MANHATTAN

WOMAN FOUND STABBED TO DEATH IN CENTRAL PARK

In an apparent suicide, a woman believed to be in her 20s stabbed herself to death in Central Park early yesterday afternoon with a foot-long kitchen knife, the police said.

While detectives consider the case to be an open investigation, senior police officials said evidence recovered at the crime scene has led many to speculate that the woman’s wounds were self-inflicted.

Shortly after 2 p.m. yesterday, police said a man walking in the park discovered the woman’s body in a patch of spring foliage, about 100 feet away from the western edge of the park near 107th Street.

She was dressed in black combat-style boots, dark jeans, a purple jacket cut at the waist, and a pink baseball cap made from satin. Police said there was also a kitchen knife – its stainless-steel blade approximately one foot in length – lodged in the woman’s chest.

A cardboard sheath used to house the knife was also discovered near the woman’s body by the authorities, leaving detectives to speculate the woman had recently purchased that knife in an effort to take her own life. Police had yet to identify the woman late yesterday.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE IDENTIFY TEENAGER KILLED ON DELANCEY STREET

Police yesterday identified an East Village teenager who was stabbed to death over a $40 debt outside a popular nightclub this past weekend.

At about 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, police said the teenager, Robert Adams, 16, had been arguing with two other male acquaintances outside the Bowery Ballroom nightclub and concert hall on Delancey Street. After quarreling over the $40 debt, police said one of Adams’s acquaintances stabbed him twice in the chest with a sharp object, and once in his side. The acquaintances, who police said possibly live nearby, then fled the scene. One of them who witnessed the stabbing is now cooperating with detectives, police said.

Adams was found with no personal identification, so police had to identify him through fingerprint tests. Police said the 16-year-old had been involved in a robbery in the past, so his fingerprints were on file.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

BROOKLYN

CONSERVATIVE PARTY CHAIRMAN MEETS WITH CLINTON OPPONENTS

The chairman of the state Conservative Party, Michael Long, said he met with two Republican candidates who might oppose Senator Clinton next year.

Mr. Long, a Brooklyn liquor store owner, met with a Manhattan lawyer, Edward Cox, and more recently with the state health commissioner, Dr. Antonia Novello.

The Republican Party, Mr. Long said, still places an importance on the endorsement of the Conservative Party. He added that the Conservative Party is still a long way from endorsing a Republican candidate for Senate.

Mr. Long described his Manhattan meeting with Dr. Novello as brief. He said she contacted him at the urging of others and seemed far from a decision. He described his meeting with Mr. Cox at Conservative Party headquarters in Brooklyn as focused. “He had given a lot of thought to this before he met with me,” Mr. Long said.

Dr. Novello declined comment through a spokesman, but the Associated Press reported yesterday she is considering a run against Mrs. Clinton.

“She would be an acceptable candidate,” Mr. Long said of Dr. Novello. “I think Ed Cox is acceptable, too. But we’re far away from making a decision and neither one has officially announced they will run. Ed Cox is a lot closer to making a decision, she wasn’t even close to that.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

CITYWIDE

RESTAURANT OWNER WHO WAS NAZI COLLABORATOR TO BE DEPORTED

An admitted Nazi collaborator who moved to New York City after the war and went on to own Schraft’s Restaurant in Times Square and control the Wise Potato Chip distributorship in Brooklyn should be deported, the American government said yesterday.

Jakob Reimer, 86, was stripped of his citizenship in 2002 after a federal trial in Manhattan. An appeals court upheld that decision last year.

“We will seek to remove him from this country as swiftly as the legal process allows,” the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Christopher Wray, said.

The move to deport Reimer comes more than 25 years after his name first surfaced during an investigation into another Nazi collaborator, John Demjanjuk.

Investigators hoped that Reimer, who had settled in Brooklyn in 1952 and became a citizen seven years later, would make a good witness against Demjanjuk. It was not to be. Reimer was described as evasive and vague, and seemed truly unaware of what the investigators were talking about. They concluded he had no useful information.

Less than a decade later, the investigation was relaunched when the Soviet Union opened up its archives to American investigators and, suddenly, Justice officials were able to show that Reimer had been present with Nazis when ghettos – including Warsaw – were cleared of Jews. He was called for another interview. This time, while he tried to maintain he had done mostly office work, he admitted to having taken part in the massacre of dozens of Jews who had been herded into a pit in a forest.

While he tried to argue that if he hadn’t fired a shot, he would have been killed himself, the court – in ruling against him – noted he had been promoted four times and decorated for meritorious service. The government also demonstrated that Reimer, who was born in the Ukraine, had applied for German citizenship during the war.

Attempts to reach Reimer and his lawyer last night were not successful.

– Special to the Sun

ALBANY

NEW, TOUGHER DRUNK-DRIVING PENALTY CALLED ‘VASEAN’S LAW’

State lawmakers agreed to stiffen the penalty for deadly drunk drivers by shifting the burden of proof to them from the prosecution. State law currently classifies drunk driving as a misdemeanor, unless the prosecution can demonstrate that another crime was committed by the driver. Drunk drivers who kill will now be presumed negligent unless they can prove otherwise.

“Vasean’s Law,” which could pass by the end of the week, will be named after an 11-year-old Queens boy, VaSean Alleyne, who was killed by a drunk driver in New York City last year. The boy’s mother, Monique Dixon, has lobbied lawmakers aggressively for weeks to change a law that limits the time served by her son’s killer to a maximum of one year in prison.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun