Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 1

ii wMpM in inyi ii in 3u7j quotas Is justice color blind? Many don't think so Outlook, IB Mem lineup Calls for gender equity hit college athletic programs Sports, 1 Hits A list of summer movies, a look at the real monster Entertainment, 1G Homearama displays dreams easier to reach Homes, 1K Showers likely High, 70; low, 55 AND Metro nHwartt -Wiiiiiartilj InWhraAiW V'' i 1 Ex-member says MSU band rituals degradin; School response: Acknowledges 'deviant' behavior. Insists changes have been made to improve situation. First of two parts jtu.Miimyj UMij um wiuii.mm ni iilimji uu ft f. if lit I is -ft "a nightmare" of bizarre initiation and hazing rituals performed by seasoned band members to "welcome" incoming freshmen. Greenfield says the intense hazing forced him to drop from 16 credits to seven last fall, quit the band and seek therapy.

He has filed a lawsuit against MSU, its band director and the drumline instructor, whose contract was recently not renewed. Advised of the lawsuit, filed Friday in Ingham Circuit Court, univeisity officials declined comment. A Detroit News investigation confirmed much of the sexual and strange behavior alleged by Greenfield. In more than two dozen interviews, current and former members said they've either participated in, witnessed or heard about lewd, sexually explicit or harassing activities. practice and thousands of dollars of drum spent on lessons were paying off.

Finally, his dream of marching before thousands of cheering fans was coming true. He couldn't wait for the fun to begin. It didn't take long. His second day on campus, while returning from lunch with a friend, a group of band members rushed up and pulled his friend's shorts down to his ankles. Greenfield was shocked.

Everyone else was amused. "Unfortunately, that set the tone for my next two years in the band," Greenfield, 20, of Bloomfield Township said recently. Within two weeks of joining the band, Greenfield was deep into what he now calls By Dave Farrell and Kenneth Cole Copyright 1993 THE DETROIT NEWS EAST LANSING Jeffrey Greenfield was ecstatic when he arrived at Michigan State University in August 1991, his first semester on the state's largest university campus. He'd just passed the most important audition of his life and won a coveted spot in the award-winning MSU Marching Band. Finally, he thought, countless hours of Coming Monday in The News Students say hazing has a long tradition in the MSU band.

ANNIE O'NEILLThe Detroit News Please see MSU, 4A Jeffrey Greenfield's joy quickly turned to disgust at MSU. WW 0 Agreement rescues doomed GM plant in Livonia, 800 jobs of the Highland Park A sigh of relief: More efficient work rules will keep parts factory from closing. months of sometimes tense efforts by local union and management officials to reverse GM's decision announced in December and spread relief across the shop floor. "There's been a lot of stress here, and people are extremely relieved," said Charles Lewis, shop committee chairman at United Auto Workers Local 262. The local union agreement aimed at reviving the plant's spring and strut business won approval by a vote of 1,001 to 229, or nearly 80 percent, Lewis said Saturday.

Not all of the plant will be saved, however. The factory has employed 1,550 hourly and 172 salaried workers. The payroll will shrink under the new agreement because the plant will no longer make chrome bumpers. As recently as February, union workers weighed a potentially crippling strike to challenge the closing. Please see GM plant, 4A By James V.

Higgins THE DETROIT NEWS There will be more paychecks instead of unemployment checks for at least 800 workers at General Motor Livonia parts plant. The plant, one of 21 nationwide GM had targeted for closing, will stay open following overwhelming ratification of a new contract designed to help managers boost productivity and improve worker efficiency. Reprieved is the Delco Chassis Division plant on Echols Road which GM previously had deemed uncompetitive and unprofitable. It was scheduled to close this year. News of the agreement ended four He broke down so suddenly and completely some investigators found it anticlimactic.

"OK," he began. "I'll tell you. I did 'em all." With that, Atkins, who waived his right to have a lawyer present, began an li-hour tale of forced sex and strangulation, a violent odyssey that began with a rape in the fall of 1991 and ended eight months and 11 prostitutes' lives later. His confessions, obtained by the Detroit News, offer the first insight into a rogue the FBI calls one of the fastest-working serial killers ever. They paint Atkins as a carefree roamer, a man who seemed to stumble upon victims, not stalk them.

And killing, Atkins told police over a cheeseburger dinner, was little more than an afterthought, a natural conclusion to rape. Yet if Atkins was one of the nation's most effective killers, he wasn't the most quiet. Once unglued by questioning, he was quick to tell police every detail including of an 1 1th murder they were unaware of as he sat in the cramped police interrogation room. He "seemed almost eager to tell us" about the slayings, said Detroit Police Insp. Gerald Stewart about the Aug.

21, 1992, confessions. "It seemed too easy." Atkins would say the same thing about killing women. 'Always the same way' "See these big hands I got?" Benjamin Atkins told Detroit detectives. "Its always the same way," he said, mimicking the grip he used on his victims. "Both thumbs over the Adam's apple and the fingers interlocked behind her neck." The Highland Park Strangler was nothing if not methodical.

While he refined his killing technique over the months, he never changed tactics to throw investigators off his scent. Police say he learned how to keep a woman on the verge of consciousness while raping and murdering her. He openly walked the 1 '2-mile stretch of Woodward Avenue, where the bodies were discovered; he even dropped by one of the murder sites as police combed for clues. He used the same come-on line and the same method to ensure a victim was "dead for check the pulse, then the heart, then push on her stomach to force out all the air. And when a victim had the wind to speak before dying, she usually begged Atkins to answer the same question: "Why me?" Please see Strangler, 10A Lincoln biographer may not be as honest as Abe For 11 hours on Aug.

21, 1992, Benjamin Thomas Atkins explained to police in detail how he raped and strangled 1 1 women in Highland Park and Detroit from the fall of 1991 to the spring of 1992. For the first time, here is the serial killer's own account of the slayings. By SCOTT BOWLES THE DETROIT NEWS COPYRIGHT. 1993 In the stark florescent glow of the interrogation room, Benjamin Thomas Atkins was beginning to melt. To the cops surrounding him, it seemed to take forever.

At first, as he sat before a parade of accusers, the 23-year-old maintained a stony defi-i 1 i ance. He didn't warm to the false comraderies or urgent coaxing po-t lice used on the man they were convinced was the Highland Park Strangler, the bare-handed killer of 4 women. But then a layer seemed to peel Jt away from the Detroit drifter. He ft confronted investigators, insisting -JF he was a male prostitute and inno- cent. When asked about the scratches and bite marks that corduroyed his chest, he swore they came from a boyfriend.

Interrogators pounced on the opening. What was it like being gay, they demanded. How could he stand to take another man in his arms? Baited, Atkins emerged from another shell, offering glimpses of his real life. He conceded he was sexually abused as a boy. His mother, he said, was a prostitute, a fact he learned after being forced to watch from the back seat of her car.

We understand, the strangers around him said. You need help. You need to get this off your chest. Charges: Writer used others' words, cheating device says. Stewart's and Feder's days as government-sanctioned sleuths.

Oates is screaming foul play. Feder and Stewart have been locked out of their offices at the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Maryland and assigned new duties. And Stewart has embarked on a 13-day protest fast. "They're bullies, they're pit bulls," says Oates, a University of Massachusetts professor who rejects the plagiarism allegations. "They decide that you're guilty and they go for the jugular with shrill and vituperative writing They invaded a field where they have no expertise, no experience." Says Stewart: "We were fortunate enough to have developed a tool for scientific work which had a use beyond the bounds of simple science.

It's my understanding of the scholar-Please see Plagiarism, 7A By Gregory Gordon NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON Two government watchdogs survived controversy as they sleuthed research abuses for a decade until they aimed their "plagiarism machine" at a noted Lincoln biographer. Dr. Ned Feder and Walter Stewart of the National Institutes of Health, who designed a computer program to find scientific fraud, have added fresh evidence to charges that historian Stephen B. Oates routinely stole from other authors' writings. But their foray into the literary world on government time has also touched off a flap that could end If See these big hands I got.

It's always the same way. Both thumbs over the Adams' apple and the fingers interlocked behind her neck." Principal benches drinking ballplayers 177 1 "Thev fthe baseball Dlavers). deserved it. I "They (the baseball players), deserved it," In Cadillac: Students cheer move, say forfeits send a message to others 4frce Vxcoo Books 7J Comment 1F Crossword Puzzle 7H Editorials 2F Entertainment 1G Fashion 5J Jim Fitzgerald 4F Homes Real Estate 1K Horoscope 6J Jumble 10K Movie Guide 8G BobTalbert 4F Susan Watson 4F The Way We Live Travel 1H Volume 163. Number 17 1993 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Printed in United States Detroit News Business 1D Classified 1L Comment 3B Y. Times Crossword 3B Death notices 6C Editorials 2B Essentials 7C Horoscope 1L Lottery 7C Metro 1C Obituaries 6C Outlook 1B Sports 1E Stocks 4D Weather 7C 119th Year, Number 269 Copyright, 1993, The Detroit News, Inc. Printed in the USA New fossils have scientists rewriting dinosaur history. Monday in Jhe Detroit News Discovery section. said Matt Parrish, a junior.

"They put their honesty on the line when they joined the team. I'm embarrassed for our school. Now we'll be looked on as low-lifes." "It got the message through," said Bill Brown, a senior. "There are football players now who know they will be up the creek if they drink." Another senior, Anne Gauld, said the action let other students know that athletes won't get preferential treatment. "It was the right decision," she said.

High school athletes throughout the state should be put on notice by the decision to Please see Cadillac, 9A By Thomas BeVier THE DETROIT NEWS CADILLAC, Mich. You expect beer and baseball at Detroit's Tiger Stadium but not at Cadillac High School. Statewide attention has focused on the school which cancelled its last nine baseball games because some players joined a drinking party at an out-of-town tournament..