Torontonian called family from Cuba saying there were 'scary' guests at
his hotel
Krista Foss. Saturday, April 28, 2001.
The Globe and Mail.
Today is Eddie Pinarreta's 30th birthday.
He won't be there, in his favourite black leather vest, with his sure smile
and lit cigarette.
Three months ago, he went to Cuba for a two-week, $2,400 Caribbean dream
trip that took him months to save up for. He never came back to his Toronto
home.
His older sister, Cora, had personally picked out the four-star Arenas
Blancas hotel in Cuba's increasingly popular Varadero resort area because it had
bleach-white sand and azure water -- and it was safe, a sunny patch of Cuba that
is among the fastest-growing destinations for winter-pale Canadians.
Four days before he was to have come home, Mr. Pinarreta left an unsettling
voice-mail message at his uncle's home and talked to an aunt about "scary"
people at his hotel. Then there was silence.
Eddie Pinarreta never walked off his return Flight 476 on Saturday, Feb. 3.
Since then, his sister, a Scotiabank clerk with a steely appetite for details,
has relentlessly put Eddie's name and picture before Canadian and Cuban
officials, only to meet dead ends.
Today, two busloads of Eddie's family, friends and members of a tight-knit
Portuguese-Canadian community will march in front of the Cuban Embassy in
Ottawa.
They are hoping to embarrass Cuban officials, sensitive to any threats to
lucrative Canadian tourism, into being more forthcoming about what happened to a
friendly, fun-loving guy on the trip of his life.
"Neither the Cubans nor us nor the family can gather enough clues that
can lead to an explanation," Reynald Doiron of Canada's Foreign Affairs
Department said yesterday.
To his protective sister, Cuba seemed an ideal tropical destination for a
hapless, part-time maintenance worker. Mr. Pinarreta was born without full
thumbs on either of his hands; he hadn't travelled much, and he still lived with
his Portuguese parents in a modest Toronto home where he spent hours tinkering
on a beloved 1969 GTO in the garage.
Ms. Pinarreta helped pack her brother's bag. She remembers the contents
right down to the number of folded jeans and condoms. She remembers how excited
he was. Four days into his trip, he called to ask her to wire money. He spoke in
Portuguese, which he rarely did, but the request itself didn't surprise her. She
was sensible about money; her brother was an unabashed spendthrift.
She couldn't call him back to tell him she needed a Cuban bank account to
wire money to. The Arenas Blancas hotel reception kept hanging up on her.
Four days after that, Eddie left the strange voice-mail message on his
uncle's phone in Mississauga.
"Uncle. It's Eddie . . . I believe there's trouble going down at my
house from some convicts that I've seen over here. Send a cop over there and let
me know what's going on. . . . Please. Ciao. . . . Oh, she was supposed to send
me some cash and she never did so that's why I'm thinking something's up. Bye."
He called back and talked to his aunt, Maria Amato. She explained about the
money. He told her there were people at the hotel who looked like they walked
off America's Most Wanted, a TV show he watched religiously.
That was the last time anybody from Eddie's family heard his voice.
A week after he failed to return to Toronto, Cora Pinarreta, who had
contacted Foreign Affairs, Conquest Vacations and numerous police forces, was on
a plane to Varadero with her uncle.
The two talked to hotel staff, combed the beach and went to Havana, where
they begged officials at Cuba's justice department, external affairs ministry
and finally the Canadian embassy there to allow them speak to whoever was
investigating Eddie's disappearance.
The day before their return flight home, they had a meeting with several men
at Arenas Blancas: immigration authorities, Varadero police officers and
provincial investigators, none of whom offered business cards, phone numbers or
audible names, according to Ms. Pinarreta.
The investigators told her that a flipped kayak belonging to Arenas Blancas
had been found two miles off the Varadero coast just hours after Eddie was last
seen lounging by the pool. No oars, life jacket, clothes or body were found, and
the hotel did not have a sign-out system that would have linked the kayak
directly to her brother.
That day, Eddie Pinarreta had emptied his guest-room safe. The next morning,
a maid found a note in his room. "Pls distribute these close [sic] amongst
use [sic]," the note read.
Cora didn't recognize her brother's handwriting in the photocopied note they
showed her.
"He wasn't the kind of guy to use a word like 'distribute' or 'amongst'
-- or to spell them right," she said.
The investigators showed Cora her brother's suitcase with all the clothes
neatly folded and ready to go. His personal documents and plane ticket were
missing. The investigators told her that Eddie had given his favourite black
leather vest to a hotel bartender he had befriended. They asked her if he was
suicidal. She broke down.
Back in her room, she and her uncle went over their notes and decided that
things didn't add up.
"Ninety-five to 98 per cent of people come out of the woods on their
own," Mr. Doiron said, noting that's what happened in the two most recent
cases of Canadians missing in Cuba. "But this case sounds more serious."
Two crucifix-draped pictures of Eddie are surrounded by lighted votive
candles in the Pinarreta household.
"We are hanging on by the grace of God," Cora Pinarreta said last
week while her parents finished taping and stapling placards for a painful
birthday celebration.
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