Word: ernst
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...failing to register as a Dominican agent (he has appealed). Schmahl took the Fifth Amendment before a federal grand jury. Trujillo has refused to waive Espaillat's diplomatic immunity for questioning by the FBI. Instead, Trujillo paid at least $100,000 for an investigation by Manhattan Lawyer Morris Ernst, once famed for defending noble causes, who last month found "not a scintilla of evidence" connecting Murphy and Galíndez...
...Ernst finds this time margin so narrow that the flight was "extremely improbable," if not impossible. (Government investigators say Murphy was gone 8½ to nine hours-plenty of time.) Ernst offers a theory of his own: Murphy was a freelance pilot, subject to big temptations "to smuggle nylons, drugs, guns . . . people"; the destination of his secret flight was rebellious Cuba, not the Dominican Republic. Ernst's proof came from "confidential sources" in Dictator Fulgencio Batista's Cuba. To back up Batista (who got five planeloads of arms in March from Trujillo), Ernst solemnly presented an affidavit from...
...Witness. Because Ernst was openly working for Trujillo, many witnesses greeted him with suspicious silence. Among them: Air Force Sergeant Harold French, an old friend of Murphy's, who helped install the Beechcraft's extra gas tanks and was with Murphy at Zahns Airport until noon on the fatal day. Murphy told French about the trip in detail, and French told the FBI ("Gerry said that gasoline would be available to him at Monte Cristi in 5-gal. cans...
...Ernst fell back on Dictator Trujillo's own offerings, e.g., 68 pages of Dominican stamps on Espaillat's passports, designed to prove that he was in Ciudad Trujillo when the whole thing happened. Ernst discounts, as the words of a habitual liar, Murphy's confessions to friends and his fiancée that he flew Galindez...
...listed as a missing person by New York police; Murphy is dead, and so is the Dominican pilot who admittedly killed him; the FBI still wants Espaillat to waive his diplomatic immunity for questioning. Sydney Baron, the ex-Tammany Hall pressagent who acted as go-between for Trujillo and Ernst, said that the inquiry was "very comprehensive and expensive," that both Ernst and Baron would probably get more than their original guarantees, boosting the cost past the first estimate of $160,000. Trujillo doubtless will cheerfully...