|
Anti-Castro activist murdered
Posted on Wed, Jun. 12, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
He is gunned down outside home
By David Green And Tere Figueras. Dgreen@herald.com.
Longtime anti-Castro activist Jorge Villaverde was convinced someone was
trying to kill him. On Tuesday morning his hunch proved grimly correct.
Villaverde was gunned down as he took out the trash from his Redland house.
He died with a 9mm pistol tucked into the back of his pants -- a gun he never
had time to draw.
''This was obviously an ambush,'' said Miami-Dade police Detective Lupo
Jimenez. "That's what we're looking at.''
The member of a fiercely anti-Castro family, Villaverde spent years in Cuban
political prisons before making it to the United States. His brother, Rafael,
was a member of the ill-fated brigade that invaded Cuba's Bay of Pigs in 1961.
News of Villaverde's apparent execution drew some members of Miami's Cuban
exile community to the crime scene. They stood in the drizzle on this rural
lane, huddling in grim clusters as they speculated on his life and death.
''I knew him well,'' said Roberto Martín Pérez, whose wife is
the prominent radio commentator Ninoska Pérez Castellón. "We
spent 20 years in political prisons together [in Cuba]. We engaged in strong
anti-Communist activities.''
The murder occurred about 8 a.m., police said. Villaverde, 67, had just
walked out through the electronic gate in front of his ranch-style compound in
the 20400 block of Southwest 198 Avenue when he was hit with a hail of bullets.
A neighbor's housekeeper told police she watched it happen.
''She saw two guys in a white car,'' said Joseph Pratt, who employs the
housekeeper. "The passenger tilted the seat back, and the driver leaned
across and shot him.''
Villaverde's maintenance man was inside the gate when he heard four or five
shots. He ran outside and found his boss lying on his back beside the trash can
-- under the wooden sign over his driveway carved with the words, "La
Tranquilidad.''
''He had blood in his mouth,'' Armando Alonso said.
Those who knew Villaverde, who was retired, said he had been attacked a few
times during the past month.
About 10 days ago, he was tending his horses behind his house -- which sits
on a 2.5-acre lot -- when someone fired a burst of shots from beyond his
property line.
''That time I heard the shots,'' neighbor Pratt said. "I ran over to
see what happened. . . . He told me they tried to kill him.''
Another neighbor recalled Villaverde saying two weeks ago that someone had
hit him in the back of the head with a weight.
'He used to ride his horse on the street, and when I saw him, I said, 'I
haven't seen you on your horse recently,' '' said Suzanne Miller. "He said
someone had hit him in the head with a dumbbell. He had a big mark there.''
Villaverde's roots in Miami's anti-Castro world ran deep. He served decades
in Cuban prisons, and at one time said he was a CIA operative trained as a "terrorist.''
He and brother Rafael -- who once ran the Little Havana Activities Center --
were indicted in the early 1980s in a notorious drug smuggling ring dubbed
''Operation Tick-Talks.'' They and 51 others were accused of running a
multimillion-dollar cocaine smuggling operation.
Rafael Villaverde, known as ''the weather vane of anti-Castro activities,''
vanished on a fishing trip after bonding out after his arrest. He has never been
found.
The intrigue following his disappearance was typical Miami: Rafael did not
die, the rumors held, but instead fled to Martinique or even Cuba.
The case against him and his brother, Jorge, later disintegrated.
Named because Miami police planted a recording device inside a clock, a
judge ruled that police had gathered evidence in the Tick-Talks investigation
illegally.
It was not Jorge Villaverde's last brush with the law.
In 1995, federal prosecutors charged him and a man living in his house with
possession of a machine gun and possession of unregistered silencers.
He spent two years in prison.
The bust occurred after someone tipped police that Villaverde was stashing
drugs at his house, said one attorney on the case.
Federal agents raided Villaverde's Redland ranch, but instead of drugs, they
found a large cache of weapons.
''He had a ton of weapons,'' said Ricardo L. Sanchez, who represented the
second defendant, Alberto Bayolo.
''Jorge had two reasons for the guns: He always believed he was being
watched by pro-Castro forces; and he had the weapons because he was one day he
was going to put together a revolution and liberate Cuba,'' the lawyer said. "That's
how Jorge lived.''
In the wake of last week's vandalisms outside the headquarters of
paramilitary group Alpha 66 and the Cuban American National Foundation -- where
assailants tossed ignited, gasoline-filled beer cans -- Miami's exile community
was awash in speculation about Villaverde's death.
Many felt Castro was ''settling scores.'' But few said that publicly.
''This was a true crime, an assassination,'' said Andrés Nazario Sargén,
leader of Alpha 66, adding that Villaverde was not affiliated with his group.
"It could have been a neighbor he had problems with, or someone else,
but there is the political question. It needs to be investigated.''
Staff researcher Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.
43 Cuban migrants land in Florida Keys
Posted on Wed, Jun. 12, 2002 in The Miami Herald.
KEY WEST, Fla. - (AP) -- Two groups of Cuban migrants totaling 43 people
landed Tuesday in the Florida Keys, U.S. Border Patrol officials said.
The first group of 23 migrants -- 11 men, five women, six boys and a girl --
was found south of Key Largo. They told authorities they had been smuggled.
A second group of 10 men, six women, two girls and two boys landed in the
mangroves at Long Key State Park, said U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Angela
Caldwell. They said they did not pay for the trip, but family members may have.
No medical emergencies were reported.
Border Patrol officials are processing the migrants, who will be taken to
Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County and will likely be released soon,
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported for Wednesday's editions.
The federal government's ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' policy generally lets Cubans
who reach U.S. soil stay but repatriates those picked up at sea.
Border Patrol officials say more than 2,000 Cuban migrants came illegally by
boat to Florida last year. | 
