She Started Relationship With Flower, Without Doubt

--Gary Dotson’s fiancee says she has never doubted his innocence, despite his failure to persuade a court to overturn his 1979 conviction in the rape of a woman who later recanted her testimony against him. “I never had any doubts,” Camille Dardanes said during an interview on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” in which Dotson also appeared. “After I met Gary, there was never any doubt. Once you get to know him, there was no way I could ever think anything happened.” Dardanes introduced herself to Dotson, who served six years on the rape conviction, at his clemency hearings in May. After the Chicago hearings, prompted by Cathleen Crowell Webb’s insistence that the rape never occurred, Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson commuted Dotson’s 25- to 50-year sentence but denied a pardon, saying he did not believe Webb’s recantation. “I went up and I gave him a flower,” Dardanes said of her first meeting with Dotson. “Later on, like a week or two later, we went out for a drink and, I don’t know, things just kind of ran around ever since.” Dotson, now an apprenticed carpenter, proposed last month. He said he cooked Dardanes a lobster dinner and opened a bottle of champagne before giving her a diamond ring. Dardanes said she did not hesitate to say yes. “I’ve known for a long time that I was in love,” she said. They plan a May wedding.

--Amtrak passengers across the country logged about an hour of unscheduled and unannounced and frustrating travel time when the trains ground to a halt in the night and waited for daylight-saving time to end. “This is right up there on the silliest-things-I’ve-ever-heard list, and I’m asking ‘why’ with all capitals and an exclamation point,” said Houstoun Demere, a television director. He spent nearly three hours on a trip from Philadelphia to New York City that was supposed to take an hour and 53 minutes.

--Steve Belcher would rather smile than fight, but that does not mean he is a pushover: He just might be the toughest bouncer in the country. In November, Belcher, 27, will be in Las Vegas to compete in the national Toughest Bouncer contest. Although he is a 360-pound bouncer, Belcher, who works in Warren, Ohio, says his greatest weapon is not his size. “Politeness. I use politeness,” he said. “They (drunks) say they’re going to knock my head off and I just say ‘That’s nice.’ ” Very few people have the heart to strike a polite, smiling, 360-pound bouncer.