This is Channel 2 News at 11.
Good evening everyone. We begin tonight with an emotional courtroom eruption during the sentencing of a convicted child killer.
The outburst came as the parents of three murdered girls came face to face with their daughter's killer,
and they pleaded with the judge to send Alex Henriquez away for life.
Channel 2's Mary Murphy was in the Bronx courtroom.
Your Honor, the first thing I'd like to say is that I am innocent of these killings.
To the end, Alex Henriquez denied it all. Denied that he strangled 14-year-old Shamira Bello back in 1988,
refusing to accept responsibility for the killing of 21-year-old Lisa Rodriguez in 1990,
or the murder of 10-year-old Jessica Guzman four months later.
I have two daughters of my own. One who is named Jessica also, who is my life.
This is the same Alex, deceptive, lying till the end. He never showed any emotion whatsoever.
He's a total sociopath in my opinion.
And Henriquez was forced to sit there as the parents of his victims bared their raw pain.
Jessica to me was everything. She was the dream come true after having four sons.
She was just about to turn 11. She had started to put on my T-shirts and show me different dances
and different things in school.
The parents of Lisa Rodriguez talked of losing their only child.
On Easter Sunday of this year, my wife visited our daughter's grave site for the first time since we buried her.
The next day she tried to commit suicide. She only wanted to be with her baby.
Henriquez called Lisa a wonderful person that he dated.
But when he tried to comment on victim Shamira Bello, her mother shrieked.
You sick, disgraceful person. Henriquez turned as his own mother told the woman to shut up.
And when he called his ex-wife a liar, a crucial witness who testified against him,
Jessica Guzman's brother screamed out in pain.
Everybody died with you, right Alex? Everybody with you.
Thank you very so much to the entrance of my sister, to Alex and to his kids.
The judge gave Henriquez at least 75 years in prison.
The maximum of which shall be for the term of your natural life and the court imposes.
There were cheers, but some families have filed lawsuits against the city.
Charging police didn't follow early leads.
It took four deaths before my daughter.
Alex Henriquez will now be transferred to a state prison facility.
Prosecutors say his crimes against children date back to 1981
when he was convicted of hitting a seven-year-old child with a garden hose.
Along the way, he was accused of sexually assaulting one girlfriend's two children
and scalding another girlfriend's child.
Prosecutors say that violence eventually escalated to murder.
In the Bronx, I'm Mary Murphy, Channel 2 News.
But he also did his share of politicking. Channel 2's Marcia Kramer reports.
One of the benefits of incumbency is, well, incumbency.
And President Bush made the most of that today in a Flagged the Flying visit to New York
where he strutted his stuff as a foreign affairs expert before the United Nations.
We cannot separate our fate from that of others.
Our peace is so interconnected, our security so intertwined,
our prosperity so interdependent that to turn inward and retreat from the world
is to invite disaster and defeat.
The President called on members of the United Nations to deal with the fall of communism
in a new world order by helping to create a new world security order
with each member state committing a special peacekeeping unit
to help in times of international crisis.
And we will work with the United Nations to best employ our considerable lift,
logistics, communications, and intelligence capabilities to support peacekeeping operations.
After the speech, the President headed over to the radio show of conservative idol Rush Limbaugh,
where his pitch concerned the economy and his ability to deal with it.
The irony is, I think a lot of people think we're in a deep recession in this country.
The irony is, we are growing, and we've grown for five quarters.
But whether people believe the President's economic forecast or not,
it came at a time when his campaign is trying to realign itself,
moving away from the harsh, play-to-the-right-wing speeches of the Republican convention.
George Bush has got to go!
Gays were one of those groups alienated by the convention rhetoric,
and today they made those feelings known.
But the Bush-Quail team was trying to realign itself without alienating the conservatives,
a kind of tough thing to do since when the New York Conservative Party endorsed the GOP ticket today,
it was Second Lady Marilyn Quail who attended, not Bush, who was in town.
The President also gave it to Bill Clinton under draft question today,
saying he hasn't leveled with the American people.
The President said that if the two debate, he'd bring it up.
That's a pretty big if since the President hasn't agreed to any yet.
Marcia Kramer, Channel 2 News.
He said Bush is refusing to debate him tomorrow, so he won't have to talk about his economic record.
But the President's staff says Bush wants to debate Clinton.
The President simply objects to the single moderator format proposed for tomorrow.
The widow of the late Congressman Ted Weiss says that she wants to carry on his legacy of fairness, integrity, and compassion.
Sonja Hoover Weiss announced plans today to enter the crowded Democratic race to succeed her late husband in Congress.
Ted Weiss died last week but still won the Democratic primary.
About a thousand Democratic Party committee members are scheduled to meet Wednesday to choose Weiss's replacement on the November ballot.
And we just-
Level officials of the Nixon administration, Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger,
both secretaries of defense under former President Nixon,
told a Senate committee that the Pentagon knowingly left U.S. Airmen in Laos at the end of the war.
As of now that I can come to no other conclusion, Senator.
And-
That does not say that there are any life today, mind you.
No, no.
In 1973 some were left behind.
Henry Kissinger, Nixon's security advisor and Secretary of State, is scheduled to testify tomorrow.
UN weapons inspectors are back in Baghdad and that tops our other news from around the world tonight.
This team will inspect sites where Iraq kept chemical weapons and the team is expected to stay in Iraq for six days.
It fell from the sky in Boston last-
Everyone knows how annoying a busy signal is.
Joel Dulberg knows better than most.
He's a sound engineer for the CBS News Magazine 60 Minutes who tried calling Medicare's 800 number
to clear up a hospital billing problem his mother was having.
I called back for over a period of five weeks in vain and never once got through that number.
Not once.
How many times would you say you called?
At least 30 or 40 times during the course of the work day and I'm supposed to be working.
So we decided to put our researcher Maureen to work calling the 800 number that Medicare tells people with hospital billing problems to call.
The number is supposed to ring at Blue Cross Blue Shield headquarters in Syracuse.
Maureen spent an entire day dialing that number.
She tried 98 times.
97 of those times all she got was a busy signal.
And even if you finally get through to that number you may find it next to impossible to get Medicare to correct its own mistake.
The reason I didn't get paid is that they claim that the patient is dead.
This is not the case.
Dr. Stephen Fair is a psychiatrist who says Medicare's new reimbursement system is a nightmare.
He's having problems with 20 to 30 percent of the claims he sends in.
The most frustrating are the cases in which Medicare refuses to pay because quote, the date of this service is after the reported date of death.
Now on both of these patients they are very much alive and well.
I called up Medicare which is very difficult to get through and they said to me well we don't know what happened why don't you resubmit it.
So he did and again Medicare rejected the claim because they said the patients were dead.
So he called up again and Medicare said resubmit the claim again.
Just last month once again I was denied on the same two patients for the same reason.
And so I went to speak to the regional director for Medicare to ask what's going on here.
Once the error has been pointed out to repeat it twice again seems to indicate a real problem.
There has been a problem as a result of budget cuts in which the number of people handling service problems and this is a service problem has been cut.
And what about that 800 number that's always busy?
Another victim of the budget cuts and it's going to get worse.
In fact the 800 number for Part A problems and questions is being eliminated on October the 1st.
So now there will be no way for people to call.
They can write.
So into our Hall of Shame we induct Medicare for coming up with a new health care system that's making people sick with frustration.
Shame on you.
Shame on you.
Shame on you.
That system.
It makes no sense but that's what Medicare has done.
I'm Arnold Diaz, Channel 2 News.
Crescendo tonight.
Earlier this evening right here on Channel 2 Murphy fired her first shots in this debate over family values.
And Dan Quayle was nationally lampooned.
Was that about me?
It's the episode America's been waiting for.
Murphy Brown's revenge against Vice President Dan Quayle.
Highly paid professional woman mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.
And what was that crack about just another lifestyle choice?
Murph take it easy the baby.
I recognized over that decision.
Murphy's anger was shared with at least two groups that gathered tonight to watch the show.
One women's group watched in a midtown office building.
And there was a similar gathering at Columbia University.
I think it's almost rather insulting to the American people that he chose to pick on a TV show.
This country's not going to turn around for us unless we get rid of people like Dan Quayle.
Behind the scenes of Murphy Brown there are some good things being said about the Vice President.
We love Dan Quayle.
Dan Quayle should be on our payroll.
He's the best publicity man we've ever, ever had.
And just what was Murphy's revenge?
It seems that for him the only acceptable definition of a family is a mother, a father, and children.
Perhaps it's time for the Vice President to expand his definition and recognize that whether by choice or circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes.
And ultimately what really defines a family is commitment, caring, and love.
Vice President Quayle watched the show tonight with a group of single mothers in Washington.
The show was critical of me.
It was basically another Hollywood campaign contribution.
The Vice President did keep a sense of humor about his feud with Murphy Brown.
Today he sent a present to Murphy's as of yet unnamed baby, a great big stuffed Republican Elephant.