Case Not Closed

Framing a trio for murder "Priests killers captured," proclaimed the front page headline in the Guatemala City daily Diario Impacto on Aug. 4. That was fast work. According to stories that appeared in all Guatemala's major newspapers, the national police had taken only seven days to solve the murder of Father Stanley Rother, 46, the red-bearded Oklahoma-born missionary who was found dead on the floor of his rectory last month in the mountain village of Santiago Atitlan. Three Indians from the area were arrested and charged with the killing, which authorities said was committed during a burglary.

For Guatemalan President Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, the arrests were timely and convenient. Father Rother's murder, widely believed to be the work of a pro-government rightist hit squad, had been a major embarrassment for Lucas Garcia's regime. The killing occurred just as the Reagan Administration was considering a resumption of the military aid that was cut off during the Carter years because of Guatemala's deplorable human rights record. The prompt arrests, however, seemed to vindicate the government's system of justice and disprove charges that its security forces may have been involved in the killing. Government officials hoped the arrests would impress newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Frederic Chapin, who is expected to arrive in the country at the end of this month.

TIME has learned, though, that the arrests were a frame-up to placate the U.S. According to "official sources" cited by Guatemalan newspapers, the police were led to the killers' trail largely by the testimony of one witness: Sister Ana Maria Gonzales Arias, a Mexican nun working as a missionary in Santiago Atitlan. Sister Gonzales was said to have told officials that she saw "various armed men" wearing hoods enter the church, where they were discovered by Father Rother apparently while they were "seeking to rob the church's money."

In reality, Sister Gonzales saw nothing. She was asleep in a nearby convent when the killing took place. There were only two eyewitnesses. One was Francisco Bocel Cumes, 18, a gardener, who was forced at gunpoint to lead the killers to Father Rother's sleeping quarters. The other was an American nurse named Bertha Sanchez, who was sleeping in a guest room in the rectory the night of the murder.

After the fatal shots were fired, Bocel Cumes ran to awaken Sister Gonzales and the other nuns. They all returned to Father Rother's sleeping quarters, where they found him lying in a pool of blood.

The next morning Guatemalan police interrogated Sanchez, Bocel Cumes and Sister Gonzales. A key point of their testimony: the killers were ladinos (men of mixed Indian and Spanish blood), considerably taller than the average full-blooded Indian, who spoke fluent Spanish. All of the arrested men are Indians who speak limited, heavily accented Spanish. Two of those arrested, Farmers Esteban Coche Leanda, 19, and Juna Quiju Caj, 25, actually were friends of Father Rother's. The third, Miguel Angel Mendoza Tecun, 32, is a well-known local merchant.

The government is now seeking the gardener as a suspect in the case, but he has gone into hiding. Two other principal witnesses have fled the country, fearing government reprisals because they had repudiated testimony about the crime. Nurse Sanchez, who is in the U.S., will not discuss the incident. Sister Gonzales has returned to Mexico, where Carmelite officials said that the Guatemalan authorities were "using her name to make false statements about how the killing had occurred."

Rother's family and friends in Oklahoma are convinced that he was not shot by the Indians. Says Archbishop Charles A. Salatka of Oklahoma City: "From what we are able to learn from our reliable ecclesiastical and other sources, I don't think that's the way it happened. Knowing Father Rother the way I do, I just don't think he would put his life on the line to prevent a robbery." Adds the slain priest's father, Franz: "They had to force their way into his bedroom to get him. If it was a simple robbery, he would not have tried to stop them." Says a foreign diplomat in Guatemala: "Nobody I know believes the government's story."

At week's end the government of General Lucas Garcia refused to comment directly on the arrests or any other aspect of the case. Pressed for a statement, a spokesman for the presidential palace would say only, "There is violence everywhere in Guatemala."

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