Word: pensacola
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Jury deliberations began in the case of the alleged World Trade Center bombers in New York City. And in Florida, a judge barred Michael Griffin, accused of gunning down an abortion provider in front of a Pensacola clinic, from using an insanity defense. Griffin's lawyer contends that his client's mind was unbalanced after long exposure to antiabortion films and videos...
...women he treated and worked with saw a different figure. Says Linda Taggart, director of the Ladies Center, another Pensacola clinic where Gunn worked: "In recent years, there haven't been enough doctors. But he was never too busy for the women. He was a very sweet, caring man, who was very much devoted to seeing that women kept all their rights." When he finished his clinic work in Pensacola, Gunn would drop in on the Slim Concept Weight Control center and give free counseling on diets and fitness. Says Paula Leonard: "All he wanted was to help women...
...shooting seemed equally ill-suited for his performance. Born and raised in Pensacola, Michael Griffin graduated from high school and enlisted in the Navy without anyone thinking he was anything but well-spoken and quiet. After serving five years as an electrician, he returned home and later married Patricia Ann Presley on June 10, 1981, in Brewton, Alabama. (A few years earlier, David Gunn had worked in the local hospital there, delivering babies.) The Griffins had two daughters and moved back to Pensacola in 1987; he got a job as a chemical operator on a polymer-casting line with Monsanto...
...minor daughters and myself." A year later the suit was withdrawn, and the couple reconciled. For a time the Griffins kept their children out of school and educated them at home, although both enrolled in a private academy last September. Griffin had no known private or public involvement with Pensacola's strident antiabortion factions until a month or so before he murdered Gunn...
During that time, though, he had drawn close to John Burt of Rescue America and Burt's wife Linda, who, with her husband, runs a halfway house just outside Pensacola for unwed mothers, called Our Father's House. Griffin volunteered to do work around the place, fixing a leaky faucet, repairing a doorjamb, installing a security system. He was gentle with the babies of visitors and told the Burts of his hope that his wife could have her tubal ligature undone so that they could have more children. He also, according to Linda, complained about his long shifts at work...