Foreign Exchange Student

Laura Gotthard

Rotary is an organization of business and professional persons united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build good will and peace in the world.

"Doing good in the World is more than a motto.  It is our goal, our mission, and our reminder.  It expresses in the clearest terms why we have a Foundation, and it challenges us to reach as far as we can to do the most good possible with everything we have.  Our Foundation exisits to support the good that we can do through Rotary.  It expands our reach, increases our strength, and makes our service more powerful and more effective.  Because of our Foundation we can, very simple, do more of our Rotary work."

2004-2005

President Glenn Estess Sr. 

President, Maura Donnelly, opened the meeting leading the Pledge of Allegiance and followed in prayer by Rich Knebel.

 ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Please keep Len and Alice Daiber in your prayers as Alice was recently diagnosed with cancer and has underwent 2 major surgeries.
• The Fish Race has been scheduled for March 25th at the Korte Rec Center.  Tickets were distributed this week and flyers will be available on the website.  Rick also has sheets listing the past international projects that Rotary has supported with the fish race proceeds.  There are three organizations that will sell tickets and receive $2 of every ticket they sell.
• Our club will be hosting the GSE team from Sweden on April 27th-April 29th.  We will take them to a Cardinal game one evening and have a dinner one evening.  We are still looking for Rotarians to host a member of the team.  Please see Maura if you are interested.  More details to follow.
• PDG Rod Buffington has organized the annual Cards/Cubs fundraiser, Cardinals Care, to raise money for Literacy Grants in our district.  He has reserved 1,500 tickets for Saturday, April 14th @12:05pm and 1,000 tickets for Saturday July 21 @3:05pm.  This is open to all individuals (Rotarians and non-rotarians alike) so get a group together, fill out a group from, and get your order in before tickets are sold out!
• Holli has fantastic Rotary shirts and jackets available for sale to help promote Rotary to the community.  See her for details.

Cliff encouraged everyone to welcome the 4 newest members; Keith Poss, Ray Herford, Kelly Korte, and Katrina Hodous. 

In a few weeks we will have a program to welcome all our new members and learn more about them.

Guests: 

Tricia Blasdel (Guest of Carrie Adolph, replacement)

Dave Haggermann (Guest of Tom Wherle, Retired Mr. CSX)

Christian Leutkemeyer (Visiting Rotarian, Silver Creek Rotary)

Don Weber (Guest of Club) 

Make-ups: None 

Birthdays: 24th Tom Hill & 27th Peggy Sebbastian

Anniversaries: 23rd Maura Donnelly & 27th Linda Jakel

Club Anniversaries: None

Please let these people know that they were missed: avid Daiber, Len Daiber, Dan Fieker, Mike Gould, Luke Harris, Roland Harris, Will Holzinger, Lisa Hunsche, Don Johannes, George Jones, Kelly Korte, Mark Korte, Terry Lammers, Terry Leitschuh, Bob Luitjohan, Glenn Meffert, Greg Miranda, Bob Nagel, James Rankin, David Peters, Keith Poss, James Rankin, Mark Reaka, Brad Rench, Bill Schaefer, Eric Schmidt, Ron Schneider, Randy Schorfheide, Art Schutz, Peggy Sebastian, and Bill Sullivan.

Reminder that 2011-2012 we will be tracking service hours again to see Rotarian's collective IMPACT.  This year's goal is 7500 hours, to date there are 1594 hours recorded. 

WELCH PROJECT: Mark reported that Sandy was very thankful for the work and that the group put in about 6 hours of work cutting down trees and cleaning out brush and logs.  He stated that Carrie brought out a group of 10 from her church to assist the 4 Rotarians as well.

Members can go to the website and log your hours or email them to him directly: swconstruct@agtelco.com

There was $1330 in the 50/50 with 15 cards left in the deck the Birthday Boy, Tom Hill, pulled the Ace for his table!

Phil fined the lucky table and Rick gave a happy buck for them saying that he knew that table would sell their full alotment of fish race tickets.

Christian gave a promo dollar for the Silver Creek Rotary Quarter Auction.  Henry was happy to be at Rotary.

PROGRAM: Don Weber, Karla Brown Case

In 1976 in Wood River there was a murder of a 22 year old named Karla Brown in the middle of town and in the middle of the day.  She was a former cheerleader and really active in the community.  It was a shock to the community.  The case went unsolved for four years.

Don became the states attorney in 1980 and would sort through the unsolved cases from time to time and see if they could get any breaks in the case.  He stated that this case is proof that sometimes you have to get lucky to solve cases.  A crime scene tech in 1983 was reviewing the case and was attempted to figure out what could have made the marks on her chin.  They took the photos they had to a bite specialists who confirmed that they were bite marks, but to analyze them, they needed to have photos that were taken at a 90 degree angle.  He stated that the to jaw line was always consistent and stationary but the bottom marks would vary.  He suggested that they exhume the body to retake the photos, since the marks would still be present (bruises remain on body after death).

They then consulted FBI agent John Douglas (Silence of the Lambs character, Scott Glenn is based on him) from Virginia.  John is an expert on physiological profiling of killers.  He suggested that when they exhumed the body that they would make a big deal about it, brining in lots of media (they had 3 TV stations present) and that the killer would contact them.  They showed him 100 photos of the bite marks for him to use for profiling.  He stated that the killer was a white male, 24-28, living or visiting 1-2 houses away at the time, had already been interviewed, had a scraggly beard and clothing at the time of the incident, had a nocturnal problem,had been a C student, in the navy, taken some electrical arts courses in college but was a drop out, had been very unlucky with women, and drove a red or orange beat-up Volkswagon.  Later they found out the reasoning behind all the profiling and it was an exact match.  John further stated that the killer would have moved out of the area immediately but would have gained confidence and move back into the area, had cleaned himself up visually because he had regained his self-esteem for getting away with the murder.

In the file they had 2 main suspects that stated where they were that day but the alibi did not match up, so they knew that one or both was involved.  

When they had the grandstand meeting with a group of detectives for view the photos with the 3 television stations present, John Prante (one of the suspects) called him and stated that he "was a witness to the murder but did not want to be considered a suspect."  They put out a search warrant for dental impressions for the two suspects and Prante's came back to be an exact match.  When they interviewed him, he responded with what they entitled the "innocent man syndrome."  Don stated that an innocent man would cooperate for about 30 minutes and then blow up, frustrated that they were accusing them instead of looking for the real suspect.  A guilty man would cooperate for hours on end.  They questioned him for over 6 hours and he never lost his cool, trying to act innocent.

As they reviewed the file 5 years after the murder they came across report from a neighbor named Harold that had told the police that he knew who the killer was but he was never followed up with. It was missed. They did follow-up with him and when he answered the door he stated "so you are finally coming to ask me about John Prante." Harold stated that he showed at his front door that day soaked with water and very nervous that the cops were coming to get him. As they continued the investigation they found that John Prante had been drinking apple jack and smoking marijuana that day and had a borderline personality. The combination of this could cause him to snap. They deemed that a potential motive could be that he had always been a loser with women, that she had rejected his physical advancements, and that he snapped and went into a rage.  They also saw in his record that not too long after the murder, he had applied to be a juvenile public officer and when asked why he applied, his answer was "I understand depression, rage, and the calm after the storm."

As they prepared for the court room, John Douglas with the FBI shared more of the details of his profiling.  The victim hands were tied behind her back with electrical cord (not rope) revealing exposure to electrical arts courses.  It was tied specifically in a navy knot, revealing he had been in the navy.  John stated that he would be scraggly because he was depressed and only this type of person would perform a murder in the middle of the day.  It was also determined that he lived close because the murder was performed in the day in the middle of town and that they was blood on the outside of the door handle.  There was a lot of blood in the crime scene, so the killer would have left to go get cleaned up and then returned to clean up the crime scene without being noticed.  Stated that he was white because inter-racial murders are rare.  And John stated that he guessed as to what kind of car he drove, but hit it right on.

In the court room when Don was questioned him, he was told that a trigger for Prante would be the fact that the victim had the nerve to get blood on him.  He was given tips for how to work up to the questions to increase intensity and right when we was at the climax to state that she had bled on him to trigger an outburst, the defense attorney objected.  By the time Don got back to him he was calm and cool and  had time to regain himself.  The court reporter later stated that she was in between the two of them and was scared for her life as she saw Prante gripping his chair tighter and tighter and getting ready to jump.

John Prante was convicted of the murder and is still in prison today.  He stated that after the trial, the victim's sister made him a needle point sign that stated "you can lie through your teeth but your teeth never lie."  The border of this sign was the pattern of Prante's dental impression.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS -  Jennifer Whitten