Panic Among the Continentals

The travel brochures describe the Virgin Islands as an "unspoiled paradise."

If they once were, they are no longer.

The tourists still flock in--some 1,300,000 a year--to swim at Pelican Cove beach and go shopping at Spar-key's, Maison Charles or the Queen's Quarter Boutique. But among the white American "continentals" who make up perhaps a quarter of the three islands' 95,000 year-round residents, there is such fear of robbery and assault that many have armed themselves with guns and talk of fleeing to the mainland.

Last week one outbreak of violence came to a stormy conclusion. A jury of one white and eleven blacks (three of whom later said they had been subjected to official pressure) found five young blacks guilty of murder in the shooting of eight people--four tourists from Miami and four islanders--during a $750 robbery at the lavish Fountain Valley golf course (TIME, Sept. 18). As Judge Warren H. Young imposed eight consecutive life terms on each handcuffed defendant, the convicted men screamed obscenities, spat on the floor, struck out at the federal marshals who stood guard.

Shouted Defendant Rafael Joseph, who was last to be sentenced: "The war has just begun!"

Later in the week another murder trial began in that same courtroom. Seven blacks stood accused of shooting two white patrons to death at the Brauhaus restaurant in Christiansted two months after the Fountain Valley slayings.

All in all, the rash of murders on the largest island, St. Croix, totals 16 in the past eleven months, which in a population of 50,000 is a homicide rate higher than that of New York City. There were five victims, all white, in the last month alone. The most recent was Stanley Radulovic, 44, an island artist, who was shotgunned to death in a parking lot of the beach club he managed near Frederiksted. The previous night, a hotel reservations clerk in Christiansted, Laura Hardy, 52, and her mother, Elizabeth Hardy, 74, were beaten and strangled in their home. Earlier, in the same town, a man was shot to death on his front lawn, and a woman strangled in her office. (A 23-year-old black was arrested last week for the three women's deaths.) The St. Croix Avis warned against "a panic situation where no one will venture outside of his home after dark."

Until recently, island government officials -- especially those charged with promoting tourism -- insisted that rac ism was not involved in the crimes. Now even they admit that antiwhite resentment is partly to blame, though Governor Melvin H. Evans, himself black, protested last week that it had been "grossly, grossly, grossly exaggerated."

Much of the discontent originates with the natives' fear that they are be ing cut out of the islands' economy, which has been hit by both the main land recession and the climate of fear it self. Tourism and mainland investments have declined. Unemployment averages about 4.8%, but is far higher among young native blacks. Moreover, many lower-paying jobs are held by "aliens," nonwhites from other Caribbean islands. Declares Mario N. de Chabert, one of the defense attorneys in the Fountain Valley trial: "The continental is looked upon as a stranger. His children go to private schools, he hires aliens who are willing to accept poor wages and worse working conditions."

Many young blacks, especially those who are veterans of Viet Nam, have a particularly emotional hatred of whites.

In reaction to the increased violence, some whites urged that vigilante groups be formed--a suggestion the authorities rejected. Instead, Governor Evans called for help from U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson. About a dozen FBI lab technicians flew in from the mainland, along with some 25 U.S.

marshals who previously served at Wounded Knee, S. Dak., plus three police tracking dogs from Puerto Rico. In an unusual move, Evans warned tourists against walking on the streets at night and said that he was considering declaring martial law. Still, even many whites recognized that, as the Daily News of nearby St. Thomas editorialized: "All the police in the world will be of little use until the unpleasant truths of racial animosity are accepted and steps taken ... to correct them."

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