WOMEN ATTEND OPENING OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE EXHIBIT

Two Cape Girardeau women will be among a group of people converging on Jefferson City today when the Silent Witness Exhibit opens in the Capitol Rotunda as a part of Domestic Violence Advocacy Day.

Paula Huggins, executive director of the Safe House for Women, and Debra Willis Hamilton, the shelter manager, will join with other members of the Missouri Coalition against Domestic Violence to participate in the opening of the Silent Witness Exhibit.

The exhibit is meant to represent all victims of domestic violence who have died as a result of the violence.

"They are silent because they have died and are not able to speak for themselves," Hamilton said.

While at the capitol, Huggins and Hamilton will be contacting legislators from Southeast Missouri urging their support for two bills to track domestic violence homicides in the state.

House Bill 1254 and Senate Bill 673 would require local law enforcement agencies to determine whether homicides are related to domestic violence and to report their findings to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Currently, no reporting system exists in the state to track the occurrence of homicides resulting from domestic violence.

The coalition is supporting the legislation because it believes that the laws will help identify the extent of domestic violence in the state and help to allocate resources for domestic violence intervention and prevention.

Hamilton said the state needs to support places that provide service to the victims of domestic violence because if the places do not exist, the victims often do not have places to go to escape the violence. The end result, Hamilton said, is often death.

"If they do not leave, the likelihood is that they will die," Hamilton said.

In this decade alone, Southeast Missouri has had several cases of domestic violence which have lead to homicide:

On Sept. 20, 1992, Andrew Lyons entered a Cape Girardeau home with a shotgun and killed his girlfriend, their son and his girlfriend's mother. Lyons is presently on Missouri's Death Row for the slayings.

On March 6, 1995, a domestic dispute at a Millersville home escalated into violence when David Maintz shot his estranged wife, Shirley, then turned the gun on himself. Shirley Maintz recovered fully from the injuries.

Later that year, on Oct. 3, Linda Nelson of New Wells was shot and killed by her husband, Jerald Amos Nelson, who then killed himself.

In November 1995, Delwin Wilkinson took his ex-wife and four others, including his two-year-old daughter, hostage before killing himself.

In 1997, Poplar Bluff saw five deaths which police say were related to domestic violence.

Myrna Gage was charged with second-degree murder in the death of her husband. Danny King was charged with first-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend and second-degree murder in the death of her daughter. Terrance Anderson was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of his girlfriend's parents.

These deaths have been recorded as a part of "the grim tally," a list of homicides by intimate partners and other family members compiled by the coalition.

The coalition, which compiles it list by going through more than 200 papers per day to determine domestic violence homicides, is concerned that their count is inaccurate, said Lynn Richards, information specialist for the group.

By pushing for the legislation, the group hopes to collect more accurate information and reduce the occurrence of domestic violence crimes that lead to homicide, Richards said.