Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 1

i i rr taf High 91, low 71 Partly cloudy Sunday Geb2s a Pige 2A Susan Watson on wanton violence. 1C a City copes with loss. 3C Profiles of 3 fallen policemen. 3C I HE ll Mi Vm Saturday July 11, 1987 Metro final For home delivery call 222-6500. ON GUARD FOR 156 YEARS 6 1987, Detroit Free Press, Inc.

Volume 157, Number 68 a Jia vinff aoc en commiini 6 The suspects talked rich, 3 officers lay dead as talks went on lived oor By SUSAN AGER Free Press Staff Writer Just before dawn Friday it became sickeningly clear that even the experts had been fooled, by a 69-year-old woman accustomed to big, fast talk. Through the long muggy night there was hope, even optimism. But inside rooms 105 and I 9 I l' 1 106 of the Bungalow Motel, three Inkster police officers lay dead on the floor, covered by mattresses and blankets, riddled by nearly two dozen bullets. One without a face. One without an arm.

"Liars," spit out John Anthony of the FBI at 3:40 a.m., just after Alberta Easter and her three adult sons surrendered and police entered the motel rooms. They expected, after the 10-hour siege, to untie their colleagues and hug them. Instead, they found ammunition shells littering the floor like peanut shells, enough guns "to take on the con-tras," according to one who saw the weapons, and three police officers dead, long dead, dead probably since just minutes after they arrived about 5:15 Thursday afternoon to arrest Easter and one son. By DAVID ASHENFELTER, MICHAEL G. WAGNER and JOE SWICKARD Free Presj Slaff Writers Alberta Easter and her three sons often boasted about their big dreams and multimillion-dollar business schemes.

But friends and business associates were stunned Friday to learn that the family down on its luck and wheeling and dealing out of inexpensive motel rooms were arrested in the slayings of three Inkster police officers. "Jesus Christ, it was them?" said Dr. Ronald Kundargi, a Carmichael, investor who tried in April to arrange a multimillion-dollar financing deal with Easter. She stood to make a commission worth several thousand dollars if she could arrange bank financing for a project Kundargi was putting together. It apparently was among the latest of a series of deals gone sour for the family members, described by many who knew them as fast talking, mild mannered and usually one deal away from a big score.

Easter, 69, and her sons George Lemons, 45, Roy Lemons 47, and William Lemons, 43 are suspects in the slaying of the officers Thursday evening at the family's makeshift home at Inkster's Bungalow Motel. Police were there to serve Easter and one of her sons with arrest warrants for allegedly writing bad checks. During a standoff with police, Easter told a reporter, "We're not killers. We've been wronged by the system." She wouldn't talk about the shootings, "just about some $100 million deal that went bad," the reporter said. "SHE HAD all these stories about the big business deals she was involved in," said an employe of the Knight's Inn in Romulus, where the family stayed last year reportedly after being evicted from their home on John Hix Road in Wayne.

"She'd say, 'I'm a millionaire. You don't know about all the money we have, but we just can't get our hands on The employe said the family lived there from January 1986 to February 1987 in three connecting rooms. "They (the rooms) weren't a suite, but she always wanted everyone to think they were," the employe said. "She had calls coming in here. They would ask for 'the Alberta Easter and we would laugh.

She was renting practically the cheapest rooms we have." The employe said the family "slid out in the middle of the night" in February owing the motel $12,000, which it never collected. Million-dollar deals that never came together apparently were a way of life for the family, said Robert Schmidt, who said he has known Easter's family for 12 years. "She was rattled from being stuck in a motel, confined like that for so long," he said of Easter. "They had suffered a number of business reversals and said they were owed a lot of money." He said he never knew the family to be violent, although he knew George and Roy Lemons had permits to carry concealed weapons, which See SUSPECTS, Page 4C i i f'f i i i. I ixiiX u.LLit ill i The charges: writing two rubber checks, one for $286.40 to rent an eight-year-old Ford station wagon from I it-, Rent-a-Jalopy, the other for more than $100.

Never in the state's history have three police officers been slain in a single incident. Never in the 60-year history of the Inkster Police Department had an officer been killed in the line of duty. DEAD ARE Officer Daniel Dubiel, 36, who has a pregnant wife and four children; Officer Clay Hoover, 24, who was engaged to be married, and Sgt. Ira Parker, 4 1 married and the father of four children. Parker had answered a calm call for a supervisor from Dubiel and Hoover.

Parker's son, Ira Parker 18, would watch the scene at the motel for several hours without knowing his father was inside. Arrested and expected to be arraigned today on murder charges are Alberta Easter, 69, and her three sons: Roy Lemons 47; William Monroe Lemons, 43, and George Lester Lemons, 45. It was a routine call, "if there is such a thing," Inkster Police Chief James Buckley said shortly after dawn Friday. He still wore the gray suit he See SCENE, Page 4C 0, i PAULINE LUBENSDetroil Free Press High winds cut swath in Inkster. Sherwood Crum, an Inkster auxiliary police officer, grieves by a patrol car Friday morning after three police officers were found slain in the Bungalow Motel.

He said he had worked closely with all three of the officers. The officer in the rear was not identified. 3A. North: Casey used profits to finance covert activity Medicaid abortion payments reinstated temporarily 11D MOVIE GUIDE LOTTERY NUMBERS FRIDAY 956 and 7514 LOTTO JACKPOT $7.5 NAMES FACES 12D OBITUARIES 10A REAL ESTATEHOMES 1-5B SPORTS 1-7D STOCK MARKETS 9-11C TELEVISION 5-6C al decision about abortion," but called it only an "interim victory." Two weeks ago Blanchard asked the Supreme Court to settle the dispute, but no decision has been made on when the payment ban becomes effective. State Department of Social Services Director C.

Patrick Babcock said some 30,000 health care providers will not be notified of the ruling to resume Medicaid payments for abortions until Monday. Payments were halted July 1 when Judge Robert Holmes Bell of the Ingham County Circuit Court ruled in favor of an anti-abortion group seeking an immediate ban on the payments. THE LEGISLATURE, prodded by petitions from Right to Life of Michigan, last month approved the ban, which Blanchard See ABORTION, Page 11A By CHARLES GREEN and R.A. ZALDIVAR Free Press Washington Slaff WASHINGTON The late CIA Director William Casey seized upon the Iran arms dealings as a way to create a secret contingency fund to finance a wide range of covert operations outside regular government channels, Lt. Col.

Oliver North told the Iran-contra committees Friday. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, termed the scheme a "secret government within our government" and Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, said the disclosure was "perhaps the most serious revelation" of the two-month-old hearings into the Iran-contra affair. North, testifying publicly for a fourth day before the congressional investigative committees, said Casey wanted to use the See HEARINGS, Page 11A By CHRIS CHRISTOFF Free Press Lansing Staff LANSING Medicaid payments for abortions were reinstated Friday by the Michigan Court of Appeals, 10 days after a lower court ordered the state payments stopped.

Friday's ruling by a three-judge panel blocked the lower court ruling but only until the appeals court or the Michigan Supreme Court decides whether a ban on Medicaid for abortions takes effect ately or next April. The appeals court asked the Supreme Court Friday for a quick hearing, and a decision could come in two weeks, according to Friday's ruling. Gov. Blanchard praised Friday's court ruling victory for poor women and the righifaf Individuals to cake a highly person NORTH: RIGHT OR WRONG? Do you think Oliver North is a patriot or a scoundrel? We're taking your responses for a special Soundoff. Page 9A.

ALSO INSIDE North stacks up evidence of his public support. Page 91 Memo says Reagan felt frustrated. Page 9A. Reader responses to Thursday's Soundoff: Do you sympathize with North? Page 111 Switch from hearings costs WXYZ in ratings. Page 9D.

Evangelist Pat Fobertson says i North confided in him. Page 91 ANN LANDERS 12D BRIDGE 10D BUSINESS NEWS 8-11C CLASSIFIED ADS 7-11B COMICS 10-11D CROSSWORD PUZZLE 11D DATELINE MICHIGAN 4A DEATH NOTICES 9B EDITORIALS 8A ENTERTAINMENT 8-9D FEATURE PAGE 12D GREATER DETROIT 4A HOROSCOPE 100 JUMBLE 11B METRO DATELINE 4A To place a classified ad, call 222-5000, Monday-Thursday 8-6, Friday 8-7, Saturday and Sunday 10-4. WWII deserter's body home at last for burial. 3A. Complete coverage of Sunday's Spirit of Detroit race.

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