Scouts' 'perversion files'

THE LATEST news in the Terry Bowers unsolved murder case came from the other side of the country.

The release in October of the Boy Scouts' secret "perversion files" was ordered by the Oregon Supreme Court, following a civil suit that the Scouts lost.

The 14,500 pages of previously confidential records include correspondence about known and suspected pedophiles within the organization from 1959 to 1985. They show that the Scouts were successful in keeping many of them out of leadership positions. But in many cases, pedophiles were also shielded from prosecution because police were not informed of the abuse.

Among the trove of internal documents are letters written in 1971 mentioning Lawrence Wakely, a Phoenixville man and convicted rapist who said he killed Bowers in 1970 in retaliation for being kicked out of the Scouts when he was younger.

"To the best of my knowledge, he's the only one in the entire investigation who admitted that he killed Terry," said retired State Police Sgt. James Wenner.

Police say that Wakely's story didn't check out at the time and that he failed a lie-detector test.

- William Bender