BROADCASTER TO ADDRESS FUND-RAISER FOR VET LAB

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- A Cape Girardeau banker expressed satisfaction Friday with the sentencing of the ringleader who conspired with two other men to kidnap him.

The ringleader, Douglas Wayne Willis, was sentenced in federal court in Florida recently to 16 years and three months in prison, plus five years probation.

Southeast Missouri Bank President John Percy Huston IV said federal authorities told him that the probation will run consecutively to the prison sentence.

"I am pleased that it is over," said Huston, "and it looks like he (Willis) will be out of circulation (for a while)."

Said Huston, "I guess that basically shuts the book on this case."

Willis, who attended the same Marshall, Mo., high school as Huston, pleaded guilty last August in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to conspiring to kidnap the Cape Girardeau banker.

Willis and two Florida men Francis Damian Straughn of Zephyrhills and John Wesley Johnson of Pompano Beach were arrested outside a Fort Lauderdale restaurant, the FBI announced in February 1989.

Inside the restaurant, authorities found a sawed-off shotgun that allegedly was to have been used in the kidnapping.

Authorities said the three men had planned to kidnap Huston for a multimillion-dollar ransom.

The three men were arrested before the crime could be carried out.

The cases against the two Florida men also have been disposed of in federal court, Huston said. But, he said, the heaviest sentence was the one given to Willis.

At the time of his arrest, Willis, who was in his early 30s, was reported to be living in a Fort Lauderdale hotel.

Willis previously had escaped from a Missouri halfway house, where he was serving a sentence for arson. Authorities said Willis had tried to burn his own home in Saline County on May 1, 1984.

BROADCASTER TO ADDRESS FUND-RAISER FOR VET LAB

CAPE GIRARDEAU A farm-news broadcaster will speak at a benefit dinner Feb. 28 for the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory for being proposed for Southeast Missouri.

The dinner will be held at the University Center ballroom and will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 each.

The broadcaster, Derry Brownfield, along with a partner established the Brownfield Network, which now serves 150 radio stations throughout the Midwest with farm news and market information.

Brownfield started farming when he was 16. He received a Future Farmers of America state farmer degree in 1949. Since that time the Brownfield farm has grown to 1,100 acres. It maintains a herd of approximately 200 registered Charolais cattle.

In addition to Brownfield, information concerning the progress of the diagnostic lab will be provided.

The Diagnostic Veternarian Laboratory Committee has been working since 1988 to secure the lab. Fund drives for the lab have resulted in 230 individual or business contributions.

Tickets are available through the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce by calling 335-3312 or by calling Gail King at 243-3557 or Ed Snider at 335-3521.