Reporter finally sees suspect in dad's death

Reporter finally seessuspect in dad's death
FRESNO, Calif. -- A Los Angeles Times reporter whose father's unsolved slaying 30 years ago led him to go into journalism finally got a face-to-face look Friday at the man investigators say committed the crime.
Mark Arax was in court for a scheduling hearing for Thomas Ezerkis, 54, who was arrested last month in Pennsylvania, where he was behind bars for bank robbery. Ezerkis is charged with murdering Ara Arax, a Fresno nightclub owner who was gunned down in 1972.
Mark Arax, who was 15 at the time, had kept a police sketch of the killer for decades, even putting it near his bed when he was a teen-ager.
On Friday, upon seeing Ezerkis, the 44-year-old reporter said: "You're trying to see the face in the composite, and you know, you can see it. But he's an old man, 30 years have passed. So I don't know what the emotions are. ... It's a complicated thing."
Arax said he went into journalism to explore who his father was and why he was killed, and to perhaps clear the older man's name of suspicions he was part of the Fresno drug underworld.
Five years ago, he wrote a book about the case, "In My Father's Name," that explores corruption and drug smuggling in Fresno and offers the theory his father was killed because he was about to expose a major drug ring with ties to law enforcement.
D-Day museum opensnew Pacific wing
NEW ORLEANS -- The National D-Day Museum opened a new wing Friday honoring Americans who fought in the Pacific in World War II, a campaign that began 60 years ago with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A military parade featured veterans marching amid showers of red, white and blue confetti. Several dozen military aircraft swooped overhead.
Museum founder and author Stephen Ambrose was flanked by dignitaries including former President Bush, actor Tom Hanks and about a dozen winners of the Medal of Honor.
"On Sept. 11, our nation suffered another surprise attack. And today we are in a different war. But I think duty, honor, country still prevails," Bush said.
"They say today 'Remember Pearl Harbor,' but I think, we as a nation, also remember Sept. 11," said Bush, a Navy pilot during World War II.
Hanks called the museum "a mirror of the courage, sacrifice, determination and optimism of the men and women of World War II."
Man cleared of rapeunder DNA testing law
RICHMOND, Va. -- A man who spent 15 years in prison for a rape he says he didn't commit has become the first person cleared under a new state law allowing felons to seek DNA tests.
The results of the genetic testing ruled out Marvin Lamont Anderson, 37, as the source of biological evidence found at the crime scene in 1982.
"I'm not bitter. There's no anger. What happened to me was a mistake by many people, not just any one individual," Anderson said in an interview Friday. "There was nothing I had to be ashamed about because I knew the truth would come out."
Anderson was convicted and sentenced to 210 years in prison based on testimony from the victim in the case. He was paroled in 1997 and has been a truck driver since.
The DNA tests partially matched two convicted felons in the state's databank, but the evidence was too degraded to make a complete match with either one, Hanover Commonwealth's Attorney Kirby H. Porter said.
Teen pleads guilty
HAVERHILL, N.H. -- One of two teen-agers arrested in the slayings of husband-and-wife Dartmouth College professors pleaded guilty Friday to reduced charges, but gave no clue to a motive for the stabbings.
James Parker, 17, agreed to testify against his best friend and co-defendant, Robert Tulloch, in a deal that could make him eligible for parole at 41.
Friday's hearing shed no light on why the teens from good families in a small Vermont town reportedly stabbed and slashed the throats of the popular and respected professors, whom they apparently did not know.
Parker pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to second-degree murder in the death of Susanne Zantop, 55. Prosecutors said they will recommend a sentence of 25 years to life after Parker testifies at Tulloch's April trial. Tulloch, 18, is accused of murdering Zantop and her husband, Half, 62, at their off-campus home Jan. 27.
Associated Press