I i 'i li I' :1 A 41111z I AO' 4 4' At eio 'I 11 i frs 0 'V orwetmswo ous' A 1114 A 2 0 '4 2' 1 i i 's i I 1 --A 'd -4---- tir i' 1-'4: I I 1 1 1e4 7 I V4 0 41'- i i 1441' t1 '0'" 1- 0- i II' ge -1 40' ff 4- -fr- e- i fsi i 6 00v -I "el ikP" BY DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR Fon Worth Star-Telegram One of a pair of Keller twins who needed liver transplants underwent surgery yesterday in a Chicago hospital Derrick Bleeker 20 months old was in critical but stable condition after surgery last night at Wyler Children's Hospital in Chicago a hospital spokeswoman said The transplant was successful and there were no complications said Mary Fetsch a spokeswoman with the University of Chicago Medical Center After the surgery Derrick is scheduled to remain in the hospital for about six weeks Doctors were pefonning an auxiliary lobe transferm which is grafting the right lobe of a donor liver to Derrick's existing liver Hospital officials called the Bleekers on Tuesday afternoon and the couple flew to Chicago that night "1 hadn't expected the call" said Sandy Bleeker Derrick's mother in a telephone interview from her Chicago hotel room "1 thought it wouldn't be for another six weeks 1 just hope while we are up here that there's another donor for Jared" Derrick and Jared Bleeker were born Feb I 1988 with a rare liver disease ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency The disease caused the twins to be born without an enzyme that breaks down protein in their system causing a toxic ammonia buildup in their blood The buildup can result in seizures brain damage and usually death within two years The cost of the operations has been estimated at $250000 per child plus $25000 per year for care afterward After a settlement in late July with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan which the Bleekers are not allowed to discuss they have the money for any required medical procedure Before slaying 89-year-old said she felt safe li ii Foil Worth Star-Telegram NORM TINDELL Lucas Bleeker holds Derrick and Sandy Bleeker holds Jared in this 1988 photo I Nf 'WU TINI-111 I FORT WORTH Seminar today on grants for rental housing Anyone interested in federal grants to rehabilitate low-income rental housing is invited to a seminar from 8:30 am to noon today in the Trinity Ballroom at the Worthington Hotel The seminar sponsored by the Fort Worth Housing and Human Services Department will explain the rental rehabilitation program which is paid for by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered by the city The cost of the seminar is $25 The program provides 50 percent of the'cost of rehabilitating a rental unit in low-income areas The program also provides loans for the investor's portion of the rehabilitation cost at no interest for the first five years and at a 5-percent rate thereafter A RLINGTON iMan 50 reports Apartment robbery A 50-year-old man was robbed of $1700 Tuesday after two men kicked down his door and ransacked his apart-mein police said The victim who lives in an apartmeht in the I 200 block of East Lamar Boulevard said he was asleep about 2 pni Tuesday when he heard a loud crash and saw two men enter his home police said One of the men held a gun to his head while the other man ransacked his apartment looking for valuables After finding 1700 they ordered the victim into the bathroom where he remained the two men left police said City staff proposes forming panel on tax breaks BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS Fort Worth Sur-Telegram FORT WORTH Elderly blind in one eye and living alone in a high-crime neighborhood in the southeast part of town Christina Banks still told her many friends not to worry she would be safe Yesterday afternoon two of those friends found the 89-year-old former Los Angeles resident strangled in her bed according to Fort Worth police homicide Sgt Paul Kratz Her humble wood-framed home of seven years had been ransacked her belongings heaped on the floor Kratz said that there was no sign of a break-in at the house in the I 100 block of Stella Street which until two days ago Banks shared with another woman "But it would be easy to enter through the back door even when (More on BANKS on next page) The school board eventually approved the abatement after Ross Perot Jr developer of the airport and owner of land nearby offered to give the school system $16 million to help balance its budget over the next four years "Had Northwest been involved at an earlier stage there might not have been as many negative repercussions" over the tax abatement Councilman Louis Zapata said during a City Council discussion of the proposed committee this week (More on TAX on next page) BY KARA ROGGE Fort Wonh Star-Telegram FORT WORTH If another major employer such as American Airlines comes to town promising jobs and asking for tax breaks city officials hope they can avoid the kind of conflict they had last summer with the Northwest school district The city staff has proposed forming an intergovernmental committee on tax incentives that would allow representatives of Fort Worth Tarrant County and local school districts that overlap the city's boundaries to discuss common incentive policies to attract industry and other development "Potential misunderstandings should be resolved before another tax abatement proposal is considered" outgoing City Manager Doug Harman said in a letter this week to City Council members to propose the committee That was not the case when American Airlines earlier this year asked for a I 5-year moratorium on tax increases on its MO million maintenance base at Alliance Airport in far north Fort Worth The Fort Worth City Council which had worked hard to woo American to become the anchor industry for the new city-owned airport approved the abatement on city taxes and urged the Northwest school board to do the same But trustees of the largely rural school district facing a public outcry over high taxes and a possible tax rollback election balked at the proposal Fort Worth stood to gain far more from the airline project than the school district school officials said 1 1 i Jeff Guinn 4 Out and About resources on Alliance Airport while allowing Rosemont streets to fall into ruin amid a neighborhood profusion of bars crack houses and prostitutes Can't blame 'em for feeling that way especially since Rosemont street repairs were promised as part of the 1986 city bond issue Lots of other groups also feel they were promised specific bond-financed street repairs that haven't happened yet Another oddity was District 6 rep Garey Gilley's short fuse when Candleridge resident Joe Cameron berated council members for appointing David Ivory as city manager (Ivory has five misdemeanor indictments pending against him) Gilley's heard this kind of criticism before and will continue to as long as he serves on the council This is the guy many people expect to be elected Fort Worth's next mayor Eye-bulging vein-bursting snarls at a voter during a council meeting won't further that cause festivals on the same weekend Privately many of the Oktoberfest movers and shakers don't like the new competition one bit and hope Dreamspace tails on its ecologically oriented ear Festiva! Feud! Sounds like a new TV game show Where's Richard Dawson when we need him? Minimal Dreamspace crowds probably won't daunt the Caravan team They've already scheduled Dreamspace II "The Americas" for May 26-27 Those dates avoid a shoot-out with Mayfest the annual extravaganza in Trinity Park every first week of May Fuse is lit: Tuesday night's City Council meeting had it all a cranky neighborhood association blustering council members nasty threats about Fort Worth suing Dallas if the powers on the wrong end of 1-30 try to get the Wright Amendment repealed The Rosemont Neighborhood Association loudly aired its complaints accusing city officials of spending all their energy and Scoot over: Whether you're ready or not whether you knew it or not the Caravan of Dreams Dreamspace Festival debuts Saturday and Sunday in downtown Fort Worth If everything works as planned this weekend's bash will be the first in a seven-festival Dreamspace series Each festival will focus on ecology and culture in different areas of the planet with this kickoff shindig spotlighting Texas Like many Caravan-hatched forays into community-based entertainment Dreamspace has an impressive lineup of performers and exhibits This weekend for free you can hear Texas music legends Doug Sahm and Sir Douglas Quintet Johnny Gimble David "Fathead" Newman and Lou Ann Barton all performing on outdoor stages (A limited number of reserved front-and-center seats are available for 15) Sidewalk vendors will offer drinks and food and there's an intriguingly named "Consumer Lifestyles Pavilion" showcasing products and services from showcasing products and services from ecologically oriented companies and public service agencies As with any Caravan program there also will be lots of quirky bet-you've-never-seenthis -before examples of music and art Sometime Saturday night the Roxy Gordon Band performs what's billed as "Choctaw Indian music" while Sunday afternoon finds Brave Combo cranking out "post-punk polka and salsa" All this and very few people Out and About's talked to this week even knew Dreamspace was coming Part of the problem may be the community mindset that this weekend belongs to Oktoberfest the annual beersausagepolka blowout tossed each year at the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Convention Center to benefit the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra This year Oktoberfest celebrates its 20th anniversary Dreamspaee organizers hope there's sufficient interest to support two downtown sufficient interest to support two downto Aitr aking room I Dreamspace I I gpqr 11V1frfeWINVIWPWW41909rOrfai.