Cruz felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach; the air was sucked from his body, and he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He was in a state of shock. He gathered himself and said to the school principal, “I know this man.”
After describing his encounter with Oswald to the principal, Miguel was sent home from school. Within a half hour of his having arrived home, he was visited by two FBI agents.
On the grounds at El Zapotal, thirty-four years later, as Cruz related this vivid memory, Miguelito Battle was enraptured. It was, after all, an amazing piece of history, not only for its significance as to the assassination of a president, but also as yet another tributary of the Cuban diaspora.
It would take time for the sale of the house to transpire. Cruz could not afford the asking price. Battle Jr. broke up the property into smaller parcels until the price of the house was within Cruz’s range. It took two years for the deal to be finalized, even though everyone involved felt that it was right that the house should wind up in the hands of Miguel Cruz.
Eventually, the man who had tussled with Lee Harvey Oswald moved into the house of José Miguel Battle Sr. He remains there to this day.
THE TRIAL OF BATTLE ON THE CHARGE OF POSSESSION OF A SHOTGUN BY A CONVICTED felon began on September 29, in the courtroom of Judge Alan Gold. It was not expected to be a lengthy proceeding. The government had one major witness: Ruby De Los Santos Torres, the cleaning lady at El Zapotal who, upon being interviewed back when the raid took place and the gun was seized—and later in front of a grand jury—said that she had seen the shotgun in the closet three months before the raid.
The problem for the prosecution, which included Assistant State’s Attorney Tony Gonzalez and Shanks, was that in the weeks leading up to the trial, Ruby Torres went into hiding. It took numerous court-ordered wiretaps and late-night surveillances for the cops to find out where she was. Most of her time was spent at her mother’s house. She was taken into custody on a material witness warrant and held until the trial. But the prosecutors had no idea if when she took the stand she would stick to her grand jury testimony or say something contradictory.
Before the testimony phase of the trial, the prosecutors and defense lawyer Blumenfeld needed to select a jury. As with many Miami jury pools, there was always the possibility that the prospective jurors would include Cuban exiles or their children. Normally this would be irrelevant, but in the case of Battle, having a juror who was sympathetic to the anti-Castro cause might be a problem for the government.
Prosecutor Gonzalez encountered just such a problem during the phase of jury selection in which the prosecutors and defense lawyer are allowed to question each prospective juror to determine if he or she is able to hear the facts of the case without bias or prejudice. Voir dire is crucial for both sides to lay the groundwork for a fair process. During voir dire, each side is allowed a certain number of “peremptory challenges,” an opportunity to disqualify a juror based on some issue or conflict, such as the person knowing someone related to the defendant, or a familiarity with either of the attorneys or with the victim. There are myriad reasons why a person could be disqualified, but a lawyer is only allowed to use a limited number of peremptory challenges, so they are employed sparingly.
During jury selection, the lawyers came upon a young woman whose father was a veteran of Brigade 2506. During her voir dire, Gonzalez asked a series of questions in open court that were designed to reveal bias on the woman’s part in favor of anyone associated with the brigade. The idea was to make her bias so apparent that the judge would automatically disqualify the woman, in which case Gonzalez would not have to use one of his peremptory challenges.
Judge Gold queried the woman himself. To Gonzalez and Shanks, it appeared obvious that she would respond in an emotional way to the Bay of Pigs history should it come up during the trial. But the judge would not disqualify her, and defense lawyer Blumenfeld was all too happy to have her on the jury. Gonzalez chose not to use one of his peremptory challenges. The young woman wound up on the jury, a development that the prosecutors would eventually regret.
Once the trial began, the first witness on the stand was Shanks, who described the circumstances of the raid on El Zapotal and the discovery of the rifle. Robert O’Bannon testified as the original affiant on the federal search warrant and also described Battle’s use of a false passport. Then Ruby Torres took the stand.
A Honduran immigrant who did not speak English, Torres had been working at El Zapotal for nineteen months at the time of the raid. It had been six months since her grand jury testimony, in which she innocently stated that she had seen the shotgun in the closet. Now, speaking through a courtroom translator, she changed her story, saying it had been less than a week before the raid that she first saw the shotgun, not three months. She also added that she had seen Cache Jimenez, Battle’s driver, bodyguard, and cook, out on the grounds of the ranch using the gun to hunt pigeons—a new wrinkle she had not mentioned in front of the grand jury.
Prosecutor Gonzalez, faced with his primary witness’s having changed her story, was confronted with a delicate proposition. He wanted to show that Torres had changed her story, possibly out of fear or because she had been coerced, but he did not want to destroy her credibility entirely. She was his witness, after all.
Gonzalez confronted Torres with a transcript reading of her previous testimony. She buckled slightly, conceding that it might have been two months before the raid that she saw the gun.
The star witness for the defense was Cache Jimenez, described as Battle’s valet and cook. For years, Jimenez had shown a willingness to do many unpleasant tasks for El Padrino, including starting his car in the morning—the least popular assignment for a Mob underling.
From the stand, Jimenez told a story of meeting Battle for the first time only six months before the raid, when he was at the ranch looking to buy some mamey. He and Battle became friendly. Battle let Jimenez shoot birds on his property, and it was there, a week before the raid, that he was shooting pigeons and doves. Afterward, he retired to a nearby bar on Krome Avenue, where some friends invited him to accompany them on an overnight fishing trip. Jimenez accepted the invitation. He was concerned about keeping the rifle in his car, since he would be leaving the car in the parking lot of the bar. He drove back to El Zapotal and asked Evelyn Runciman (Battle was not home) if he could leave his gun in the house. After the fishing trip, he forgot to retrieve the gun, and there it was on the morning Shanks and the other cops raided the place.
Unchallenged, it might have seemed like a reasonable story. But on cross-examination by Gonzalez, the story quickly unraveled. Gonzalez asked Jimenez, “Why didn’t you just park your car at El Zapotal?”
Jimenez stumbled with his answer. Apparently he had not anticipated this simple question. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I just, uh, well, decided not to.”
Gonzalez then went in for the kill. What Cache Jimenez did not know was that the investigators had surveillance photos and wiretap conversations of Jimenez going back five years, to when the cops first planted a court-authorized tap on the phone of Gilberto Borges.
Gonzalez asked the witness, “Mr. Jimenez, isn’t it true that you would do anything that Mr. Battle asked of you, including lying here today?”
“No, definitely not.”
“Isn’t it true that you have said, ‘I did things for Battle I would not do even for my family’? Did you say that?’
Jimenez answered confidently, “No. I don’t even know him that well.”
Gonzalez asked Judge Gold for permission to play the tape of a conversation from the Borges wire. On it, Jimenez complained about having to get up in the middle of the night to get Battle a Cuban sandwich and deliver it to his hospital room at Mt. Sinai in Miami Beach. The jury listened to Jimenez, in his own words, say on the tape, “I do things for Battle that I wouldn’t even do for my own family.”
Jimenez was stunned. “That’s not my voice,” he said, and then quickly changed direc
tion by adding, “That’s not what I meant when I said that.”
Gonzalez then put Shanks back on the stand to introduce four-year-old surveillance photos of Jimenez and Battle at a restaurant called the Bahamas Fish Market, where they met with a number of boliteros and bookmakers. Not only were the photos shown to the jury, but Shanks and the prosecutors were now able to introduce evidence they hadn’t been able to before, including a recollection by the detective of the time they watched Jimenez lean in the driver’s side window of Battle’s car and turn on the ignition, as if he were anticipating—and dreading—a car bomb explosion. While Jimenez did this, Battle was hiding behind a concrete pillar.
The defense rested on a Friday. The judge gave the jury instructions first thing on Monday, and they were off to deliberate. Gonzalez and Shanks were expecting a quick verdict. It was not a complicated case. Either you believed it was Battle’s gun or you didn’t. Either way, there was not much to deliberate about.
Surprisingly—at least to the prosecutors—the deliberation dragged on all through the first day and into a second day. “This is not good,” Gonzalez told Shanks. Perhaps the jury was deadlocked and could not reach a verdict.
At the end of the second day, the jury foreman notified the court that they were ready to deliver their verdict. Gonzalez and Shanks were tense, until they saw the jurors stream back into the jury box. The young woman with the Bay of Pigs history in her family was in tears. The body language of the other jurors seemed to suggest that they were relieved to have reached a conclusion.
The judge read the verdict: “Guilty.”
Afterward, Shanks ran into one of the jurors outside the courthouse. The juror explained that as soon as they entered the jury room and took their first vote, everyone voted guilty except for the young Cuban woman. She kept saying, “I can’t believe that sweet old man, a Bay of Pigs hero, would be so devious.” It took the rest of the jury sixteen hours to wear her down with the facts of the case until she finally gave in.
A few months later, in February 1998, Battle, Shanks, and the other investigators and lawyers were back in court for a hearing on the issue of sentencing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Lehner had designated the sentencing as an opportunity to go for an “upward departure,” which involved an unusual quirk of federal law. By legal statute, it was permissible at sentencing to introduce new evidence against a convicted party in an effort to show that he or she was a more serious criminal and therefore worthy of a sentence that exceeded the guidelines for the crime of which he was convicted.
The prosecutors went to great lengths to make their case. Lehner had prepared a thirty-page motion about the upward departure, and he had Shanks prepare a two-hundred-plus-page exhibit packet, tabbed and broken down into various components, all of which were referenced in Lehner’s motion. In addition, the prosecutors were allowed to put witnesses on the stand. At the hearing, they paraded a number of jailhouse witnesses into the courtroom to testify specifically about Battle’s involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Drug dealing had always been a sore subject with Battle. He protested loudly to those around him that he was against dealing cocaine. His public position was perhaps founded on his love of The Godfather, in which the character of Don Corleone contends, “This drug business will be the downfall of all of us.” In reality, Battle’s forays into cocaine dealing, though not extensive by the standards of Miami in the 1980s, were no secret to people in the underworld.
And yet it was also possible that the various jailhouse witnesses being brought into court to make Battle look bad were in fact gilding the lily. These witnesses were not being held to the standard of a criminal trial. The burden of proof was low, and it was impossible to fully verify the facts of their various accusations.
After listening to this testimony for the better part of an afternoon, Battle had had enough. To one of the witnesses in the midst of telling cocaine tales about him, El Padrino shouted, “Mentiroso (liar)!” Then he cursed at the prosecutors and said with a scowl, “Dirty, dirty . . . Drug traffickers.”
Jack Blumenfeld immediately moved to quiet his client. He was surprised. Battle had never lost his cool in court before. He had always been calm and controlled.
The outburst led Blumenfled to do something he’d never done before—put Battle on the stand. He figured he had nothing to lose. He wanted Battle to express his disgust at being called a drug trafficker.
Battle was wearing his best suit, a teal blue linen/cotton combination. On the stand, he was gentlemanly. “I did not address the witness,” he said, in regard to his outburst. “I just said it was dirty to bring him in here . . . Let them sentence me to one hundred years. This kind of thing is just not done.”
Blumenfeld said to the judge, “I can’t defend against a drug case where my client was not indicted, about something that happened nine years ago . . . This is very unfair.”
Judge Gold listened to all the testimony and various legal arguments, and on March 19 he emphatically ruled against the upward departure. In a statement, the judge ridiculed the government’s position, questioning why all that evidence was brought into a sentencing hearing in the absence of a RICO indictment.
Five days later, Judge Gold sentenced Battle to eighteen months in prison—the low end of the guidelines. He cited Battle’s poor health as one reason for not sentencing him to more time.
Once again, the judicial system had smiled on Battle. With time off for good behavior, he could be out in a year.
DAVE SHANKS WAS PISSED OFF BY THE JUDGE’S LIGHT SENTENCE. PART OF THIS WAS the usual cop’s annoyance at “liberal” judges working against the better interests of the public. In Shanks’s mind, José Miguel Battle was a gangster, a murderer of women and children, and a serious menace to society. The fact that he had a good lawyer who was adept at working the system to the advantage of his client only made Shanks angrier. The ability of Battle to commit heinous crimes—murders—and receive only a modest punitive response from the system was to the veteran cop a travesty of justice and a cruel joke.
On top of that, Shanks was especially peeved by the judge’s belittling reference to a RICO indictment. Mostly because he knew the judge was right. If the government wanted to use RICO-type evidence against El Padrino, then they needed to mount an actual RICO case against the Corporation. Shanks had always dreamed of such a reality, but he was one local cop—albeit a pesky cop—without the institutional authority to undertake the kind of massive and expensive investigation required to take down the Corporation.
On March 26, one day after the Battle sentencing, Shanks’s dream moved closer to reality when Tony Gonzalez, perhaps his strongest advocate on the prosecutorial side, left the State Attorney’s Office to become an AUSA for the Southern District of Florida.
Shanks and Gonzalez were now possibly in a position to make things happen, but the truth was, they didn’t yet have the witnesses. They knew that the Corporation’s criminal history stretched back decades, but if they were to establish those early crimes as predicate acts in a RICO conspiracy, they needed to be able to put people on the stand who had firsthand knowledge of these crimes.
There were some likely prospects, among them Willie Diaz, the arsonist who played a key role in the arson wars of the 1980s. Diaz had already taken the stand in the 1987 trial of Lalo Pons. He could be compelled to do so again in a RICO trial.
Also, there was Vincent “Fish” Cafaro. To the astonishment of many, Cafaro in 1986 secretly became an informant for federal authorities. For five months, from October 1986 to March 1987, he was wired up with a recording device, which he wore while attending high-level Mafia meetings. On March 20, 1987, the government revealed in court that Cafaro had been working for them. Many mafiosi were indicted, including Cafaro’s own son, Thomas.
In the late 1980s and in 1990, Cafaro testified at a number of major Mob trials in New York, including two trials involving John Gotti, the capo di tutti capi. Afterward, Cafaro disappeared into the federal witness prote
ction program.
Already, at a Lucchese crime family trial in the early 1990s, Cafaro had testified about how the Cubans—and specifically José Miguel Battle Sr.—were partners with the Mafia in the city’s highly lucrative numbers racket. Cafaro could be a valuable witness against the Corporation—if Shanks was able to track him down.
Finally, there was Robert Hopkins, another organized crime figure who could link the activities of the Corporation to the Mafia. In 1987, Hopkins was put on trial for the murder of a Cuban bolitero, Pedro Acosta, at the summit meeting of the members of the Corporation, La Compañía, and the Mafia. Hopkins was there and, along with everyone else, ducked for cover when a drive-by shooter gunned down the bolitero on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant where the meeting took place. Prosecutors later claimed that Hopkins had arranged the murder, but they had no real case. He was acquitted.
As often happens when a criminal defendant beats the government in court, to “save face,” Hopkins was soon indicted on follow-up charges. Currently under indictment on gambling charges, and out on bail, he might be willing to talk if it would help him out with his legal complications.
Shanks and Gonzalez discussed the prospects of being able to round up these and other crucial witnesses. To begin the process, it was necessary to officially transfer Shanks to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and have him deputized as a special investigator, making him technically an employee of the federal government. The next order of business was to send him to New York to reconnect with Detective Richard Kalafus of the NYPD.
In his thirty-third year on the job, Kalafus had announced his pending retirement. Once he was gone, he would take with him the most encyclopedic knowledge of the Cuban bolita culture in the New York– New Jersey area of any cop who had ever walked the streets. Though Shanks had met with Kalafus before, he needed to do it again, this time with a focus on who throughout the bolita universe—either in prison or still out on the street—could be squeezed into a position where he might take the stand against Battle and the Corporation.
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