Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.metro From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Headline Article Date: Fri, 30 Oct 92 15:33:28 EST Message-ID: \SE B;METROPOLITAN;NATION;AMERICAN SCENE;SOUTH \BY FROM WIRE DISPATCHES AND STAFF REPORTS S=NEW STORY Wuornos pleads guilty to another murder CROSS CITY, Fla. - A hitchhiking prostitute on death row for a string of slayings has pleaded guilty to another murder. "The reason I'm not going to take this to trial is . . . because it would be impossible for me to get a jury that would not hate my guts," 36-year-old Aileen Wuornos said Wednesday. Wuornos, who preyed on motorists along North Florida's Interstate 75, has admitted killing seven men in all. She has been convicted of one murder, pleaded guilty to two and pleaded no contest to three others. In the seventh slaying, no body was found and she was never charged. She has received four death sentences so far. Sentencing on the latest plea was set for Dec. 7. S=NEW STORY Andrew cleanup firms charging high prices FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Contractors are charging the government exorbitant prices for clearing debris left by Hurricane Andrew. Some are charging prices two to five times the competitive rates, the Sun-Sentinel reported yesterday. In one case, the Army Corps of Engineers paid almost $1 million for a job another contractor did for less than $200,000, the newspaper said. The estimated $225 million cleanup cost is already the most expensive in U.S. history, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Damage was so vast that the Corps suspended its normal bidding procedures and appointed six major construction companies to manage the cleanup. The newspaper said its findings of price gouging were based on reviews of federal contract documents and interviews with contractors, truck drivers, equipment operators and other workers. S=NEW STORY Woman, 77, sentenced in child-fondling case FORT WORTH, Texas - A 77-year-old woman was placed on seven years' probation on charges of molesting two toddlers who were in her care. A judge ordered Opal Johnson to seek counseling and barred her from baby-sitting during her probation. She pleaded no contest Wednesday to child-fondling charges in incidents involving two girls in 1989 and 1990. The father of one of the girls was angered by the sentence. "If it had been a male perpetrator, he would have been long gone to prison," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted the unidentified man as saying. "But because she's in her 70s, in bad health and a woman, she gets this. We are just happy that we've stopped the molesting." S=NEW STORY Elderly woman registers to vote for first time EUTAW, Ala. - A 92-year-old woman whose husband wouldn't allow her to register to vote did just that after he died. Clarice Humphrey, who said her late husband "always took care of voting" for the both of them, cast an absentee ballot in Tuesday's election, for Democrat Bill Clinton. "My father didn't believe in women voting," said Mrs. Humphrey's daughter, Martha Hathcock. John Humphrey died in November. Anita Tatum, state director of voter registration, said Mrs. Humphrey is the oldest person to register for the first time that she has heard about in Alabama. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM