Assassin: The Terrifying True Story Of An International Hitman

by Robbins, Christopher

  Evertsz had discovered through his informers that a 16-year-old girl had been the mistress of one of the men involved in the plot. ‘I wasn’t quite sure. As the result of it we got the girl and we killed her.’ I wanted to know exactly how the murder of the girl had happened but it was clear that Evertsz did not attribute much importance to it. He was impatient to continue, completely uninterested in going into the details of such a minor killing.

  —But how did you kill her?

  ‘We put a bullet in her.’

  —Did you do it?

  ‘Yeah.’

  —What was she like?

  ‘Beautiful.’

  —What did you feel about it?

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  —You just went along and killed her?

  ‘That was my orders.’

  And with an awful gentleness that made the murder sound even sadder and more unnecessary he added, ‘I didn’t give her time to think about it. I said, “Look honey, I want to ask you a couple of questions” and . . .’ Evertsz snapped his fingers.

  He passed on to more important things - the shooting down of one of Trujillo’s assassins. ‘I was there when they got one of the guys. We had an alarm and when we got there, there were three other cars already arrived - three agents, two army lieutenants, myself and my man. We all started shooting right away and we killed the guy. He was walking, presumably to pick up a car, and we got the guy right there in the street. He didn’t want to give himself up and he started shooting.

  ‘After the assassination Trujillo’s wife wanted to kill the whole population,’ Evertsz laughed. ‘She ordered poison to be put into the water deposits of the city. She wanted to kill everybody - every fucking body! She was crazy with grief.’ Even Ramfis, who had stepped into his father’s shoes, baulked at the idea.

  Ramfis’s control of the country was shaky and he was unable to hold his position. He soon decided to quit and on the night before his departure he personally shot the three assassins who had been captured. His revenge was extreme. He started shooting them in the legs and riddled them with bullets. One body had more than seventy shots in it.

  With the departure of Ramfis the tables were turned on the Trujillo men and they became the hunted. ‘Things became a little bit rough,’ Evertsz said. ‘Once in a while we got a crowd against us - “Hey, that’s a Trujillo man!” And we had to pull our guns sometimes, right there in the street. We were always on the ready. I used to sit with a sub machine gun on the passenger seat and my pistol drawn. Sometimes I would scare off some people - shoot at them and they would stop it. A whole group would come with big sticks, chains. The anarchists and communists had worked on them - you know how it is. The mob - you can’t control the mob. You use the mob, you use the people - they don’t know what they want or what they don’t. You just use them.’

  The country was then taken over by a State Council. The military had decided to hold elections to ease tension. By a strange coincidence the two surviving assassins, General Imbert Barreras and General Luis Amiama Tio, were in charge. They disbanded the Km9. ‘We burnt everything. We destroyed the records of the Trujillo Youth because Trujillo was no more. Then I’m without a job - just having a good time.’

  Evertsz helped to run Molina’s farm again. ‘I went to see Amiama Tio after a while and said I wanted to go back in the Air Force as a lieutenant. He asked me why I was going to him when before I was trying to kill him. I said, “Well, you know how it is.” He said, “Well, sonny boy, I love your father - I know how it is”.’

  Evertsz was assigned to Rafael Ellis Sanchez, who was in charge of security, as his personal aide. Previously Sanchez had been one of Trujillo’s political prisoners and had his nails pulled out. Evertsz and Sanchez got along well.

  Evertsz worked as Sanchez’s personal bodyguard for about six months. ‘He soon got tired of me. He was a little communist and he started to hire communist agents and then he started to hire Dominicans as secret agents from the streets! Guys without any preparation at all . . . just guys from the streets! One day I went to get paid and there was a big mob of agents - about seven agents and ten or twenty more guys. They said, “Hey, there’s Carlos - he’s the one who’s doing this.” I ran up the stairs to Sanchez and I said, “Look I’m going to have to kill several agents of yours so I might as well leave.” He said, “Yeah, go to the back, pick up the car and leave.” The following day I took off.’

  Four

  Evertsz went to the States. In New York he spent the money he had and then worked in a factory for three days. ‘Then I said - this isn’t for me.’

  Times were lean but Evertsz contented himself with the thought that at least he was not in gaol, along with many of the other Trujillo men. He worked in supermarkets first as a delivery boy at the Pioneer (now defunct) on Broadway at West 163rd Street and then as the manager of a Royal Farms supermarket. He had married a German girl called Rosemary and had two children by her, a boy and a girl. It was to be the first of four marriages (although there have been no divorces).

  He was fast becoming an honest tradesman. In 1965 he bought a grocery store on West 29th Street in Brooklyn, Coney Island. By this time he had married an Irish girl called Shirley and they had a little boy. The store went well and he began to make a little money.

  In March 1966 he was contacted by a Mr Jim, an agreeable person, Evertsz said, with a straightforward way of speaking. He asked Evertsz what he thought his position would be if he returned to the Dominican Republic. Evertsz said that he was not thinking of returning as he was doing well.

  ‘I told him to level with me and he said he wanted me to go back and work for the CIA. He asked me if I thought I could work for the Dominican intelligence again. I told him I didn’t know, but I thought it would be pretty easy as by that time the men at the top were old friends of mine from the Military Academy, guys I knew since we were kids. He said he wanted me there in May and told me to think about it.’

  Evertsz decided to go and saw Mr Jim again in May. He remembers staying the night in the International Hotel at the airport before boarding the midnight plane to Puerto Rico. The idea was for him to relax and make it look as if he was on vacation before returning home.

  He stayed in Puerto Rico until 14th May and then flew to Santo Domingo. It was his birthday but he did not celebrate. ‘I’m not sentimental at all,’ he explains, ‘that’s not my line.’

  He did nothing for a month and then he contacted Col. Jorge Antonio Vanderas, chief of a section of the national police. ‘He was a joker, always had a smile - he was a small, nice man. He said to me right away, “I hear you’re working for the CIA” - just like that. I said no, but right away he had the hint. I asked for work and he asked me why I didn’t apply to the Air Force where my friends were. I told him that I always wanted to be a good cop.’

  Antonio was organizing a group of ‘Nice clean-cut boys’ to work as undercover agents and agreed to use him. The communists had been active and the agents’ job was to be the usual one of locating political enemies. ‘At the time there were continuous assassinations and bomb attempts - there was a lot of work to be done. I worked for him for about three months - heavy, heavy work. Then he put me on plainclothes night patrol in a car with a police sergeant called Tito. During this time I did a little bit of shooting at the university and used a few grenades and bombs to create an anarchic situation to blame on the communists.

  ‘The CIA eventually contacted me. It was a Mr Anthony Ruiz from the U.S. Embassy. He was supposed to be some technical aide to the underdeveloped countries but was head of the CIA in the Dominican Republic. As far as I know he still is. He told me that things were under control in the Republic and that our intelligence was doing a good job. But they were worried that there might be a coup from the top officers and secret service men, so they asked me to find out the feelings of the top officers and bright secret service men towards the U.S.A. The Americans used to tell the Air Force what to do - there was no two ways about it.’
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  He left his police job when he was contacted by Air Force Intelligence and invited to join them. He was under the command of Col. Manuel de Jesus Sanchez Cuevas and Evertsz’s job was to act as a civilian and investigate men in the force and find out their political opinions, contacts, social habits etc.

  ‘Then in 1967 Anthony Ruiz asked me to put a bomb in the men’s lavatory in the American consulate. I didn’t ask why. It was obvious that political capital could be made out of it. We timed it so that it would go off at night and that nobody would be hurt. Then right away I started an investigation for the Dominican government into who put the bomb there. I lent a hand to the U.S. State Department as well - they still don’t know who was responsible because I never did find out. They’re still looking. I also put a bomb in the American library, again for Ruiz, again at night.’

  He married again in 1967. When asked for the name of the girl he pursed his lips, broke into a laugh and replied, ‘You won’t believe this - but I can’t remember the name of the chick.’ He thought hard. Eventually he did recall the name - Milady. She had his son.

  The same year Col. Luis Ney Tejeda Alvarez, the police chief, sent for him. He wanted him to pick up a girl in a hotel near Santo Domingo who was travelling with a married couple, a Jamaican teacher at Washington University and his American wife.

  ‘I went to the lobby of the hotel and met her. We had a drink and then the usual stuff between a man and a woman - we appealed to each other. I took her out for a ride and a nice dinner - I didn’t lay her out all that day. I introduced her to my mother and everything. Meanwhile, I found out that they were going to Jamaica to meet Stokeley Carmichael who was on his way to Cuba.

  ‘I reported back to Tejeda who sent me to Jamaica. They were worried about Carmichael because they thought he was stirring up the communists all over Latin America. About four days after the girl left I went to Jamaica and I used her to get to Carmichael who was staying on a farm up in the north. I talked to him, checked on him around and about, and returned to the Dominican Republic. He was a very, very likeable person.

  ‘I went back and filed my report and sent a copy to the CIA. A couple of months later Ruiz contacted me. Now that I had been to Jamaica I had the contacts to get to Cuba.’ Ruiz asked obscure questions about whether Evertsz could get close to Castro if he was sent to Cuba. ‘He asked me if I was willing to take a chance for big money and get into Cuba and kill Fidel Castro - just like that.’

  Evertsz was not sure that he would come out of it alive. Ruiz outlined a brief plan and told him that details would be provided by a Cuban who knew the country well. But nothing came of it and Evertsz heard no more of the plan.

  In October 1968 the foundation of a plot was laid that was to be the biggest intrigue Evertsz was ever to be involved in. He was contacted by Col. Luis Ney Tejeda Alvarez, who had lost his position as police chief but was still in the country. ‘Col. Tejeda asked me if I would like to become a captain. I said, “That sounds fine - who do I have to kill?” He told me that it was heavy stuff, but that I would be a captain with special privileges and so on. Then he asked me, “Are you willing to kill the U.S. Ambassador?” I was shocked. I didn’t believe him. Then he laid out the whole thing and he said that right away, before we went any further, if I refused I would be killed.

  ‘Then he told me the plan. He said, “We kill . . .” and then he corrected himself, I remember that, and he said “You kill . . . the ambassador and we leave proof that the communists did it”.’

  Tejeda’s plan, according to Evertsz, was to create friction between Balaguer and the U.S.. Pressure would be put on the president to carry out a purge of the left and its continued existence would show the government to be weak. Tejeda’s friends, on the other hand, were in the military and would willingly pursue the course dictated by the Americans.

  ‘I told him that we could not do it alone and he said that he had the army in the north backing him up,’ Evertsz said. ‘As a member of A2 I had access to the U.S. Embassy. I had to check the movements of the ambassador and find out what security arrangements were made around his movements. I had to find out which security men were with him, which car he used, which doors - the whole layout.

  ‘I told him that I would do it, but that I needed time. He said that I had fifteen days. I left and had myself a real stiff drink. I have been shocked only twice in my life and this was the second time. The other time was the first time I killed a man. This was big - to kill the U.S. Ambassador, that’s hell . . . big.’

  Evertsz immediately reported the meeting to Anthony Ruiz who called in Cyril Frank, the chief of security for the U.S. State Department in the embassy. They refused to believe the story and said they wanted proof. It was agreed to plant tapes in Evertsz’s car.

  ‘They fixed the car at the embassy, a real nice, neat job. Four days later I met Tejeda on the highway by the beach. He got out of his car and got into mine and we drove away. He asked me what I had done and I told him of the ambassador’s movements. Then I asked him if he really wanted to kill him. He said, “Yes, we have to”. Everything was going down on the tape. I suggested that we did it on a certain corner by throwing a grenade under the ambassador’s car and then shooting everybody in it with a submachine gun. Another guy would throw the grenade and force it to stop. If we just started to shoot he could get away. He might get hurt and he might not. Also his car had bulletproof windows. A grenade under it would blow the doors open. “Fine, it sounds good,” Tejeda said.

  Evertsz went back to the embassy with the tapes. They still refused to believe him. ‘I got pissed off. I said call the Chief of the Air Force, I’m not putting up with any more of this crap. We had an argument and finally they arranged for us to do it again. This time it was planned for night and they were going to follow us. I picked up Tejeda at his house and we drove down Bolivar Avenue to Maximo Gomez Avenue and parked the car. We had the final meeting on 17th October and we set a date to do the job on 21st October. I went to the embassy at this time and they did believe me. They called Washington direct and they ordered the ambassador to leave Santo Domingo for a few days on a little vacation.

  ‘I had met the ambassador several times. I knew him from the days when I put the bomb in the American embassy. This time he saw me and thanked me personally. He said that not only had I saved his life but saved a bad situation between the U.S. government and the Dominican Republic - you know the kind of things ambassadors say. “We’re proud of you,” and all that baloney. Washington told the embassy to drop the whole thing and pretend that nothing had happened.

  ‘They told me to go back to my office. I said, “Hold it a minute. This is not right. How can I go back to this man and tell him there’s no more plot against the ambassador? What’s he going to think - he’s going to say I double-crossed him and knock me off right away.” Then Anthony Ruiz said, “This is none of our business. This is your job, this is your risk. You’ve done your duty - that’s all. That’s what counts. Whatever is going to happen to you now in your personal life is none of my business.”

  ‘I said, “Well, listen, I’m going to be in a tight position. Is this thing going to come out or not?” They said that they were not going to say a word about it - they had their man secure and now knew that they had to watch out for Tejeda. I said that it wasn’t going to be that way. I had to leave the country. “Put me in Puerto Rico, put me in Australia - any place - Hawaii, any place, but now, right away, tonight. This cat is going to find out and knock me off.” He said “Well, that’s your business” - just like that - “There’s nothing I can do for you”.’

  Evertsz told them he would catch the next commercial flight to the States. Ruiz replied that they were refusing him entry. ‘I told them, “I have a right, I’m a legal resident, a former U.S. citizen. I’ve been working for you long enough, let’s cut that crap”. They said no, because if the thing came out they were ready to disown me. Imagine the impact - a CIA man working in the Dominican government! It was going to
come out real bad for them.

  ‘I told them they had an hour to think about it or I was going to put it in the paper. They said, “Hold it”. I said, “What do you mean - hold it? What do you mean telling me to go fuck myself?” They thought I was kidding.’

  He telephoned Radhames G. Peña, editor of El Nacional. When Peña heard that Evertsz wanted to give him a story he suspected a trick but the news was too big to ignore so he arranged a meeting. Evertsz gave him the outline of the story. ‘Have you turned into a communist?’ the editor asked dryly. Peña telephoned a left-wing member of the government, Jotin Cury, and an appointment was fixed for the same evening. During this day Evertsz had not been to his office at A2. He was supposed to check in personally or phone every morning and he knew that Tejeda would be worried. ‘I passed the time by going to the movies and then going to see a girl. I was going crazy.’

  Cury was nervous when Evertsz saw him and said that he didn’t think there was much he could do unless he would agree to sign a statement. Evertsz agreed and Cury tried to get him political asylum. The Brazilian embassy refused but the Mexicans accepted.

  The following day El Nacional splashed the story with a picture of Evertsz on the front page and Col. Tejeda took the wise precaution of leaving for Miami.

  The Dominican Police immediately surrounded the Mexican Embassy. After four days the ambassador saw Evertsz and said that they could not extend asylum any longer as the Caracas Convention decreed that embassies were not allowed to grant asylum to military personnel.

  He said that Evertsz could try and get away the best way he could. He was given back his weapons.

  There were no radio bulletins or government statements about the affair. Evertsz had not said a word and nobody really knew what was going on except for the story that appeared in El National. The American embassy had not denied or affirmed the plot, but had merely pointed out that plots against their ambassadors in Latin America were frequent.