Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1983-01-13

              75th Year No. 103 Good Morning! It's Thursday, January 13, 1983 2 Sections 12 Pages 25 Cents
Murder suspect
claims trickery
led to confession
By Scott Nishimura
Mittsourtan atafl writer
UNION, Mo. In a packed courtroom, Dolores Miller
denied Wednesday that she killed her husband with an in-sulin
overdose and testified that she was tricked into ad-mitting
to the crime.
Her appearance in her own defense at her capital mur-der
trial ended the third day of testimony. The jury will
hear final arguments and begin deliberations today.
Mrs. Miller is charged with the March 1962 death of
her husband, Erroll " Roy" Miller. Miller died while re-covering
from brain surgery at Truman Veteran Hospi-tal
in Columbia.
Columbia Police Detective Randy McMillen, who took
Miller's statement March 11, also testified Wednesday.
He said Mrs. Miller told him she killed her husband as an
act of mercy she told him that prior to the operation
Miller indicated he was afraid he " would be a vegeta-ble."
Boone County Prosecutor Joe Moseley stressed
throughout his examination of prosecution witnesses that
a bag full of syringes had been found in Mrs. Miller's car
following her arrest.
When Mrs. Miller took the stand, defense attorney Pat-rick
Eng asked her to point out statements in her March
11 confession that she considered untrue. Among the
points she said were false were the claims that she in-jected
insulin into her husband's I. V. bag using an insulin
bottle and a syringe she had taken from a nurses station
at the hospital, and that she flushed the syringe and the
bottle down a toilet afterwards.
Columbia Police Detective Sgt. Dale Richardson
frowned as he sat nearby listening to Mrs. Miller's testi-mony.
He leaned forward from time to time as if to catch
her response. Richardson was one of two Columbia po-lice
detectives who testified they watched as Mrs. Miller
signed the confession.
Eng attempted to further discredit the validity of the
confession by charging that McMillen coerced Mrs. Mill-er
into signing.
" Now, Mr. McMillen," he said, " there was a little bit
of trickery here, wasn't there?" Mrs. Miller testified she
was promised she would be released to make funeral ar-rangements
for her husband if she signed the confession.
Eng also criticized McMillen for discarding his notes
of his conversation with Mrs. Miller.
" Now, we don't know exactly what those notes say, do
we?" he asked in cross- examinati- on of the detective.
" No, sir," McMillen answered.
Others called to testify Wednesday included three ex-pert
witnesses.
Dr. Jay Dix, Boone County medical examiner, testified
mat Miller died of an insulin overdose. Dix said Miller's
condition at the time of his death could not have been
produced naturally.
Yet two doctors testifying in Mrs. Miller's defense told
the jury insulin only rarely causes death and added that
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Murder defendant Dolores Miller, 53, right,
chats with defense character witness Patsy
Miller could have died as a result of any of a number of
complications resulting from the removal of the brain tu-mor.
Dr. Ron James, a Columbia physician who is himself a
diabetic and a specialist in diabetic treatment, testified
that an overdose of insulin rarely kills.
The effect is to decrease blood sugar levels in the body,
he explained. He said an overdose may cause profuse
perspiration, convulsions or epileptic seizures.
Dr. George Gantner, chief medical examiner for St.
Louis and St. Louis County, admitted that an insulin
Greg Horstmeler
Hayes of Kennett, Mo., Wednesday outside a
Union, Mo., courtroom.
overdose could cause death, but said Miller's death could
just as easily have been caused by a number of other fac-tors.
Mrs. Miller remains free on bond, which was reduced
from $ 150,000 to $ 1,000 after her case was transferred in
September to Franklin County. Judge John Brackman
said he reduced the bond because the Franklin County
Jail has no space for women.
Brackman later disqualified himself from hearing the
trial at the request of Moseley. Circuit Judge Lawrence
Davis is conducting Mrs. Miller's trial.
I 1
10 a. m.-- 4 p. m. Red Cross
Bloodmobile at Truman Veter-ans
Hospital.
5 p. m.- 6: 3- 0 p. m. Chili supper
at West Junior High School.
Tickets available at door, $ 2.
Inside
Business .7A
Classified 3- 4- B
Comics .. . ................. 6A
Opinion 4A
Record 7A
Sports 1- 2- B
Hallsville 3B I
Man who sprayed dioxin
gives a tearful testimony
By Joe Lambe
State Capitol Bureau
Russell Bliss, the used- o- il hauler
who in 1971 sprayed dioxin- tainte- d
oil on property throughout Missouri
to keep down the dust, wept Thurs-day
as he testified before the state
House Energy and Atomic Energy
Committee.
" I swear to all of you I had no idea
this material was bad," he said in
his first public testimony. " I just
wish it had been disposed of in some
other way."
Bliss was introduced by Speaker of
the House Robert Griffin, D- Camer- - on,
who dodged wires and TV camer-as
on his way to the podium. Most
legislative committee meetings are
marked by half a dozen half empty
coffee cups left in their wake. This
one drew a full house.
" IT1 tell you the truth," said Bliss.
" I'm not going to beat around the
bush." . ,
Tears ran down his cheeks as oe
reclaimed his innocence. He had no
Elea dioxin was in the oil, be said.
The owners of horse arenas where
I
the poisonous oil was first sprayed
were friends, he said. They had been
impressed by the absence of dust at
the arena on Bliss' farm near Rosa- t- i,
Mo., where he said he raises
prize- winnin- g horses. When they
found out he had sprayed with oil,
they asked him to spray their are-nas,
he continued.
EPA tests later revealed that diox-in
levels at Bliss' farm were 300
parts per billion a dangerously
high concentration. Yet Bliss said it
had little effect on his livestock or
his family.
About six chickens and many wild
birds died after he sprayed, he said,
but he assumed they'd been poisoned
by picking through horse droppings
containing a toxic deworming com-pound.
" I never even thought the oil
might have caused it," he said. " I
want you to understand my love for
animals I wouldn't intentionally
do anything to harm an animal." In
fact, no one suspected the oil to be
the culprit until long after birds,
See BLISS, Page 8A.
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Reagan fires
arms director
Conservative victory
By United Press International
WASHINGTON President Reagan, m a major high- lev- el
purge that followed months of political infighUng.
Wednesday fired the director of the U. S. Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency and replaced one of his top
arms negoUators.
Reagan announced he was replacing embattled agency
Director Eugene Rostow with Kenneth Adelman, deputy
U. S. representative to the United Nations, in a move like-ly
to placate hard- lin- e conservatives and infuriate arms
control advocates.
The president aho replaced Richard Staar. who since
1981 has been negotiating conventional force reductions
in Europe at talks in Vienna, with Morton Abramowitz, a
career foreign service officer.
And, rejecting the recommendation of ilostow and Sec-retary
of State George Shultz, Keagan further announced
he will nominate former Rep. David Emery, R- Ma- me, as
deputy director of the arms control agency.
In a written statement. Reagan called the members of
his reconstituted arms control team '" men of great dis-tinction
and dedication" and reaffirmed his determin- atio- n
to seek reductions in conventional and nuclear
arms.
" It is essential that we press forward in the search for
arms reduction." he said. '" We shall be unrelenUng in
our efforts."
Reagan said Shultz shares his " high confidence" in the
new nominees.
For months, Rostow has been the target of sniping
from conservative Republican senators who did not view
him as sufficiently hard- lin- e, and succeeded in torpe-doing
the nominations of his deputy and one of his chief
assistants.
Rostow, in a brief statement, said: ' it has been a priv-ilege
to serve as director of the Arms Control and Disar-mament
Agency for the past 20 months. In recent days, it
has become clear that the president wished to make
changes. In response to his request, I have tendered my
resignation."
He indicated it was Shultz who informed him of the
reasons behind the firing.
Vice President George Bush, who is leaving the coun-try
at the end of the month to discuss recent Soviet arms
reduction proposals with European allies, said he did not
believe the Rostow resignation would alter his own mis-sion.
" I don't see any effect on the trip." he said " I mean
things go on. The talks will resume on schedule and
that's the key thing." He refused to comment on whether
Rostow was fired and said the changeover " came as a
big surprise to me."
A conservative Democrat who served as undersecre-tary
of state in the Johnson administration, Rostow also
did not get along with the White House national security
staff.
Where have the creative leaders gone?
New York Times
NEW YORK Most attempts to
reform the universities in the past 20
years have failed. They fell victim to
faculty conservatism and weak pres-idential
leadership. This is the
judgment of Clark Kerr, former
president of the University of Cali-fornia
and chairman of the Carnegie
Council on Higher Education.
" Where," asked Kerr, " have the
leaders gone? They have gone where
they have also gone in corporations,
unions and government." They
have, he believes, given way to decision-
- making by the marketplace and
to a participatory democracy that
gives special- intere- st groups the
power to veto changes.
" Leadership does matter," Kerr
stresses, particularly in troubled
times. In recent such times, Ken- says- ,
presidents " were used like
Kleenex."
Kerr is a seasoned academic ob-server
and, in the view of many, also
one of the most reasonable ones. He
expressed his recent critical views
in an unusual dialogue with himself
a second postscript to a small but
important volume, " The Uses of the
Universities losing power, critic says
University," originally published in
1963, one year before the student re-volt
at Berkeley touched off nation-wide
and ultimately worldwide stu-dent
uprisings and demands for
reforms.
The book was reissued in 1972 with
a postscript in which Kerr responded
to misinterpretations of his original
work but also set down things he
wished he had said differently. Now,
in another reissue by Harvard Uni-versity
Press, he has added a second
postscript, trying to. diagnose the
obstacles to academic reforms in the
great research universities.
The original volume became
known for Kerr's new definition of
the university as a " multiversity"
an institution with many purposes
and constituencies. In a prescient as-sessment
of changes that were about
to shake both the academic and the
real world, he wrote of the coming
" knowledge industry." Dissident
students subsequently accused him
of wishing to turn universities into
" knowledge factories," and of want-ing
to create giant multiversities
that would turn students into mere
pawns of an impersonal system. Dis-sident
politicians accused him of aid-ing
and abetting the student revolt,
and Ronald Reagan, then Californ-ia's
governor, pressed the Board of
Regents into firing him.
What his critics failed to note was
that Kerr had pinpointed serious
problems in need of reform: the pro-fessors'
neglect of undergraduate
teaching, and the deterioration of
the curriculum into a variety of
training programs for specialists, to
the neglect of generalists.
In his latest postscript, Kerr pays
tribute to the durability of the great
research universities, but also points
out that they owe their stability to
the fact that other institutions the
two- ye- ar community colleges and
the four- ye- ar colleges absorbed
the shock of a huge expansion. The
community colleges alone expanded
from an enrollment of 400,000 in 1960
to four million in 1980. But on the
negative side, most efforts to make
the universities responsive to stu-dents'
legitimate demands for good
teaching have, in Kerr's view,
failed.
Why? " The essential conserva-tism
of faculty members about their
own affairs," says Kerr, is one rea-son.
Since universities are run by
consensus, the older members usual-ly
prevail, and for the younger fac-ulty
there is no reward in seeking in-novation
only tiresome
negotiations, often ending m disap-pointment.
Most academic reforms, Kerr
says, are initiated by students, who
are " notoriously inconstant in their
efforts, partly because of their rapid
turnover and their responsiveness to
current fads." And when adminis-trators
try to bring about change,
they usually are outmaneuvered by
faculty committees.
Why do faculty members tend to
oppose change? Largely because the
proposed reforms would force them
to spend more time with students or
provide broader coverage of sub-jects
they prefer to limit to their own
( often rather narrow) scholarly in-terests.
Professors who opposed the
changes proposed in the 1960s gener-ally
supported the trend of the 1970s
a trend toward greater specializa-tion
because it promised to keep
undergraduates out of their hair as
they concentrated on their research
and a few graduate students.
" The academic changes of the
1960s," says Kerr, " originated in
student bull sessions and in the
minds and hearts of administrators
who listened to students; they died in
the faculty clubs." As examples,
Kerr cites the declines in such pro-grams
as black and Hispanic stud-ies.
Many observers see the same
fate for women's studies and urban
affairs programs.
The reform movement, Kerr says,
" was a flame that burned brightly
for a while and then flickered out, its
extinction mourned by only a few."
And he adds: " I count myself among
those few."
Russell Bliss told a state House committee
Wednesday that he unknowingly sprayed oil
Rax Penning
contaminated with deadly dioxin at several
areas in Missouri.
i
Flood debris
trucked to
county landfill
TIMES BEACH, Mo. ( UPI) A
caravan of sealed trucks loaded with
flood debris left dioxin- contaminat- ed
Times Beach under police escort
Wednesday and was met by nearly
30 helmeted state troopers at a land-fill
in Warren County.
Although residents of Warren
County had vowed to form a human
barricade to block the trucks, the ve-hicles
entered the landfill without in-cident.
The troopers stood in forma-tion
at the landfill entrance as the
trucks passed by.
The crowd of about 40 people be-gan
chanting as the trucks neared,
but their words were drowned out by
the drone of media helicopters over-head.
Lt. Walter Palmer of the Highway
Patrol had addressed the crowd with
a bullhorn prior to the trucks' arri-val,
and warned that violence would
lead to arrests.
Gene Rugh, a member of an envi-ronmental
group, said he asked the
See POLLUTANT, Page 8A.
i