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The new President of Missouri Western University calls his job "a dream come true". The university Board of Governors has hired Robert Vartabedian to replace Jim Scanlon, who is retiring next June after seven years as Western President. Vartabedian is now the Vice President of Academic Affairs at Eastern New Mexico State. He says his top priorities for Western are to improve graduation and student retention rates, and lobby the legislature for better funding for higher education.
It’s up to the governor of Illinois to decide if a man wanted for murder in Missouri is sent back to Missouri to face the charges. Governor Blunt has asked the governor of Illinois to extradite Timothy Krajcir, now an Illinois prison inmate. Krajcir is accused of murdering five women and raping a sixth woman in Cape Girardeau almost thirty years ago. Krajcir is serving 40 years in Illinois for a murder there. Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor Morley Swingle says the extradition process and transfer of an inmate can take 30 to 90 days. A spokesman for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich says the governor had not received Blunt’s request, but planned to approve it.
The importance of the issue of illegal immigration in the 2008 governor’s campaign is emphasized by what the two leading candidates were doing Monday. Governor Blunt was hedge-hopping to news conferences talking about his newest get-tough proposals targeting illegal aliens. The legislature will be asked to pass the plans next year. Attorney General Nixon was letting it be known he had successfully prosecuted a Lake of the Ozarks developer for hiring illegal immigrants to build luxury condos. The developer gets five years probation and one-million dollars in fines and penalties. Blunt has not officially announced his re-election plans, but has raised a lot of money for a campaign next year. Blunt is a Republican. Nixon is the leading Democrat for governor in 2008.
A St. Charles man is charged with stealing from a Gladstone woman who paid him $560 for four Hanna Montana concert tickets, but never got the tickets. Clay County’s prosecutor says Bryan Phelps offered the tickets on eBay and took funds through Pay pal, but the tickets never arrived in Gladstone. He claims they got lost in the mail.
A woman from Grain Valley who faked being the mother of sextuplets has been jailed in Independence for failing to live up to terms of her probation. Sara Everson and her husband Kris got a lot of donations from sympathetic folks after circulating stories they’d had six babies. They were put on probation and ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution. But they never made any payments and did not even show up for visits with their parole officer. Her husband surrendered last week and has been sentenced to three years in prison. She’ll be sentenced soon.
