The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 3

Cofl Angelee gfaaea Sunday, August 2, 1981 Part I 3 Ex-Merceiaary Reportedly Aiding Search for Boyce By CHARLES P. WALLACE and JACK JONES, Timet Staff Writers A former Rhodesian mercenary and ex-convict was reportedly placed under protective custody in New Jersey Saturday after he apparently began cooperating with federal agents who are hunting for escaped Soviet spy Christopher Boyce. A source close to the investigation said Frank Abbott Sweeney, 38, was being protected by federal agents after his release on $250,000 bond by a judge in Newark. "Technically speaking, he's out on bail," the source said. "But a person can be free and under protection if he does not object to helping himself out" Sweeney was arrested at his home in Closter, N.J., last Thursday on charges of illegal possession of firearms.

But government affidavits, released in court by an apparent oversight, said federal agents believe Sweeney helped Boyce flee the United States and travel to South phone calls he made from a hotel. Some of those calls were reportedly made to an apartment in Hermosa Beach. The marshals went there and found that a man named Tom Sullivan, who was also known as "Col. George Leslie," had departed owing rent In the Hermosa Beach apartment, the agents found the two letters from Sweeney, opening "dear colonel," and indicating that Sweeney had helped Boyce to leave the country and had been questioned by U.S. marshals in November.

According to neighbors, Sweeney moved to the Closter, N.J., home in January. He left the red frame house for two months shortly after moving in, but has spent the last two weeks close to home. "He was always here," said one neighbor, Dave Dooly, who said he observed Sweeney body building on his lawn each morning at 9 a.m. Please see CUSTODY, Page 17 would seek refuge in South Africa, whose government is zealously anti-communist and maintains stricti controls on immigration. The court record suggests that one reason for Sweeney's arrest may have been indications that Sweeney was himself planning to leave the country.

While visiting San Francisco from June 9 to 15, Sweeney reportedly bought airline tickets to fly from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, on July 10. On June 20, he canceled the trip, but bought a Sydney ticket with an open departure date. "He continues to make active plans involving international travel which, it is believed, will place him in proximity with the fugitive," the records said. There are a number of airline flights from Sydney direct to South Africa. According to the affidavits, marshals followed Sweeney to California in the last two months and checked out long distance tele Federal officials said they were stunned at the release of the documents in court They apparently were concerned that Boyce would now learn that he was being actively sought in South Africa.

Boyce, 28, is a former employee of TRW Systems Group, a major defense contractor in Redondo Beach. He has been sought since Jan. 21, 1980, when he escaped from the federal prison at Lompoc, where he was serving a 40-year term for selling the secrets of a CIA spy satellite to the Soviet Union. According to two letters written by Sweeney and introduced in the court, Sweeney was visited by U.S. marshals as early as last November and questioned closely about Boyce's whereabouts.

But it was not clear why they had waited until now to arrest Sweeney, who met Boyce while in the federal prison at Terminal Island. One letter written by Sweeney reported ly placed Boyce in an area of South Africa known as the Orange Free State, which is adjacent to the independent black nation of Lesotho. Sweeney visited South Africa less than a month after Boyce's escape from prison, the court documents said, and remained there for four months. He was there again in January, posing as an anthropologist Sources in the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, the South African capital, told The Times that embassy officials are convinced that Boyce is still in the country.

They said South African police were "cooperating" with the search. Interestingly, U.S. marshal "wanted" posters concerning Boyce were posted in South African police stations as early as last August, indicating that U.S. authorities have long been aware of the possible South African connection. The court documents gave no indication why Boyce, a convicted communist agent, Budget Ax Hits Mental Health Basics Stanford to License Gene Technology mmmmmi: ByLEEDEMBART, Times Staff Writer Stanford University announced Saturday that it would begin licensing its patented process for gene' splicing to any firm that wanted to use it for a minimum of $10,000 a year.

The process was developed by Stanley Cohen of Stanford and Herbert Boyer of the University of California at San Francisco and was donated to Stanford. It is believed to be at the heart of the work being done by virtually every company that has entered the genetic engineering boom. Stanford estimated that 200 companies were now using the process. It is offering incentives to them to sign up early, although a license will not be required until a product made through the process is available to sell. The university predicted that it would earn several hundred thousand dollars a year at first and as much as $1 million a year by the mid 1980s.

Proceeds Will Be Split Proceeds from licensing the gene-splicing patent will be split evenly with UC San Francisco after Stanford takes 15 off the top for administrative expenses, the university said. The question of how to capitalize on basic research in genetic engineering has occupied universities for more than a year, since it became clear that the new technique would find wide application in the pharmaceutical, food and agriculture industries. Universities did not want a repeat of their computer experience, in which some faculty members did basic research and then formed private companies that made fortunes, but left the schools with nothing. Harvard Venture Dropped Last year, Harvard suggested going into the genetic engineering business but dropped the idea after a firestorm of protest from faculty members who said that such a venture would violate the fundamental intellectual mission of the university. Stanford, which received a patent on the gene-splicing technique last December, is adopting a middle course.

It will make the patent available to any commercial user for an initial Please fee STANFORD, Page 23 By LOIS TIMNICK, Times Human Behavior Writer At first glance, the budgetary ax in Sacramento and Los Angeles County appears to have missed the field of mental health. But mental health programs in Los Angeles County will apparently be hard hit by even the relatively modest cuts now planned because their budgets have been consistently whittled for the past several years. Now even the basic programs that serve 100,000 schizophrenic, depressed and other disturbed patients in Los Angeles County each year are facing cuts of $3.2 million. Pressing new areas of need must be ignored, health officials say. A county-sponsored survey last year, for example, estimated that nearly 6,000 people, 1,000 of them dangerous, needed immediate hospitalization and were turned away.

More recently, local psychiatrists have warned that as many as 35,000 severely ill young drifters may be wandering the streets of Los Angeles in need of psychiatric and other help. Overcrowded Conditions Many of these wind up in jail or living marginally in board-and-care homes or on the street And those who do manage to get into the public mental health system often face long waits, overcrowded conditions and inadequate care by poorly trained professionals. Dr. Harold E. Mavritte, the county mental health department's assistant director for programs, says the public mental health system here has been "gradually eroded" over the last five years.

Bit by bit, the county has been forced to close adult and children's wards at County -USC Medical Center, close down district offices, eliminate administrative positions and curtail its preventive efforts. The county's mental health director, J. Richard Elpers, says his 1981-82 budget of $142 million is now less than half of what it would take to run a comprehensive program. "This is the year of trying to improve our efficiency, to revamp the system to serve the most severely chronically ill, and to pull back on general outpatient services," he said. This means shifting hours and Please see CUTS, Pace 27 JOE KENNEDY Lot Angela Timet Voluntary labor is building the new Fallsvale school, going up to replace the old school building which was found not to be earthquake safe.

Parents Refuse to Let Their Old Mountain School Die By LORRAINE BENNETT, Times Staff Writer FOREST FALLS, their landmark two-room rock schoolhouse failed to meet California earthquake standards, school officials gave the 950 residents of this small mountain community two choices. They could squeeze the 70 children in kindergarten through the 6th grade into two modular classrooms that the state would send them. Or they could watch the Redlands Unified School District bus the children down a mountain to other schools in the district But Forest Falls residents are a strong-willed, enterprising sort who put up with annual winter snowfalls sometimes several feet deep for the opportunity of living on uncluttered land and breathing crisp air. Their unincorporated community is a still unrenowned small-scale Yose-mite with its own waterfall cascading down craggy rocks. Fallsvale School was built of native river rock in the 1930s by early community residents.

Placing modular classrooms near it was a prospect that seemed unthinkable to today's residents. Officials at Redlands Unified School District had earmarked $291,000 to upgrade the Fallsvale School but studies had determined that was not feasible, and the allotted funds were not enough to build a new school. So, the community hired an architect to design a plan for a new three-room school, built with voluntary labor, on a budget of $300,000. The lowest bid returned was $500,000. Then several events that Forest Falls residents consider fortunate twists of fate began to occur.

Resident Bob Dobias, a contractor with Inland Pre-Cut Timber Homes of Redlands, said his company could furnish a jre-cut building and if enough community labor could be provided, he would build the school within the $300,000 budget This unorthodox package first needed the approval of the state architect's office. "This type of pre-cut building and the idea of community labor blew the minds of the state ar-Please see SCHOOL, Page 25 But so was busing the youngsters down ice-coated roads in winter. They saw a third choice: Why not build their own school? "People come here, see the old Fallsvale School and say, 'What a neat place for kids to go to remarked Ed Pellissier, who moved to the mountains from Whittier a decade ago and says now he would never live anywhere else. "We didn't want to lose that feeling, and people didn't want their kids bused 17 miles to Red-lands or even farther." Local real estate agent Tom Mclnthosh, who has a child in Fallsvale School, agreed. Lunch by the Stream "Our kids not only learn here," he said.

"They sled during recess in winter. In spring they go down and eat lunch by the stream." The prospect of their children losing such rich experiences motivated residents to form Friends of Fallsvale School. Talk of building their own school flew through the community. 'Night Stalker' Theory Connecting Eight Southland Slayings Disputed By JOHN HURST, Times Staff Writer SANTA BARBARA Is a psychopathic "Night Stalker" murdering Southern California couples in their beds? Or has the Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Department been overeager as two other police agencies claim in linking eight Southern California murders and a knife attack to one killer still on the loose? The controversy and confusion began last week when the Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Department said it believed there is a link between the murder of a couple found bludgeoned to death in a Goleta home Monday and the shooting death of another couple in a home a few blocks away 19 months ago. Psychologist Draws Profile Authorities also said they believe the same killer committed a nonfatal knife attack on another couple in the same neighborhood 22 months ago and went on to say they suspect a link to the bludgeon murders of a Ventura couple in March, 1980, and an Orange County couple in August, 1980.

Santa Barbara County sheriffs spokesman Russ Birchim said deputies have dubbed the killer the "Night Stalker," and authorities said a "profile" developed by a local psychologist had indicated "a high probability" that the murderer would strike again even before the latest homicide. "There is a person out there killing people," said Sgt William Baker, head of the sheriffs major crime division. "We believe there is a strong possibility that the three (Santa Barbara cases) are connected." Regarding the Orange County and Ventura murders, Baker said: ange County cases, all the victims were reportedly found in bed. In all the Santa Barbara cases, the victims were unmarried couples, leading to speculation that the killer might be a demented moralist But in the Ventura and Orange County murders, the couples were married. In Santa Barbara County, all three crimes occurred within a square mile.

All were near a creek bed that meanders through Goleta, an area adjacent to Santa Barbara that is made up largely of newish tract homes. In two of the Santa Barbara crimes, the same caliber gun was used, according to police, but ballistics tests on recovered bullets have not yet determined whether or not the same weapon was used in the two cases. These are the crimes under investigation: Early on Oct 1, 1979, a Goleta couple, who asked not to be identified, were accosted in their bed by a man armed with a kitchen knife. According to a source, the intruder shined a flashlight on them and, threatening to "blow your head off," forced the woman to tie up the man with cord. If the intruder had a gun, according to sources, the couple never saw it in the darkness.

The intruder put a pair of shorts over the head of the woman, according to a source, and forced her into another room and tied her up, continually threatening murder. In the meantime, the man, still bound, was able to get out of the house and yell for help. The intruder ran from the home, jumped on a bicycle and, Please see KILLINGS, Page 24 "I would say there is a strong suspicion (that they are linked to the Santa Barbara cases but to a lesser degree because I'm not as familiar with those jurisdictions' cases." But authorities in Ventura and Orange County are skeptical that the murders in those jurisdictions are linked to the Santa Barbara cases. "We see no connection between the killings," said Ventura Police Sgt Larry White, in charge of the Ventura homicide investigation. "We don't know what if any link there might be." He contended that Santa Barbara County authorities "jumped the gun" with their announcement of a suspected link and said there had been no communication between the two departments immediately prior to the statement that a link is suspected.

Similarly, Orange County authorities are unconvinced. "I think they (Santa Barbara County authorities) are very premature at this point" said Darryl Coder, Orange County sheriffs investigator. "They're still coordinating their investigation "We had a double homicide in August of last year," he continued, "and we put out a bulletin (to other law enforcement agencies) that anybody with a double homicide contact us We were contacted by just about everybody in the state The fact that you have a male and a female killed on a bed does not make the cases the same. "Shortly after our homicide," Coder continued, "San Diego had a homicide, male and female in bed together. We ran down there and it turned out it was a dope ripoff "It is not uncommon," he went on, "to have a male and female (killed) in their house.

Most people do go to bed at night and because they are killed in bed does not make those cases that similar." The Santa Barbara crimes aside, Coder was similarly skeptical of any connection between the Orange County and Ventura murders. "We don't feel that (there is a connection), he said. "We never felt that" The eight homicides and the knife attack, committed between Oct 1, 1979, and July 27, 1981, share several striking similarities, but there are also notable differences. In every crime the victims were a man and woman in their bedroom, probably in bed. In each case, the scene of the crime was a comfortable to fashionable home.

In most cases the weapon was a bludgeon. But in another it was a gun. In one it was a knife with the threat of a gun. In the latest it was a gun and a bludgeon. No Sexual Molestation In none of the cases has sexual molestations of the victims been reported.

In at least one case, the victims were tied up, but in some cases authorities deny that binds were used and in others they refuse to say. In four cases, nothing is believed to have been stolen from the victims' homes. But in one case, a small amount of cash was taken, according to police. In the Santa Barbara County murders, the male victims were found on the floor and the females in bed, according to police. But in the Ventura and Or.