Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

by Michael Connelly

  “When you see them go into a restaurant and the chefs and the waitresses all walk out and stand around while the doors are locked for the meeting inside, you really get an idea of what is going on down here,” says Raabe.

  Little Nicky’s associations were not only with members of his own crew. The covert cops watched him meet in Fort Lauderdale with high-ranking representatives from many of the country’s major mobs—Colombo, Lucchese, Buffalino and so on.

  “The nature of intelligence work is to take raw information and hypothesize, come up with theories of what is happening,” says Raabe. “So we see Nicky meeting all these people. Business is obviously being discussed. We can’t say for sure what was happening, but we have a good idea.”

  And these meetings came with all the clichés of movies like The Godfather. There was the reverential treatment of Mafia leaders, the ceremonial kissing of cheeks and hands.

  “Sometimes it got to be funny,” Drago says. “We’d see the cars pull up with 10 or 15 guys getting out for a meeting and they’d be circling all over the front yard trying to make sure they kissed or hugged everybody.”

  JUST LIKE THE MOBSTERS, police don’t like offending their own. Law enforcement agencies are territorial, careful not to encroach on others’ turf without invitation. It is the axiom of parochialism that Chief Cochran of Fort Lauderdale speaks of.

  And that axiom flies in the face of MIU’s all-for-one, one-for-all concept of sharing intelligence among law enforcement agencies. After years of working cases, MIU has neither been joined by all the police agencies in Broward County nor has it replaced the organized crime or intelligence units of its member agencies. Instead, it continues to work with them and, as always, remains quietly in the background.

  “It would be my hope that MIU would one day be the organized crime investigative enterprise in this county,” says Cochran. But in the meantime, investigators in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and maybe even people like Nicky Scarfo, probably have a better understanding of what MIU is all about than the Broward citizens who help pay for it.

  “MIU is becoming a highly respected information bank on what these types of OC characters are doing down there,” says Coblantz of the New Jersey police. “Put it this way—on the Scarfo case, MIU has given us leads that we are still tracking down.”

  WHILE NICKY SCARFO was under the eye of MIU in Fort Lauderdale, two high-ranking members of his organization were in Philadelphia talking to the FBI and then to a grand jury. There were also 800 tapes of wiretaps. And from Fort Lauderdale came the MIU dossiers and indications that Scarfo was running the organization from Casablanca South. On Nov. 3, 1986, he was arrested while on a trip to New Jersey. A grand jury had indicted him and 17 associates for conspiracy and racketeering.

  A day later in Florida, the casino issue was defeated at the polls.

  Scarfo was released on bail and returned to Fort Lauderdale once more, but the grand jury wasn’t through. While he lay on the chaise longue behind Casablanca South, Scarfo’s empire was being quietly dismantled. He would face still another indictment.

  On Jan. 7 of this year, Little Nicky’s white Rolls pulled into Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and the gray-haired, well-tanned man was dropped off at a charter airline’s front gate. Scarfo was traveling light—no bodyguard.

  He went into the airport lounge for a drink before boarding. He didn’t know it then, but a couple of hours later he would land in New Jersey and the FBI and police would be waiting. Detective Drago had tipped them earlier that day after stopping Scarfo on his way to dinner. This would be the night that Scarfo would be jailed without bond for his second indictment.

  Over at the bar, two men sat and watched Scarfo until he walked to the boarding gate. They followed and watched while he went down the loading ramp.

  Maybe Nicky had a premonition. Maybe the back of his neck was burning. Whatever it was, something made him turn and look back as he got to the plane’s door. He saw a man standing at the other end of the ramp looking at him. It was a man Nicky had never seen before. Steve Raabe, detective from MIU, stepped out of character for that moment and smiled. Then he waved good-bye to Nicky Scarfo. A send-off from the Open Territory.

  CROSSING THE LINE

  LAPD FOREIGN PROSECUTION UNIT

  South of the border is no longer safe for criminals.

  LOS ANGELES TIMES

  December 13, 1987

  SEVEN YEARS AGO, the body of first-grader Lisa Ann Rosales was found dumped in a ditch near her home in Pacoima. She had been sexually molested and strangled.

  The case was not an easy one for the Los Angeles Police Department—it took a tip five years later for detectives to identify a suspect, and then they discovered that the man had fled to his native Mexico.

  In previous years, the case might have ended there, with police thwarted because the suspect was beyond the reach of U.S. laws. The problem, which had long frustrated American law enforcement officials, was that Mexico refuses to extradite its own citizens to the United States for trial, despite the existence of an extradition treaty between the two countries.

  But this time the case did not end. Detectives turned to a new squad in the LAPD, the foreign prosecution unit.

  Six months after the Los Angeles detectives decided that they knew who killed Lisa Ann Rosales, Mexican authorities were handed a complete file on Luis Raul Castro, translated into Spanish, and were even told where he could be found. They took the case from there.

  Today, Castro stands convicted in a Mexican federal court of murder. He is expected to be sentenced by the end of the year and could serve up to 40 years in a Mexican jail.

  “Before we had the foreign prosecution unit, people were literally getting away with murder,” said Lt. Keith Ross, supervisor of the unit. “The fact was we were not actively pursuing Mexican suspects that fled to Mexico. That has changed.”

  The Rosales case is one of many examples of how Los Angeles crime means Mexican prison time since the four-member unit began working with Mexican authorities in 1985. Since then, 48 Los Angeles cases—all but three involving murder—have been brought in Mexico. More than half the suspects have been captured, convicted and jailed there.

  ‘Is It Legal?’

  Scattered cases have been brought in other countries as well, including one in France.

  “The first thing people ask is ‘Can you do that? Is that legal?’” Ross said. “The answer is that it is a legitimate means of prosecution that is available to us.”

  But some legal observers question whether suspects should face Mexican justice for American crimes. They argue that Mexico’s justice system affords defendants few of the protections of the U.S. system—most notably, defendants do not have a chance to face their accusers; the testimony of the American witnesses is delivered solely through documents.

  “My first reaction is that it presents an enormous problem,” said Leon Goldin, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “We are talking about the LAPD, acting as an arm of our government, using court procedures in Mexico that wouldn’t pass muster here in a moment.”

  No Acquittals

  The record shows that the California law enforcement officials are almost certain to go home happy after bringing a case to Mexico. No case brought by the LAPD has yet to result in an acquittal.

  It is a great contrast to the situation Los Angeles police faced when they conducted a 1984 study that prompted creation of the foreign prosecution unit.

  In that study, according to Ross, police reviewed all outstanding murder warrants—cases in which a suspect had been identified, but no one arrested. Of 267 people being sought, about 200 had Latino surnames, he said.

  “That gave us the strong feeling that a large number of suspects were fleeing to Mexico and finding sanctuary,” he said. “There was no department-wide procedure for tracking, arresting and prosecuting them.”

  “There was a lot of frustration,” said Detective Arturo
Zorrilla, noting that the attitude of most officers was, “Let’s file the case away and hope [the suspect] comes back across.”

  Extradition Treaty

  In theory, prosecutors here could have sought extradition on any of the suspects confirmed as being in Mexico. The two countries have an extradition treaty that provides for Mexican citizens to be returned to the United States to face trial for serious crimes. But, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said, “It has not occurred, ever.”

  The refusal to extradite, officials said, is rooted in a firm belief in Mexican law that Mexican citizens who commit crimes outside the country should be prosecuted by Mexican authorities.

  U.S. law, on the other hand, provides that U.S. citizens who commit crimes in other countries should be subject to prosecution there. (About half a dozen American citizens have been extradited to Mexico in the last decade to face trial, according to the Justice Department.)

  On Books since 1928

  The different approaches are reflected in a provision of Mexico’s penal code that allows for the prosecution of foreign crimes. Although on the books since 1928, the provision was infrequently used until recently because other countries’ law enforcement agencies rarely brought cases to the attention of Mexican authorities.

  Before the Los Angeles foreign prosecution unit was formed in April 1985, the LAPD, like most U.S. police agencies, did not have formal procedures for cutting through the diplomatic red tape to pursue cases in Mexico. Few detectives even knew it was possible.

  Today, a U.S. Justice Department international law specialist said, the Los Angeles unit is in “the forefront of using this tactic.”

  Operating under the fugitive division headed by Ross, the foreign prosecution unit is led by two homicide squad veterans, Detectives Zorrilla and Gilberto Moya.

  Both see their jobs as equal parts detective work and diplomacy.

  The Murder Book

  To file cases in Mexico, the unit, whose members are bilingual, compiles a written record of the case in Spanish. Affidavits, witness statements, photographs and descriptions of evidence are put into a report they call the “murder book.”

  This consolidation and translation is often the longest part of the procedure, usually lasting several weeks. The Lisa Ann Rosales case filled four thick files.

  The district attorney’s office must then formally relinquish jurisdiction of a case, an action that is not taken lightly. Prosecutors acknowledge that because of the U.S. Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy, if they seek trial of a case in Mexico and do not get a guilty verdict, any attempt to refile the charges in the United States would be quickly challenged.

  Norman Shapiro, a deputy district attorney who handles the foreign cases, said the decision depends mainly on the prospects for prosecution in the United States and a certainty that the suspect will not return from Mexico.

  ‘We Have Been Satisfied’

  “We have to have solid information that the suspect is down there,” Shapiro said. “When we have that, we have been quite willing to let Mexico prosecute. We have been satisfied with the results.”

  Of the 26 Los Angeles cases that have made it through the Mexican justice system, according to the foreign prosecution unit, all have resulted in convictions. And although Mexico does not have the death penalty, officers familiar with U.S. cases tried there said prison sentences seem to be slightly longer. Because of differences in laws, making exact comparisons is impossible.

  Before the case travels to Mexico, the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles must certify the authenticity of the investigative documents. In practice, this usually means confirming that a crime was committed and that the investigating officers are legitimate.

  Then, once officers have determined through informants and other detective work where a suspect is in Mexico, the unit moves.

  Checked Weapons at Border

  This year, the detectives have checked their weapons at the border and crossed into Mexico an average of twice a month.

  Occasionally they travel with Mexican police to observe the arrests, but most often they wait at police stations or hotels until a suspect is in custody or local police determine that he or she cannot be found. Moya said the officers go to Mexico to streamline the filing process, strengthen relations with authorities there and be available to offer additional case details or even question suspects themselves.

  The officers make no secret of the value of the social side of the visits.

  “Diplomacy and image are important,” Moya said. “You make concessions, courtesies to their protocol. You pay your respects. We don’t want to meddle in the internal workings of the law enforcement of another country. We work within their customs.”

  Protocol Observed

  On a recent trip to Mexicali to present evidence in connection with an East Los Angeles murder, Moya and José Herrera, the case detective, did not go directly to the prosecutor who would handle the case.

  They first went to see the director of the state police, whose men had caught the suspect a week earlier based on leads Moya and Herrera had provided. Then there were several meetings with Mexican detectives and police administrators to shake hands and pay respects.

  The Los Angeles officers offered the Mexicans small gifts of basic equipment not provided by their own department: flashlights, handcuffs, notepads, even bullets. The Californians had purchased the items in the United States with their own money.

  When the detectives finally got to the office of Angel Saad, attorney general of the state of Baja, their stay in Mexico was nearly over. Saad looked over the file, grimaced at photographs of the victim’s body and asked detailed questions about the legal and diplomatic procedures they had followed.

  After a 45-minute meeting, Saad finally placed the “murder book” in the hands of one of his prosecutors.

  Notified of Outcome

  In a year or so, after the process of trial and appeal is completed, Mexican authorities will officially notify Los Angeles police of the outcome.

  American law enforcement officials acknowledge that procedural differences make it easier to get convictions in Mexico than in the United States.

  Once a case is accepted for prosecution in Mexico, a defendant is assumed to be guilty and then has to prove his innocence. There is no bail allowed in murder cases, no jury trials and guidelines on the admissibility of evidence are less stringent.

  LAPD foreign prosecution unit officers said they know of no instance in which a witness in a Los Angeles murder case, detectives included, went to Mexico to testify. Instead, Mexican prosecutors rely upon the witness accounts and affidavits supplied by police.

  Attorneys Disturbed

  That the defendants thus are denied the opportunity to face their accusers, a cornerstone of the U.S. justice system, is disturbing to some attorneys.

  “No one says a criminal should go unpunished,” said Jaime Cervantes, a former president of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. in Los Angeles. “But this country has a long-developed concept of how someone is proven guilty of a crime and there is something fundamentally unfair about going to another country to convict and punish them.”

  Peter Shey, chairman of the international law committee of the local National Lawyers Guild, also questioned the Mexican prosecutions.

  “Basic notions of fundamental fairness are either nonexistent or rarely employed in their justice system,” Shey said. “If people are required to stand trial in Mexico for crimes in the United States, they would be placed at a significant disadvantage.”

  ‘A Jaundiced Eye’

  Lt. Ross, the unit’s supervisor, said he believes that such concerns are unfounded.

  “I think a lot of people have tended to view Mexican justice with a jaundiced eye,” he said. “But that is an American perception and it is a misconception. Mexico has a very legitimate legal system that operates very well.”

  Ross and his fellow officers contend that a murder suspect who flees to avoid prosecutio
n in Los Angeles is accepting the justice system of the country he runs to.

  “You have to accept the risks that you have incurred by fleeing,” Moya said.

  Much like the LAPD unit, the California attorney general’s office has developed specialists in bringing cases to Mexico. The state’s chief expert is Ruben R. Landa, a special agent with the attorney general’s office in San Diego, who took his department’s first murder case to Mexico in 1980.

  70 Murder Cases Brought

  Since then, Landa has helped various California police departments bring 70 murder cases to Mexico, 14 so far in 1987, more than in any previous year. About 20 of the cases have worked their way through Mexican courts, he said, all resulting in convictions, although one of those was thrown out on appeal.

  “Now it’s sort of snowballing,” he said. “More and more detectives are finding out that this is a way to go with their cases.”

  One benefit for U.S. authorities is financial. Mexico pays for prosecuting the cases, and police officials estimate that it costs American taxpayers less than $1,000 in travel and other expenses to bring a case there, an amount that pales in comparison to the costs of jailing, prosecuting and defending a murder suspect in Los Angeles.

  “You are probably talking about saving thousands of dollars on every case,” Ross said.

  ‘Two-Way Street’

  But Angel Saad, the Baja attorney general, said the arrangement does not just help the U.S. agencies.

  “It is a two-way street with positive results for both countries,” he said. “For Mexico, it signifies its willingness to punish its citizens that commit crimes in foreign countries.”