Briefs

ANONYMITY FOR AN AX MURDERER

On a quiet Wednesday morning in Springfield, Ill., a man walked into Lauterbach's Cottage Hardware Store, grabbed an ax and began swinging. By the time he left, one person was dead and two others were critically injured. Ten days later, police got a call from Bobby Joe Kyle, a patient in the 49-bed psychiatric ward at St. John's Hospital, who claimed that his roommate had confessed to the crime. Unfortunately, Kyle did not know his roommate's name. He asked Nurse Elaine McCall to identify him, but she refused. Reason: McCall believed his name was shielded by a state law guaranteeing the privacy of mental-health records. Hospital administrators backed her up, even after she was fined $250 by a county judge for refusing to give the man's name to a grand jury. McCall did tell police that the suspect was not in St. John's at the time of the murder and that he resembled their composite sketch. Now Informant Kyle has left the hospital. Whether the suspect is still there or out on the street is anybody's guess.

THE HAZARDS OF BUSINESS TRIPS

Work is a many-splendored thing. It can range from garbage collecting to paper shuffling, and even, after a recent ruling in Michigan, to sexual intercourse. Domenico Signorelli, 37, was engaged in the latter one spring night in Birmingham, England, when he was overcome by carbon monoxide from a space heater. He died ten days later; his companion, whom he had met on the job, recovered. Signorelli's widow collected $170,000 in life insurance, and there the matter might have ended had her husband committed his indiscretion back home. But since he had been sent abroad by his new employer to get acquainted with the firm's technology, she argued, the death was work-related and should be covered by worker's compensation benefits. The widow and her two children won a ruling awarding them $167 a week for the next ten years --roughly $84,000 in all. Reasoned Administrative Law Judge Leo LaPorte: "Man is by nature a social creature. It is not reasonable to expect that an employee who is on assignment to a distant land will simply stare at the walls of his hotel room after work hours."

LIFE AND DEATH DECISIONS

Delivery of her second child Elin was a breeze for Jennifer Daniels, 30, but since then nothing has been simple. Elin suffers from meningomyelocele, which has paralyzed her below the waist and could cause brain damage. After consulting several doctors, who painted a gloomy picture of Elin's future, the parents refused to authorize any operations. The likely consequences: death within two years. Variety Children's Hospital in Miami, where Elin was staying, asked a local court to allow an operation. Last week, after a hearing that featured a former March of Dimes poster child smiling in her wheel-chair as evidence that afflicted children can lead happy lives, Judge Ralph Ferguson ordered doctors to operate. As a result, Elin can expect to live at least six to eight years. Said the couple's attorney, Milton Kelner: "They are loving, caring parents. Is it not the right of the parents to decide the course of their child, or is it the courts'?"

A similar but even more vexing case involving deformed Siamese twins is scheduled for a preliminary criminal hearing this week in Illinois. The twins, joined at the waist, have a total of three legs. Their parents, Pamela Schopp and Dr. Robert Mueller, allegedly decided at birth that the twins should be allowed to die. But, though receiving little food, they clung to life. After eight days the state took custody and then brought charges of attempted murder against the twins' parents and their physician. Said Illinois State Attorney Edward Litak: "These kids weren't denied a machine; they were denied ordinary sustenance." No matter how the prosecution turns out, someone, most likely a judge, faces a tough decision: Should the twins be separated, with the prospect of almost certain death for one, or should they be left alone, possibly resulting in the death of both?

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