The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, April 12, 1989, Image 1

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Texas A&M ^
Battalion
Vol. 88 No. 131 USPS 045360 10 pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, April 12,1989
WEATHER
FORECAST for THURSDAY:
Mostly to partly cloudy and mild.
There is a 30 percent chance of
scattered thundershowers.
HIGH:73
LOW:55
Satanists offered UT student
as human sacrifice, police say
BROWNSVILLE (AP) — Author
ities blame human sacrifice by a Sa
tanic cult of drug smugglers for the
deaths of a dozen people, including
aUniversity of Texas student, whose
todies were found buried on a ranch
Tuesday just south of the Mexican
torder.
“It was horrible,” said Alex Perez,
sheriff of Cameron County, the
southernmost in Texas. “It was like a
human slaughterhouse.”
The dead include a 21-year-old
IT student who disappeared in the
Mexican town of Matamoros, just
across the Rio Grande from
Brownsville, during his spring break
vacation March 14, sheriffs Lt.
George Gavito said.
Authorities declined to identify
other victims, but said all were
males. Police believe two of them
died after the UT student.
The dead apparently were sacri
ficed by drug smugglers who be
lieved satanic rituals would protect
them from authorities, Gavito said.
The cult had been involved in hu
man sacrifices for about nine
months, he said, and prayed to the
devil “so the police would not arrest
them, so bullets would not kill them,
and so they could make more
money.”
Authorities declined to describe
evidence found at the ranch, but dis
played some small color snapshots
they said were taken there. One pic
ture showed a caldron containing a
dark red liquid and what appeared
to be bones. Another showed 12
body bags.
“I’ve been an investigator 15 years
and it’s one of the worst things I’ve
ever seen,” Gavito said.
Four people have been arrested
by Mexican Federal Judicial Police
and more arrests were expected, Ga
vito said. The suspects include U.S.
and Mexican citizens, he said.
The bodies were found Tuesday
morning on the ranch located about
20 miles west of Matamoros, Gavito
said. Authorities refused to pinpoint
the location of the graves and said
the area had been sealed.
Mark Kilroy, the missing pre-med
student from UT, vanished from a
crowded Matamoros street before
dawn March 14 while on a drinking
foray with a group of friends.
Kilroy apparently was taken at
random after members of the cult
“were told to pick one Anglo male
that particular night,” Gavito said.
Kilroy’s body was found in a 3-
foot deep grave, Gavito said, and the
other bodies were buried nearby.
After a search of the ranch, police
got a confession from one suspect,
and that led to the other arrests, Ga
vito said.
At least one of the suspects ad
mitted involvement in Kilroy’s
See Killings/Page 6
Police seize rifles, arrest hundreds
in attempt to stabilize Soviet Georgia
MOSCOW (AP) — Police arrested hundreds
of people and were seizing tens of thousands of
hunting rifles from Soviet Georgians in an at
tempt to calm the republic, which on Tuesday
mourned 19 people killed in a pro-independence
rally.
Tanks, armored personnel carriers and sol
diers patrolled the streets of the southern repub
lic's capital, Tbilisi, to enforce a ban on public
gatherings and an 11 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew.
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said he consid
ered it a “sacred” principle that Georgians and
others should have the right to express their
opinirins freely, but said the law set limits on their
actions, reported the head of West Germany’s
Social Democratic Party, who met with Gorba
chev on Tuesday.
“The question of state power is nothing to be
trifled with or taken lightly,” Hans-Jochen Vogel
quoted the Soviet leader as saying.
Reports indicated a general strike that began
Friday to back demands for Georgia’s secession
was easing. Some buses and trolleys resumed
routes Tuesday, said Nana Natadze, the wife of a
Georgian nationalist activist. She said many
schools remained closed because of a boycott.
Tuesday was declared a day of mourning to
mark what the Georgian Communist Party
leader, Djhumber Patiashvili, called “a common
grief’ — the deaths of civilians killed in a clash
Sunday with soldiers and police at the pro-inde
pendence demonstration.
Cars and trolleys were adorned with black
flags and people wore black clothes and ribbons,
Natadze said.
“Everything is black,” she said in a telephone
interview from the city of 1.2 million people, 900
miles south of Moscow. “Everyone’s suffering.”
Georgian radio and TV canceled regular pro
grams to play dirges and report news, said Na-
nuli Gogtia, another Tbilisi resident whose
daughter, Irina Sarishvili, was among a half-
dozen Georgian activists arrested over the week
end.
All entertainment activities were called off, the
official Soviet news agency Tass reported.
About 200 people were arrested for violating
the curfew, and police were confiscating 66,000
registered hunting rifles from the public tempo
rarily, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gen
nady I. Gerasimov told reporters Tuesday.
Attorneys accuse North
of violating Navy code
Officials blame cocaine, crack
for recent resurgence of syphilis
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oliver
North defended his honor and his
efforts on behalf of the Nicaraguan
Contras Tuesday against a fusillade
of suggestions from the prosecutor
that he violated the code he was
taught at the Naval Academy.
“At the U.S. Naval Academy you
would have been kicked out for
this?” prosecutor John Keker asked
atone point.
“In the U.S. Naval Academy no
body taught me to run a covert oper
ation,” North retorted. Nor about
“political warfare going on in Wash
ington in 1983-1986.”
On specific matters, North:
• Denied he tried to help his asso
ciate, Richard Secord, make
$500,000 by renting a ship to the
CIA, which turned out not to be in
terested in the offer.
• Said he merely was following
orders when he drafted a letter to
Congress denying involvement in
helping the Contras at a time when
official aid was barred.
“At the Naval Academy you were
taught falsehood included decep
tion?” Keker asked the witness, a
Marine lieutenant colonel until he
resigned in the wake of the Iran-
Contra affair.
“You were also trained to obey all
lawful orders,?” asked Keker, un
derlining the word lawful on a large
pad on an easel facing the jury.
“Did you lake courses in that and
learn what was meant by lawful and
unlawful? . . . You were trained and
taught that it was a crime when in
World War II at the end of the war
German officers came and said they
were ordered to do it?”
North said, “I don’t believe I have
ever received an unlawful order.”
North said he was following or
ders from National Security Adviser
Robert McFarlane when he drafted
a letter to Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-
Ind., the chairman of the House In
telligence Committee. That letter
denied news accounts that the Na
tional Security Council staff was so
liciting donations and offering tacti
cal advice to the Contras. It is at the
heart of several charges concerning
lying to or obstructing Congress.
Taken through the draft phrase-
by-phrase, line-by-line. North said
he omitted some facts and shaded
others because they would have dis
closed efforts, including President
Reagan’s, to help the Contras while
the law forbade it.
Keker said, “They do teach you
.. Battalion file photo
Oliver North ^
(at the Naval Academy) even real
warfare, not just political warfare,
has rules?”
North: “It would be nice to see
those rules apply.”
Keker: “And since other people
didn’t apply those rules, you weren’t
going to apply them either.”
North: “I applied a lot of rules. . . .
I did not consider the fact a letter
from a Cabinet officer (McFarlane)
to a congressman could possibly be
unlawful. It never occurred to me
that the omission of certain words in
a letter to Congress would be consid
ered a violation of law.”
DALLAS (AP) — State officials
say an increase in the use of cocaine
and crack statewide has sparked the
resurgence of syphilis, a disease
health officials once thought they
had defeated.
In Texas, where for several years
the number of syphilis cases has
been declining, there was a 15 per
cent increase in cases in 1988 and it
may increase by another 20 to 25
percent by the end of 1989, said Joe
Pair, who heads the sexually trans
mitted disease control division at the
Texas Department of Health. And
the reason is expensive, illegal
drugs, he said.
“These people don’t even con
sider themselves prostitutes, because
no money is changing hands. But
they are exchanging sex for drugs,”
said Lois Kantor, who manages the
sexually transmitted disease pro
gram for the Tarrant County Health
Department. “They don’t look on it
as a pleasurable activity. It’s usually a
transaction more than anything.”
Researchers and health profes
sionals say crack, a smokable deriva
tive of cocaine, is the illegal drug
causing most of the problem. It is
cheap — about $20 per dosage —
easy to get and quickly addictive.
Crack is highly addictive and in
creases sexual appetites, health offi
cials say. To that end, people who
crave the drug often end up trading
sex for drugs — despite the low
price.
DALLAS (AP) — After setting out
to detect a mutagen in red wine, a
researcher said Tuesday that the po
tentially harmful substance also has
been determined to be a powerful
anti-cancer agent.
“The bottom line in terms of
wine: It’s sort of a bad news turned
to good news situation,” said Ter
rance Leighton, a microbiology pro
fessor at the University of California
at Berkeley.
The mutagen, found in a variety
Sex “just kind of goes hand in
hand with the drugs,” Hugh Ramsey
of the Houston Health Department
told the Dallas Times Herald.
“Indigent individuals have very
little with which to barter for drugs
See Syphilis/Page 6
of red wine samples that were stud
ied, has been identified as quercetin,
Leighton said.
A mutagen is an agent that brings
about a mutation, or a change in a
gene.
White and rose wines and red and
white grape juices contain low or no
levels of mutagen, Leighton said.
But red wines contain varying
amounts of quercetin.
See Wine/Page 6
Scientists say red wine
carries cancer deterrent
Local foundation stresses need for information on AIDS
Kirk White, public awareness chairman for
the Brazos Valley AIDS Foundation Help
line, helps distribute literature and con
doms in the MSC Tuesday.
By Juliette Rizzo
STAFF WRITER
“Know the Facts, Not the Rumors” is the message
representatives of the Brazos Valley AIDS Foundation
were trying to give students Monday in the MSC by dis
tributing AIDS information pamphlets and condoms.
The foundation was one of many community and
campus organizations represented at the 1989 Ffealth
and Wellness Fair in the MSC, sponsored by the Texas
A&M Center for Drug Prevention and Education.
Kirk White, public awareness chairman for the Bra
zos Valley AIDS Foundation Helpline, said the founda
tion came to campus because it wanted students to be
aware they can control the spread of AIDS, or acquired
immune deficiency syndrome, through safe sexual
practices, including the use of condoms.
White said most students who are sexually active tend
to ignore the threat of AIDS and don’t always practice
safe sex. According to the AIDS information pamphlet
passed out by the foundation, it is not who you are that
is the main concern, but what you do and how you do it.
“Students ignore AIDS, but it can happen to them,”
White said. “Students may not come down with the dis
ease until after graduation. But if they do, they will con
tract it now.”
White said AIDS is a larger problem in Brazos Valley
than most people believe.
“People used to think it just doesn’t happen here,” he
said. “But it does.”
He said those who have the disease used to be afraid
to admit it to the community. When they finally did go
to the community for help, no help was available, he
said.
“A trend started as people needing assistance turned
to the big cities for help,” White said. “Now, all that has
changed.”
With the rise in the number of people in the commu
nity needing help, came a rise in the amount of quality
assistance available, he said.
The Brazos Valley AIDS Foundation, a non-profit
organization staffed by volunteers, established a help
line to inform the public about the AIDS epidemic.
White said the helpline offers medical information
about the disease, and community and national refer
rals. The helpline also supplies information to assist in
general non-AIDS crisis situations. The line is open 5-
11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. An answering ma
chine takes calls after hours, and responses are made as
soon as possible.
White said the phones are manned by volunteers,
like himself, who are taught the latest AIDS informa
tion, AIDS-related topics and crisis intervention.
He said more than 1,200 pamphlets about the disease
and the helpline were distributed to students in the
MSC. Some students approached him voluntarily, he
said, but the majority were hesitant.
“We tried to make the students more aware,” he said.
“They might not read the information, but by passing it
out, hopefully more students know’ help is available
here in the Brazos Valley.”
For additional information and referral, contact the
AIDS/Crisis Helpline at (409) 690-AIDS.