Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1982-07-17

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74th Year No. 258 Good Morning! It's Saturday. July 17. 1982 2 Section 1() Page 2o Cent-- .
: : Judge denies guilty plea
Woman accused
of confining son
for three months
A Cape Girardeau woman accused of locking
her 7- year-
- old son in her basement for almost
three months pleaded guilty to child abuse Fri-day
in Boone County Circuit Court. But Judge
Frank Conley raised questions about Olgica
Kocevski's mental condition and rejected her
plea.
Ms. Kocevski, a 27- year-- old naturalized Ca-nadian
citizen, appeared ashen and at times
shook uncontrollably. Straining to hear, Judge
Conley had to coax whispered answers from her
as she testified from the witness stand.
Akbar Esker, a 28- year-- old Pakistani and co- defend- ent
in the case, was not present for the
pre- tri- al hearing but is scheduled to appear for
trial July 28.
Ms. Kocevski, who has claimed she did not re-port
the abuse of Dejan Kocevski because she
was afraid of Esker, had been expected to testi-fy
against Esker. But the fact that her guilty
plea was rejected on the basis of her emotional
stability could jeopardize her use as a prosecu-tion
witness.
" This will put the prosecution in a hell of a
spot," said Esker's attorney, Hale W. Brown.
Ms. Kocevski, who is expected to return to
court July 28 to answer charges against her,
was taken to Fulton State Mental Hospital for
psychiatric evaluation when she left court Fri-day.
The bizarre case has attracted national atten-tion,
largely because of the legal problems cre-ated
by the couple's nationalities. It was or-dered
transfered to Columbia in June due to
extensive pre- tri- al publicity in Cape Girardeau.
The alleged child abuse came to light April 13
when fire broke out in Ms. Kocevski's rented
home. The blaze was blamed on an electrical
short that ignited loose attic insulation. A result-ing
explosion blew the roof off the house, awak-ening
neighbors, who summoned Cape Girar-deau
firefighters.
Much of the house had been destroyed by the
time fire crews arrived.
I Firemen broke through a locked basement
door in an effort to salvage what they could
from the home. Firefighter Robert Thompson
later reported that he was entering the smoke- fille- d
basement for a second time when he stum-bled
over a smalt bundle at the foot of toe stairs.
That small bundle was Dejan. -
Thompson carried Dejan, who was suffering
from smoke inhalation and heat prostration,
into the yard. There firefighters administered
mouth- to- mou- th resuscitation and cardio- pulmi- na- ry
resuscitation to the unconscious child.
After an ambulance had left with Dejan for
Southeast Missouri State Hospital, a neighbor
alerted Fire Chief Charles Mills that Ms.
Kocevski had a 7- yea-r-
old boy. Mills ordered his
men back into the house to search for him.
" He was awful small," Mills said of the child
who already had been removed from the house.
" We couldn't believe he was a 7- year--
old." He
had estimated Dejan's age at 4.
According to hospital reports, Dejan was suf-fering
from chronic malnutrition. He weighed
only 32 pounds.
Mills said he was shocked by the child's
stunted appearance. Asked by telephone Friday
if Dejan had bruises or marks on his body, the
fire chief declined to comment.
Ms. Kocevski and Esker were not home at the
time of the fire. According to Cape Girardeau
authorities, the couple had been in Peoria, HI.,
for three or four days.
Firefighters said the basement was a dingy
room with a concrete floor and a small bath --
room. The main room was lit by a single naked
light bulb. It's furnishings consisted of a couch
and a small chest of drawers. Firemen said
stains on the couch appeared to be vomit. Atop
the chest was a small platter containing a ba-nana
snack cake and a couple of cookies.
' ' There were no toys,' ' Mills said.
Ms. Kocevski and Esker had been renting the
Cape Girardeau house since late December
1981. But most neighbors said they hadn'. t seen
Dejan in the three months prior to the the fire.
According to news accounts, Dejan had been al--
Sg1! Ji.
Jim Waketum
Olgica Kocevski. a 27- year- o- ld Cape G5- - cuit t; ourt. A naturalized citizen. Ms.
rardeau resident, is taken to her pre- tri- - Kocevski appeared ashen and at times
al hearing Friday in Boone County Cir- - shook uncontrollably.
lowed up from the basement only once to cel-ebrate
his seventh birthday in January.
Ms. Kocevski and Esker moved to Cape G-irardeau
from Toronto, Canada, where they had
worked on the maintenance staff of a hotel. Ms.
Koqevski met Esker at the hotel after her di- -
4He was awful small.
We couldn't believe
he was a 7- year-
- old.'
vorce from Dejan's Yugoslavian father, Branko
Kocevski.
A check with Canadian authorities revealed
that Dejan was admitted to a Canadian hospital
in March 1981 after a teacher at the Church
Street School in Toronto reported she believed
the boy was in pain. According to news ac-counts,
Dejan had a reddened eye, cigarette
burns on bis arms and back, a bump on his fore-head,
scratches on his buttocks and bruises on
most of his body.
Veronica Payne, acting executive director of
Toronto's Catholic Children's Aid Society, said
Friday that Dejan had showed signs of abuse
but said the only injuries she could confirm
were those to his eyes.
The society took temporary custody of the
child, and the case was investigated by the
city's child abuse team. But at a court hearing,
the team was unable to establish who was re-sponsible
for Dejan's condition. Custody of the
child was returned to Ms. Kocevski after the
court was assured she was no longer seeing
Esker.
Ms. Kocevski took Dejan out of the Church
Street School and enrolled him in Toronto's pri-vate
Jesse Catchem School. According to Ca-nadian
news accounts, she removed Dejan from
that school in November 1981, telling officials
she was taking the boy on a trip to Europe. Ms.
Kocevski and Esker then left Canada in a rented
truck.
Police said Dejan never was enrolled in a
Cape Girardeau school.
After the fire, Dejan was hospitalized for sev-eral
weeks, generating medical bills totaling
more than $ 21,000. Medicaid has paid $ 2,000; the
balance remains unpaid.
Dejan has been living in a temporary foster
home, but may be reunited with his father soon.
A Cape Girardeau circuit court has granted cus-tody
to Branko Kocevski, who now works in a
hotel on the border of France and West Ger-many.
In Missouri, child abuse is considered a class
D felony. Fines for a class D felony range from
$ 1 to $ 5,000. Sentences range from a day in
Boone County Jail to five years in the state peni-tentiary.
This story was reported by Missourian staff
writers Paul Shannon, Keith Philpott and Debo-rah
Kay NeweD.
Hig this
Gophers burrowing
in radioactive waste
LOS ALAMOS, N. M. ( UPI) A
Los Alamos National Laboratory
study has uncovered another factor
that designers of radioactive waste
disposal sites should keep in mind
gophers.
Tom Hakonson, Leo Martinez and
Gary White said in a recent report
their study showed that a colony of
gophers moved more than 12 tons of
j dirt and burrowed 1.7 miles of tun--
1 nels in a 2.4- acr- e site during a 401--
; day period in 1979- 198- 0.
Almost all the activity in the test
site, located in a section of a low- le- v-
3 el radioactive waste site at the lab,
1 was confined to three feet below the
; surface, while the waste is buried be--
k low the four- fo- ot level.
" The question is, if you have 50
years of that activity, what will be
the situation?" Hakonson said re-- -.
cently.
He said most low- lev- el waste
,." material in the country is buried in
7 trenches that are covered with 3-- 6
ft?
1
feet of soil. Most gophers burrow
within the top three feet, he said, but
some dig as far down as six feet.
Even when the animals do not dig
into buried wastes, their tunneling
can be harmful by providing con-duits
for water to infilitrate the wast-es
and cause erosion, Hakonson said.
Scientists also are studying meth-ods
to protect the waste from go-phers,
such as incorporating layers
of gravel or cobblestones. Los Ala-mos
is incorporating some of these
ideas into its waste site, Hakonson
said.
" What we're trying to do is devel-op
the best techniques for minimiz-ing
any risk," he said. " We need to
contain this stuff for decades, maybe
a couple hundred years. What we are
not yet able to answer is what hap-pens
in the long run."
The gopher study and related re-search
at Los Alamos is part of a De-partment
of Energy study on dispos-ing
of low- lev- el radioactive waste.
1m towi totiy
6: 30 pjn. " By Strouse," din-ner
theater, Memorial Union
Ballroom. Tickets, by reserva-tion
only, 882- 734- 4.
8: 15 pan. " On Golden Pond,"
Summer Repertory Theater,
University Theater. Tickets,
$ 6 for general admission, $ 1
for students.
Index
Classified 2- 3- B
Comics 4B
Opinion 4A
Record 5A
Religion 3A
Sports 1-- 2B
Iran Iraq
stalemated
United Press International
Iraq said it launched another ma-jor
counterattack against the Irani-an
army Friday and claimed to have
destroyed 75 percent of the enemy's
armed forces. It claimed to have
moved the war back into Iran with
air strikes against the city of Hama- da- n.
Iranian ruler Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, his troops reportedly
thrown back by the counteroffen- siv- e,
issued a new set of peace condi-tions
that appeared to drop a key de-mand
for the ouster of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein, but
wanted Iraq -- to agree to pay war
damages and admit it was the ag-gressor.
Though conflicting claims made it
difficult to assess action on the
ground, U. S. intelligence sources in
Washington said the 22- month-
- old
war that has now shifted into Iraq
was still " basically a stalemate."
They said the Iraqis had managed
to push back an Iranian advance to-wards
Basra, Iraq's only Persian
Gulf port, but that the Iranians have
regrouped in two main armies north
and east of Basra for a major as-sault
expected over the weekend.
Combat on the fourth day of Iran's
push into Iraq, " Operation Rama-dan,"
shifted to the skies with re-ports
of heavy Iraqi air attacks
against Iranian positions on the Ira-qi
side of the Shatt al- Ar- ab water
way that forms part of the disputed
border between the two Gulf rivals.
Iraq said it shot down a U S -- made
Iranian jet fighter, the third report-ed
Iranian loss since the start of the
invasion.
But Iraq also said its ground
forces resumed their counterattack
and contained the enemy offensive
Iraq said its forces beat back the
Iranian advance on Basra after ' vi-olent
combat' Thursday, killing
more than 1,000 Iranians
Iran said Iraqi jet fighters at-tacked
the Hamadan in western
Iran, killing 64 people and wounding
350 others.
Iran said Iraq's combat losses in
Thursday's fighting included 600
troops killed or wounded and 77
tanks and armored vehicles de-stroyed
or captured.
U. S. intelligence sources, whose
information was understood to come
from spy satellite pictures, said they
expected the Iranians to strike next
from the north and the east in an en-circling
pincer movement against
the Iraqis defending Basra.
The communiques of both sides
made it clear the Iranians were still
holding Iraqi territory west of Bas-ra.
After initially advancing six to 10
miles across the frontier, the Irani-ans
were pushed back in a bow- shap- ed
line extending slightly west
of the border the U S. sources, who
requested anonymity, said
Councilmen ponder
deposit amendment
ByLeeDancy
Missourian staff writers
Three of the seven city councilmen
said Friday they do nctfa or exclud-ing
2- li- ter plastic bottles from Co-lumbia's
container- depos- it law.
Fifth Ward Councilman Dick
Walls suggested the City Council ex-clude
the 2- li- ter bottles from the law
at the council's July 6 meeting. The
law now requires a 5- c- ent deposit on
all canned beverages and bottled
beer sold in Columbia.
The council will hold a public hear-ing
and final vote on the proposal at
its regular meeting at 7: 30 p. m. Mon-day
in the County- Cit- y Building.
Sixth Ward Councilman Matt Mc- Cormi- ck
and Fourth Ward Coun-cilman
Pat Barnes told the Missour-ian
they would vote against the
amendment.
Mayor John Westlund said that, al-though
he had not decided how to
vote, he was leaning against the pro-posed
amendment.
" I haven't developed a firm opin-ion
yet," Westlund said. " I'll have to
wait until the public hearing." The
mayor said he would prefer to keep
the law intact, particularly if there
is a referendum in November.
Second Ward Councilman Duane
Lammers, Third Ward Councilman
Rodney Smith and First Ward Coun-cilman
Al Tacker could not be
reached by the Missourian.
Petitions are being gathered at
three Nowell's liquor stores and at
Eastgate Party Shop, 2006 E. Broad-way,
to put the ordinance on the No-vember
ballot.
" Two- lite- r plastic bottles are not
being recycled, and they are not a
litter problem," Walls said. " I don't
feel we should have to pay somebody
to haul them away."
Recycled 2- li- ter containers can be
the fuler for coats and vests instead
of expensive goosedown, saia David
Thelen, organizer of Columbians
Against Throwaways. They also are
used in polyester fabrics, he said.
Local recycler Dave Allen, owner
of Civic Recycling, 1407 Grand Ave.,
said he makes approximately $ 20 on
each bag of 275 bottles distributors
bring to him for disposal.
Poor sales of textiles " nave hurt re-cycling
businesses, Allen added.
Contracts between Wellman Indus-tries
and du Pont, which has recy-cling
plants in Michigan and Iowa,
bring in all the plastic the two firms
presently can handle Both states
have deposit laws.
Thelen said these circumstances
are not good reasons to amend the
ordinance. " The worst that happens
is they go to the landfill." he said.
" Then they're out of the litter
stream."
Thelen asserted that firms are
willing to take the bottles, although
he declined to name them.
Other items to be considered by
the council include :
A request from Keeneland
Properties, representative of Excep- tico- n
Midwest to . zone a 7.7- ac- re
tract in the 100 block of Portland
Avenue from single- famil- y resi-dential
to office classification. The
request received unanimous approv-al
from the Columbia Planning and
Zoning Commission June 2-- 5
A request from Harold Juhnson
to rezone 6 42 acres m three jarcels
from single- fami- ly residential to
( See REQUEST, P. 6A)
KOMU change to AUC involves
more ' than just flip of a switch
By Scott Stuckey
Missourian staff writer
When KOMU- T- V drops NBC Aug.
8 to become an ABC affiliate, it
won't be with a simple flip of a
switch.
Although the technological re-quirements
for the switch aren't par-ticularly
complex, there will be a
fundamental change in the way the
station receives its new network sig-nal.
KOMU, Channel 8, will receive its
ABC feed directly from the ComStar
D-- 3 satellite, says station manager
Tom Gray. Currently, KOMU relies
on a more costly microwave signal
that " hops" down from Chicago
along a line of microwave towers
spaced 25 to 30 miles apart.
ABC recently equipped KOMU
with a 4.6- met- er dish to receive the
satellite signal, and a larger dish is
on order, Gray says. The satellite
link will save the network the fees it
currently pays telephone companies
for use of the microwave " line"
Insight
from Chicago.
ABC is the first of the networks to
change to direct satellite reception,
although CBS and NBC also plan to.
Gray says.
Gray cites ABC's superior national
ratings, emphasis on news and a
commitment to quality program-ming
as the main reasons for the
switch from NBC. Recently, NBC
slipped into last place among the
three national networks in the rat-ings
race, while ABC emerged as a
strong contender.
" Everyone knows that NBC's rat-ings
are a major concern," Gray
says, adding that NBC affiliate sta-tions
in Savannah, Ga., and Odessa,
Texas, also are switching to ABC.
Gray says the move to ABC will
not bring about immediate rate in-creases
for KOMU's local advertis-ers,
even though the station expects
a larger share of the network audi
ence.
Program changes planned for
KOMU include moving the noon
news broadcast to 11 a. m and ainng
the network program " Couples,"
now shown only on the West Coast,
at 9 a. m. Gray says ABC also is plan-ning
a new late- nig- ht feature news
program hosted by Phil Donahue.
KOMU's switch to ABC, originally
scheduled for July 12, was delayed
by a dispute over a possible sale of
the current ABC affiliate. KCBJ- T- V.
But Wednesday, a U. S. district judge
in Kansas City ruled that KCBJ
would relinquish its ABC affiliation
Aug. 8.
KCBJ hopes to become the new
NBC affiliate on the same day, but
negotiations have been complicated
by a suit against station manager
Richard Koerug. The suit was filed
by Wooster Republican Printing Co.,
which claims breach of contract for
sale of the station. Wooster, an Ohio
media chain, has been trying to buy
KCBJ for several years.
4