Banner Graphic, Volume 13, Number 46, Greencastle, Putnam County, 29 October 1982 — Page 2
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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, October 29,1982
Halloween tragedy: We can all learn a lesson from small-town incident
PITTSFIELD, Maine (AP) Christopher King did not measure his life in seconds or his safety in inches. He approached Halloween 1981 with all the enthusiasm of a 7-year-old. He would be Dracula, with a flowing cape and ghoulish mask. Across town, Karen Huff, newly married and 23, spent the afternoon of Oct. 31,1981, at a party, then returned home to change clothes before driving to a friend’s house. Children were already out trick or treating in the gathering dusk as she drove south on Hartland Avenue. So she was being careful, switching on her headlights and driving well below the 40-mph speed limit. Rudy and Bonny King felt the gentle nudge of anxiety parents sense on this holiday. They worried about too much candy. They knew about trick or treating after dark. They had heard warnings about traffic and unsafe costumes. Christopher scrambled in and out of the car, increasing his cache of candy. By the time the family reached Hartland Avenue, he had ripped and eventually discarded his costume. It was just after 6 p.m. and the sun, below the horizon, cast a deep yellow reflection across the western sky. Street lights were on, but Police Chief Spencer Havey said later there were too few to illuminate the roadway.
Fate of Texas 'Candy Man' goes to Supreme Court (c) 1982 Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON The question of whether Texas can execute Ronald Clark O’Bryan on Halloween for the murder of his 8-year old son with cyanide-laced trick-or-treat candy will come before the full Supreme Court on Friday. Justice Byron White referred the case of O’Bryan, a Houston-area resident known as the “Candy Man,” to the nine justices Thursday after the Texas attorney general’s office asked him to overturn a stay granted Wednesday by a federal appeals court. The motion is expected to be discussed Friday, when the court holds its regular weekly meeting. Removal of the stay would clear the way for O’Bryan’s execution by injection Sunday, although other last-minute appeals are possible. No one has been executed in Texas since 1964, and no state has used lethal injection to carry out a capital sentence. If the court leaves the stay in place, a hearing would be held in January before the sth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, a spokesman for Texas Atty. Gen. Mark White said. O’Bryan murdered his son Timothy on Halloween evening 1974. After taking out $20,000 insurance policies on each of his children, O’Bryan gave his son a Pixy Stix, a sugary candy contained in a tube, that was laced with cyanide. Timothy O’Bryan died about an hour after eating the candy. State Dist. Judge Michael T. McSpadden said he set the execution for Oct. 31 because the murder had “ruined Halloween for everyone. ’’ Justice White had three options in handling the Texas appeal. He could have turned it down himself, granted it or referred it to the full court. Any action short of bringing it before the full court could have been appealed individually to each of the remaining eight justices. In its brief, the Texas attorney general’s office called O’Bryan’s legal claims “obviously lacking in merit” and “frivolous.”
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Mrs. King, holding her 3-month-old son, Ryan, admonished Christopher to watch for traffic. Her husband also cautioned his son, but decided not to walk him across the street. Neither parent gave a second thought to his blue jacket and dark pants. “Maybe I was tired or just lazy, I’ve played it back a million times,” King recalls, “He is a little boy, but he was starting to grow up. He didn’t want to have Mom and Dad lead him to the door.” Christopher walked behind the car, his Dracula mask perched atop his red hair. He waited for a car to pass and started across the road. Midway, Christopher pulled down the mask. That eliminated his peripheral vision. King could see a small Datsun coming, headlights on, traveling at what appeared to be a prudent speed. Christopher would safely reach the sidewalk. No one is certain what happened next. There were no screeching tires or shattering glass, only a soft thump and the wave of panic that gripped Karen Huff as she realized she had hit something. “I never saw him. I never touched the brakes.” The impact lifted Christopher onto the car’s hood, driving his head into the windshield wipers and carrying him 30 yards .
Economists see rise in indicators WASHINGTON (AP) - Good news for the economy and the Reagan administration is showing up in the form of a gain in the government’s main economic forecasting gauge. It comes just a few days before the midterm congressional elections. Guessing in advance of today’s Commerce Department report, economists were expecting a gain of 0.5 percent or more in the Index of Leading Economic Indicators. That would not be a huge increase, but it would be much better than the 0.9 percent August decline the first after four straight increases. Although relatively few Americans are familiar with the index, Reagan officials can be expected to call attention to the new gain and what it might mean for the economy in general. The index is designed to forecast future trends in the economy. And if past performance is any guide, five increases in six months should be a strong signal that at least some recovery from the recession should be coming soon. In addition, it already seems clear that two of the index’s 10 components stock prices and the nation’s money supply will be up strongly again in October. And that means the index may well be up again in this month. Most economists expect little growth in the national economy in the current OctoberDecember period. There is no official government projection, but two Cabinet members have provided their own estimates. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige says he expects in-flation-adjusted gross national product to rise at an annual rate of 2 percent or less in the fourth quarter, and Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan estimates 3 1 / 2 to 4 per cent.
Jay Nancy
Jennifer Gayla
Arms freeze bad choice, defense secretary says
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, citing a tough speech by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, says an arms freeze would heighten the risk of nuclear war Weinberger, holding his first general news conference in nearly 21 months, appeared to be trying Thursday to persuade people to vote against freeze proposals on next Tuesday’s ballots in nine states, the District of Columbia and several large communities. “Proponents of these nuclear freeze resolutions believe that such a step would reduce the risk of war and increase prospects for a U.S.-Soviet arms reductions agreement,” Weinberger said in a prepared statement. "We think it will be just the opposite,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that a nuclear freeze would weaken the deterrent forces we rely on to prevent war.” Responding to Weinberger’s statement, Randall Kehler, coordinator of the Nuclear
Learning to cope Big Three automakers' profits 'no victory from volume'
DETROIT (AP) - Two of the nation’s Big Three automakers, rolling up profits of more than $1 billion for the first nine months of 1982 despite slumping car sales, have “learned to cope” with fewer customers, analysts say. “Certainly (the profits) are not a victory from volume,” Arvid Jouppi, an independent analyst in Detroit, said Thursday. “There is no evidence of a recovery in the industry ... The industry has learned to cope.” Although Ford Motor Co. lost money in the third quarter, it was an improvement over last year, and both Chrysler Corp. and General Motors were in the
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Havey said his investigation showed that if Mrs. Huff’s Datsun had been traveling faster than 25 mph, or hit him a second sooner, Christopher would have died. As it was, his neck was broken and only the feverish work of emergency medical technicians saved him. “They lost his pulse twice on road,” Havey said. “I thought the boy would die. Maybe he should have.” Christopher’s will to live helped him through the night and a nine-day coma. His parents borrowed a camper and lived in the hospital parking lot. “I guess it was one of those things you do when you love your son,” Mrs. King says. A year after the accident, Christopher remains paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors at Yale-New Haven Medical Center in Connecticut have implanted a device like a heart pacemaker to help him breathe more normally. If it works, Christopher may undergo physical therapy in Boston at year’s end. “We don’t talk about the paralysis. Chris has accepted how he is; he does the best he can do with it,” Mrs. King says. “He handles it a lot better than most adults would,” says his father. Christopher studies with a tutor for a few hours a day. He is
world
Weapons Freeze Campaign in St. Louis, said: “If Secretary Weinberger is worried about President Brezhnev’s call for a Soviet buildup of nuclear weapons, he should realize that a mutual freeze would put a stop to that buildup.” He said Weinberger’s remarks “amount to nothing more than a desperate political attempt to influence the outcome of the freeze votes on Nov. 2.” Weinberger noted that Brezhnev, in a speech Wednesday to Soviet defense leaders, “pledged the Soviet Union to continue the path of an even more intensified quest for military superiority.” Stressing that Brezhnev called for further steps “to improve the Soviet Union’s warfighting capability,” Weinberger said the speech underlines reasons for not entering into a freeze. Brezhnev said that the level of Soviet combat readiness “should be even higher” and accused the United States of an aggressive policy that he said
black. Cost-cutting and manufacturing efficiencies were responsible for the profits, considering car and truck sales remain behind 1981’s already depressed levels, Jouppi said. “In a volume sense, there wasn’t any recovery,” agreed Harvey Heinbach, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. in New York. “A tremendous amount of costcutting has gone on.” Their comments came after Chrysler reported it made $9.4 million, or 3 cents per share, in the third quarter of the year. That compared with a loss of $140.1 million, or $2.01 per
“is threatening to push the world into the flames of nuclear war.” Weinberger said that Brezhnev “emphasizes the correctness of the (U.S.) president’s military program” aimed at restoring what Weinberger contends is an eroded deterrent against any Soviet threat. Under questioning, Weinberger described as an “absurdity” Brezhnev’s accusation that the war in Lebanon was a U.S. creation. He appeared to back away from his assertion last week that he did not believe the U.S. Marine peacekeeping force in Lebanon would be enlarged and its mission broadened. “I can’t really say what we’ll be doing three to four weeks from now,” Weinberger said. He stressed, however, that “it is not an open-ended commitment” and that the first priority is to gain withdrawal of all foreign Arab and Israeli forces from Lebanon together with a buildup of Lebanese army strength.
share, in the same 1981 quarter. It was the first third-quarter profit for Chrysler in five years and the first time since 1977 that the No. 3 U.S. carmaker posted three consecutive quarterly profits. “Chrysler’s performance in the third quarter is especially impressive, coming at a time when the company also had to bear the cost of its 1983 product launch, endure a severe disruption in the important Mexican auto market and overcome occasional work stoppages caused by the national rail strike and by scattered walkouts at some of our plants,” Chrysler Chairman Lee lacocca said in a letter
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learning Spanish from other patients and teaches new words to his parents on weekends. Visits to New Haven are made easier by Rudy King’s transfer to Fort Devens, Mass., where he is a National Guard officer Military insurance helped pay for Christopher’s treatment. As autumn deepens, the Kings find themselves reliving Halloween. “We won’t ever let the kids go trick or treating again. It’s just too painful,” Mrs. King says. But Christopher intends to celebrate by being a Smurf at a small party in the hospital. Karen Huff, meanwhile, was so shaken by the tragedy that she could not even get out of her car. She took a leave of absence from work and didn’t leave her home for nearly a month. Police tests showed the car did not fail mechanically, and that drugs and alcohol were not factors. “If it hadn’t been for my husband and cousin (a Pittsfield police officer) I never would have made it through this. I’m just getting to the point now where I don’t blame myself,” Mrs. Huff says. The Kings do not blame Mrs. Huff, although they have not spoken to her since the accident. “She has had enough suffering, too,” Mrs. King says, a sadness coming to her soft hazel eyes. “It’s coming Halloween. ”
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It may be trick-or-treat time on the calendar, but that isn't the reason Toronto residents caught a glimpse of Corvil, a mythical monster, making a telephone call. Inside the costume is seven-foot, two-inch actor Kevin Peter Hall, 27, who takes a break in the filming of the CBS movie . "Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters" to place a call. Long . distance, no doubt. (AP Wirephoto).
to shareholders. Some Chrysler autoworkers walked out in September before the United Auto Workers union and company agreed to a tentative contract. The pact later was rejected by workers, who wanted to regain the $2.50 per hour difference between their base pay and that of other Big Three autoworkers. But they voted Tuesday by a margin of more than 2-1 to resume talks, set for January, thereby averting a strike. So far this year, Chrysler has earned $266.6 million, or $3.23 per share, versus a loss of $408.7 million, or $6.21 per share, in 1981.
Chrysler was near bankruptcy between 1979 and 1981, however, and received aid from banks and the federal and state governments which will have to be repaid in coming years. General Motors earned $129.4 million in the quarter, compared with a $468.2 million loss last year, and has made $817.7million so far in 1982 versus $236.7 million in the first nine months of last year. Ford lost $325.4 million in the third quarter, compared with a loss of $334.5 million for the same quarter a year ago. It has lost $422 million so far in 1982, compared with a loss of $713.8 million by this time last year.
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