Rare Modern Tale of Murder on the High Seas
The six refugees explained their 58-day ordeal began when they left Cuba on June 25, 2004,
for what was supposed to have been a three-day journey to Cozumel, Mexico. But a leaky boat, mechanical problems and a careless gaffe at sea left them afloat with no food, water or fuel. Hurricanes pushed and
bullied their tiny craft hundreds of miles off
course. Now it was Aug. 24, almost two months after they'd set sail.
By itself the story of their tormented survival is remarkable enough. But the six had washed ashore with a secret: The boat had held a seventh person, Luis Estrada Sanchez, a 39-year-old husband and father
who had served as the boat's captain.
At first the other six withheld from Corpus Christi immigration
officials the fact that he had died at sea -- or that he had existed
at all.
Then one of them let it slip. Luis' death set off an unusual federal
investigation involving three agencies, including the FBI.
For more than a year, investigators have worked to solve what U.S.
Coast Guard documents refer to as a ``Murder on the High Seas.'' A
hearing in the case is set for Tuesday in a Dallas immigration court.
One of the Cubans, a bicycle mechanic named Orlando Requejo Pupo, was
arrested in Dallas weeks after landing. He remains in a Central Texas
immigration detention cell, without any formal criminal charges and
long after the provisions of the Cuban Adjustment Act should have
required his release.
In a jailhouse interview, he blamed his predicament on Texas
immigration authorities' unfamiliarity with the Adjustment Act. The
act basically holds that while Cubans caught at sea must return home,
those caught on U.S. soil get special privileges: A fast track to
residency and citizenship -- and freedom even when suspected of a
crime.
``If I were in Miami, my situation would be different. I wouldn't be
in jail. I would not have had to spend the months I have been here in
jail,'' Orlando said. ``It isn't fair, believe me, that I am in
detention after spending 60 days confined in a five-square-meter scrap
of paper in the sea.''
Records of the investigation and interviews indicate the government
continues to view all of the refugees as either suspects or witnesses
to murder.
The records also show the government's effort to prosecute one or more
of the voyagers for murder has foundered in unfamiliar legal territory
regarding jurisdiction, uncertain evidence and whether the Bush
administration has scuttled 20 years of Cuban Adjustment Act policy.
In May, Orlando formally applied for political asylum. The government
has filed a motion opposing it, but won't say why publicly.
At the hearing Tuesday, Orlando's attorney, Joel Vera, will argue that
he should be set free on bond pending his asylum case, set for Oct. 21
in Dallas.
Attorneys for Immigration Customs Enforcement are prepared to round up
everyone who survived the boat trip, from New York, New Jersey,
Florida and elsewhere, and fly them to Dallas for court proceedings,
sources familiar with the investigation say.
Federal authorities involved in the case aren't talking. But an
examination of investigative reports, interviews with survivors and
other documentation offers a credible account of the Cubans' crossing
and why the government is suspicious.
The journey starts
They set out from the southern Cuba port city of Manzanilla at 2 p.m.
on the last Friday in June 2004, guided by an old nautical compass.
Spirits ran high despite the leaky wooden boat, with its hand-made
propeller, sputtering engine and makeshift backup sail.
The five men and one woman from Camaguay, Cuba's third-largest city,
had bought the boat for $1,500. The mere sight of it worried Orlando.
He started a diary as a kind of epitaph to his wife and two children.
``If something happens to me,'' he wrote, ``I would like this notebook
to reach my family. I beg of you.''
Seeds of doubt about the boat were nourished by questions about Luis,
the band's self-appointed leader. Luis, who had arranged the venture,
was an aloof man with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache.
He had been supporting his wife, daughter and mother with a coveted
job in a ``dollar store,'' which sold imported consumer items for U.S.
currency and paid fair wages. Luis wore a nice watch and better
clothes. His hands were supple, they noticed.
A skeptical Orlando and several of the men felt less than assured when
Luis, insisting he was an experienced seaman, pulled out a fisherman's
license to prove it.
But they pointed the wooden boat toward the British-controlled Cayman
Islands 150 miles away, where they would pick up a seventh passenger.
And, under Luis' command, the little boat puttered southward all night
and into the next day.
No one got much sleep; water seeped into the boat through the floor
and everyone had to bail. Everyone, that is, except for Atiliana
``Magaly'' Araujo Cruz.
Magaly 55, had been a librarian for 33 years, and had four grown
children. Determined to join her daughter and sister in Miami, she was
violently seasick from the start. In her illness, she ruined most of
their food.
Then the engine broke down.
Adrift in a slowly sinking boat, the first disharmony began to take
hold. Luis ordered them to take turns rowing toward a small,
uninhabited key on the horizon. They pushed ashore near dusk and
fought over what to do.
Orlando insisted they turn back for more food and repairs. Siding with
him was Zeidel Rivero Perez, 28, a cook by trade and the youngest on
the boat.
But Luis overruled them. ``No! We don't go back!'' he repeatedly said.
He was joined by Aldo Mesa Diaz, 37, a mechanic and welder on his way
to New Jersey, and Miguel Dias Cango, 36, a carpenter who had
attempted two abortive escapes from Cuba.
Magaly, too sick to pick sides, stayed out of the fray.
Between the men, tensions mounted. Mechanical deficiencies turned what
should have been a daylong voyage to the Caymans into a nightmare of
hunger, rowing and increasing bickering.
Privately, Luis must have worried about Orlando, who was an ex-soldier
recently paroled after a five-year stint in Cuba's penal system. His
crime, Orlando says, was stealing a government truckload of meat while
working at a state-run slaughterhouse.
Luis also had a past. He told some that he once served time for a homicide.
Finally a Cayman Islands coast guard cutter intercepted them and towed
their crippled wooden boat to one of the chain's three islands, Cayman
Brac. Cayman immigration policy wouldn't let them stay; they could
either be repatriated back to Cuba or leave on their own.
But they found immigration officials eager to help them -- for a
price. With money wired from U.S. relatives, Magaly and Miguel bought
an 18-foot, open-air Pleasure Craft for $5,000 from the island's chief
immigration officer.
The fiberglass vessel came equipped with a 115-horsepower engine, a
smaller spare engine and a tarp sun shelter. The little sports boat
was the sort used to fish shallow waters near shore.
A local sailor Luis met assured him they could make Cozumel, Mexico,
on the Yucatan Peninsula, by traveling due west for three days. All
they needed was an electronic hand-held global positioning device.
Everyone pitched in for three 55-gallon drums of fuel and about three
days worth of canned food and jugs of water. Magaly bought seasickness
pills. Luis bought a bright yellow GPS unit, had it programmed with
the Cozumel coordinates and slung it around his neck.
And although space was tight, no one objected when a seventh Cuban, a
39-year-old refrigeration mechanic named Rolando Perez-Rivero, joined
the group.
On July 1 they sped into open waters again.
More troubles
Eleven hours later, the engine ran its tank of gas dry and quit.
Orlando did some quick math on the remaining fuel and realized it
wasn't enough to reach Cozumel. He screamed at Luis, ``It's your
fault! It's your fault!''
Orlando, Zeidel and the new passenger, Rolando, insisted they return
to the Caymans.
Luis, joined by Miguel and Aldo, argued to push on.
Luis and his allies got their way. But Orlando let his feelings be known.
``I reproached him for everything that happened,'' Orlando said in an
interview. ``I reproached him because the rest of them couldn't see
past their noses. They would say, `Let's keep going and going.' And I
explained to them that if we keep going like this we are going to
die.''
And then a simple blunder made the specter of death a permanent
companion in the boat. Luis was fussing with the GPS and pushed a
button. In an instant, all of the coordinates to Cozumel were erased.
The group was blind.
On July 3, the fuel was gone. Rationing their remaining food and
water, they turned the tarp sunroof into a sail and, after further
disputes, kept the western heading toward Mexico.
Hunger gnawed. The men decided they would have to fish or die, but
with what? From the engine, they pulled a piece of wire. With a
whetstone, the wire was sharpened to a razor point and bent into the
shape of a hook. This was attached to a thin twine rope several yards
long. From barnacles on the boat's underside, they found tiny
creatures for bait.
It worked.
On July 8, after three days with almost no food, Orlando reported in
his diary that he hooked the first fish. He shared it raw with his
companions. The length of twine and hook now was a fragile, vital
lifeline for seven people. Each day, the fear was real that a large
enough creature would snap it off. Nothing was wasted. Blood and
intestines were swallowed. Bones dried, ground up and eaten.
The next day, July 9, a storm brought terrifying 12-foot waves that
violently tossed the boat but also more temporary salvation: fresh
water. Struggling to keep from being hurled overboard, the men used
the tarp to catch the rainwater, channeling what they could into jugs.
Long days of strict rationing stretched into another week, then
another, with no fish, water-bearing squalls and often no wind to keep
them moving west. Along with fear and depression came irritation.
Space was tight. At night, the largest four people could lie in the
bottom of the boat, in a row like sardines, feet to face, and sleep.
To relieve themselves or take refuge from the summer's heat, they
would jump in the sea.
The travelers sometimes thought they'd spotted land, paddling with
great hope only to find a mirage. Worse letdowns would come -- and go:
luxury cruise ships and commercial vessels. Some passed tantalizingly
close enough to hear people on board. One nearly crashed into them.
Cursory entries in Orlando's diary describe the voyagers'
deteriorating physical and mental conditions:
``July 12, 2004 (Monday). The sea was flat like a plate the whole day.
We can't see land anywhere. The food and water are running out, and we
have enough left for only one or two days. Desperate. At night, a ship
came so close to us that it almost cut us in two.''
``July 13, 2004 (Tuesday). No wind. We did not move at all. We can't
see anything. There is no land anywhere and this is making the people
feel desperate because we don't have any food left and we are not sure
how long we have left.''
July 15, 2004 (Thursday). We have no water and no food and we are
almost out of hope.''
By July 17, the travelers were drinking their own urine.
Everyone on board was now dying in the windless summer heat, and
Orlando wrote, ``Only God knows what he is doing. I leave everything
in his hands, he who is our Lord and guide.''
As physical conditions deteriorated, so did relations aboard the
vessel. Of the men, only Orlando, Rolando and Zeidel seemed to have
enough energy to fish, steer, set the sail and urge the other three
men to join in. Some of the men, lethargic from weight loss, dizzy,
even hallucinating from their deprivations, began resisting Orlando's
admonitions. Orlando's criticism of Aldo, Miguel and, above all, Luis,
grew more heated.
As July turned to August, the fishing luck was intermittent. The
travelers ate seaweed to relieve aching shrunken bellies. They
collected more rain to ration.
Luis continued to maintain he was the captain, but as his body shrank,
he retreated into a psychological shell, segregating himself. Late on
some nights, they would hear Luis weeping aloud about missing his
family.
Magaly was a grandmotherly island of neutrality.
She was the one person to whom Luis reached out. He would whisper to
her at night, sometimes of his distrust of Orlando and his wish that
he had never left Cuba.
Orlando admired Magaly as well, writing in his diary on Aug. 5, her
birthday, ``This woman is the one who gives me strength to keep
going.''
Mutiny or suicide?
On Aug. 7, Orlando noted in his diary ominous current changes pulling
the boat eastward, the wrong direction. By Monday, Aug. 9, he noted
that unusually fast-moving clouds had filled the sky. Tropical Storm
Bonnie had arrived, sucking them backward.
Bonnie had whirled itself into a full-blown tropical cyclone barreling
through the sea channel between Cuba and Cozumel at 55 knots per hour,
according to National Weather Service charts. It slammed into the
little boat, pushing the sea northward into towering mountains of
water. Each swell pushed the boat almost vertically up walls of water
to a crest so high that the petrified voyagers could not see the
bottom of troughs they were then sent plunging down into.
The Cubans figured they were doomed. Every wave threatened to flip or
swamp them.
The worst of the storm began to ease on the third day, having pushed
them well north into the Gulf of Mexico.
Utterly spent, physically and emotionally, they were not in the clear.
About Aug. 13, Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 monster, spiraled at
110 mph over the Cayman Islands and western Cuba and into the eastern
Gulf of Mexico.
Although they weren't directly in its path, the storm's massive
spinning arms slapped westward, spewing two more days of rain,
swelling waves and wind in their direction.
In the wake of Bonnie and Charley rose dozens of tornadic water
spouts, a product of clashing air masses. These funnels rise from the
sea surface to the clouds, spinning at a destructive 130 mph. Now,
dozens of thundering water spouts zigged and zagged all around the
boat. One spun so close they had to paddle out of the way.
The silver lining was Charley's westerly winds. These actually helped
push the Cubans closer to the Texas shoreline.
Orlando's journal notes the boat's sail finally had caught a good,
steady wind. But the journal's omissions are extensive. Nowhere does
the diary mention that sometime after the water spouts evaporated,
something in him snapped.
He decided to seize control of the boat, enlisting Zeidel's help.
Orlando made his move after another series of bitter confrontations.
According to a preponderance of accounts gathered by investigators,
Orlando had grown increasingly agitated by the refusals of Aldo,
Miguel, and Luis to pitch in and help.
``I had to take control of the boat because my life was in danger and
the lives of the other people,'' Orlando later said. ``The lives of
these people were going to depend on me and that was what happened,
understand?''
Orlando says he only used strong language, not deadly force, to take control.
But one day, according to other accounts, Orlando drew the boat's
fish-cutting knife and, with Zeidel, launched into a ``frenzied
attack.'' Aldo, armed with a screwdriver, Miguel and Luis were
involved in the fracas.
Afterward, Aldo lay stabbed in the face, Miguel bled from multiple
puncture wounds. Orlando was bleeding from wounds to his shoulder and
thigh. But when all was said and done, Orlando and Zeidel had
possession of both the screwdriver and knife.
An almost unbearable mutual distrust settled in among the men until
all feared sleeping without an ally.
There were reports of other attacks, too, including one in which
Orlando ordered Aldo and Luis off the boat with nothing but two empty
oil drums to hold onto.
Sometime after that incident, on or about Aug. 20, the waters of the
gulf would claim Luis.
The night's events are shrouded by disputed accounts. What is clear,
though, is that the survivors swore to forget him. And if anyone ever
asked about Luis, they would say he had jumped overboard in a suicidal
fit of depression. Some four or five days later, they washed ashore in
Texas.
Conflicting stories
On Sept. 13, 2004, about three weeks after he had walked onto Mustang
Island, Orlando was resting in his sister's Dallas apartment when
immigration agents knocked on the door.
He had taken refuge with his sister to regain his health and was
working for their uncle's small trucking business.
He was cuffed and later jailed, officially for technical violations of
entry laws. He has been held in the federal detention facility near
Haskell since then.
Among the issues government prosecutors face in deciding whether to
bring a murder charge against him is the quality of the evidence. No
weapon or body has been recovered. And the accounts of the witnesses,
given their stress and physical deprivation, are shaky at best.
Whether by accident or by design, Magaly was the only one who let slip
to immigration officials that Luis had existed.
Suspicious agents had her identify three of Luis' identification cards
that had been found among a pack of other cards in Orlando's
possessions. An increasingly nervous Magaly balked when asked why none
of the other five passengers had mentioned Luis.
Stuttering, she volunteered that there had been no ``cover up,'' then
fell back on the party line: Luis had thrown himself overboard.
Suspecting foul play, the immigration agents called the FBI and the
Coast Guard Investigative Service.
Then investigators caught Orlando in an incriminating lie about the
IDs. When asked about them, he said unidentified friends back in Cuba
had given him the identification cards to sell in the U.S.
Orlando has stood by the account that Luis committed suicide. He says
it had been Luis' turn to steer the boat that night while the others
slept. Orlando maintains that he woke up the next morning and
discovered that Luis had vanished.
``We always thought that maybe when he got near the edge to pee he
fell out. This had happened several times before.''
But that's not the story others tell.
Aldo told investigators that Orlando and Zeidel attacked Luis late one
night. Orlando and Zeidel threw Luis overboard and Luis was alive when
he hit the water, Aldo said.
``Everyone on board saw Orlando and Zeidel do this, and that they
threw him an empty gas can to hold onto,'' Aldo told investigators. He
promised to testify in court, under oath, that ``Orlando and Zeidel
threatened the others on board the boat not to say anything.''
But Aldo's version of events isn't easily corroborated.
Magaly refused to cooperate with authorities and even invoked her
right to counsel during questioning. She has not responded to repeated
interview requests.
But Magaly managed to leave behind something. On the night before
leaving Corpus Christi to join her daughter in Florida, Magaly spent
the night a woman who saw Magaly on television and offered shelter.
All night long, Magaly spilled her guts to Aracelis Esther Tamayo,
saying she didn't tell the truth because she was mortally terrified of
Orlando. Tamayo, who declined an interview request, went straight to
the FBI, according to records.
In Tamayo's unusually detailed third-hand account, Magaly said she had
been awakened that night by a violent commotion. When she asked
Orlando and Zeidel what had happened, they told her that Luis had been
crying again and jumped overboard.
Magaly urged them to jump in after Luis, but Orlando and Zeidel said,
``Are you crazy?'' The night was too dark and the waves were too
powerful. Orlando then underlined his words with a threatening
emphasis.
``Did you hear me?'' he asked pointedly. ``Luis jumped in the water.''
Zeidel chimed in. ``Did you hear what Orlando said? He jumped in the
water. Remember that -- he jumped in the water.''
The next morning, she saw Orlando rifle through Luis' belongings,
pocketing money and Luis' three identification cards.
Miguel said in an interview he didn't actually see Orlando and Zeidel
attack Luis. He said he had been in a dehydration-induced delirium for
days and was semi-catatonic that night. But he said that Magaly
frantically pushed him awake and reported that Orlando and Zeidel had
just thrown Luis overboard.
``I can't tell you for sure if it was them, but I didn't find it
impossible to believe Magaly,'' he said. ``I woke up and sat there,
watching them talk near the motor and looking back at us. They had no
compassion.''
Reached by phone, Rolando only would say, ``This has affected me a
lot. A lot. I don't want to remember it. I don't want to recall that
time.''
Problems with the case
Federal prosecutors face daunting problems in keeping Orlando behind bars.
Among several issues facing government prosecutors is whether time
limits in the Cuban Adjustment Act should force them to turn him loose
before they can bring charges.
Orlando has not been charged with any crime. Technically, he has been
detained for entering the country illegally, even though in practice
the law holds that he should be set free and given citizenship within
a year unless charged with a specific crime or suspected of drug
trafficking, Joel Vera and other immigration lawyers say.
But the records and a source close to the investigation make clear
that the government is holding him well past time limits while trying
to gather enough evidence for a charge. By holding him for this
reason, authorities have broken with years of Adjustment Act policy,
several immigration attorneys said.
Because there are no diplomatic ties to Cuba, immigrants from there
can't deported, even if they have prior convictions.
``If this were happening in Florida, there would be an uproar among
the Cuban community,'' said George Rodriguez, a Cuban immigration
lawyer based in Dallas.
Sensitivity to upsetting the politics of South Florida's Cuban émigré
population might explain why Zeidel is still free. He lives in Florida
with relatives, and his arrest would certainly not go unnoticed,
immigration attorneys said. Zeidel has refused to be interviewed.
The government faces other problems, among them whether or not it has
proper jurisdiction to bring a case when it remains unclear where the
crime might have occurred.
Last September, the FBI appeared to drop out of the case because,
according to one of its own reports, the bureau ``has no jurisdiction
in the matter.'' But they are involved in the case again.
Federal prosecutors in Corpus Christi have openly questioned whether
they can proceed against Orlando, investigative records show.
Houston maritime law attorney Michael Bell said Cuba or even the
Cayman Islands might have jurisdiction over a maritime case but ``from
the U.S. standpoint, there's not a lot of contacts with the incident
that would give them claim to jurisdiction if it happened on the high
seas.''
