This Day in Crime History: MARCH 23, 1979 : TWO MEN SENTENCED IN MURDER OF FORMER CHILEAN DIPLOMAT

Federal Judge Barrington Parker presides over the sentencing of Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross Diaz for the murder of Orlando Letelier. Novo and Ross Diaz were initally sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment.

The murder to which Judge Parker referred had occurred on September 21, 1976, when a car bomb exploded while victims, Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador, and his friends Michael and Ronni Moffitt were driving on Washington D.C.’s Embassy Row. Letelier was the intended target because of his political work against Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Letelier was the ambassador to the United States for Chile’s leftist government led by Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. However, after a CIA-supported coup by Pinochet in 1973, he was sent to a concentration camp on Dawson Island in the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. He survived and was exiled to the United States where he spent his time lobbying against the new military dictatorship.

According to the prosecution, a man named Michael Townley was contacted by key figures in Pinochet’s regime to assassinate Letelier and he used Cuban exiles, among them Novo and Ross Diaz, to help carry out the hit. The entire plot was unraveled when Townley was caught and turned into a prosecution witness. For his cooperation, Townley was given a new identity and only a 40-month prison sentence. He never expressed any remorse and is thought to have returned to Chile after his release.

General Pinochet was granted amnesty for his crimes when he stepped down from power in Chile. However, while traveling in England in 1998 he was arrested based on charges for human rights abuses by a Spanish prosecutor.

Novo and Ross Diaz’s sentence was turned over on appeal and they were later acquitted. Evidence has since come to light suggesting that the CIA might have been aware of the impending assassination in advance and, perhaps because of the U.S.’s close relationship with Pinochet, done nothing to stop it.

Article Details:

March 23, 1979 : Two men sentenced in murder of former Chilean diplomat

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 23, 1979 : Two men sentenced in murder of former Chilean diplomat

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/two-men-sentenced-in-murder-of-former-chilean-diplomat

• Access Date

  March 23, 2016

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in Crime History: MARCH 22, 1984 : TEACHERS ARE INDICTED AT THE MCMARTIN PRESCHOOL

Seven teachers at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are indicted by the Los Angeles County grand jury after hearing testimony from 18 children. Included among the charged are Peggy McMartin Buckey, the head of the school and her son Ray Buckey. Seven years and millions of dollars later, the case against the teachers came to a close with no reputable evidence of wrongdoing and no convictions.

The McMartin school debacle began on August 12, 1983 when Judy Johnson reported to the police that she believed her 2-1/2-year-old son had been molested at the McMartin Preschool. The first major blunder occurred less than a month into the investigation. On September 8, the Manhattan Beach Police Department sent out a form letter to more than 200 families, alerting them of an investigation into the allegations of child molestation and naming Ray Buckey as a suspect.

The latter set off a wave of hysteria in the community. Compounding the problem, virtually every child who attended the school was sent to the Children’s Institute International, an organization that claimed it could get children to reveal abuse even when they didn’t want to talk about it. Unfortunately, CII was also capable of getting easily manipulated children to reveal abuse when it had never actually happened.

The allegations that CII produced grew more bizarre every day. They reported that they had been taken to a cemetery where dead bodies were dug and hacked to pieces (causing blood to spurt out). The local Catholic church invited an expert on Satanic cults to talk to the congregation in the wake of the allegations. Of course, there wasn’t any corroboration of these wild allegations from any witnesses although the school often had visitors and guests. The truth or falsity of the allegations mattered little to the community at large. The McMartin school was burned down in an arson attack and seven other local preschools closed down as people who worked with children began to fear that they would be the next accused.

Unfortunately for other child care workers around the nation, the abuse scare of the early 1990s found many victims. More recent research has demonstrated that questioning techniques of children can easily be manipulated so that the child will give the answer that the questioner desires.

Article Details:

March 22, 1984 : Teachers are indicted at the McMartin Preschool

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 22, 1984 : Teachers are indicted at the McMartin Preschool

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/teachers-are-indicted-at-the-mcmartin-preschool

• Access Date

  March 22, 2016

• Publisher

  A+E Networks