Two Women

County traffic police are investigating a six-car accident in Simpsonville early Wednesday evening that left two women seriously injured.At 6:15 p.m., two cars traveling east on Route 32 near Cedar Lane collided and crossed the center line into westbound traffic. Four other cars also were involved in the resulting crash, police said.Myria Williams, 61, of Chester, who was driving east, and Margaret Bland 49, of Eldersburg, who was driving west, were flown by Maryland State Police helicopter to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where they were reported in serious but stable condition last night.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - It's just days before the wedding and Dorothy Austin is on her cell phone trying to track down a Dixieland band to lead the procession from Harvard's Memorial Church to the Lowell House yard. The odds of finding a band for the Fourth of July are getting longer by the minute. But they are nothing compared with the odds against marriage that she and Diana Eck faced 28 years ago when they first met. Now the table in Lowell House, the student residence where these two women have been co-masters for nearly a decade, is covered with place cards.

A former National Security Agency cryptologist who has had two death sentences overturned since killing two women 11 years ago was given consecutive life sentences for those crimes yesterday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. But members of the victims' families worry that Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck's decision won't bring finality to a case that began after Darris A. Ware, 33, shot his former fiancee, Betina "Kristi" Gentry, and her friend Cynthia V. Allen on Dec. 30, 1993. "To say that I'm happy with it is an understatement," said Gentry's father, Edward L. Gentry.

Police said yesterday they were searching for a White Marsh man accused of arranging a robbery during which two women were raped. Andre Earl Evans, 31, of the 11200 block of Red Lion Road is accused of arranging a robbery that occurred at 11:30 p.m. March 17 at a home in the White Marsh area, Baltimore County police said. A 50-year-old man was robbed, and two women, ages 44 and 46, were raped, police said. Another man has been arrested in the incident. Robert Dwayne Eubanks, 26, of Baltimore was being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center on charges of armed robbery, two counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sex offense, according to police.

An argument between two women at the food court of Annapolis Mall on Saturday night spilled into the parking lot, where a man police believe was linked to one of the women was stabbed several times with a pocketknife, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. The man, who was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center as a precaution, was in good condition with stab wounds to the shoulder and back, said police spokeswoman Lisa Ritter.The argument broke out shortly before 10 p.m. in the food court, and a mall security guard asked both women to leave.

A Kingsville man has been arrested in the attacks on two women who were left for dead along train tracks near Aberdeen, crimes that occurred just before two other women were reported missing and were later found killed in the same area. Driving a gray Dodge Neon with bedsheets on the seats, Charles Eugene Burns picked up two women in separate incidents near Aberdeen last month and took them to secluded locations near train tracks, police said. The 34-year-old suspect allegedly choked one until she lost consciousness, and the other until blood vessels in her eyes burst.

Two women who police say helped lure 29-year-old Donnie A. Joy Jr. to his death last summer pleaded guilty in Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday to robbery with a deadly and dangerous weapon - a far less serious count than the first-degree murder charge they would have faced in a trial. As part of their plea agreements, Chantiece Renee Koromah, 19, of the 2600 block of Mura St. in Baltimore, and Nicole Marie Mongelli, 19, of Silver Run Valley Road in Westminster, said they would testify against the two men police say did the shooting.

Calling claims by two Baltimore area women that they were subjected to invasive strip searches by U.S. Customs Service agents "patently incredible," a federal judge yesterday dismissed their $6 million lawsuit against the government. "There is just no evidence here that any customs agents exceeded the bounds of propriety," U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis said in deciding the high-profile dispute, which he said came down to a question of credibility. The ruling angered the women, and their lawyer, Edward J. Connor of Camp Springs, Md., said they would appeal.

Baltimore Ravens All-Pro linebacker Ray Lewis dropped malicious prosecution charges yesterday against two women who accused him of hitting them in a 1999 Woodlawn bar fight. In return for Lewis dropping the charges, the women dropped their appeal of the April jury award that cleared Lewis. The women, Sherita A. Williams and Catrice Hill, filed suit against Lewis, saying that he hit them during a fight when they confronted one of Lewis' friends at the Windsor Inn on Windsor Mill Road on Nov. 29, 1999.

A Baltimore County jury is being asked to decide whether Ravens All-Pro linebacker Ray Lewis hit two women during a melee in a Woodlawn tavern after watching a Monday night football game in November 1999. Catrice Hill and Sherita A. Williams have filed a $6 million assault and battery lawsuit against Lewis in Baltimore County Circuit Court stemming from an incident Nov. 29, 1999, at the Windsor Inn on Windsor Mill Road. A. Dwight Pettit, the lawyer for the women, told jurors in opening statements yesterday that his clients were trying to edge their way out of the crowded tavern and confronted Eric Carter, a friend of Lewis', because he was blocking their path.