|
THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP -- CHILD ABUSE, SATANISM, AND MURDER IN NEBRASKA |
|
CHAPTER 5: JUST HOW BIG IS THIS COVER-UP? The Nebraska Foster Care Review Board, which is not a law enforcement agency and is not equipped to investigate crimes, let alone prosecute them, in 1988 found itself by default the main recipient of reports of abuse from children and from case workers, which attested to the existence of an organized child exploitation ring in Nebraska, and stretching far beyond. Expressing frustration and alarm that the Omaha Police had failed to investigate reports of child murders and other serious crimes, even after many urgent phone calls from personnel at Richard Young Hospital, FCRB Executive Director Carol Stitt on July 13, 1988 met with Nebraska's Republican governor, Kay Off, to seek help. Governor Off told her to "do whatever is necessary" to secure an investigation. On July 20, Stitt wrote to Attorney General Robert Spire, to request that his office, the state's top prosecuting agency, enter the case. For the first time, somebody openly pulled together the testimony of Nelly Patterson Webb, Loretta Smith, and other children, whose reports of abuse all cited Larry King. "Pursuant to the Nebraska Child Abuse Statutes, the State Foster Care Review Board is making a report of allegations of a child exploitation ring and respectfully requests an investigation," wrote Stitt. She noted that in December 1987, FCRB had reviewed the allegations about a child prostitution ring centered on the Webb family's foster home. Then: On 5/17/88, the Foster Care Review Board received a phone call from Kirsten Hallberg ... who is a previous employee of Uta Halee Girls Village and currently works for Richard Young Psychiatric Hospital in Omaha. She was aware of Nelly and [her youngest sister] Kendra's reports to the Review Board. Ms. Hallberg told me about three Uta Halee girls, a 20-year old young man at Richard Young, and three youths at Boys Town who all reported inappropriate activities with Larry King of Omaha. She also reports that at a recent child exploitation conference in Kansas City a detective from Kansas City ... asked her when the Nebraska authorities were going to do something about Larry King. On 7/20/88, Kirstin Hallberg reported a 15-year old girl at Richard Young who is talking about inappropriate activity with Larry King and also is alleging witnessing a murder of a young boy who said he was going to tell of the abuse he suffered. Along with the letter, the Foster Care Review Board turned over its entire file on these cases to the attorney general. Spire assured the FCRB that he would do everything in his power to help, and assigned the case to one of his top assistants, Bill Howland. As months dragged by with little apparent action by the attorney general, Stitt and Dennis Carlson demanded a meeting with Howland, which was held in his office on November 22, 1988. Stitt described the meeting to the Legislature's Executive Board, on December 19, 1988: When Dennis and I were in this meeting it became clear to me that if Mr. Howland had ever read the materials we delivered to him in July, it was a long time ago. He didn't know major players' names in the case. ... Dennis did some rather tough questioning and it became clear to both of us that nothing had occurred. The file was just a mess. I grabbed the file from him. Reordered it. ... Dennis and I both left that meeting, I mean, I can speak for myself, and I felt full of despair and I felt like all the optimism that we had had that something was going to happen, to not only help the kids who'd been abused, but to stop this from occurring to other kids, and many of the kids that I'm aware of were State wards, was not happening. Nothing was happening. ... Now we see that we were just being put off, "Yeah, we'll get out there," and "Yeah, we'll do this," and "Yeah, we're on top of it," but really none of the officials had organized their investigation. Her fellow Executive Board member Burrell Williams added: I think we became really baffled and puzzled on what was going on when you get all this information in front of you and nothing had, [or] is being done about it. Dennis Carlson was also puzzled: I ... don't know what if anything either the Omaha Police Department or the Attorney General's office actually did. ... If I were doing that investigation, the first thing I would have done with that information is contacted Loretta Smith who's making allegations that she had witnessed homicides, not a homicide, it's homicides. ... I ... talked to Loretta Smith's case worker at Richard Young Hospital on November 22 and she told me that the last person that interviewed Loretta was Officer Carmean and that took place on June 28, 1988. On November 30, 1988, Stitt again attempted to contact the governor, to set up a still more urgent meeting, because of the failure of the attorney general's investigation to get off the ground. The governor's staff scheduled a meeting for the following week, but canceled the appointment the next day. The governor, according to her office, was "not willing" to meet, as Carlson recorded in his daily notes of December 1. In the November 22, 1988 meeting, Howland once again claimed he would do everything he could, a claim undercut by the attitude of the governor. The Attorney General's Office put one investigator, Thomas Vlahoulis, on the case part time, but, as the Legislature's Franklin committee was to learn on June 22, 1989, he did next to nothing. In this transcript of his legislative testimony, Vlahoulis is questioned by committee counsel. COUNSEL: As I understand what you told Senator Chambers, the information in your notes, which was important, was placed in the reports that you generated, is that correct? VLAHOULIS: Yes, it was. COUNSEL: Now, the conclusion I draw, after reviewing that information, is that you really didn't do anything between July and late November, except to collect some extraneous pieces of information about Mr. King's business interests and perhaps about ... his wife's citizenship status. That's my conclusion from reading the reports. *** On December 20, 1988, Attorney General Robert Spire was quoted in the Lincoln Journal saying that his office had "acted promptly and professionally" on all the "sensitive information" received on child abuse six months earlier. Yet the Nebraska State Patrol, the agency that would be called upon by the attorney general in such an investigation, conducted its very first investigative meeting on the case on December 19, 1988, the day Spire was boasting to the Lincoln Journal about his alacrity! In the face of official inaction, Carol Stitt and the medical personnel responsible for treating Loretta Smith grew concerned about her safety. She had already been threatened, and the new charges she was making put her in even more danger. Stitt turned to still another agency, the Douglas County (Omaha and surroundings) Attorney's Office, and requested a protective order for Loretta. When the Douglas County attorney filed the order, however, it said that Loretta was making bizarre statements, that she had been on the streets for two weeks, and that she was suicidal! Not only were these allegations untrue, but they could help ensure that Loretta be discredited in any future court appearance. The order had an even graver implication, as Senator Chambers observed during Stitt's December 19, 1988 testimony to the Executive Board of the Legislature. SENATOR CHAMBERS: Neither you nor Miss Hallberg said that the child is suicidal. STITT: No. SENATOR CHAMBERS: But if that's in the court record, in the petition, an official document and the child winds up deceased then and if the result of [sic] a suicide then everybody would have had prior notice that this child is suicidal, if you would, by that report, by that petition and the court order. Chambers was also familiar with the person in the Douglas County Attorney's Office who filed the order, Liz Crnkovich. SENATOR CHAMBERS: Now this is some information that I have and maybe you don't, are you aware that Lynne [sic] Crnkovich has had information given to her by certain professionals about some of the things that these youngsters have been talking about and making allegations and she chose to do nothing. Were you aware of her involvement in that regard? STITT: Yes, I was made aware of that while we were trying to see what we could get done in Omaha. ... Vlahoulis, the part-time sleuth from the Attorney General's Office, later told Franklin committee investigators about another time Loretta ran afoul of Crnkovich. According to Vlahoulis' conversations with Crnkovich in January 1989, Father Val Peter of Boys Town "had been approached by Loretta Smith and ... she complained to him that the F.B.I. and Crnkovich had intimidated her to such an extent while she was at Richard Young Hospital that she had not provided them with all the information that she knew." At the December 19, 1988 Executive Board meeting, Senator Loran Schmit asked Carol Stitt what effect the gross mishandling of her case might have on Loretta Smith. Stitt answered, "I'd like to say if the State continues to handle the case the way they've handled it, everything that this perpetrator has told them is being reinforced. That he has the power, there's nothing they can do, nobody's going to help them, and that certainly has been what's happened so far."
|