Closet

WHY DOES the Daily News provide a forum for morons? Mr. Carchidi asked how we know that Obama isn't a "closet Muslim. " Also why Barack doesn't use his middle name. (Kenneth doesn't use his.) Obama isn't a closet anything. Neither is Mr. Carchidi - he's an open hate- monger. Bryan Flannery, Chalfont

Barbara Spiro-Ryan's closet is not really a closet. It's more like a room that's part pink-floral French country boudoir, part fashion museum. There is no denying that Spiro-Ryan, a retired senior vice president of institutional advancement at Drexel University, has fabulous clothes. No woman could ignore her airy Jason Wu dresses, full-length fur-trimmed Oscar de la Renta coats, or soft leather Rachel Roy jackets. The Louis Vuitton bags in sizes big, bigger and biggest are nothing to sneeze at, either.

The Smithsonian Institution - which for good reason also is known as the "Nation's Attic" - announced that during 1986 it had acquired 942,000 new items for its extensive collection. Joining existing artifacts - such as Gen. P.H. Sheridan's stuffed horse, Dorothy's ruby slippers and a 1935 Girl Scout uniform - were old pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge, 10,000 Scandinavian moths and butterflies, the personal papers of Playboy illustrator Alberto Vargas, 300 calculators and President Warren G. Harding's top hat. News reports of these eclectic acquisitions arrived at a household we know just in time for the annual event, known there as The Expedition to the Back of the Closet, subtitled This Year We Have to Throw Something Out. The coincidence did not go unnoted.

The conversation turned to the subject of gay film director John Waters. I mentioned that I saw him once, riding a bike in Provincetown, Mass., where he was attending a film festival. I didn't mention the g-word - you know, the three-letter word that should have come right before the word "film," most often accompanied by the l-word. The conversation took place last week on the college campus where I teach, and somehow, the little censor inside my head thought maybe I'd be promoting some sort of gay agenda in a setting where it didn't need to come up. The closet is a funny place.

During the Senate hearings on gays in the military, Sen. Sam Nunn proposed a compromise: " . . . this issue could be resolved along the lines 'We don't ask any questions, and you don't give any answers.' " His proposal is the very arrangement currently crumbling in corporate America. The senator's proposal to continue to allow homosexuals to serve if they stay in the closet has been the unspoken agreement in American business for many years. Most companies didn't want to know such information, and most corporate employees agreed not to provide it. Why is this arrangement collapsing in the military and many U.S. corporations?

Green Bay Packers rookie fullback Najeh Davenport was arrested yesterday, accused of breaking into a university dormitory in Miami and defecating in a woman's closet. Davenport, 23, surrendered to police and was charged with a second-degree felony count of burglary and a misdemeanor count of criminal mischief. The fourth-round draft pick out of the University of Miami was wanted on a warrant issued in April. He was released yesterday from a Miami-Dade County jail after posting a $6,500 bond.

The body of a 33-year-old woman who had been missing about a week was found yesterday in the bedroom closet of her Southwest Philadelphia apartment, police said. Police said Cathy Lofton, of South 52d Street, had been strangled. She had been the subject of an intense search by family members for several days, police said. Lofton's boyfriend, Thomas Morris, 33, of the 700 block of South 51st Street, was arrested a few blocks from his home yesterday and charged with her murder.

Robin Daniels's captivity inside closets started long before her boyfriend was arrested on charges that he kept her locked in one for up to 20 hours at a time, surrounded by buckets of her urine and feces, for two years. The boyfriend, Hiram Thelmon, told a psychiatrist that he'd been locking Daniels in closets when he went to work since the couple moved into their first apartment, Dr. Mark Sageman testified yesterday at Thelmon's trial. Thelmon, 29, is on trial before Common Pleas Judge Arnold New, charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping and related charges for allegedly locking Daniels in a closet of a room at the Kesmon Hotel for two years.

Thanks to a Main Line consignor who is remodeling, Barry Slosberg's two-day "quality" auction today and tomorrow has some better-than-average European furniture. The top piece of furniture, however, is American, a large corner closet that came from the house of the 18th-century printer Christopher Sauer. "It oozes age," Slosberg said this week at his gallery in Port Richmond as he went over some of the details of its workmanship, including its double arch, 16-glass-paned doors.

Authorities raided a Gloucester County residence yesterday morning and seized 28 sick dogs that were part of an illegal sales operation crammed in a sweltering basement closet. Officers with the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said they found the puppies, recently purchased from two of Pennsylvania's largest puppy mills, in filthy crates stacked on top of one another in the unventilated closet in Franklinville. "They were very sick," said Sy Goldberg, lieutenant colonel of the NJSPCA in New Brunswick.

DALLAS - An Army nurse showed no alarm or discomfort before suddenly collapsing during a Skype video chat with his wife, who saw a bullet hole in a closet behind him, his family said Sunday. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark's family released a statement describing what his wife saw in the video feed recording her husband's death. "Clark was suddenly knocked forward," the statement said. "The closet behind him had a bullet hole in it. The other individuals, including a member of the military, who rushed to the home of CPT Clark's wife also saw the hole and agreed it was a bullet hole.

A 43-year-old West Philadelphia man has been arrested in the fatal stabbing f a Southwest Center City resident whose body was found stuffed inside his bedroom closet over the weekend. Police said an argument, the nature of which was not spelled out, prompted John M. Smallwood to repeatedly stab Shawn Andrews, 41. Andrews' body was found Saturday in the closet of his bedroom in a first-floor apartment on the 700 block of South 19th Street after a friend went to check on him, police said.

Man found stabbed in apartment closet * 19th Street near Bainbridge, Southwest Center City A 41-year-old man was found dead with multiple stab wounds in the bedroom closet of his first-floor apartment about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 5:11 p.m. The victim, Shawn Andrews, was found by a friend who hadn't seen him for a day or two and who went to check on him, Homicide Sgt. Tim Cooney said Sunday night. Police believe that Andrews was stabbed inside his apartment by someone who knew him who then placed him in the closet, Cooney said.

DALLAS - The bulk of a man's childhood comic-book collection, including many of the most prized issues ever published, sold at auction Wednesday for about $3.5 million. A copy of Detective Comics No. 27, which sold for 10 cents in 1939 and features the debut of Batman, got the top bid at the New York City auction. It sold for about $523,000 with a buyer's premium, said Lon Allen, managing director of comics for Heritage Auctions, the Dallas-based auction house overseeing the sale.

No need to unpack the Move Mobile Closet when you get to your destination. Just unzip the molded polycarbonate wheeled bag and hang it by its attached hook. Behold, a built-in system of cantilevered shelves, zippered compartments, and mesh pockets, each labeled with pictures depicting a suggested use (pants, shoes, folded shirts, toiletries, etc.). The storage system is integrated into the Move's lining, which can be unzipped from the bag and hung separately, leaving you with an empty case for use at your destination, or an alternative packing space.

A judge dismissed charges Tuesday against one of four people in an alleged kidnapping scheme that ended with the discovery of four mentally challenged adults locked in a Tacony basement in October. Testimony from several witnesses in a two-day preliminary hearing in Common Pleas Court indicated that Eddie Ray Wright was a victim of alleged ringleader Linda Ann Weston, not the accomplice that prosecutors and police had alleged, said Judge Patrick Dugan. Assistant District Attorney Erin O'Brien had argued that Wright acted as a bodyguard and jailer on Weston's behalf, sometimes abusing the other captives when she demanded it. But witnesses testified that Wright, 50, slept in the same foul basement where the four victims were discovered Oct. 15, and that Weston was collecting his Social Security benefits.

IN A matter-of-fact voice, and wearing a long, straight black wig that hid the severe injuries and scars to her head, a niece of Linda Ann Weston described to a judge yesterday how she had been tortured over the years. Beatrice Weston said that she was beaten, burned, banished to live in locked closets and forced to prostitute herself. When they lived in Texas, Linda Weston called men on a party line and would "have them come up [to Weston's house] and make me have sex with them," Beatrice testified yesterday.

A judge dismissed charges Tuesday against one of four people in an alleged kidnapping scheme that ended with the discovery of four mentally challenged adults locked in a Tacony basement in October. Testimony from several witnesses in a two-day preliminary hearing in Common Pleas Court indicated that Eddie Ray Wright was a victim of alleged ringleader Linda Ann Weston, not the accomplice that prosecutors and police had alleged, said Judge Patrick Dugan. Assistant District Attorney Erin O'Brien had argued that Wright acted as a bodyguard and jailer on Weston's behalf, sometimes abusing the other captives when she demanded it. But witnesses testified that Wright, 50, slept in the same foul basement where the four victims were discovered Oct. 15, and that Weston was collecting his Social Security benefits.

There are certain spaces home buyers crave, such as giant kitchens and expansive walk-in closets. And then there are the spaces that turn up unexpectedly, especially in some older homes: bomb shelters, smokehouses, outhouses. Quite often, homeowners find, these oddball spaces can be put to new use. Tom Johnson of Liberty 100 Realty in Waldwick, N.J., recalls selling a house that had a secret staircase connecting a closet on the first floor with a closet on the second. The owner lined up her shoes on the steps.

Jean McIntosh's Tacony apartment was getting crowded. By early October, she already had at least 10 people - adults, children, two toddlers, and a runaway teen - cramped inside her three-bedroom on Longshore Avenue. And sometimes her 19-year-old cousin, Beatrice Weston, was locked inside a closet, police said. So the four mentally handicapped adult captives her mother, Linda Ann Weston, had brought up from West Palm Beach, Fla., were going in the boiler room two floors below.