Numerous atrocities were committed by both sides.
This was the situation that William Stewart was sent into when he was assassinated in 1979.
William Stewart
William Stewart, known as Bill professionally and in his bylines, was born in West Virginia in 1941 to a middle class family that nurtured his interests from an early age, which included journalism and world events. Although William dreamed of being a reporter from an early age, he never imagined that his work would lead to his death and that his death would be a catalyst in the collapse of a despotic regime.
Stewart did well in high school and then moved on to Ohio State University in 1963, where he earned a degree in journalism. In the 1970s, Stewart’s first big job was with CBS television affiliate WCCO in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was then hired by ABC news as a foreign correspondent, where he quickly earned a reputation as a solid reporter who was willing to travel to hot spots around the world in order to get scoops.
Stewart’s growing reputation earned him coveted yet dangerous assignments around the world, such as covering the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. The results of the Islamic Revolution were enough to frighten many journalists away from covering volatile spots around the world, but the experience only seemed to invigorate Stewart, who looked for his next assignment.
He found it in the war zone of 1979 Nicaragua.
Covering the Nicaraguan Revolution
When Bill Stewart was sent to cover the revolution in Nicaragua, he focused most of his reports on the growing leftist insurgency that was led by the Sandinistas. Stewart was not naïve; he knew that the situation in Nicaragua was becoming increasingly turbulent and the Somoza regime was growing more desperate to hold onto power.
Because of this, Stewart made sure to take precautions.
He always traveled with a Spanish translator, twenty-six-year-old Juan Espinosa, and he made sure to always let belligerents from both sides of the war know that he was a member of the foreign press corps.
Despite his precautions, Stewart could not avoid his death on the streets of Managua.
June 20, 1979, was a hot day in the slums of Managua. Stewart and Espinoza were traveling through the slums of the city in a van clearly marked “PRESS”, which had in the past kept them safe from violence from either side. Stewart was chasing down some leads about leftist insurgency leaders when they arrived at a road block that was erected by members of the Nicaraguan National Guard.
The Nicaraguan National Guard was essentially the paramilitary wing of the Somoza regime. The members of the National Guard were loyal to the Somozas and vehemently anti-communist. Although the National Guard was an official government organization, its members often formed secret death squads and carried out clandestine extra-judicial killings of their enemies. The National Guard battled the Sandinistas primarily in urban settings with the erection of road blocks throughout Managua being one of their common tactics to capture, arrest, and kill Sandinistas or those sympathetic to the communist group.
The Nicaraguan National Guard also interacted frequently with the foreign press corps with few incidents. The Somoza regime had an understanding with the press and tried to manipulate it according to its goals. The Somoza’s may have been responsible for many atrocities, but they rarely sent their death squads to kill members of the media.
When Stewart and Espinoza were stopped by the National Guard members, they thought that it was just another routine stop and they would soon be on their way. In fact, other members of the international press corps were also at the barricade filming the event. To their surprise, they were ordered out of the van and separated. Espinoza was shot and killed away from the camera while Stewart protested and showed his press credentials.
Stewart was then ordered to kneel and was shot behind the ear, killing him instantly. To add insult to injury, the shooter then kicked Stewart’s body.
The driver of Stewart’s van, Pablo Tiffer Lopez, would later testify that the shooter said, “I’m sure he’s no journalist. He’s a dog.”
But instead of being just another death squad murder, the assassination of Bill Stewart became headline news around the world and helped to topple the already teetering Somoza regime.
A Reporter Brings Down a Dictatorship
In an era before the internet, the film footage of Bill Stewart’s assassination was broadcast into the homes of millions of people around the world on broadcast news. In the United States, the major networks showed the entire, uncensored killing to horrified Americans from coast to coast.
The video of Stewart’s killing went viral long before YouTube was even a thought in anyone’s mind.
The immediate impacts of the assassination were dreadful for the Somoza regime, which never prosecuted anyone involved with the killings. The government only lasted about another month and President Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled the country in July and was assassinated just over one year later by a Sandinista hit team in Paraguay.
Many historians attribute the fall of the Somoza regime to Stewart’s assassination. After the shocking film of his murder was broadcast on television, American support for the Somoza regime plummeted and President Jimmy Carter refused to give Somoza political asylum in the United States.
Bill Stewart’s assassination was clearly a case where one man changed the course of history. Unfortunately for Bill Stewart, the young reporter had to die in the process.
Chapter 7: The Cold Case Murder of Ralph Smith
Cab drivers are some of the most underappreciated workers in the world. Cab drivers bring us to destinations, usually without questions and in return they are often harassed, are the butt of jokes, and are sometimes the victims of crime. Many cabbies pay for their own cars and gas and the ones who drive company cars often have to pay the company a certain amount before they can collect any money from the fares.
True, some cabbies make fairly good money, but they have to deal with rude, ungrateful customers and they often risk traffic tickets in their quest to get their customers to their destinations on time.
Too many tickets can cost a cabbie his/her license and with it, his/her livelihood.
Then there is the danger of being a cab driver.
Cab drivers are often the victims of robberies in many American cities and even in cabs that have protective Plexiglas that separates the driver from the passengers, assaults, robberies, and even murders can occur.
Most Americans have heard or read news reports of a cabbie being robbed or even murdered, but few have stopped to consider truly how dangerous and underappreciated the occupation is.
Ralph Smith was one such cabbie who met an unfortunate end on the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Murder of Ralph Smith
The evening of October 22, 1971, began like any other in the home of fifty-one-year-old Ralph Smith. He kissed his wife and three children goodbye and drove off in his cab to work for the night.
According to his family, Ralph Smith always took precautions and was not known to take chances while working. He carried a pistol with him at all times when he was working and was considered a pretty good judge of character. He avoided picking up fares that looked too drunk or drugged out and he was always cautious in high crime neighborhoods.
But no matter how careful a person can be, one can never avoid every pitfall.
When Ralph did not return home from work early the next morning, his wife was not immediately worried. She thought that he probably had a good night and picked up some extra fares.
Then she received the call from the Raleigh Police Department. Ralph had been shot and killed.
Ralph’s body was found lying on the front seat of the cab with his unused pistol at his side and twenty-nine dollars in his wallet. The police speculated that it was a robbery gone wrong and that Ralph had pulled his gun after the robber had pulled his. Unfortunately, Ralph was slower on the draw.
The Smith family was devastated by the news.
“I was a torn wrec
k,” said Ralph’s daughter, Dorothy Smith. “I couldn’t sleep. Most nights, all I could see was my daddy.”
Smith’s murder immediately garnered a significant amount of media attention for a number of reasons. The killing took place just south of Raleigh’s downtown, within a few blocks of the state capitol and the downtown entertainment district.
Smith’s family and fellow cabbies took advantage of the early media attention by appealing to the public for anyone with information to come forward and a reward was offered.
Although Raleigh, like most big American cities, had its share of crime in the early 1970s, the murder of a cab driver made the case a particularly high profile crime and one that the police dedicated special attention toward solving. A number of police officers who were on patrol heard the fatal shots so they made it their personal mission to catch Smith’s killer.
But despite the extra media and police attention that was given to Smith’s murder, few leads came in and the case quickly went cold.
The Case Goes Cold
When a murder case becomes cold, it is usually not because the police give up. In the case of the Ralph’s Smith’s murder, it was simply that there were few leads. No one witnessed the actual murder and there was little forensic evidence available. The investigation remained open, but the detectives who originally worked on the case progressed through the ranks of the police department and most of them eventually retired.
For the family of a cold case murder victim, it is not so easy to move on.
Ralph Smith’s family, though, knew that he would want them to live their lives. The Smith family moved on, but never forgot. Smith’s children grew up and started their own families. Ironically, his son even worked as a cabbie for a while.
But the memory of the Smith family patriarch was never far from the minds of the family, even those who never knew him.
“When we’ve had family reunions, the other sisters and brothers always remembered him. His picture’s up on the shelf,” said Ralph Smith’s granddaughter, Monica Taylor. “It’s been 40 years. It’s been a long time.”
Yes, indeed, it was a long time for the Smith family to get justice for Ralph’s murder, but eventually their patience would pay off.
Sinatra Dunn
While Ralph Smith was being a responsible, hardworking citizen, a young man on the other side of Raleigh was spending his time committing crimes and doing drugs. In 1971, Sinatra Dunn was a conman and petty criminal with many problems.
Although he was not known on the streets to be a particularly violent individual, Dunn ran with a rough crowd and committed an array of crimes in order to fuel his drug addiction. When he was not high on cocaine or heroin, Dunn spent his time casing out places to rob and people to rip off. He eventually served a year in prison for larceny during the mid-1970s.
Dunn also had a difficult time maintaining relationships with women and had a history of domestic violence.
Clearly Sinatra Dunn was a man with many demons.
But sometimes people with deep personal problems just need someone who will listen, or sometimes they just need to be “burned out” from their lifestyle. By the mid-1980s, Sinatra Dunn was burned out from a life of crime and drug use and he met someone who would listen.
Seeing that his life was a wreck, Dunn began attending church and substance abuse recovery groups in order to stop the vicious cycle that he was in and find some value to what was left of his life. During this time, he met a kind woman named Sherdenia Thompson who saw something in the troubled Dunn that no one else had ever seen.
She saw the potential for a good person.
Thompson and Dunn met while she was doing ministry work to recovering drug addicts and criminals and almost immediately the two developed a deep bond. Dunn quit using drugs and was no longer involved in criminal activity. Since he had a criminal record, finding a decent paying job was difficult for Dunn, but with the support of Thompson he was able to persevere.
One of his many jobs was as a cab driver.
Dunn and Thompson married in 1986 and everything seemed to be going well for the couple. After Thompson’s elderly mother could longer care for herself, the couple moved her into their home to give her round-the-clock care. Dunn would later use that caretaking experience to care for Sheredina when she had a stroke in 2008.
Dunn had clearly turned his life around with the help of Thompson. He had become an honest, productive citizen who shared everything with the woman he loved.
But he still had one dark secret.
The Arrest and Trial of Sinatra Dunn
As it turns out, Sinatra Dunn was a suspect in the murder of Ralph Smith almost from the beginning. In 1971, Dunn was at the height of his criminal activity and drug use and was fairly well-known to the Raleigh Police Department.
He was also an accomplished domestic abuser.
Not long after the Ralph Smith murder, Dunn gave his wife at the time a brutal beating that resulted in her giving a statement to the Raleigh Police.
Dunn’s wife’s statement, though, was not about domestic abuse—it concerned murder!
The woman told police that shortly after the Ralph Smith murder, Dunn had confessed the crime to her. Since angry spouses often file false reports on their partners, the Raleigh Police conducted a full background check on Dunn before they took the investigation any further. The police knew Dunn as a street criminal and drug user and although most of his known acts of violence were directed toward women, he was known to pull stickups among other crimes.
The Raleigh Police tracked Dunn down and questioned him concerning the Ralph Smith murder. Dunn unequivocally denied any involvement and said that his wife just made up the story because she was mad at him.
Although Dunn’s wife’s statement may have been admissible in court, alone it was not enough to make an arrest, never mind get a conviction. The Raleigh Police were never able to collect any physical evidence that tied Dunn to the murder, so they needed him to confess, which he was not willing to do in the 1970s. Also, the Raleigh Police eventually lost track of Dunn’s wife, who they believed would have been an unreliable witness if the case ever went to trial.
Despite the lack of evidence, the Raleigh Police Department never gave up trying to catch Ralph Smith’s killer.
In the early 2000s, the Raleigh Police Department, like many police departments across the United States, opened a cold case squad in order to clear the backlog of cold case murders they had. Advances in forensic science, such as the AFIS and CODIS databases, have helped solve many cold cases, but those advances did little to help detectives solve the Ralph Smith murder.
Instead, Raleigh detectives would appeal to their primary suspect’s conscious.
Detectives tracked down their primary suspect, Sinatra Dunn, in July 2014. The detectives expected Dunn to repeat much of what he told other investigators in the early 1970s, but instead he gave them a full confession.
Dunn said that on the night of the murder, Smith picked him up as a passenger, but that he never planned to pay the father of three. When he tried to leave Smith’s cab without paying, the angry cabbie grabbed ahold of him and a struggle ensued. Dunn pulled his pistol out, shot Smith, and then fled from the scene.
Sinatra Dunn was charged with Ralph Smith’s murder, to which he pled guilty in late 2014 and received a twelve year sentence. Unlike many criminal defendants who face similar charges, Dunn appeared relaxed and peaceful in the courtroom.
A big weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
The joy that the Smith family felt after they learned that Ralph’s killer had been caught was quickly tempered when they learned the details of Sinatra Dunn’s road to redemption. They could not help but feel a certain level of sympathy for Dunn, even though he took the life of their loved one.
Ralph Smith’s wife, Effie, lived to see her husband’s killer arrested and sent to prison before she passed away on May 18, 2016, at the age of ninety-seven. Effie showed poise, empathy, and a certain amoun
t of wisdom when asked about her husband’s killer.
“I feel sorry for this family, and I don’t hate him, either,” said Effie. “You’re not supposed to hate for what he did. But what he did, he’s got to pay for it, too, not me.”
Perhaps when Dunn is released from prison he will be able to pass along some of Effie’s empathy.
Chapter 8: The Disappearance and Murder of Chandra Levy
If you were to turn on a television or read a newspaper in the United States between May and early September of 2001, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to avoid hearing about the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
The young intern disappeared from her Washington, D.C., apartment without a trace. The case bothered people because she was seemingly innocent and was therefore possibly the victim of a random, violent crime.
As the case dragged on, it became lurid. There was evidence that the young intern may have been sexually involved with a congressman and many wondered if perhaps the sleazy congressman may have been involved in her disappearance.
Then the world changed.
The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks not only changed the course of history, but dominated the American news cycle for several weeks, which meant that the Chandra Levy case was covered much less and therefore began to recede from the minds of much of the public.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 5