Death Benefits

Nearly seven months after her husband became one of the first casualties of the Gulf War, the widow of Marine Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin is battling a bureaucracy that has yet to return all of his belongings or pay the balance of his death benefits. The weeks and days since her husband was killed in a gritty battle for the Saudi border town of Khafji, Carol Bentzlin says, have been filled with frustration and heartache.

Should families be paid for donating a loved one's organs? That question has generated a heated debate as transplant experts look for ways to increase the too-small pool of organ donors. In a commentary last month in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., a Florida transplant coordinator called for consideration of a $1,000 "death benefit" for next of kin. According to Dr. Thomas G. Peters, altruism alone isn't working. And other efforts to increase the number of donors have failed.

A man who allegedly faked his death in a Glendale doctor's office as part of a $1.5-million insurance scam was arrested Monday in Texas, authorities said. Melvin Hanson, who had been the subject of a nationwide hunt, was picked up by U.S. Customs Service officials at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport on suspicion of having a forged passport, said Columbus, Ohio, Police Detective James Lanfear. Hanson was jailed in Ft. Worth awaiting arraignment on a federal fugitive warrant.

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed an election-year drug bill that would dramatically stiffen the penalties for people who buy or sell illegal drugs, even casual users. Approved by a 375-30 vote, the House-passed omnibus drug measure was hailed by conservatives as "a momentous step" and condemned by civil libertarians as an unconstitutional intrusion on individual liberties.

The Veterans Administration finally has awarded death benefits to the widow of an Enola Gay crew member--21 years after her husband died of leukemia and nearly 43 years after the B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Eleanor Shumard, 66, of Detroit, had been fighting since 1967 to get the VA to acknowledge that her husband's death might have been caused by radiation exposure from the bombing.

Prudential Insurance Co. has paid $10.5 million--its largest death benefit ever--on a policy insuring North America Savings & Loan Assn. owner Duayne D. Christensen, who was killed in a Jan. 16 car crash just hours before regulators seized his troubled institution. The payment, however, is being withheld from the policy's sole owner and beneficiary, Janet F. McKinzie. Prudential placed the money Wednesday in the custody of the U.S.

Survivors of police officers killed accidentally on city streets cannot sue the municipality for negligently creating unsafe conditions, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday. The court, in its first signed opinion since three new justices assumed office in March, said family members in such circumstances are limited to benefits from pension and workers' compensation programs.