January 29, 1996

Saying he was cold and wanted to repair the boilers that heat his home, John E. du Pont walked out of his house after a 48-hour standoff today and was arrested by SWAT team members, the police said. He was charged later with first-degree murder in the slaying of a former Olympic wrestling champion, David Schultz, on Friday and was ordered held without bail in a county prison. The Delaware County District Attorney, Patrick Meehan, said he had not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

There was no upset at the Super Bowl yesterday as the Dallas Cowboys won their third championship in four years, defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers, 27-17, in Tempe, Ariz. But the most valuable player was one of the unlikeliest of heroes: Larry Brown, a cornerback who plays opposite the celebrated Deion Sanders. Brown had two interceptions in the second half. The first, midway through the third quarter, helped set up a Dallas touchdown that made the score 20-7. His second came with 4 minutes 9 seconds left and led to the Cowboys' final touchdown, after the Steelers had cut Dallas's lead to 20-17.

The bust-out turned out to be a bust. Hudson County officials have changed their minds about a hole in the wall discovered when 160 Department of Corrections officers in riot gear seized the Hudson County Correctional Facility on Jan. 19, the A.P. reported. At the time, the acting warden, Scott Faunce, said he believed the hole they found was for an "escape that was being worked on that has now been foiled."

A 36-year-old lifeguard who was reading a magazine when an 8-year-old boy nearly drowned last March in an Atlantic City pool has been sentenced to five years' probation, a year's house arrest, 300 hours of community service and a $300 fine and was ordered to undergo psychological counseling, the A.P. said. Among other offenses, the lifeguard, Nicyce A. Smith of Atlantic City, was accused of endangering the welfare of a child and forgery because her lifeguard's certificate from the American Red Cross contained false signatures.

After nearly losing control of its prisons to gangs in the early 1990's, Connecticut has restored order by offering violent gang members a choice: Repudiate your blood oath to the group, or serve your entire sentence locked in a cell 23 hours a day. In a program closely watched by other states, Connecticut sends gang leaders in its system to a maximum-security prison here, the Garner Correctional Institution, where they are told there is only one way out of permanent lockdown.