DEATH OF A MYSTERY MAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303000007-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: July 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303000007-0
-TICLE AP LAj LJ
PAC LOS ANGELES TIMES
12 July 1985
Death of a Mystery Man
Elements of International Intrigue Surface After `Routine' Crime
By PATT MORRISON, Times Staff Writer e A large gold medal, possibly walks to visit friends at the Park La
On the police blotter, it is a robber the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Brea complex, and solitary dinners
y- awarded to James by Mexican at a little restaurant down the
murder of the sort that happens with President Miguel Aleman in 1947, street, "he kept to himself pretty
dismaying regularity in Los Angeles these for exceptional services of an un- much."
days: an 82-year-old man trussed up and specified nature.
dead of a heart attack, his fourth-floor Even after the war, working as a
dpatment ransacked, valuable god heio e A heavy gold watch, its face real estate appraiser traveling the
looms taken. made of an American $20 "double world, and later in retirement,
But to his brother-in-law, it has the eagle" gold piece and inscribed on James "was very paranoid" about
unsettling look of a Graham Greene spy the back "A SPJ, con las gracias del what he had done in the war-and
story. in find i odd that a former Nap pals (with the country's thanks), subsequently as well, Ferreira said,
.~' Miguel," and a gold chain so ornate indicating that his brother-in-law
intelligence man-decorated by the gov''you'd be a jackass to wear it in could have continued working for
ernments of Spain and Mexico for public," Ferrera said. the U.S. government until as re-
hush-hush services rendered during World e Another large gold medal, this cently as 10 years ago.
War II, an American liaison officer to one from the government of Spain,
Britain's Lord Mountbatten of Burma, a presented in 1946 for unknown Sensitive Information
decoding expert who visited such wartime wartime services rendered. "He'd known sensitive U.S. in-
hot spots as Saipan and Tinian, and who Ferrera believes that James, a formation-he thought it was sen-
even years later made mysterious trips to "very, very careful man" who sitive," Ferrera said. He traveled
Mexico and Europe, usually with a body- wouldn't even open the door for often to Mexico, where he held
guard, a man cautious and secretive-was probate attorneys when his brother honorary dual citizenship, and was
killed in his own apartment with no sign of died in Bakersfield not long ago, invariably protected by "body-
forced entry. may have been done in for some- guards supplied by the U.S. Em-
"It's a complex case," agreed Sgt. Wayne thing he knew, not something he bassy or Mexican government,"
Horton, whose Wilshire Division detectives owned. Ferrera said. A reporter's call to
have labored to solve the case since the There is "plenty of reason to the embassy in Mexico City was not
body was found. Horton said they would believe it was not just robbery," returned.
check with the CIA and the FBI, but he said Ferrera, who had first met the He kept saying he had to make
added that there is no indication that it was man that his sister, Irma, would one final trip to serve his country,"
an in other than a robbery-murder later marry, in the South Pacific in said Ferrera, who said James was
(police specu ate at the victim die w i e 1942. still afraid of things he had done
being tied up). when he was young-that
The body of retired Cmdr. Stuart P. Reluctant to Talk may (still) be angry about."
James was found stuffed under the kitchen James, a Stanford letterman, 8rY about.'
sink of his mid-Wilshire apartment nine went into the Navy in 1939, and
days ago. even after he left the service in
His brother-in-law, Robert Ferrera, 1946, he was close-mouthed, with
found the body when he delivered James' more than the usual diffidence of
Social Security check and the retired Navy men home from war, Ferrera says.
man did not answer the elaborate secret "All he would say was, 'I did my
knock that he had insisted his acquaint- per.'
ances use since he was mugged out front six Apartment manager Gertrude
months earlier-a coded knock that he Rubenstein said that aside from
changed every few months as a security
precaution.
James had evidently just returned from a
market when the intruder caught up with
him-groceries were strewn on the floor.
So were the contents of the apartment
where he had lived for eight years. The
place, police said, was "completely ran-
sacked." And in a green attache case
usually hidden in the closet, the intruder
found and stole:
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303000007-0