National briefs

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 31, 2001

Clues sought in Aspen jet crash

ASPEN, Colo. -- The pilot of a chartered jet asked the control tower if runway lights were on moments before the plane crashed as it approached one of the nation's trickiest airports, an investigator said Friday night.

Al Dickenson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board team examining the crash, said the taped conversation with controllers showed the pilot was assured the lights were illuminated. Dickenson would not comment on whether the query indicated the pilot couldn't see the lights.

The Gulfstream III cockpit voice recorder was found, but the 20-year-old jet was not equipped with a data recorder, officials said.

Carol Carmody, the NTSB's acting chairwoman, said that the voice recorder "has some useful information on it" and that it had become "apparent from our preliminary look that the left wing hit the ground first. In terms of what happened after that, we're not clear on the sequence."

The NTSB team examined hundreds of pieces of metal from the executive jet that went down Thursday night, killing all 18 on board in light snow a few miles outside this ski resort town.

The plane, carrying 15 passengers and three crew members, was owned by Cinergi Pictures Entertainment. Among those on board were two employees of a Los Angeles TV station who had planned a weekend of skiing.

Student shot to death at Gary, Ind., high school

GARY, Ind. -- A 10th-grader was killed Friday in a high school parking lot by a 17-year-old former student who shot him in the head, authorities said.

The suspect admitted shooting Neal Boyd, 16, outside Lew Wallace High School, said police Chief John Roby.

Authorities said they did not know whether the boys knew each other, and the motive remained unclear.

"It was a one-on-one incident. Basically what happened, the 17-year-old walked up to the 16-year-old and put a gun to his head and fired one shot," Roby said. "I guess the fortunate thing about it is that there was only a small crowd around."

The shooting happened before classes began. The school's roughly 1,000 students were sent home for the day.

The boy was arrested at his home minutes after the shooting and will be charged as an adult, Roby said.

Convicted rapist is sentenced in boy's death

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- A man convicted of rape and murder in the case of a 13-year-old boy who suffocated during sexual bondage was sentenced to the maximum Friday -- life in prison without parole.

"Usually a murder is over in a minute. In this case, this victim was left helpless and bound," Judge David Clinger told Joshua Macabe Brown, 23. "Trying to imagine his thought process has sent shivers up my spine."

Brown was found guilty last week in the 1999 death of Jesse Dirkhising at the apartment Brown shared with his lover, Davis Don Carpenter, 39.

Prosecutors said the men drugged the boy, bound him with duct tape and rope, gagged him with his own underwear and sexually assaulted him.

Last week, Brown was spared the death penalty when the jury acquitted him of capital murder but found him guilty of first-degree murder. The jury deadlocked over the penalty for murder, leaving the decision up to the judge.

Carpenter's trial on rape and capital murder charges begins May 7.

Elsewhere...

ATHEIST SLAYING: David Waters, 54, the key suspect in the slaying of atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and two of her family members, was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison. Waters led authorities to a mass grave west of San Antonio, Texas, containing the remains of the family in January. He agreed to disclose the grave in return for being allowed to plead guilty to an extortion conspiracy charge.

LAPD CORRUPTION: Nino Durden, a former police officer arrested in the Los Angeles Police Department Rampart scandal, pleaded guilty Friday to charges stemming from the shooting of a gang member and will get nearly eight years in prison. Durden admitted to conspiracy to obstruct justice, perjury, filing a false police report and grand theft.

RAMSEYS SUE: John and Patsy Ramsey are seeking $65-million from former Boulder, Colo., police Detective Steve Thomas, publisher St. Martin's Press, and several other defendants in a libel and defamation lawsuit that alleges the detective made false accusations about the couple in a book he co-wrote and in TV interviews promoting the book, JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation.

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