The General & the Blonde

As buyer of U.S. warplanes and supplies for Nationalist China, Lieut. General P. T. Mow (who likes to be called Pete) failed to account for $19 million in funds credited to his name in U.S. banks. Early this year, when his government sued in a Washington, D.C. federal court for an accounting and the return of any unspent money, Mow took a powder (TIME, March 10). His lawyer admitted that Mow had gone across the border to Mexico.

In palmy Cuernavaca, resort town about 35 miles south of Mexico City, Mow bought a big house and hired four servants. A fortnight ago he rode in his Cadillac to Cuernavaca's cobbled shopping section to buy a straw hat. As he stepped out of the car door, five men grabbed him, flicked out police badges, whisked him back to his house. There they also arrested a slim, trim, two-toned blonde named Agnes Kelly, 31, who became Mow's secretary after giving up nightclub appearances and modeling in New York. While Mow fumed, the gumshoes searched his house, snatched his papers. Then, without preferring formal charges, they bundled the greying general and the blonde up to Mexico City and locked them for three days in a 12-by-12-foot detention office, where they slept on a couple of wooden desks.

Mow was arrested because the Chinese embassy in Mexico had demanded his extradition to Formosa on charges of embezzling at least $5,000,000. It was reported that Mow had a sizable part of the missing millions in Mexico. His local attorney said that Mow would hand the money over to the United Nations or the Mexican government if he could be sure it would be returned to the Chinese people "instead of the pockets of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek." Once Mow was in custody, however, Attorney General Luis Felipe Canudas decided that Mexico had a couple of scores to settle first with the high-living general: illegal entry, and use of stolen funds to buy Mexican property. Added Canudas: "We are holding Agnes Kelly, his secretary--we have to have a polite name for her--as an accomplice in spending the stolen money." Also held: Oliver Kisich, 53, balding San Francisco "business consultant," who said he had been hired by Mow's U.S. attorney "to help the general out in Mexico."

At week's end Secretary Kelly was freed for lack of evidence tying her to the charges against Mow. Moved to the federal penitentiary, Mow will have to await the government's next move.

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