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Show Sunday, February ivian open-face- at age 13, based on a confession he gave police after a night and a day in custody. "I think they looked at me as just a kid from the other side of the tracks, just a throwaway," Pacek says. The state now admits that Pacek was wrongly convicted. Gov. Robert P. Casey signed a pardon on Nov. 15 on the recommendation of Allegheny County District Attorney Robert Colville and the state's Board of Pardons. Official acknowledgement of his innocence has lifted a great weight from Pacek after 33 years of agony. He's more relaxed and his temper is slower to flare. "I feel like a gheny River about 20 miles north- goodguy,"hesays. shaving since age 10. They questioned him all that night in a police car, all the next morning, without sleep, took him in the afternoon to Pittsburgh, where he passed lie detector tests twice, sent him home after 17 hours, then picked him up again and began more questioning that night. Finally he broke down and said he was the killer. "It's not unheard of for young people to confess just to get the case off their back," says District Attorney Colville. "I've seen it happen before." At his trial, Pacek said he confessed to protect his girlfriend, Mary Daley. His parents had put her under a court order to stay away from their son Pacek 's long ordeal began the night of Nov. 28, 1958, as he walked home from his girlfriend's house through Brackenridge, a town on the Alle- poor steel-mi- ll self." Associated Press photo Edinboro University professor Jim Fisher poses with his files on the Jerry Pacek murder case. Fisher helped rekindle interest in the case that led to Pacek's pardon. ; v,i ,v . j s it.m. suture t - - i 'I 1 ' Us&i , fit" I V ? i l& ,r- - jfs .isw : Tljj ' 1 j Under Pennsylvania law, juvenile suspects are tried as adults in murder cases. Pacek was convicted as an adult and sentenced to 10- - tkS& 1 k r; 'v;2 Associated Press photo Jerry Pacek is shown with his wife Peggy and daughter Jennifer, age 4, outside their Kittanning, Pa. home after Gov. Dick Thornburg pardoned him from a 1958 murder conviction. 20 years in prison. He served 10 years of the term and 10 years probation after that. He might have gone to his grave labeled a murderer if it hadn't been for a criminal justice professor and author, Jim Fisher of Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pa. Casting about for notorious Pennsylvania murder cases worth researching, Fisher came across microfilm copies of old newspaper stories on the Stevick case. And there it was. "Pacek confessed to killing her with a pipe, then changed it to a hatchet," Fisher says. The true killer, he says, surely would have known what weapon he used. According to Fisher, the county's chief homicide investigator at the time, Ted Botula, couldn't find the murder weapon so he produced a plausible substitute, a rusty, muddy hatchet in the woods 100 yards from the murder site. He took it to the crime lab, Fisher says, where a forensic chemist determined it could not have been the murder weapon. Nevertheless, the hatchet was entered as trial evidence as one of the types of weapon that could have done the deadly job. "You might as well have intro duced a lamppost," Colville says. Fisher said police and the prosecutor also knew: Pacek's clothes were clean, even though the attack spattered blood in a radius, and bore none of the victim's hair or cloth25-fo- ot ing fibers. Conversely, none of Pacek's hair, semen or fibers was found on the victim. Pacek bore no scratch marks even though the victim had bits of her attacker's skin under her fingernails. The one pubic hair found on the victim was not Pacek's. "The only evidence against Jerry Pacek, Fisher says, "was his confession." Fisher believes an appeals court would have thrown out such a slim case, but Pacek's defense attorney, John V. Snee, dropped the appeal. Pacek, in jail, was not informed and assumed the appeal was turned down. Fisher says Snee was running for district attorney and had taken the case for court-appoint- ed members from his long ordeal. Snee has since died. So have other figures in the case: Common Pleas Court Judge Henry X. O'Brien, prosecutor Samuel Strauss, town Constable Edward Roenick. A reporter's recent phone call to Botula, the county detective, was not returned. He has stopped talk ing to reporters about the case, but told the Valley News Dispatch in Tarentum the day of Pacek's pardon, "We did a job and the record speaks for itself. If people want to make something out of it, let them." Pacek has spent his adult life living down the conviction. At one time, the name Jerry Pacek was su notorious that even after his 10 year prison term, rumors about him continued. Actually, he lives in a rural area barely 13 miles from the town where his life was derailed and works as a carpet installer, a trade he learned in prison and one of the few jobs he could get as a He married Ms. Daley, who bore him a son while he was in jail. She later died of cancer and the boy, Jerry Jr. , was killed in a traffex-co- n. the publicity. He says he can't be angry at Snee, though, because the lawyer once hugged him when he started crying. That hug, Pacek recalls, was the only compassion he re ic accident in his 20s. Pacek has remarried and has two children. FDA commissioner says Utah case " led to investigation SALT LAKE CITY (AP)-- The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration says the investiga-- '. agency has an tion into the controversial sleeping based at least par-- ; pill Halcion tially on a Utah case in which a woman was acquitted of killing her mother while she was taking the drug. U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene has refused to unseal confi- -' dential reports on the safety of the drug. In a ruling released in October, Greene said the public can go to the federal Food and Drug Administration for more information about the drug, one of the most widely prescribed sleep medications in the world. Greene's ruling involved the case of a Utah woman who killed her mother while allegedly under on-goi- ; . the influence of Halcion. The ruling came two days after the drug was banned in England. Similar cases are pending in Missouri and Texas. During a visit to Salt Lake City Thursday, Dr. David Kessler said the agency has an active investiga-- : tion into drug's effects on people. "We are going through the do-- ; cuments in the case," Kessler said. ; "We are taking the investigation ; on Halcion very seriously." Kessler declined to say exactly when the investigation started, ex- -' cept that it was "probably several months ago." : He said the Utah case was a : factor in starting the investigation. ; But during Kessler's : as head of the agency, his main has been the safety 6f ; concern ; breast implants. Lawsuits filed against implant manufacturers claim that gel leaks cause a variety of health problems, including cancer and immune dis- -' . ; : orders. Last month, Kessler got a tary moratorium on the use plants. An advisory committee was ; assembled that includes physicians and scientists and they are sched- uled to report on their findings latter this month. Kessler would say little about the investigation, but did elaborate on its importance. "Personally as a physician, I see these devices as important options in the treatment of breast cancer," he said. ll (J fb",i,,": 1 JjJjJd "'Y&Jksj, , I Free 8mm Video Movie With Your Video Walkman Purchase ffJ 1 I fir Mdeo Walkman from Sony f w if take your choice of several popular movie hits on 8mm A. Features full VCR recording and playback capabilities, 4" color LCD display, home TV and cable compatibility, and one-da- y programmability. Major Electronics 1199.99 video cassettes. Ask for details'. H SF. 01 R KXTRAS PLAN WITH VOIR VIDEO WALKMAN" I'I Rt II ASR, MONDAY. FKBRl'ARV 17 ONLY. Repayments must be iiuJcin I2ciiul momlilv p.i)mcnts. There is no fiiuiKeilurReilpJvmeim jrc nude a scheduled. If pjnicnts ire not nude as scheduled, a monthly periodic interest r.itc of I. ST shall he nude on the A erase Dails B ilame. This corresponds to an Annual I'crccnunc Rate of If'?. 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Scores of townfolk flocked that day to watch the boy pretend to beat a female police officer who stood in for the victim. A local television station aired its footage of the manufactured drama. "Try to imagine," Pacek says, "the center of attention and telling the story one at a time to all these people, answering the same questions over and over. I lost track of who I was talking to or how many times I told it to I just lost my- Li d east of Pittsburgh. He said he heard a moan, walked toward the sound and saw a man rise up and run away from a woman lying bleeding in a decaying vegetable garden. It was about 11:45 p.m. Pacek said he tried to flag down passing cars and finally pounded on the door of a neighbor, who called police. The victim, Lillian Stevick, 52, had 19 head wounds made with a heavy metal object and died 45 minutes later on the operating ta- ld i THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, freed after 33 years in prison for murder he did n't commit EDITOR'S NOTE After 17 hours of questioning, a lad confessed to murder and went off to prison. He was innocent. Now he is free, by official pardon of the state, but how can the state restore 33 years of a man's life? KITTANNING, Pa. (AP) -Jerry Pacek spent his youth as a convict and his adulthood branded for a murder he didn't commit. Now he's adjusting to life as the kind of man he always thought he a good man. was "It's unbelievable how much support I get from strangers. I don't know what to say to people when they come up and shake my hand. I don't know what to do with that," he says. Jerry Pacek, at age 46, has not often experienced that kind of d friendliness since he was wrongly convicted of murder, : 16, 1992 In Salt Lake, elsewhere in I tah and in the I'.S., VISA', American Express", Diners Club', Carte Blanche', and Discover' cards. Shop all stores this Monday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; oaler by phone: We gladly accept your ZCMI Option Charge, MasterCard', 579-666- |