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Thursday, Jan. 29, 1998

Slain reporter remembered for dedication

Friends gather for memorial service, tell how Kathryn Dettman touched their lives

By DIANA HEIDGERD
Associated Press

   TEMPLE - Slain Waco television reporter Kathryn Dettman was remembered by friends and family members Wednesday for her faith in God and her dedication to journalism.
   Dettman, 36, was found stabbed to death in her Temple apartment Jan. 22, just days before she was to leave KWTX-TV for a new job at KTVT-TV in Dallas.
   About 400 people gathered for a memorial service on Wednesday, many saying their lives had been touched by Dettman.
   ``She was so easy to get to know,'' said Harold Ellis. ``Her freshness was contagious.''
   Ellis, a chaplain at the Bell County Jail, met Dettman when she was working on a story about the prison ministry. The two visited women's death row in Gatesville.
   During her career, Dettman visited with many of the women on death row, including Karla Faye Tucker, who may be the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War, and Darlie Routier, who was sent to death row for the murder of her two young sons.
   ``The light of life just came through her like an ocean,'' said friend Lyndsay Dawkins.
   Dettman started her career with KWTX before joining The Associated Press in Los Angeles in 1990 and transferring to the AP's Broadcast News Center in Washington the following year.
   She rejoined KWTX in mid-1993.
   Andy Lippman, the AP's bureau chief in Los Angeles, said Dettman was eager to learn when she arrived in California.
   ``She said, `I want to learn to write. I want to learn to be good,''' Lippman remembered.
   Lippman announced the creation of an AP Television-Radio Association scholarship to be awarded in Dettman's name.
   ``Hopefully it will give others a chance to follow their dreams,'' he said.
   Dettman's neighbor, Anthony Gary Silvestri, 21, is charged with the murder and remains in Bell County Jail on $500,000 bond.
   Police say the victim apparently left the door to her apartment open the morning of Jan. 22 to let her cats out as she prepared to go to work. Neighbors called 911 after hearing a scuffle in the unit.

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