
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 8, 1993                   TAG: 9309080014
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

2 CONVICTED IN BURNING OF TOURIST

Two white laborers were convicted of all charges Tuesday in the burning of a black tourist who said they taunted him with racial slurs, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire.

Mark Kohut and Charles Rourk showed no reaction when the jury of five whites and one black found them guilty of attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery. The jury returned its decision after a 10-day trial and 12 hours of deliberations.

Burning victim Christopher Wilson sat looking straight ahead next to his mother, Enid Plummer, who looked upward as the first guilty verdict was read and nodded her head. Later, she wiped away tears as Wilson whispered to her.

Kohut and Rourk, both day laborers from Lakeland, face up to life in prison. Sentencing was set for Oct. 22.

Wilson made no comment as he left the courthouse, but his mother said in a statement through prosecutors: "We are very happy to know justice was served."

Wilson, a 32-year-old stock-brokerage clerk from New York City, was burned over nearly 40 percent of his body, and prosecutors had relied on his emotional testimony.

He described being abducted by gun-wielding attackers on New Year's Day outside a suburban Tampa shopping plaza and forced to drive to a remote field, where he was doused with gasoline and set ablaze.

Wilson called Rourk, 33, "the mean one" who barked racial slurs during the abduction and sloshed him with the gasoline. Kohut, 27, was "the one with bright eyes" who spoke little during the attack.

But there were no fingerprints, hairs, fibers or DNA tying Kohut and Rourk to the scene, and there was similarly no link found through handwriting analysis of a note left behind that read "One les nigger more to go."

The prosecution's problems were compounded when on the third day of testimony, the lead state litigator on the case, Len Register, abruptly resigned. He cited repeated interference from State Attorney Harry Lee Coe. That left the case in the hands of Coe, a former judge known as "Hanging Harry" who had not personally prosecuted a case in 22 years.

by CNB