Apparent
By Pete Thomas,
Los Angeles Times
It was a honeymoon in Hawaii
Mark Monazzami will never forget,
no matter how hard he tries. He
emerged from the hospital Thursday
and planned to join the search for his
wife in the beautiful waters off Maui.
It was there, he said, that she bled to
death after the shark took off her arm.
Skeptics might wonder about such
a tale. There are no eyewitnesses to
the assault, and no body. But there are
few doubters in Hawaii, where two
other attacks have been reported
recently, and where tiger sharks were
hunted earlier in the decade to reduce
the threat of strikes on humans.
Most of all, there is Monazzami’s
story, in which a tiny kayak was pitted
against howling trade winds. Maui
police say that at this point they have
no reason to doubt the story, and they
hope others will pay heed.
A naturalized citizen of Iranian
descent, Manouchehr Monazzami-
Taghadomi, 39, who goes by the
name Mark, has lived in California
for 20 years. He had visited and
corresponded with Nahid
Davoodabai, a 29-year-old Iranian
gynecologist, often in recent years.
He finally asked her to marry him in
December 1997.
She accepted, and the two took
their vows that winter in Iran. She
remained for several months to sell
her clinic. He returned to California
and began the paperwork his wife
would need when she emigrated.
When that finally happened last
summer, they planned a spring
honeymoon to the scenic shore of
Lahaina, Maui. Monazzami, a
consultant company employee and a
frequent visitor to Hawaii, wanted to
treat his wife to a week in paradise.
Genice Jacobs, a colleague of
Mother’s loss in a
By Bettina Boxall,
Los Angeles Times
MODESTO, Calif. _ A housekeeper
at the motel that has been Raquel
Pelosso’s home these grim weeks
pressed $ 100 into her hand and kissed
her on the cheek. A waitress from the
motel restaurant gave her $4O and a
hug. A woman she had never seen
before handed her a potted lilly and
then walked away in tears.
It was the day after authorities told
Pelosso that one of two bodies found
in a charred rental car a week ago was
that of her 16-year-old daughter
Silvina. Pelosso looked numb and
slightly dazed Saturday as she
returned the hugs and nodded at the
words of sympathy.
Pelosso’s wrenching personal
tragedy has become in some small
sense the public’s as well, played out
on television and in newspaper
headlines about the California
vacation that ended in death not only
for her daughter but for her lifelong
Kevorkian is convicted of second-degree murder
By Eric Slater,
Los Angeles Times
PONTIAC, Mich. _ Jack Kevorkian,
the eccentric former pathologist who
for a decade defined and drove the
national debate over assisted suicide,
was convicted late Friday of second
degree murder in the death of a
terminally ill man who had asked for
his help.
Separated from the courtroom
gallery by a wall of 10 deputy
sheriffs, the diminutive Kevorkian,
70, stood blank-faced, clasping his
hands as the jury foreman declared
him guilty of murdering Thomas
Youk. He also was found guilty of
delivery of a controlled substance.
Youk’s wife, Melody, who had
hoped to testify on Kevorkian’s
behalf, closed her eyes and shook her
head slightly. On the other side of
the courtroom, the sister of a 34-year
old woman Kevorkian helped die in
1997 let out a cheerful “Yes!” Under
Michigan law, the retired physician
could received 10 to 25 years in
prison on the murder charge, and
another seven for using secobarbital
to kill Youk.
Noting that Kevorkian previously
had assisted in ending patients’ lives
while awaiting trial on assisted
suicide charges, prosecutors asked
that his bond be revoked and he be
held over for sentencing.
Kevorkian’s attorneys promised he
shark attack kills honeymooner, fuels fear in Hawaii
Monazzami, said the couple was
looking forward to their romantic
getaway. “He’s just a really sweet guy
and if you looked in eyes all could see
was love and passion for for his wife.”
On March 13, they checked into a
small condominium resort just beyond
the beach on the popular corridor
between Kaanapali and Kapalua,
north of Lahaina. In an interview from
his hospital bed this week,
Monazzami recalled how they
lounged in the sun, snorkeled, and
took long walks on the beach.
Others were paddling around on
kayaks and it looked like fun,
Monazzami said, so they decided to
give it a try. They reserved a two-seat
hard-plastic ocean kayak on March 17
and picked it up the next morning.
Unlike kayaks in which paddlers sit
inside the shell, the seats of this
version are on the exterior of molded
plastic bodies. The vessel is tippy in
choppy waters, but easy to maneuver
and fast. In warm coastal waters, it is
an ideal craft.
Wearing only swimsuits and life
jackets, they set out at about noon in
an area south of Lahaina called
Ukumehame. The weather was ideal
and their kayak glided swiftly across
the ocean with little effort. In all, they
had paddled for about three hours,
Monazzami said, before taking a long
rest on the beach.
Monazzami’s arms were weary and
he was content to remain on the beach,
he said, but his wife persuaded him to
climb aboard the kayak one more
time. It was 4 p.m., and the water
immediately beyond the beach was
still relatively calm. Offshore, a small
craft advisory had been issued to
boaters. From the beach, a keen and
knowing eye might have seen the
telltale “wind line” beyond the area
protected by the mountains.
Off they went, not getting very far,
friend, Carole Sund, and Sund’s
daughter, 15-year-old Juliana.
The crime has also been major news
in Argentina. On Friday, shortly after
airing an interview with Silvina’s
weary father when he returned to
Argentina, television stations
interrupted live coverage of Kosovo
and political turmoil in Paraguay to
transmit the announcement by the FBI
of the discovery of the third and final
corpse in Yosemite.
“The End of Hope,” was the front
page headline in the Pagina 12
newspaper Saturday.
Raquel Pelosso has been somewhat
overwhelmed by the gifts and money,
intended to help defray the expense
of her weeks away from Argentina.
“People don’t show their feelings that
way in Argentina. I’m really
surprised,” she said quietly as she sat
in the Holiday Inn where she and the
Sunds’ relatives have stayed since
shortly after the trio disappeared in
February.
A few feet away, in a room off the
would obey all laws and asked that
he remain free.
“Can I have your word?” Oakland
County Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper
asked Kevorkian. “I kept my word
until now, and I’ll keep it,” Kevorkian
said. Cooper allowed him to remain
free until his scheduled sentencing
April 14.
Kevorkian’s lawyers pledged to
appeal the verdict, but he is almost
certain to be imprisoned pending the
outcome of any appeals. “We believe
it is certainly injustice to try and
equate an act of compassion with an
act of murder,” attorney David
Gorosh said after the verdict “He was
invited into the Youk home. Certainly
(Youk) had every right to end that
pain, as every American does. Dr.
Kevorkian will be lauded as a hero
in history.”
Oakland County prosecutor David
Gorcyca, who has received numerous
threats since filing the murder
charges, said that the jury had granted
him his “ultimate wish.” “It has never
been my intent to participate in the
martyrdom of Dr. Kevorkian,”
Gorcyca said. “The verdict stands for
the sanctity of human life. Whether
you agree or not with the verdict,
what Dr. Kevorkian did to Tom Youk,
in the state of Michigan, was second
degree murder.”
Unable to control his movements
or even swallow, and afraid of
choking to death on his own saliva,
World and Nation
Monazzami said, before a big wind
“came out of nowhere” and began
pushing them farther from the beach.
Within moments, they were 2,000
yards offshore with nobody in sight.
Since their kayak was rented on an
unlimited basis and no one was
expecting them ashore, Monazzami
realized that their chances of rescue
that night were slim.
The chop made it difficult to keep
the vessel upright, especially with the
onset of darkness. They began to
capsize frequently, but soon found
that it felt warmer in the water,
anyway. Temperatures above and
below the surface were about the
same, in the low to mid-70s, but in
the water they were out of the wind.
At some point during the night,
however, Monazzami became
concerned about the possibility of a
shark attack, and said so to his wife.
Her response, he said, was that being
warm was more important than
worrying about sharks. Moments
later, it was Davoodabai who cried
out, “Shark!”
In an instant, she was pulled under.
She surfaced almost immediately,
complaining with remarkable calm
that her left arm was missing. He
reached out to help her and clutched
at the wound near her shoulder, but
all he could feel was tissue and flesh.
Blood rushed through his fingers.
Holding her by the right arm, he
climbed back onto the vessel and
pulled her aboard. He tried to stop the
bleeding using the string from his
swim trunks as a tourniquet, but the
damage was too extensive. She drifted
in and out of consciousness, at one
point telling her husband that she
could feel her fingers. “I said, ‘No,
honey, you don’t have an arm,’ “’
Monazzami said.
About 30 minutes passed before
Davoodabai started feeling severe
foreign land becomes a public loss
motel’s indoor pool, was a room full
of flowers for Pelosso and the Sunds’
family. Two-dozen volunteers have
taken hundreds of messages and calls
from the public. “I really feel uneasy
getting so many presents,” Pelosso
confessed. “I do appreciate it but I’m
trying to understand how it works.”
Pelosso and Carole Sund’s parents,
Carole and Francis Carrington, have
said they will remain in Modesto until
they can take the remains of their
relatives home. Authorities, who have
made no arrests in the case, have
indicated the bodies will likely be
released this week. The remains of
Silvina and Carole Sund were found
in the trunk of the rental car the trio
had taken on their trip to Yosemite. It
had been burned and abandoned on a
dirt road in Long Bam. Juliana’s body
was discovered last week near a
reservoir, 30 miles away.
When Pelosso said goodbye to
Silvina in December, she thought a
little bit about earthquakes, but the
idea that her youngest daughter would
Youk, 52, was in the latter stages of
Lou Gehrig’s disease when he
summoned Kevorkian Sept. 15.
Recording their meeting on video,
Kevorkian presented Youk a consent
form, which he signed. Then he
asked Youk to think about his
decision, saying: “Let’s not hurry into
this.”
Two days later, Youk was ready to
go, both his wife and brother Terry
said this week as they watched the
trial unfold. In the videotape that
prosecutors played for the jury, Youk
was seen sitting in a chair, clad in a
plaid shirt, his eyeglasses on.
Kevorkian searched for a vein, then
gave Youk the first of three injections
that rendered him unconscious and
then stopped his breathing and his
heart.
The act marked a milestone in
Kevorkian’s tireless crusade to
legalize euthanasia: He himself
injected Youk with the fatal drug
cocktail, rather than employing his
so-called suicide machine, which
allowed some 130 other patients to
administer the drugs themselves.
CBS aired an edited version of the
tape on its popular Sunday night
program “60 Minutes,” along with an
interview in which Kevorkian
challenged prosecutors to charge
him. They did. And a man who shuns
worldly possessions, living mostly
off Social Security checks and the
generosity of friends, had shouldered
pain, Monazzami said. “She started
screaming from the bottom of her
heart, and I was going crazy because
I couldn’t do anything to help her.”
Suddenly, the screaming stopped.
Davoodabai was dead. Dizzy from
grief and exhaustion, Monazzami
shifted his weight and his kayak
capsized again. He let go of her body,
and she drifted into the blackness.
Monazzami said he climbed back
onto the kayak. No long caring if he
lived or died, he said, he stretched out
and let the current take him where it
may. He awoke to the sound of his
vessel bumping against a rocky shore.
Then a wave flipped the kayak and
spilled Monazzami into the water. He
lost his shorts struggling to get
himself on the beach.
The current had deposited him on
Kahoolawc, a small island 12 miles
southwest of Maui. The island, until
recently used for target practice by the
U.S. Navy, has been uninhabited for
years. It was Friday morning, March
19, when he landed. One of the first
things he saw were military
helicopters buzzing over the
mountain lops.
Weary and feeling faint for lack of
food and water, he spent most of the
day resting on the beach, covering
himself with trash in an attempt to get
out of the wind, vowing to climb the
mountain on Saturday morning. The
next day, he said he found a paid of
old sandals. “I spent five or six hours
hiking. I went all the way to top of
mountain and nothing.”
Monazzami said he never ate, but
it rained Saturday and he drank from
pools formed in the rocks. “Before
that I was very close to drinking sea
water,” he said. Late Saturday
afternoon, he got lost and was startled
to discover a satellite dish atop an old
military bunker.
It was dark by time he reached the
fall victim to a violent crime never
crossed her mind. After all, she was
sending Silvina to the home of a dear,
lifelong friend.
Pelosso and Carole Sund met as
teen-agers, when they were exchange
students. Pelosso had spent some time
in Michigan and Sund stayed with
Pelosso\s family in Argentina for six
months in 1973. “We had a great time
together. She had a sense of humor,”
remembered Pelosso .
When Carole returned to
California, they kept in touch, writing
and calling. In the mid 1980 s, Sund
took Juliana, then a toddler, on a 10-
week visit to Argentina. It was
summer and the Pelossos rented a
house in the hills. They took the
children to the river and hiked. The
little girls hit it off immediately.
Despite the great distance and only
occasional meetings, Sund and
Pelosso maintained a strong
friendship over the years. They had
long phone conversations in which
Pelosso could tell Sund things she
the debate forward once again.
The division over the issue was
evident all week at the Oakland
County courthouse. A group called
Not Dead Yet, made up of disabled
people who contend euthanasia
generally and Kevorkian specifically
targets people depressed over their
disability, protested daily.
Cooper ruled that testimony from
the Youk family would be unfairly
prejudicial in a murder case, and they
were not allowed to take the s'and.
That left Kevorkian with no
witnesses and none of the emotional
testimony that helped make four
previous juries unwilling to imprison
him for carrying out the last wishes
of people in agony.
Additionally, Kevorkian insisted
on acting as his own attorney, a move
that prompted his longtime attorney,
Geoffrey Fieger, to cut ties with the
former pathologist, saying: “I don’t
let my clients commit their own
assisted suicide.”
Having promised to starve to death
in prison if convicted, Kevorkian
seemed to be doing just that during
the trial, some observers said, his
only defense being a scattershot
closing statement that centered
around his intent to end Youk’s
suffering, not kill him, and the
philosophical rightness of
euthanasia.
“There are some acts which
Thursday, April 1, 1999
building, but it afforded him some
protection until morning. At daybreak
Sunday, Monazzami fiddled with
some of the equipment he found in
the bunker, but found all of it useless.
Until he found the phone.
It was concealed in a small casing
on the wall. He followed the wire to a
jack and plugged in the line. There
was a dial tone. He dialed 911. “The
guy answered and that’s when I burst
(into tears),” Monazzami said. “All
the pain of not having my wife hit
me.”
Keith Keau, enforcement chief for
the Maui division of the Department
of Land and Natural resources, was
involved in die rescue effort. “When
we found him he was totally
dehydrated and in shock.”
Monazzami’s kayak was retrieved
from a nearby beach on Monday and
not found to have any damage “other
than scratches and dents caused by the
rocks,” Keau said. On Wednesday
afternoon, while searching for the
body off the shore of Kahoolawc,
investigators from the Maui County
Police Department found a blue life
jacket “similar to the one reportedly
wom by Davoodabai.”
Asked if the vest had tooth marks
or blood stains on it, Lt. Glenn Cuomo
would only say, “It’s still being
examined.” The case is being treated
as a missing person investigation by
the criminal investigations
department of the police department,
according to Capt. Victor Tengan.
“That’s just standard procedure,” he
explained, adding that at this point
there is no reason to doubt
Monazzami’s story.
Monazzami was discharged from
the hospital Thursday afternoon and
had planned on joining police in the
search for his wife’s body on Friday.
The apparent attack on Davoodabai
is the third shark attack this month.
told no one else
“I always found her really wise,”
said Pelosso. The girls saw mutual
family photos of each other but that
was about their only communication.
When it was time for Silvina’s teen
age trip to America, she decided she
did not want to go on an organized
tour as her older sister Paula had. “She
wanted to see how things worked in
another country,” Pelosso said. “She
wanted to share a life.”
So Sund invited her. And late last
year, Silvina, described as a shy and
serious girl, set off for three months
with the Sund family. Just as her
mother had taken an instant liking to
Sund, so Silvina became friends with
Juliana. “I thought it was going to be
a hard time for both of them but they
got along as Carole and I had 20 years
before,” Pelosso said. Juliana was
already making plans to visit
Argentina this summer.
The trip to Yosemite was all
carefully planned, to be followed by
a tour of the Grand Canyon with
common sense says are not crimes,”
he told the jury. Then, first thing
Friday morning, as the jury began its
second day of deliberations,
Kevorkian stunned the courtroom by
asking to have his attorneys handle
the rest of the case.
After Cooper agreed, Gorosh Filed
a motion to dismiss the case. When
prosecutor John Skrzynski had
objected during Kevorkian’s closing
argument that the defense was
introducing new material, he had
suggested in front of jurors that
Kevorkian should have taken the
stand in his own defense, Gorosh
argued. Cooper dismissed the motion
for a mistrial. After 12 hours of
deliberations the jury sent a note
saying it had reached a verdict.
- The Behrend College Beacon - page 7
On the morning of March 5, Maui
resident Robin Knutson, 29, was bitten
in the leg while swimming 300 yards
off Kaanapali with her boyfriend. She
remains hospitalized with extensive
injuries and faces possible amputation.
Three days later, an Arizona toilrist,
Jonathan Allen, 18, was bitten while
bodyboarding off Kauai. He suffered
only minor injuries and was treated
and released.
At least the first two attacks were
blamed on tiger sharks, the top
predator in Hawaiian waters. Tiger
sharks can measure 20 feet or longer.
They feed primarily during the night
or at dawn or dusk on reef fish and
sea turtles. They typically move into
deeper water during the day.
While shark attacks on swimmers
and surfers in Hawaii average about
two per year, the slate hasn’t had a full
blown shark scare since 1992-93,
when a scries of attacks within a very
short span off Oahu led to the
organization of a state task force and
the first shark control program since
the mid 19705. John Naughton, a
National Marine Fisheries Service
biologist and shark expert based in
Honolulu, believes Hawaii’s waters
remain safe for those who swim or surf
responsibly, in daylight hours and
away from murky areas such as river
mouths, which often attract feeding
sharks.
He pointed out that the two recent
attacks, on the swimmer and kayaker,
involved “high-risk” circumstances.
As for the most recent incident,
Naughton said, “We have made some
recommendations to peopje who rent
kayaks that they should certainly warn
tourists about the possible dangers,
and not to rent them when there are
hazardous winds and large surf.”
As for those who find themselves
adrift in a kayak in the middle of the
night, Naughton cautioned, “Stay on
the vessel at all costs.”
Sund’s husband Jens and the Sunds’
other three children. But Sund and the
girls never showed up at San
Francisco International Airport, where
they were supposed to rendezvous
with the family Feb. 16.
When she first heard of their
disappearance, Pelosso assumed the
three had been in a car crash. But then
Sund’s wallet was found in Modesto,
suggesting a more sinister fate and
setting off a massive, FBI-led search.
The crime has struck a profound
chord in Argentina for several reasons.
The disappearance, torture and murder
of young people at the hands of the
military was tragically routine during
the 1970 s dictatorship. Pelosso’s
mother expressed a common
sentiment: It is hard to believe that the
family survived the terror of the 1970 s
only to lose their daughter 20 years
later in a seemingly safe area of
California.
Learning
to grin:
Big Mac
and a side
of smiles
Los Angeles Times
TOKYO _ Some foreign companies,
such as McDonald’s Corp., put such a
premium on smiling faces in Japan
these days that they discriminate
against poker faces in the hiring
process. How? In interviews, job
applicants are asked to describe their
most pleasant experience, and
managers evaluate whether their faces
reflect the pleasure they’re discussing,
says Yuichiro Koiso, dean of the
company’s training institute, known as
Hamburger University. If otherwise
qualified but unable to crack a smile,
they’re banished to a job making
burgers instead of meeting customers.
After all, employees must provide
friendliness at the price promised on
menus at each of the chain’s nearly
3,000 restaurants in Japan: “Smiles, 0
yen.”
Training for managers includes
spying on competitors to evaluate both
the frequency and the quality of their
employees’ smiles, Koiso says. “We
discuss what type of smile is good and
bad, and through the discussion group
they find common themes, such as eye
contact and the smile’s timing.”