Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 257, Greencastle, Putnam County, 3 July 1980 — Page 3

If you think this nearly completed hotel in Akron, Ohio, looks as though it was constructed from grain silos, you're absolutely right. Construction of the Quaker Square Hilton is nearly complete. Workers cut out

Jury finds Wall guilty, deciding death penalty

. LAFAYETTE. Ind. (AP) - A jury faced a decision today on whether to recommend the electric chair for the man it convicted of killing five members of his family. The panel of nine women and three men convicted John Wall Jf.. 24. Logansport, on five counts of murder late Wednesday night. Wall, who pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, heard the verdict without any display of emotion. Wall’s attorney, Kelly Leeman, said, “He knows an appeal is possible. He has been very accepting and realizes he has another shot at it (being acquitted). Leeman said he is more than optimistic about the appeal process and wants “to see this man get the help he has been denied for so long. ” The Tippecanoe Circuit Court jury deliberated six hours Wednesday night after hearing nearly four weeks of testimony. Judge W'arren Thompson told the panel to return at 9 a.m. today for that phase of the trial dealing with the death sentence.

Purdue study will center on demise of family farms

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. TAP) once the backbone of the state’s agricultural economy, are dying out, and a new study by Purdue University will try to find out why. Paul Farris, head of Purdue’s department of agricultural economics, says the study will focus on midsized farms to 500 acres because those are the farms that are vanishing from Indiana. Between 1964 and 1974, the number of farms between 100 nnd 500 acres dropped 21 percent while farms under 100

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portions from silos which once held grain for a Quaker Square factory and fashioned them into the perimeter of the hotel, which is expected to open by mid-July. (AP Laserphoto)

Wall was charged in the March 28, 1979 shooting deaths in Logansport of his father, John Wall, 51; two sisters, Robin Musselman. 18, and Nancy Shanks, 21; a brother-in-law, Thomas Shanks, 25; and a 22month old nephew, David Scott Musselman. The state will present aggravating circumstances, the defense mitigating. Both sides may provide rebuttal, and then the jury will decide. Its recommendation is not binding, however. “I feel relieved,” Cass County Prosecutor Tom Kragh said after the verdict. “I never felt for half a second he was insane from the first time I talked to him down at the jail. Judge Thompson said the death penalty issue is simpler than the trail itself and he hoped the issue could be decided in one day. In his summation Wednesday afternoon, Kragh reviewed Wall’s activities the day of the murders, showing the court pictures of the bodies and murder

acres increased 60 percent and those over 500 acres increased 48 percent. The research project was outlined for about 300 Indiana agricultural leaders, legislators and educators who were on hand for belated groundbreaking ceremonies for a $9.4 million, four-story Purdue agricultural research building Tuesday. Arthur Hansen, Purdue’s president, said economists estimate the annual returns from research expendures is between 21 and 47 percent. Gov. Otis R. Bowen spoke

weapons. He questioned earlier testimony by tavern-owner Robert Brenner, who said another tavern patron spiked Wall’s drink with an unidentified white powder on the day of the shootings. Kragh said Brenner should have alerted Wall to the powder being poured into his drink, and the prosecutor suggested this lapse might discredit Brenner’s testimony. Leeman offered an emotional final argument to the jury, saying he was “sick of the drivel of psychiatrists who talked with Wall for only an hour or so.” Leeman said the man Brenner identified as Richard “Buggs” McCrea could have had a motive for spiking Wall’s drink. The defense attorney said McCrea worked with Wall, and Wall’s father laid off McCrea. McCrea was laid off the same week the elder Wall notified his son he was being laid off. Leeman urged the jury not to send Wall to prison but to let him “get the help he needs.”

briefly at the ceremony, noting that the $3.4 billion annual income from farm products ranks Indiana eighth nationally in farm cash receipts. In a preliminary study of 125 farms, economist Craig L. Dobbins fournd marketing at the top of a list of farmer problems. “I had thought that this group wasn’t growth-oriented, but they were just as concerned as other farmers,” Dobbins said. The study hopes to provide marketing information, particularily on the livestock and grain futures, Dobbins said.

Current structure 'archaic' Coalition urges revision of utility rates

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The current utility rate structure is archaic and should be revised so the rate structure is more in line with customer usage, according to a spokesman for the Citizens Action Coalition. Bill Moberly, consumer affairs representative for United Auto Workers Local 685 in Kokomo and a spokesman for the coalition, says there may be a relationship between income levels of utility customers and how much gas and electricity they use. The group wants to test that

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theory, so it has gone to Public Counselor Frank Biddinger to urge his support for a study of Indiana’s utility rate structure. Moberly says the study, which will cost about $200,000, will be patterned after a similar one in Ohio. Moberly said the Ohio study showed the more income a household had, the more energy was used. He says similar results in Indiana would support the coalition’s proposal a higher rate be set for natural gas or electrical usage beyond the minimum

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amount needed each month. “We would use this study to work with the Legislature, the Public Service Commission and the public counselor to create a new rate structure,” Moberly told reporters at a Statehouse news conference Wednesday. He said the utility rate structures currently in use in Indiana were devised in the 19205. “They are obviously archaic,” Moberly said, explaining the rates were scaled when energy was plentiful and its use was encouraged. Moberly said his proposal dis-

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July 3,1980, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

fers from so-called “lifeline rates,” which are special rates set for low-income energy users. “We don’t want to subsidize the poor,” he said. “We don’t want to make the poor a burden on everybody.” “The concept is conservation, not subsidizing the poor,” Moberly said. Moberly conceded the biggest break in utility rates comes with massive industrial consumption. But the study his group is proposing would not deal with industrial energy

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users. Moberly says Biddinger “was very favorable to our request.” Biddinger, whose office represents consumer interests in utility rate cases, said he wanted time to look at the results of the Ohio study before he made a commitment on the proposal. “If it lookqd like it had some validity, if the funding was available, I would pursue it,” Biddinger said in an interview. “But I’d have to see the Ohio study before I would know whether we would want to do such a study in Indiana.”

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