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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,
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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
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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!”