Notes on a Crime

From FBI files last week came new evidence powerfully supporting the hypothesis that Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo engineered the international kidnaping of Basque Scholar Jesus de Galindez from the heart of Manhattan on March 12, 1956. Released were papers of Pilot Gerald Murphy, the onetime Eagle Scout from Eugene, Ore. who flew the kidnap plane and later vanished in the Dominican Republic. Items:

P: Murphy's log of the flight to Monte Cristi, an isolated airstrip on the north coast of the Dominican Republic.

P: Murphy's preliminary flight chart.

P: Notes in Murphy's writing mentioning Galindez, Arturo Espaillat, former Dominican consul general in New York, and U.S. Private Detectives John Frank and Horace Schmahl.

The FBI has since linked Espaillat, Frank and Schmahl to each other and to Murphy. Detective Frank has been sentenced to eight months to two years in prison for failing to register as a Dominican agent (he has appealed). Schmahl took the Fifth Amendment before a federal grand jury. Trujillo has refused to waive Espaillat's diplomatic immunity for questioning by the FBI. Instead, Trujillo paid at least $100,000 for an investigation by Manhattan Lawyer Morris Ernst, once famed for defending noble causes, who last month found "not a scintilla of evidence" connecting Murphy and Galindez.

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