The group also plans to work with
medical societies on how to finance or cover experimental treatments.
"We're not taking a P.R. approach to this but a policy approach," she
said. "People want us to solve the problem, not just discuss it."
Still, Robert Laszewski, a health-care
consultant in Washington, said the industry often muffs its public-relations
strategy. Cigna's delay in reversing its decision on Nataline's transplant
"shows just how tone-deaf" the industry is, he said.
Health insurers have also been
fighting a legal battle in California over their right to rescind the policies
of members who make misstatements on their applications. Critics say the
insurers sometimes use small errors as an excuse to withdraw coverage.
"They don't get the critical nature of the debate," said Mr.
Laszewski.
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Mrs. William P. Orr was riding in a
car on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1904 when she lit up a cigarette. A
policeman on a bicycle ordered her to put it out. "You can't do that on
Fifth Avenue while I'm patrolling here," he told her.
Until the late 1920s, a woman who
smoked in public was not only considered vulgar, she risked a warning from the
police. In 1922, a New York alderman, Peter McGuinness, proposed a city
ordinance that would prohibit women from smoking in hotels, restaurants or
other public places.
"Young fellows go into our
restaurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes," the alderman argued.
"What happens? The young fellows lose all respect for the women, and the
next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert
their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit
murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women."
A Washington Post editorial in 1914
declared, "A man may take out a woman who smokes for a good time, but he
won't marry her, and if he does, he won't stay married."
There had been famous high-profile
female smokers, of course. In the late 18th century, Rachel Jackson, wife of
the seventh president, sometimes handed her pipe to a dinner guest, saying,
"Honey, won't you take a smoke?" In the mid-19th century, the French
novelist George Sand openly smoked cigars. But before the 1930s, most women
smoked only in the privacy of their own homes.
"To smoke in public is always bad
taste in a woman," Alexandre Duval, a Parisian restaurateur, said in 1921:
"In private she may be pardoned if she does it with sufficient elegance."
World War I drew many women out of
their homes to jobs where their co-workers smoked. Americans who traveled
abroad, or who entertained foreign guests, saw aristocratic women smoking,
often with elegant holders, at dinner parties. The suffrage movement,
culminating in the 19th Amendment in 1920, drew attention to other gender
inequalities. Smoking became a visible symbol of defiance and feminism.
Working women in New York in the 1920s
would sometimes jump into a cab at lunchtime for a private smoke. Upper-class
female smokers in Charleston, S.C., at around the same time ordered their
cigarettes by mail so the local tobacconist wouldn't know their dirty secret.
But the old ways died hard. In 1920,
Hugh S. Cumming, surgeon general of the U.S., warned that "the cigarette
habit indulged by women tends to cause nervousness and insomnia and ruins the
complexion. This is one of the most evil influences in American life
today."
The manager of a Manhattan hotel told
a New York Times reporter, "I hate to see women smoking. Apart from the
moral reason, they really don't know how to smoke. One woman smoking one
cigarette at a dinner table will stir up more smoke than a whole tableful of
men smoking cigars. They don't seem to know what to do with the smoke. Neither
do they know how to hold their cigarettes properly. They make a mess of the
whole performance."
Several women's colleges banned
smoking. At Smith College, students seen smoking, even off campus, received a
demerit. Three demerits meant expulsion. Bryn Mawr students were prohibited
from smoking within 25 miles of the college except in private homes.
In 1921, U.S. Rep. Paul Johnson of
Mississippi proposed a bill to make it illegal for "female persons"
to smoke in "any public place where two or more persons are gathered
together" in the capital. "Regulating smoking by women comes under
police power and, as is well known, police powers are practically without
limit," he said. (The bill never came to a vote.)
In 1928, the executive board of the
Cleveland Boy Scouts recommended that scouts use their influence to discourage
women from smoking, saying it "coarsens" women and "detracts
from the ideal of fine motherhood." Sioux Falls, S.D., barred billboards
picturing women smoking, and Lynn, Mass., banned the showing of films in which
women smoked.
Capitalism came to the rescue. Philip
Morris brought out a cigarette for women with the slogan "Mild as
May." The American Tobacco Co. suggested smoking could make you thin,
proclaiming "You can't hide fat, clumsy ankles. When tempted to
overindulge, reach for a Lucky."
Finally, a public-relations genius,
Edward Bernays, dreamed up a campaign that echoed across the country. He
persuaded a dozen debutantes to light up cigarettes while marching in the
Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue in 1929. The attractive young women called their
cigarettes "torches of freedom."
According to a U.S. government
estimate, the number of women between 18 and 20 years old who began smoking
cigarettes tripled between 1911 and 1925 and more than tripled again by 1939.
Some men who disapproved of women
smoking thought it might be the lesser of two evils. "If it were a
question between their smoking and their voting, and they would promise to stay
at home and smoke," Sen. Joseph Bailey of Texas said in 1918, "I
would say let them smoke."
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan, Esquire
January 6. A patent lawyer named
Dickerson prepared and published what he calls a plea or argument in a case
before the court in Washington that is a tissue of the vilest
misrepresentations and fabrications that could well be gathered together, if I
may judge from such parts as I have seen. I do not see the New York Herald, in
which it was published and paid for. The great object appears to have been a
reckless assault on Isherwood, Engineer-in-Chief, but the Department is also in
every way assailed. Of course the partisan press in opposition take up and
indorse as truth these attacks, and vicious men in Congress of the opposition
and equally vicious persons of the Administration side adopt and reëcho these
slanders. It is pitiable to witness this morbid love of slander and defamation.
That there may have been errors I cannot doubt, but not in the matter charged
by Dickerson.
I think Isherwood has exerted himself to discharge his duty, and serve
the government and country. His errors and faults — for he cannot be exempt — I
shall be glad to have detected and corrected, but the abuse bestowed is wholly
unjustifiable and inexcusable. As he is connected with the Navy Department, any
accusation against him, or any one connected with the Department, furnishes the
factious, like J. P. Hale, an opportunity to vent their spite and malignity by
giving it all the importance and notoriety they can impart. I hear of Hale and
H. Winter Davis and one or two others cavilling and exerting themselves to bear
down upon the Engineer-in-Chief. There is an evident wish that he should be
considered and treated as a rogue and a dishonest man, unless he can prove
himself otherwise. Truth is not wanted, unless it is against him and the
Department.
McDonald's is setting out to poach
Starbucks customers with the biggest addition to its menu in 30 years. Starting
this year, the company's nearly 14,000 U.S. locations will install coffee bars
with "baristas" serving cappuccinos, lattes, mochas and the Frappe,
similar to Starbucks' ice-blended Frappuccino.
Internal documents from 2007 say the
program, which also will add smoothies and bottled beverages, will add $1
billion to McDonald's annual sales of $21.6 billion.
The confrontation between Starbucks
Corp. and McDonald's Corp. once seemed improbable. Hailing from very different
corners of the restaurant world, the two chains have gradually encroached on
each other's turf. McDonald's upgraded its drip coffee and its interiors, while
Starbucks added drive-through windows and hot breakfast sandwiches.
The growing overlap between the chains
shows how convenience has become the dominant force shaping the food-service
industry. Consumers who are unwilling to cross the street to get coffee or make
a left turn to grab lunch have pushed all food purveyors to adapt the
strategies of fast-food chains.
It also
shows how the chains' efforts to adapt to a changing market have had
drastically different results on their bottom lines. McDonald's is entering the
sixth year of a successful turnaround, while Starbucks has begun struggling
after years of strong earnings and stock growth.
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Louis
J Sheehan Esquire
Still, the new coffee program is a
risky bet for McDonald's. It could slow down operations and alienate customers
who come to McDonald's for cheap, simple fare rather than theatrics.
Franchisees say that many of their customers don't know what a latte is.
The program attempts to replicate the
Starbucks experience in many ways -- starting with borrowing the barista
moniker. Espresso machines will be displayed at the front counters, a big shift
for a company that has always hidden its food assembly from customers.
McDonald's says it wants customers to see the coffee beans being ground and
baristas topping the mochas and Frappes with whipped cream.
"You create a little bit more of
a theater there," says John Betts, McDonald's vice president of national
beverage strategy.
Ads for the espresso drinks running in
the Kansas City area, where the concept is already being tested, say you don't
get a "condescending look" for mispronouncing the size of the drink
at McDonald's -- a jab at the "grande" and "venti" sizes at
Starbucks. (At McDonald's, you just ask for small, medium or large.)
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz
popularized lattes and cappuccinos in the U.S. after borrowing the idea from
espresso bars he visited in Italy. When he began expanding Starbucks beyond
Seattle in the late 1980s, he said he wanted the cafes to serve as a
"third place" where people gather between home and work and feel some
of the romance of the European cafe.
But the coffee chain has evolved into
more of a filling station. It is now battling fast-food outlets for some of the
same customers and meal dollars. Today, about 80% of the orders purchased at
U.S. Starbucks are consumed outside the store. The average income and education
levels of Starbucks customers have gone down, the company has said. As part of
a big push into food, Starbucks sells lunch at more than two-thirds of its
company-owned locations in the U.S.
Starbucks's rapid store and menu
expansion have slowed traffic at older locations and gummed up operations
behind its counters. After years of downplaying threats from rivals, Starbucks
executives now say they're preparing for competitive encroachment.
"We understand all too well that
we have built a very attractive business for others to look at and try and take
away," Mr. Schultz told investors on a conference call this November.
"We are up for the defense and we are going to get on the offense."
Starbucks declined to make executives available for this story or specifically
address competition from McDonald's.
McDonald's executives say they aren't
launching espresso drinks to go after Starbucks, but instead to cater to
consumers' growing interest in specialty drinks. And although McDonald's is
encroaching on the business that Starbucks invented, analysts say McDonald's
may pose more of a threat to Dunkin' Donuts, which has a more similar customer
base. Analysts also point out that McDonald's overall beverage expansion, which
includes bottled drinks, is as much aimed at taking business from convenience
stores and vending machines as it is from specialty cafes.
Starbucks increased its sales even in
parts of the country where Dunkin' Donuts has a strong presence. Some analysts
say Dunkin' and other fast-food competitors actually have helped Starbucks by
expanding the total market for upscale coffee drinks.
A Dunkin' spokeswoman says the company
doesn't comment on competition but says the chain believes it has
"democratized" espresso and become a coffee destination.
McDonald's grew from a single San
Bernardino, Calif., hamburger outlet that opened in 1948 into the world's
largest restaurant chain by offering consistent hamburgers and french fries
served quickly and at a low price. Its beverage lineup, anchored by Coca-Cola
Co. sodas, was designed to complement its food.
McDonald's executives watching the
growth of Starbucks at the beginning of this decade realized that they were
missing out on the fastest-growing parts of the beverage business. Data showed
that soda sales had flattened while sales of specialty coffee and smoothies
were growing at a double-digit rate outside McDonald's. Customers were buying
food at McDonald's, then going to convenience stores to get bottled energy
drinks, sports drinks and tea, as well as sodas by Coke competitors.
Early on, Starbucks didn't see the
Golden Arches as a competitor "because McDonald's was selling hot, brown
liquid masquerading as coffee," says John Moore, who spent almost a decade
in Starbucks's marketing department before leaving in 2003.
McDonald's move into upscale coffees
dates back to a concept that is unfamiliar to most of its customers: the
McCafé. It started in Australia in 1993. McDonald's brought the cafes to the
U.S. in 2001 by carving out a corner of the restaurant, decorating it with leather
couches and adding a counter that sold cappuccinos and sweets. But the cafes
never took off here because they didn't feed into McDonald's drive-through
business, where two-thirds of sales take place, says Don Thompson, president of
the chain's U.S. business.
In 2003, McDonald's initiated a
turnaround strategy called Plan to Win. Among other things, it included a total
remodeling at thousands of U.S. locations. Molded plastic booths were replaced
with oversized chairs, lighting was softened and muted tones took the place of
bright colors. Wireless Internet access was also added.
"We began to realize...we could
definitely sell coffee in this environment," Mr. Thompson said. In 2006,
McDonald's changed its drip coffee to a stronger blend and began marketing it
as a "premium" roast.
In recent years, Starbucks started to
see fast-food chains as more of a threat, according to former employees and
people close to the company. In parts of the Northeast, store managers told
baristas their biggest competition was Dunkin' Donuts, now a unit of Dunkin'
Brands Inc., which made a national push into espresso drinks in 2004.
Starbucks increased the pace of its
store expansion at the beginning of this decade. Some changes, including
drive-through windows and breakfast sandwiches similar to the Egg McMuffin,
mirrored techniques used by fast-food chains. This led to tensions among
management and employees about whether the chain was eroding the core of the
Starbucks experience, according to former employees and people close to the
company.
At McDonald's, the success of its
upgraded drip coffee emboldened the chain. In 2005, it began testing drinks
sold under the McCafé banner at a handful of franchises in Michigan. It sold
lattes and cappuccinos from the front counter so it could pass them to the
drive-through windows.
WSJ's Janet Adamy reports that
McDonald's will add espresso, lattes and other specialty drinks to its menu in
2008. By launching "McCafe," McDonald's hopes grab some of the
upscale coffee market from Starbucks.
McDonald's researchers contacted
customers of Starbucks and other coffee purveyors and conducted three-hour
interviews where they videotaped the customers talking about their
coffee-buying habits. The researchers got in the cars of the customers and
drove with them to their favorite coffee place, then took them to McDonald's
and had them try the espresso drinks.
"There was a surprise
factor," says Patrick Roney, a director of U.S. consumer and business
insights at McDonald's. "The people who were on the fence...there was an
opportunity to get those."
Restaurants that tested the drinks
began passing out complimentary small mochas and lattes. "A lot of our
customers don't know what a latte is," says John DeVera, an Overland Park,
Kan., franchisee who is testing the drinks.
Management advised restaurant
operators to hire baristas who are "very friendly" and show a
"willingness to learn about the competitor's product," according to a
2006 internal memo about how to start selling the drinks. "For example, a
typical Starbucks customer would ask for a Grande Latte; our Baristas need to
know that this is a medium size drink," the memo says.
Unlike at Starbucks, where baristas
steam pitchers of milk then combine it with the espresso, McDonald's process is
more automated. It uses a single machine to make all the components of each
drink. Espresso is brewed using beans with a darker roast that are more finely
ground than those for drip coffee, resulting in a concentrated form that's
usually mixed with hot milk to make lattes and cappuccinos. McDonald's has
three flavors it adds to its espresso drinks, a significantly narrower lineup
than Starbucks, which boasts thousands of drink combinations.
During testing, plain shots of
espresso were taken off the menu and more whipped cream was added to some
drinks. The company also moved the espresso machines to the front counter from
the back after realizing the drinks undersold when employees made them with
their backs to the customer.
Drinks are priced from $1.99 to $3.29
and come in vanilla, caramel and mocha flavors. In advertisements in test
markets, McDonald's tells customers those are 60 cents to 80 cents less than
competitors' prices.
Heather Pelis, a 19-year-old
babysitter from Rayville, Mo., says she didn't like the McDonald's vanilla
latte when she tried it. "It was a little syrupy tasting," Ms. Pelis
said recently while drinking a drip coffee at a McDonald's in Liberty, Mo. But
she says she'd be willing to try another espresso drink because they are
cheaper than the caramel macchiatos she buys at Starbucks, and because
McDonald's is more conveniently located. The nearest Starbucks is a 30-minute
drive from her, she says.
McDonald's franchisees say they think
the new coffee drinks will be particularly helpful in drawing young consumers
who prefer them to drip coffee. Gary Granader, a Detroit-area McDonald's
franchisee, has started seeing groups of teenagers at some of his restaurants
after school since he added espresso drinks a year ago. Mr. Thompson says
McDonald's also is considering adding some type of music-downloading service at
its locations.
McDonald's beverage expansion will add
a new line of bottled drinks by Coke competitors. The drinks being considered
include PepsiCo Inc.'s Mountain Dew, Lipton green tea and Red Bull GmbH's
namesake caffeine drink. Restaurants also are getting a soda fountain with
flavor shots that allow customers to create their own drinks like cherry Sprite
and vanilla Diet Coke. Mr. Thompson said that Coke remains the "big
brand" at McDonald's, and a Coke spokesman said the company is not
concerned about the competing beverages being sold at McDonald's.
Only about 800 of McDonald's U.S.
restaurants have the specialty coffee drinks now, and some may not get the full
beverage program until 2009. Executives and franchisees will not give specifics
on how well the espresso drinks have sold in tests.
McDonald's has already made some
headway in gaining coffee credibility. In February, the magazine Consumer
Reports rated the chain's drip coffee as better-tasting than Starbucks.
Starbucks responded that taste is subjective and its millions of customer
visits per week demonstrated the popularity of its coffee.
The rating nevertheless angered some
top officials at Starbucks, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Around the same time, Mr. Schultz sent a memo to Starbucks executives warning
that the chain may be commoditizing its brand and making itself more vulnerable
to competition from fast-food chains and other coffee shops. He lamented the
loss of the "romance and theatre" that occurred when the company
switched to automated espresso machines several years ago.
To improve store traffic and
same-store sales growth, Starbucks has said it is trying to make its operations
more consistent. It is reducing the number of items and promotions it offers
and is focusing on what executives call the "vital few" areas that
improve results, like selling more beverages and attracting more customers.
Starbucks executives have attributed
the slowdown in sales growth and store traffic in the U.S. to the weak economy.
Mr. Schultz has said that new
competition actually helps Starbucks by expanding the specialty-coffee
category. "Those consumers over time are going to trade up," he told
investors in November. "They're going to trade up because they are not
going to be satisfied with the commoditized experience or the flavor." He
has emphasized that Starbucks's baristas, who are instructed to memorize
customers' drink orders and make genuine conversation with patrons, will
continue to set the chain apart.
But some Starbucks baristas say that
the chain's push into food and drive-through service has made that a lot more
difficult. Some workers say their managers instruct them to ask customers
whether they want a breakfast sandwich with their coffee -- a selling technique
that feels unnatural when they know the customer doesn't want one.
"The more and more business they
get in the store, the more it seems like another fast-food job," says Joe
Tessone, a Chicago barista who has worked at Starbucks for three years.
The overlap between McDonald's and
Starbucks has put Jack Rodgers in an unusual position. In 1958, McDonald's
pioneer Ray Kroc granted Mr. Rodgers one of the chain's first franchises for a
restaurant in St. Charles, Ill. Mr. Rodgers eventually traded that location and
today owns part of three McDonald's around Newport Beach, Calif.
Mr. Rodgers later moved to Seattle
where in 1985 he wound up investing in the predecessor chain of the modern-day
Starbucks cafe. He later became a Starbucks board member and executive. He left
the company in 1996 but remains a shareholder and a friend of Mr. Schultz.
Now Mr. Rodgers is looking at adding
the lattes and cappuccinos to his McDonald's restaurants. He didn't envision
the chains would compete so closely when he first invested in Starbucks.
"Not in my wildest dreams did I see this coming," he says.
777777
A blaze of X-rays from the center of
our galaxy is the burp following a gargantuan (and rather messy) cosmic feast,
astronomers reported in February: A massive black hole there devoured something
the size of the planet Mercury, and in the process, let loose an outburst so
intense that we still see the echoes six decades later.
When matter falls into a black hole,
it grows hot and glows brilliantly before vanishing into oblivion. These days
the Milky Way’s central black hole, called Sagittarius A*, seems fairly placid.
But over the past five years, NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory has
monitored “light echoes”—X-rays bouncing off nearby molecular clouds and
reflecting back toward Earth—showing that Sagittarius A* had a planet-size
banquet not so long ago. “It was about one thousand times brighter than
anything we’ve seen from this black hole,” says Caltech astronomer Michael
Muno, who led the project. “It’s possible that it could have been a larger mass
that fell in.”
Based on the distance of the molecular
clouds from Sagittarius A*, astronomers calculate that the original X-ray that
burst from the black hole’s lunch must have lit up Earth’s skies 60 years
ago—but astronomers did not have the necessary X-ray telescopes back then.
Chandra has detected similar, far smaller black-hole snacks since 2000.
When the black hole starts its next
planet-size meal, though, the light show will be hard to miss: Muno estimates
the X-rays will be 100,000 times brighter than anything seen before. “It would
be a spectacular thing to look at,” he says.
Chinese researchers announced in March
that they had created glass that can be bent into right angles without
shattering. But this isn’t glass as we know it: The new glass is opaque, twice
as strong as window glass, and made of metal.
As solids, metals have an orderly
atomic structure; in liquid metals, the arrangement becomes random, as in
glass. To create metallic glass, scientists supercool liquid metals,
effectively “freezing” the random array in place. These bulk metallic glasses,
or BMG, are two to three times stronger than the crystalline form of the
metals.
Superstrong BMG has already been used
in the manufacture of high-tech golf clubs and tennis rackets; in 2001, the
collector on NASA’s Genesis spacecraft, which caught particles from the solar
wind, was made of BMG.
But since the 1980s, when scientists
began making BMG, the materials have exhibited a fatal flaw. Paradoxically, the
stronger they are, the more vulnerable they are to cracks, says Wei Hua Wang, a
physicist who helped develop the new glass at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A tiny fracture in the original type of BMG spreads quickly and becomes
catastrophic.
To create a glass that is both strong
and flexible, Wang and his colleagues altered an existing BMG recipe, combining
zirconium, copper, nickel, and aluminum. Realizing that small changes in the
metal mixture would lead to large variations in brittleness, they sought a
combination that would keep cracks from spreading. “The plasticity of the glass
is very sensitive to the composition,” Wang explains.
After two years, the scientists
produced bendable BMG. It contains hard areas of high density surrounded by
soft regions of low density. The result: When a crack begins in one place, it
dissipates quickly in the surrounding regions, leaving the whole flexible.
New Jersey gets all
the bad press... which is further testament to how slimy Pennsylvania politics
is --
Most priests take a
vow of poverty, but bankruptcy records show that the Rev. Joseph F. Sica, a
Scranton-area priest, took out enough loans to live large if he wanted to.
On an annual salary of
$13,200, Sica amassed debts totaling more than $218,000. Most of that debt was
owed to First Community National Bank, whose chairman is Sica's longtime friend
Louis DeNaples.
DeNaples, a casino
owner, is the subject of an ongoing Dauphin County grand jury investigation.
Sica was arrested this week on a perjury charge that accuses him of lying to
that same grand jury.
Since Sica's arrest,
more details have emerged about the priest's financial relationship with
DeNaples. Sica, who has been a priest since 1982, filed for bankruptcy in April
1997. The case was dismissed in June that year.
When Sica filed for
bankruptcy, he was making $880 per month and had $250 in his checking account.
Still, he was able to receive $147,702 in the form of loans from DeNaples'
bank.
At the time of the
filing, the priest owed First Community National Bank the following: $16,500 on
a car loan for Sica's 1996 Eddie Bauer Chevy Blazer; more than $77,000 for a
personal loan; and $54,000 for another personal loan.
Both of the personal
loans were used for family expenses, according to court documents.
When Sica was arrested
on Tuesday, he had $1,000 in cash on him, prosecutors said. He also owns a 2007
Jeep that has been paid off.
Sica's attorney Jane
Penny would not comment on the bankruptcy case.
Kevin Feeley,
DeNaples' spokesman, said that he was not in a position to discuss the priest's
finances. He did say that First National Community Bank conducts all of its
transactions in a standard business fashion and is regulated by a number of
state and federal agencies.
The loans have piqued
First Assistant District Attorney Fran Chardo's curiosity. Chardo pointed to
Sica's salary and the size of the loans.
"I don't know how
someone qualifies for that sort of credit on that salary," Chardo said.
"It would be relevant to our inquiry."
It may be relevant to
the grand jury investigation, but Sica's relationship with DeNaples and his subsequent
arrest have no bearing on whether the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board made
the right call in giving DeNaples a slots license, said former board Chairman
Tad Decker.
Although Sica appeared
at several regulatory hearings with DeNaples, Sica never testified before the
board and was not a character witness for DeNaples.
"We didn't
consider him as a factor, at least in my mind," Decker said.
The only thing that
would change Decker's mind on whether DeNaples should have been given a license
is an indictment and conviction.
"I think people
should emphasize the word convicted of a crime," Decker said. "The
board will do what it has to do. We dealt with what we had in front of us.
There was nothing in front of us that suggested Mr. DeNaples was unsuitable
before that time."
Sica also isn't
dwelling on the criminal charges against him. The priest, who was leaving the
Dauphin County Courthouse on Friday, said that he was doing fine and he has
received support and prayers from friends.
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If Olga Shugar has a regret, it is
that she will never see the fear of imminent death in the eyes of Theodore
Solano, the man who murdered her 18-year-old daughter.
Shugar, of St. Petersburg, Russia,
said she had hoped that Solano would be executed for the 1993 slaying of
Natalia Andreevna Miller, a Russian immigrant he had wed in a marriage of
convenience.
Instead, Shugar and her daughter Vera
sat in a Cumberland County courtroom Friday, watching grim-faced as Solano, 49,
pleaded no contest to third-degree murder and kidnapping charges in return for
a 17- to 40-year state prison sentence.
It was Shugar's first glimpse of
Solano, a convicted sex offender.
What she felt, she said, was
revulsion.
"It was not a human being. It was
not an animal," Shugar said. "It was strange."
She said she had hoped Solano would
receive the death penalty and experience the "horror" her daughter
must have felt as he strangled her.
President Judge Edgar B. Bayley's
sentencing of Solano under a plea agreement fashioned by District Attorney
David Freed was perhaps the final act in what was Cumberland County's most
vexing cold case.
Miller's nude and battered body was
found by hunters in woods along Whiskey Springs Road in Cumberland County's
South Middleton Twp. in December 1993.
For more than a decade, investigators
chased a series of fruitless leads. They weren't even able to identify Miller,
who for years was known only as Jane Doe 24-275.
Freed said police even sent
information from the woman's contact lenses to optometrists nationwide in hope
of making an identification.
Finally, in 2004, they tied Solano, of
Irondequoit, N.Y., to the slaying through DNA taken from semen and blood found
on Miller's corpse, Freed said. Solano was required to provide a DNA sample to
a police central records system because of a sex crime conviction.
Only then were local authorities able
to identify Miller and notify Shugar, who on Thursday went with Coroner Michael
Norris for her second visit her daughter's grave in Middlesex Twp.
Shugar fought back tears as she spoke
of Natalia, an honor student and accomplished painter and pianist whom the
Russian government had sent to study in Italy, France and the U.S.
While in the U.S., Shugar said,
Natalia fell in love with an American student. Natalia turned 18 in 1993 and
emigrated, intending to marry the American, but the romance fell apart, Shugar
said.
In June 1993, Natalia met and married
Solano, a carpenter and building contractor who was living in the Washington,
D.C., area.
Freed said Solano's one-page
prenuptial agreement with Miller stated that both were free to seek an
uncontested divorce at any time.
Shugar said Natalia called Solano
"my pink piggy" and seemed happy during her frequent phone calls
home.
Then, her daughter abruptly stopped
calling. Shugar said Solano denied knowing what had happened to Natalia and
refused repeated demands to call the police.
Freed said investigators aren't sure
what prompted Solano to kill Miller. They believe he strangled her with a brown
leather belt, a piece of which was found beneath her body, he said.
Solano had no ties to the midstate and
apparently dumped Miller's body at random, Freed said.
He said the plea deal was struck to
ensure Solano will spend most, if not all, of the rest of his life in prison.
Freed initially sought a first-degree
murder conviction and the death penalty.
"There's nothing pleasant about
resolving a murder case," he said. "We just hope this resolution will
help [Miller's] family to go on."
Solano, who had been in county prison
since 2005, apologized to Miller's family, but didn't admit to committing the
murder.
He told Bayley he is a born-again
Christian and will spend his prison time spreading the Gospel.
"I've come to the realization
that this is my highest calling," Solano said.
Bayley, visibly angry, told Solano
that Miller's slaying was "as despicable and heinous as I've ever
seen."
Miller's sister, Vera, said nothing
will make up for her slaying.
"It doesn't matter how long he
will be in prison," she said. "She is dead. And he will be
alive."
TIMELINE
# Early 1993: Russian student Natalia
Andreevna Miller comes the U.S. to marry an American she met while studying
abroad. The relationship collapses.
# June 1993: Miller weds Theodore
Solano in the Washington, D.C., area. Authorities describe it a marriage of
convenience.
# Dec. 10, 1993: Miller's nude and
battered body is found in South Middleton Twp. Cumberland County Coroner
Michael Norris determines she had been raped and strangled.
# January 1994: Authorities bury Miller
in LeTort Cemetery in Middlesex Twp. They still don't know her identity, so the
grave marker bears the notation "Jane Doe 24-275."
# 1994-2003: Despite running down
leads, investigators are unable to identify Miller.
# January 2004: Solano is charged in
the murder and Miller is identified. Authorities say DNA in semen and a blood
stain found on her body is linked to Solano, who is serving prison time in New
York on child pornography charges.
# July 6, 2005: Investigators unveil a
Russian-style headstone bearing Miller's photograph for her grave. Her mother,
Olga Shugar, comes from St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend the ceremony.
# Friday: Solano pleads no contest to
third- degree murder and kidnapping charges in return for a 17- to 40-year
state prison sentence.
