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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 22, 2016)
Page 10A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian Friday, July 22, 2016 PERRY: Jaeger denies any inappropriate activity TRUMP: Democratic a response to the allegations February, and was initially individual with her whole convention next week describing them as vague supervised by Commis- career and life ahead of her, information. and unfounded. He said his sioner Morley before being and twisted that by using his The recall petition was job is to oversee and make reassigned to Perry. She was position and authority, and in Philadelphia iled by Steve Speer, husband decisions in the best interest assigned back to Morley at encouraging her to do things Continued from 1A of Sandra Speer. It sheds some light on the allegations, among them that Perry had an inappropriate relationship with a county employee he supervised earlier this year. Both Perry and the employee, Economic Development Director Patti Jaeger, deny that happened. The petition also claims there have been “excessive situations needing litigation” under Perry’s watch as the head of human resources, resulting in “thousands (of dollars) in fees and settle- ments.” A third complaint alleges that Perry ordered a raise for another county employee by garnishing his own wages, but never followed through on reducing his salary. Perry, who was elected county judge in 2012, iled of the county, which isn’t always easy. In his statement for justiication, Perry said he is trying to provide as much service as possible with the few resources. “Trying to provide services with very limited funding does create contro- versy among elected oficials, but I continuously work through these iscal issues,” the statement reads. As county judge, Perry handles both juvenile and probate cases while also serving as chairman of the Board of Commissioners. He addressed some of the allegations with the East Oregonian, including his relationship with Jaeger, which he said was never inappropriate. Jaeger, 20, was hired in a special meeting April 27 — the same meeting where county oficials submitted their letters asking for Perry’s resignation. Perry, who is 50, said he worked closely with Jaeger and helped her to develop professional connections. They also play cards and golf together, but there was never anything inappropriate under his supervision. Jaeger also denied any inappropriate activity between the two. “He’s a great friend and a good person, too,” Jaeger said. “I’ve never had any inappropriate relations with him.” Jaeger’s mother, Corrina, said she believes the relation- ship went beyond that. “Our concern is that he has taken a young, innocent she would never do and knows are morally incorrect,” she said. As for other allegations in the petition, Perry said he has been left to speculate. In his defense, Perry said he has been active in bringing in state dollars to help the county develop its infrastructure. He said he hopes voters will weigh his accomplishments. “We’ll let the voters decide whether they want me to stay here or not,” he said. Perry is the third Eastern Oregon oficial to face a recall in recent months. Harney County Judge Steve Grasty retained his seat by an overwhelming margin earlier this month, while a recall election is scheduled for Aug. 16 against Grant County Commissioner Boyd Britton. COLUMBIA: Coroner said the man had probably been dead for about two years “I am going to keep it until I can hand [the remains] to her next of kin and they can give them a respectful burial. There’s someone out there who’s missing that person,” Bigelow said. But he acknowledged that he has exhausted all of his ideas for inding her identity. “I can’t think of a single thing I can do to contribute to that investigation,” he said. In 2013, a beachcomber discovered an accumulation of bones strewn along the riverbank. Some of them appeared to be human, including a partial skull with the upper row of teeth still intact. Bigelow sent the bones to Wash- ington State forensic anthropologist Kathy Taylor, who determined which were human, and sent them on to the forensic laboratory at University of North Texas. Experts there extracted DNA from the bones, and entered the results into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of DNA records. Nearly two years after the discovery, Bigelow and Taylor had an answer: The bones belonged to 44-year-old Molly Newton-Waddington, a beloved but troubled Kelso mother and wife who was last seen in Kelso on March 14, 2012. Kelso police continue to investigate Waddington’s death, which they consider suspicious. Continued from 1A ‘That was when I realized the heartbreak’ Coroner duties constitute a relatively small part of Bigelow’s workload, but he takes them seriously. By carefully examining the latest remains, he found a few clues: The man spent at least a little time in western Washington, died after spring 2013, and had probably been dead for about two years. He was probably middle-class, and middle- aged. He probably died elsewhere, and his body then traveled up or down the river with the currents and tides. Bigelow sent a detailed press release to media outlets and asked the public for tips, just as he had done in 2013. “With Molly Waddington,” Bigelow recalled, “all we had was a skull. We didn’t know height, weight, gender, practically nothing. When I asked for assistance, the world called me. Everybody who was missing anybody. That was when I realized the heart- break — how many people had people missing.” Bigelow began to feel guilty about “giving so many people hope of closure.” “They have some particular person deeply at heart, and they’re just scan- ning all the time, looking, and when they see one of these things, they pick up the phone and call,” Bigelow said. This time, Bigelow was able to provide more detail in his release. “As a result, I got very few calls, ” Bigelow said. People are often slow to ile reports about people who have transient lifestyles, but it’s rare for a middle-class person’s disappearance to draw so little attention. “This guy seems like the kind of guy that people would be looking for,” Bigelow said. “He had Vibram-soled shoes — those things are like $20 a toe. It’s odd.” Getting to ‘maybe’ With small staffs and little tech- nology at their disposal, rural coroners research cold cases on evenings and weekends, or whenever they can borrow a few minutes from the reams of appeals, briefs and dense county reports that continuously pile up. And they seek help wherever they can ind it. Bigelow took the man’s teeth to a dentist, who created records and turned them over to the Washington State Patrol. WSP, in turn, entered them into the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, an FBI database. NCIC compared the Pillar Rock man’s tooth charts to records going back to the 1980s, and spit out a list of 141 men who had gone missing in Wash- ington during the time period when he likely died. NamUs, other databases, and tipsters added still more names to Bigelow’s ever-expanding list. When investigators ran Wadding- ton’s DNA proile through the CODIS database, it quickly found her identity, but such clear-cut results are fairly rare. “Sometimes, you can come pretty close to knowing,” Bigelow explained. “Other times, depending on the quality of the dental records or the remains, all you can do is say, ‘I can’t exclude this person.’” After that, it was down to Bigelow to igure out which of the many missing men he could cross off of his list. Hours upon hours of reading, dialing, researching, and waiting, waiting, waiting on return calls, police reports and search results. “There’s a lot of detective work, even when there are other potential matches,” Bigelow said. Bones, everywhere Bigelow again called on Taylor, the forensic anthropologist, for help. In her lab, Taylor will remove the man’s remaining fatty tissue, then examine and preserve the bones. Just as with Waddington, she will send samples to UNT for DNA testing. A Washington native who earned her doctorate at the University of Arizona, Taylor has worked out of the King County Medical Examiner’s ofice since 1996. Though it’s a rela- tively new ield, the demand for her unique services is growing. Taylor sometimes responds to scenes when bodies turn up. People regularly call on her to examine bones, or photos of bones found around the state. “A lot of what I’m doing is eval- uating a bone and asking, ‘Is this human?’ Because there are bones everywhere,” Taylor said. In addition to using the databases, she works with police, the media and other experts, including a forensic artist. She also spends a lot of time talking with the families of the missing, encouraging them to do their part to keep investiga- tions active. “We really try to explore every avenue,” Taylor said. “If you know of somebody that’s missing, you have to report them, and you have to be vigilant to make sure that somebody is getting them into the system.” ‘Everybody should get a name’ Taylor cautions that DNA testing is “not the magic bullet everyone thinks it is.” Frustratingly, sometimes there’s just not enough to work with, espe- cially with old, weathered remains. “What we have to do then is put it on the shelf and wait for the technology to get better, and then you resubmit it,” Taylor said. “You never give up.” It’s too soon to say whether this man’s bones will provide usable DNA, or other clues to his identity. Without a name, investigators are unlikely to ever igure out how he died. Sometimes, though, families do get answers against all odds. Taylor and her collaborators recently solved a seemingly hopeless cold case from 1989. When she inally met the victim’s sister, Taylor’s irst words were, “I have been waiting 20 years to talk to you!” “Every one of these people that are in my care have families and are loved by somebody. It’s excruciating not to be able to igure out who they are. You know that they are being missed. You just don’t know by whom,” Taylor said. “You want to return them to their families. Everybody should get a name. They came into this world with a name. They should leave it with a name.” Continued from 1A hard-line immigration poli- cies that ired up conser- vatives in the primary but broke with many in his party by promising protec- tions for gays and lesbians. His address on the closing night of the convention marked his highest-proile opportunity yet to heal Republican divisions and show voters he’s prepared for the pres- idency. Ever the showman, he fed off the energy of the crowd, stepping back to soak in applause and joining the delegates as they chanted, “U-S-A.” As the crowd, iercely opposed to Clinton, broke out in its oft-used refrain of “Lock her up,” he waved them off, and instead declared, “Let’s defeat her in November.” Yet he also accused her of “terrible, terrible crimes” and said her greatest achievement may have been avoiding prison for her use of a private email and personal server as secretary of state. The more than hour- long speech was strikingly dark for a celebratory event and almost entirely lacking in speciic policy details. Trump shouted throughout as he read off a teleprompter, showing few lashes of humor or even a smile. He accused Clinton, his far-more-experienced Democratic rival, of utterly lacking the good judgment to serve in the White House and as the military’s commander in chief. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said. “But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be Ameri- ca’s legacy.” In a direct appeal to Americans shaken by a summer of violence at home and around the world, Trump promised that if he takes ofice in January, “safety will be restored.” As he moves into the general election campaign, he’s sticking to the controversial proposals of his primary campaign, including building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border and suspending immigration from nations “compro- mised by terrorism.” But in a nod to a broader swath of Americans, he said young people in predominantly black cities “have as much of a right to live out their dreams as any other child in America.” He also vowed to protect gays and lesbians from violence and oppression, a pledge that was greeted with applause from the crowd. “As a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said,” he responded. Trump was introduced by his daughter Ivanka, who announced a child- care policy proposal that the campaign had not mentioned before. “As president, my father will change the labor laws that were put in place at a time when women weren’t a signiicant portion of the workplace, and he will focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all,” she said. Trump took the stage in Cleveland facing a daunting array of challenges, many of his own making. Though he vanquished 16 primary rivals, he’s viewed with unprecedented negativity by the broader electorate, and is struggling in partic- ular with younger voters and minorities, groups GOP leaders know they need for the party to grow. The irst three days of this week’s convention bordered on chaos, starting with a plagiarism charge involving his wife Melania Trump’s speech and moving on to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s dramatic refusal to endorse him from the convention stage. Then, Trump sparked more questions about his Oval Ofice readiness by suggesting in the midst of the convention that the U.S. might not defend America’s NATO partners with him as president. The remarks, in an interview published online Wednesday by The New York Times, deviate from decades of American doctrine and seem to reject the 67-year-old alliance’s bedrock principle of collec- tive defense. Trump reinforced his position from the conven- tion stage, saying the United States has been “picking up the cost” of NATO’s defenses for too long. He also disavowed America’s foreign policy posture under both Democratic and Republican presidents, criticizing “ifteen years of wars in the Middle East” and declaring that “Ameri- canism, not globalism, will be our credo.” “As long as we are led by politicians who will not put ‘America First,’ then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect,” he said. He had promised to describe “major, major” tax cuts. But his economic proposals Thursday night were vague, centering on unspeciied plans to create millions of jobs. He promised a “simpliied” tax system for the middle class and businesses, fewer regu- lations and renegotiation of trade deals that he says have put working class Americans at a disadvan- tage. At every turn, Trump drew sharp contrasts with Clinton, casting her as both unqualiied for the presidency and too tied to Washington elites to under- stand voters’ struggles. Democrats will formally nominate Clinton at their convention next week in Philadelphia. She is on the verge of naming a running mate to join her in taking on Trump and his vice pres- idential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, in the general election. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine has emerged as her top choice. Turkish lawmakers give leader Erdogan sweeping new powers after attempted coup ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey will be able to extend detention times for suspects and issue decrees without parliamentary approval under a three-month state of emergency approved Thursday by lawmakers following last week’s attempted military coup. Parliament voted 346-115 to approve the national state of emergency, which gives sweeping new powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had been accused of autocratic conduct even before this week’s crack- down on alleged opponents. Erdogan has said the state of emergency will counter threats to Turkish democracy. Even without the emer- gency measures, his govern- ment has already imposed a crackdown that has included mass arrests, mass irings and the closure of hundreds of schools. Erdogan said the new powers would allow the government to rid the military of the “virus” of subversion, blaming the coup attempt on a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen. The cleric has denied any knowledge of the attempted coup. “This is a state of emer- gency imposed not on the people, but on (the state) itself,” declared Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. “We will, one by one, cleanse the state of (Gulen’s followers) and eliminate those who are trying to harm the country.” The government hopes the state of emergency will be lifted within 40 to 45 days, said Yildirim’s deputy, Final Days Saager’s Shoe Shop Up to 50% Off Milton-Freewater, OR Numan Kurtulmus. Turkey immediately said it was partially suspending the European Convention on Human Rights, allowing it more leeway to deal with individual cases, by invoking an article most recently used by France and Ukraine. The Council of Europe said it had been informed of Turkey’s decision, and that the conven- tion will still apply, but that individual exceptions will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Meanwhile, video emerged of soldiers iring at crowds who rushed to defend the government during the failed coup. Footage from CCTV cameras above the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul showed soldiers shooting at a man who had his hands up as he approached tanks that were blocking trafic. Other footage, obtained from the Veronica Zapata Auto Health Home Life habla español 541/289-3300 • 800/225-2521 The Stratton Agency Hermiston / Pendleton • stratton-insurance.com Veronica Zapata Family Insurance Agent Turkish Dogan news agency, showed a mob attacking surrendering soldiers on the bridge after daybreak. On Thursday, thousands of people again gathered at the bridge to protest the failed coup. Waving Turkish lags, the crowd walked across the bridge linking the European and Asian sides of the city, some deiantly chanting, “Our martyrs are immortal, our nation cannot be divided!”