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Show A8 The Salt Lake Tribune NATION/WORLD Sunday, Septemt 10, 1995 Rampaging Hurricane Rips Caribbean Island in Two Author Searches for Mormon Killer 89 9 ge kar 09.20.32 6 O1;% ‘BROW Driggs, a sixth-generation Mormon, is writing a book about the KLEASEN 2708 S AUSTIN, case. But its main character,like his alleged victims, is nowhere to be found. “There is a possibility he is ROBERT ELMER LAMAR BLVD Os dead,” Driggs says of Kleasen, tees whose murder conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1977 because of a faulty search warrant. But Driggsisn't sure. Paroled from prison in New York in 1988 after serving sentences for firearms violations and assault, Kleasen told The Buffalo News he was tired of “this monster business.” State parole officials said he still had “pent-up hostility and a great potential for extreme violence ” Kleasen cor * his paroie in Buffalo i nd told ac- quaintances he G4 to marry a woman te whom times. His wives were from Mexico, Equador and Sweden. “His mental illness made him strange in a way that Americans would more easily see him as strange,” Driggssaid. Born in Buffalo in 1932, the wily child of reclusive, 42-year- oid parents, Kleasen had an early and lifelong fascination with guns. Fe spentthe first of several been writing. A friend shipped several boxes ofhis belongings to an English address. In 1992, Kleasen sent a postcard from London to a Buffalo lawyer who had once represented him. And that is all Driggs can find. Still, the 46-year-old author, a veteran defender of death row inmates in Florida and Texas, has managed to assemble —- through interviews and the written record -~ a chilling mosaic of Kleasen's fractured life and crimes. It wasn't easy, for Kleasea frequently used aliases and told grandiose lies about himself. Among them, he claimed to have directed all CIA operations in Latin America,to have participated in the assassination of Che Guevara and to have been a U-2 test pilot. Foreign Wives: Kleasen was married and divorced three The Associated Press Murdervictim Gary Darley stints in menial hospitals at age 18 after firing off a shotgun in a Buffalo hospital when he becameenraged that his foot injury wasn’t being quickly treated. He was diagnosed then as “a psychopathic personality with psychosis.” Kleasen’s father was forcibly committed to the same state mental hospital for five years in the 1950s. Andyet, Kleasen, while mentally ill, was hardly “a drooler,” Driggs said. He was a file clerk for Bell Aircraft for five years, workedat a Texas animalhospital and graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a degreein sociology. Oddly, he spent two years in Buffalo as a jail guard for the Erie County Sheriff's Department until foreed to resign in 1964 after off-duty threats of armed violenceagainstcivilians. In 1971, at his mother’s farm 10 to 12 miles from Palmyra, N.Y. — the birthplace of Mormonism — Records showthis is a copyof a driver license issued to Robert Kleasen, convicted of murdering two Mormonmissionaries. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS COLUMBIA, S.C. — Defense attorney Da- Barbuda was cut into six pieces. The storm wrecked 95 percentof Kleasen shot a manin the foot and was charged with assault. Hefled to Texas, where he already had been charged with poaching a buffalo while on a huntingtrip. At about the same time he began living in a stolen trailer behind the taxidermy shop in the hill country west of Austin, Kleasen presented himself at the Mormon Church's Austin 1st Ward and asked to be baptized. Only later did local church leaders learn that Kleasen — claiming to be a Mormon — had stormy relations with church members in Denmarktheyearbefore, and was expelled from the country for severely beating a Mormon woman. Mormon Tale: Driggs expects to complete a first draft of his bookthis fall. He has no interest in producing “a slasher book with a picture of a band saw on the cover.” Rather, he sees the missionary murdersas essentially a Mormon story andis intrigued by how his church’s high-powered proselytiag attracts all types. “It's inevitable we're going to come up with some Junatics,” he said. “The amazing thing is that we haven't had more people sliced up.” Mormons traditionally reach out to new converts, and readily identify, through a strong com- mon language and belief system, with their fellow Mormons, Driggs said. It’s a feature of Mormonism he admires. But, he said, “We possibly make ourselves more susceptible to predators like Kieasen because we let our guard down.” McCullough, the former Austin bishop, remembers accompanying Catherine Fischerto thejail to talk to Kleasen about her missing son a week and a half after the two missionaries disappeared. “She wanted to know where his body was. She wantedto take his body home [to Milwaukee],”’ McCullough said. “She forgave him right there. ... There is evil in the world, and there’s a real contrast between forgiveness and revenge.” Kleasen never admitted the killings, and speculated to Fischer that her son's nameplate could have been placed on flat surface by anyone and used for target practice. In the 1988 interview, he clung to the idea the bodies had never been found, ‘How can you say people are dead?” he asked. “I don’t know anything aboutit.” If Kleasenis alive, he will be 63 on Sept. 20. Nation’s Death-Row Defender System Faces Loss of Funding vid Bruck leaned forward andsaid softly, “Ili see you. Take care, man.” Strapped to the prison gurney, condemned killer Sylvester Adamsbeganto call out and sing to Jesus. Poison then flowed into the veins of the mentally retarded black man, ending a 16year fight to prevent his Aug. 18 execution. The battle’s last five weeks were fought by Bruck and staff of federally funded lawyers. ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SAN JUAN,Puerto Rico — In its rampage through the Caribbean, Hurricane Luis tore apart more than houses, yachts and lives. It ripped anislandin two. As the center of Luis passed over Barbuda on Tuesday, it churned up 10-foot waves that breached a narrowinlet and severed a small northeastsliver of the island, pari of the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The Daily Observer newspaper on Antigua reported Saturday that the coral reef that makes up From a crowded Columbiaoffice, they frantieally tried to overturn Adams’ sentence for strangling a teen-age neighborin 1979. Those lawyers — South Carolina’s Post Conviction Defender Organization — are under attack from death-penalty supporters. Frustrated at long delays in carrying out executions, they are targeting 20 such defender groups nationwide. Congressis listening. The House has voted to cut all $20 million in federal moneyfor the 1 groups, whichrepresent death-row inmates or * sist appointed lawyers with final appeals. TheSenate hasnotvoted, but even supporters of the defender groups say politicians of both parties are against them. The average wait between conviction and execution is just undereight years, according to a Justice Department study. Prosecutors partly blame the centers, calling them “philosophical think tanks” only trying to stall executions. SAVE : [35%TO 50%| the island’s buildings, and battered its infant tourist industry. The town of Codrington, where all of Barbuda’s 1,500 residents live, was flooded, and sea water contaminated the water supply, the newspaperreported. All the hetels on Barbuda, 280 miles east of San Juan, also were severely damaged:the Coco Point Lodge, where rooms went for $400 a night; the “K” Club, which had its own golf course: Pink Sands; Palmetto and Sunset View. Theisland was trying to developitself as a tourist resort, espe- cially for snorkelers and skindivers attracted to the 60 shipwrecks on the reef. As the storm churned toward Bermuda, the official death toil on five islands rose to 16 when two more bodies were found on St. Maarten, the Dutch-administeredhalf of St. Martin. Some 65 percent of the buildings on Antigua were destroyed, and the Red Cross said the hospital ran out of water on Saturday. The island of St. Martin, only days ago a pristine vacation spot for wealthy tourists, was a jumble of ripped-apart yachts, houseboats and shantytowns. Rescuers were searching for dozens of people believed missing. Damage in St. Martin was extensive. Jetties and airports were trashed, roads washed away and trees uprooted. Shuttle Prepares to Capture Satellite FLORIDA TODAY CAPE CANAVERAL,Fla. — Shuttle Endeavour continued its pursuit of a solar sciencesatellite Saturday as its astronaut crew beamed back stunning shots of Hurricane Luis and took part in an unusual outer space-to-under- sea linkup. After a two-day chase, the astronauts today are to snatch the solar observatory from orbit, tucking the $8 million craft back into Endeavour’s cargo bay for a planned Sept. 18 return to Earth. Mission specialist Michael Gernhardt released the so-called Spartan 201 spacecraft from Endeavour’s bay Friday. Circling 230 miles above the planet, Endeavour’s astronauts captured video of Hurricane Luis on Saturday as the massive storm churned toward Bermuda after slashing a deadly path across the Caribbeanisland of St. Martin The crew also got a long distance radio cali from former Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, now a 70-year-old aquanaut conducting ocean research in an underwater lab off Key Largo. Ice Skater Nancy Kerrigan Weds Her Agent ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BOSTON — Nancy Kerrigan switched from “Why me?” to “I do” on Saturday when she married her agent in a ceremony closed to fans, reporters and clubwielding rivais. The Olympic medai winner wed Jerry Solomon, an agent 16 years her senior wheis considered one of the mostinfluential people in sports. Fans lining the streets of Boston’s tony Back Bay neighborhoed applauded as Kerrigan’s father helped her out of a black stretch limousine and up the steps of the Church of the Covenant. “She looked beautiful,” gushed Joan Newell of Weymouth. Kerrigan wore a high-necked white dress a fitted bodice and a long train. A headed headpiece supported her full-length veil. Solomon wore a black tuxedo, a white plain-fronted shirt and a black tie. Kerrigan’s fame spilled beyond the skating world when she was elubbed on the knee by a henchman of rival skater Tonya Harding in January 1994. 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