The Battalion
Tuesday -June 10, 199
Teen gives birth at prom,
leaves baby in trash bin
FREEHOLD, NJ. (AP) — The
music played on, and the young
woman in the dark, loose-fitting
dress danced with her prom
date, looking as if she were hav
ing lots of fun.
But in the marble-tiled ladies’
room at the catering hall, a
maintenance worker was mak
ing a horrible discovery: blood
all over a stall, a newborn baby
dead in a trash bin.
Authorities are awaiting test
results before deciding whether
to charge the 18-year-old moth
er with killing her newborn son
and then returning to the dance
floor at the Lacey Township High
School prom Friday night as if
nothing had happened.
“The baby was alive during
the birthing process,” Robert
Honecker, a Monmouth County
prosecutor, said Monday. “The
medical examiner must deter
mine, could the baby have exist
ed independent of the mother.”
Among other things, investi
gators are testing the toilet wa
ter to determine whether the
full-term, 6-pound, 6-ounce
boy was drowned.
The Star-Ledger of Newark and
WCAU-TV in Philadelphia identi
fied the mother as Melissa Drexler
of Forked River. Although author
ities are treating the case as a po
tential homicide, the teen-ager
was allowed to remain in the cus
tody of her parents.
“They’re very upset,” a
woman answering the telephone
at a Drexler residence in Forked
River said. She said that she is
Melissa’s grandmother and that
she hopes the teen is getting
some help. She hung up without
giving her name.
No one emerged Monday af
ternoon from the Drexlers’ one-
story house in a neighborhood of
modest homes. Flowers hung
from planters around the en
trance of the home, a brown
wood-sided house with a blue-
gray door and shutters.
At the high school Monday,
students said they had been un
aware the 5-foot-7, 130-pound
girl was even pregnant.
“She really didn’t look preg
nant to me at all,” said Becky, a
junior who saw the girl at the
prom. She would not give her
last name.
Nor did anyone realize when
she returned from the ladies’
room at the Garden Manor cater
ing hall in Aberdeen Township
that she had just given birth.
“She was sitting near me and
my friends, talking and laughing.
She looked like she was having
fun,” said Jamie Dries, 16. “She
looked like nothing was wrong.”
Clinton fears ‘malevolent’ cloning
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Clinton said Mon
day he wants to ban the cloning of human beings but
allow some cloning research while Americans debate
the moral implications.
The president proposed legislation that would ban
cloning “for the purposes of creating a child.” It would di
rect the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to re
port in 4 1 / 2 years on whether the ban should continue.
Clinton stopped short of banning the cloning of an
imals and certain human genes for important biomed
ical research. “There is nothing inherently immoral or
wrong with these new techniques, used for proper pur
poses,” he said during a Rose Garden ceremony to re
ceive the commission’s report.
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., has said he would in
troduce stronger legislation than Clinton’s. His plan
would forbid human cloning and human embryo re
search related to cloning
Clinton urged private researchers to avoid attempting
to clone a human baby, saying that threatens “the sacred
family bonds at the very core of our ideals and our society.”
“At its worst, it could lead to misguided and malevo
lent attempts to select certain traits, even to create cer
tain kinds of children, to make our children objects rather
than cherished individuals,” Clinton said.
Clinton’s proposal is based on the
bioethics panel’s conclusion that it is
“morally unacceptable” to create a
child through somatic-cell nuclear
transfer cloning and implant it into a
woman’s body for delivery.
Scottish scientists used such a
process to create Dolly, a sheep, the
first mammal cloned from adult cells.
Before Dolly was born healthy and
Clinton normal, her creator had failed 277
times. Some of the duplicate lambs
were born with severe and lethal birth defects.
Dr. Harold Shapiro, chairman of the bioethics panel, said
commissioners had difficulty weighing whether their moral
and ethical reservations about cloning “were sufficient for
us to suggest a legislative solution for the moment.”
“We all understand there are moral views that many of
us have, which we do not want to translate into law out of
respect for those who have totally different views,” Shapiro
said. “We are very sensitive to that issue.”
McVeigh
Continued from Page 1
Capt. Jesus Rodriguez, his chest
loaded with medals, took the stand to
describe McVeigh as “an outstanding
soldier” who helped save a fellow sol
dier’s life and was cool—and accurate
— under enemy fire.
“He did what he was told,” said Ro
driguez, who chose McVeigh as his
personal gunner. “He anticipated
what had to be done, took pride in his
work. He had a genuine care for how
we looked in front of the company.”
And, a grinning Rodriguez said,
McVeigh liked strawberry Pop-Tarts,
which he would get in the mail dur
ing the war and share with Ro
driguez, to the ribbing of other sol
diers who joked that McVeigh was
kissing up to the boss.
Under cross-examination, the vet
erans acknowledged they had not
seen McVeigh since at least 1992 and
knew nothing about his life, thoughts
or plans in what prosecutors say is the
critical year before the April 19, 1995,
bombing of the Alfred R Murrah Fed
eral Building.
But they did detect warning signs.
Bradley gunner William Dilly said un
der cross-examination McVeigh was
always urging him to read The Turner
Diaries, a racist novel that begins with
the bombing of a federal building by
revolutionaries. He also described
how McVeigh had an odd habit of tak
ing battlefield pictures of dead Iraqis.
And one defense witness,
McVeigh’s childhood friend Vicki
Hodge, hinted at McVeigh’s changed
personality when he left the Army in
late 1991 after a failed effort to qualify
for the elite Special Forces.
“He seemed maybe just a little
bit disillusioned,” said Ms. Hodge,
who hasn’t seen McVeigh much
since that time.
When she did know him — from
fourth grade until they parted ways af
ter high school — McVeigh was the
class down and a gangly teen who had
the nickname “Chicken McVeigh,” a
play on Chicken McNuggets. It was
later shortened by friends to just
"Chicken.”
“I loved Tim,” she said. "He’s my
second brother. And I still always will
love him.”
Two teachers testified McVeigh was
a bright, friendly and outgoing student
who got high test scores and was vot
ed "most talkative” by his senior class.
Vincent Capparra also spoke of
McVeigh’s friendliness as an employ
ee at an armored car service in the
mid-1980s. But the testimony took a
dark turn when he told how McVeigh
caught children throwing egg-filled
snowballs and warned one that he
“could really blow up his house.”
The defense penalty phase is
pected to wrap up with witnesses
plaining McVeigh’s anger over
government siege at Waco, wl
came exactly two years before
federal building bombing thatki
168 people.
The same jury that last weekci
victed McVeigh of murder and ci
spiracy in the blast is expected toI)mt|
gin deliberating as early |V|
Wednesday whether he should die
injection or be sentenced toli
prison without parole.
The defense presentation mi
counter 2 112 days of gut-wrenchi
testimony from survivors describi
their shattered lives, and theportra
al of McVeigh as an cowardly, ang
bomber willing to kill children
avenge Waco and spark a secoi
American Revolution.
Lead attorney Stephen ]on
made it clear McVeigh would m
take the stand, nor would hissisti
Jennifer. But their father, Willia
McVeigh, would.
Among those testifying Mondi
was former Army buddy How
Thompson, who said he for
McVeigh to be outspoken about curW
rent events, but who never forcedh|-,p|
views on others.
“He was a soldier’s soldier,
Thompson said.
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