I Was Scared

WESTMINSTER -- John A. Gebhardt, a 51-year-old former marketing executive, told a Circuit Court jury last week that shoplifting charges filed against him in October were the result of an overzealous Caldor security guard who refused to admit he made a mistake.The jury didn't buy the story.After nearly three hours of deliberation over two days, the four-man, eight-woman panel convicted Gebhardt on Friday on one charge of misdemeanor theft.Gebhardt was shopping in the Cranberry Mall store on theevening of Oct. 18 to pick up some hardware supplies, batteries and videocassettes.

For more than five months, Russell L. Shaffer Jr. dodged the bullet. But there it was Monday, a Mailgram from the U.S. Army telling him he had been called up from inactive reserve status and was due to report to Fort Knox, Ky. by Jan. 31. Shaffer, who lives in Glen Burnie, is one of about 20,000 members of the Army Individual Ready Reserves called up to active duty this week to meet specialized needs in the Persian Gulf war. In a separate order, the Army...

Benjamin Franklin Boisseau Jr., one of two robbers involved in a Randallstown bank holdup in which two female employees were killed, got the maximum sentence in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday -- four life terms, plus 100 years.Two of the life sentences are without the possibility of parole. They are for the murders of Dorothy Juanita Langmead, 44, and Anastasia "Stacy" George, 51, who were shot to death while they lay face down during the Oct. 26 robbery of the Farmers Bank & Trust Co. in the 9800 block of Liberty Road.

A Baltimore County jury yesterday convicted Benjamin Franklin Boisseau Jr. of first-degree murder and other charges for his role in a Randallstown bank robbery last October that left two women dead and two others injured.As the forewoman delivered the guilty verdicts, Boisseau, 23, stared mournfully at the judge, while the husband of one of the tellers murdered at the Farmers Bank & Trust Co. grasped the hand of the branch manager, Barbara Mitchell Aldrich.Mrs. Aldrich, who survived the shootings to call for help, wiped from her eyes the tears she had held back Tuesday when she calmly described how Boisseau's companion methodically shot her and three other employees, one by one, as they lay helpless on the floor of the bank vault.

Cleveland Jackson lost $3 and a handful of peanut butter cookies when his East Baltimore house was robbed. But it's what one of the suspects left behind that made the break-in truly baffling.On the second floor of the ransacked rowhouse, Jackson found a crumpled color photograph of one of the suspects -- a woman who had ordered him upstairs and forced him to take off his pants while lying on the floor."Sometimes, when you do things wrong, that's a way of somebody saying you should be caught," Jackson, 77, said yesterday.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- William Kennedy Smith's lawyers spent five hours trying to pick apart the testimony of the woman accusing him of rape, challenging her account of the attack and repeatedly prompting her to break down in tears on the stand.Defense attorneys pressed the woman on her spotty memory of the Easter weekend evening she says she was attacked. How, they wondered, could she recall ordering a Caesar salad and Cliquot champagne but not remember whether she met with N NTC bartender friend or where she took off her shoes and panty hose?

Nature cut quite a path through the countryside around Frizzellburg when it toppled eight 115-foot-tall, century-old trees Saturday night.Seven poplar trees behind the house of Walter Brilhart, in the 2100 block of Frizzellburg Road, were felled in a row, exposing roots as wide as 25 feet across.The path of the erratic wind through the area was so narrow that it left a lightweight aluminum lawn chair sitting, unmoved, at the side of a pond about 100 feet from the trees.A 115-foot hickory tree across the road from the home of Nancy Willis, next door to Mr. Brilhart, fell into the woods crushing many smaller trees.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations today in the trial of three alleged gang members on charges including attempted murder, kidnapping and carjacking. Larhonda Lomax testified Friday that she was abducted from a white Jeep Cherokee she was driving Jan. 9 of last year, as she arrived at her home near Perring Parkway in Baltimore County. She said she was driven to a house on Normal Avenue in the city, and tied up and interrogated about the whereabouts of her husband, Charles Byers.

A Baltimore County Circuit Court jury yesterday declared that Rep. Helen Delich Bentley did not try to choke an Owings Mills process server during a June 1, 1990, confrontation in her Towson office.But neither did the process server, John E. Burns, 42, assault Mrs. Bentley, according to the jury's verdict, reached yesterday after 80 minutes of deliberation."I'm just glad it's over with," said Mrs. Bentley, the 68-year-old Republican from the 2nd District. "It's been a long time hanging." She declined further comment.

A 29-year-old Howard County man pleaded guilty Monday to charges of vehicular manslaughter after an October incident in which he left the scene of a fatal crash after a bout of heavy drinking. Police showed up at Ray William Wolfrey's Fulton home after they followed a trail of leaking fluid from the Oct. 10 accident, which killed Mary Valenzuela, 53, of Bethesda. "I screwed up," he told investigating police at the time. "I was scared." Authorities said he claimed he hadn't had any beer until after the accident and thought that the crash "didn't look that bad."