He has been in the Foreign Service since 1947, so wedded to it that when asked if he ever wanted to do anything else he says simply, "I don't know." His assignments have included Bulgaria, Guatemala (where, since his predecessor had been murdered, he traveled with armed guards), Washington and Switzerland.

But it was his two-year stint as U.S. ambassador to Chile that made Nathaniel Davis the model for the ambassador in the 1982 film "Missing" and left a scar on his life.

Last Monday, lawyers for Davis and two other embassy officials who served with him in Chile filed a $150 million libel suit in U.S. District Court in Alexandria against Universal City Studios Inc., which made "Missing," about the disappearance and death of American Charles Horman in Chile, and against Thomas Hauser, who wrote the book upon which the film is based.

Also named were Constantin Costa-Gavras, the director of "Missing"; MCA Inc., the parent corporation of Universal; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., publisher of the hardcover book by Hauser; and the Hearst Corp., whose Avon Books division published the paperback version.

In the suit, the lawyers single out passages of the book and movie, stating they are "false, unfair, inaccurate and defamatory." The plaintiffs "have been held up to public disgrace, scorn, and ridicule," according to the suit.

"I've lived with the Horman case personally and professionally," Davis says quietly in an airport restaurant outside Providence, R.I. The case, he says, was not the reason he was brought back to Washington to become director general of the Foreign Service a month and a half after the young American's disappearance. "But it affected my career after that."

When he was nominated for assistant secretary for African Affairs in January 1975, the Organization of African Unity issued an unprecedented formal statement questioning his appointment because of the cloud cast over him by the suspicion of U.S. involvement in the coup in Chile.

He was appointed to the post, but seven months later he resigned over the decision to increase covert U.S. intervention in the Angolan civil war. Davis went to Switzerland after that. He has been teaching at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., since 1977.

The movie "Missing" and the book of the same name portray the U.S. ambassador to Chile -- who is called simply "the ambassador" -- as a defender of big business, with a veneer of ambassadorial politeness masking a deep coldness.

Sitting in a quiet restaurant, the 57-year-old former ambassador is polite and friendly but guarded in his answers. White-haired and portly, he clasps his hands and places them squarely on the table when talking or leans back in his seat, hands in the pockets of his dark, three-piece suit.

Certain scenes in the movie make him indignant and resentful, he says, but if there is bitterness at his portrayal in the film and book, it doesn't show; if there is emotion it doesn't show; there's just a flicker of resignation.

"Well, it hasn't been a very happy experience," he says.

More than nine years have passed since September 17, 1973, when Charles Horman, an adventurous, 30-year-old American free-lance journalist, was taken from his home in Santiago, Chile. In late October, his body was found in the municipal cemetery.

In the weeks between, Horman's wife, Joyce, and his father, Edmund, took up a painful and arduous search for him in a country reeling from the military coup September 11 that toppled the Marxist government of Salvador Allende.

It was a search, the Hormans have said, that U.S. embassy officials in Santiago not only didn't aid but actually hindered -- to the point where the Hormans suspected U.S. officials of complicity in Charles Horman's death, which allegedly occurred at the hands of the Chilean military.

The Hormans suspected that Charles was murdered because he had, by chance, received sensitive information about American involvement in the coup through conversations with a naval engineer in Viña del Mar, Chile.

Nathaniel Davis picks his words carefully, and articulates them as deliberately as if he were speaking to one of his classes at the Naval War College.

Some of his own first-hand recollections of Chile and the Hormans are vague, but he's well-versed in the details of the book and the movie.

He has been the movie twice. The first time was when "Good Morning, America" arranged for him to see it a year ago in New York before making an appearance on the show to discuss the movie. The second time was recently, in preparation for questions after the filing of the lawsuit. He rented a video cassette recording of the movie in Newport for $4 and borrowed a machine on which to play it.

"Obviously, the movie has great dramatic impact, doesn't it?" he says with a little smile. " . . . I can certainly say what the impact of the movie brought home to me is that most people who see it end up believing it -- which is very bothersome.

"I was also said that this unhappiness and frustration of the family seemed to find its expression in turning on U.S. public officials who were trying to help them." He pauses and smiles slightly. "It was kind of said."

Despite this, he says he feels no resentment toward Edmund Horman, who has publicly expressed his dislike of the ambassador. "Whatever grief they've given me," Davis says, "they've suffered more."

That's why Davis excluded Edmund Horman from the suit.

"My own feeling is that Edmund Horman has lost his only child," says Davis. "He's a little different from people who are making a pile of money on saying things that are false about me and my colleagues and the U.S. public service. It's a little different.

"I understand what the family has gone through. Well, perhaps I don't understand. But I can understand what it's like to lose your son," adds Davis, who has four children. "I don't mean I've lost any of my children, but I think I can imagine what he feels like. That has to condition my feelings about him."

But not his feelings about the movie.

"The thrust of the movie essentially is that we were complicit in telling the Chileans to murder Charles Horman," says Davis. "Charles and Terry Simon [a visiting friend] went down to Viña and learned too much and... as a result of trying to suppress what they learned down there, we either agreed to or put the Chileans up to killing them.

That's what the movie says or suggests. It's very bothersome to me, in the first place not only personally but for what this says about the U.S. Foreign Service, that an ambassador, who is a professional, would go abroad and be in the position of telling the authorities of another country to kill an innocent young American who's committed no crime.

That's a very corrosive thing to suggest about public service when it's false."

"The movie does raise questions about government officials," says Sheldon Mittleman, the head of Universal's legal department. "We felt and still feel that it's not defamatory... I think Ambassador Davis sees a lot of innuendo that's not there. That's my personal opinion. I think the ambassador reads things in that aren't there. The courts will decide that down the line."

"I think that the complaint is an example of cheap-shot draftsmanship," says author Hauser, who is also a lawyer. "There's nothing in that suit that pertains to me that isn't virtually protected." Hauser points out that many of the statements from his book cited in the suit are quotes from other people.

"I have never said, nor has the book said, that any of the plaintiffs ordered the execution of Charles Horman," says Hauser. "Obviously, I've said some of the officials were not as forthcoming with information about the Horman case as they should have been."

Last year, Hauser says, he made a "generous offer" to Davis to apologize for anything Davis could prove wrong in the book and then make a correction in subsequent editions. Davis, he says, never took him up on it. "To this day, I stand by the book," says Hauser.

"I don't remember that offer," says Davis. "And that's not generous at all when he's gone through the paperback and hardcover editions. What good is [a correction] for a possibly nonexistent next edition? I remember him making a challenge."

The movie premiered a year ago, and Davis said it has taken that year for all three plaintiffs to make a collective decision to sue. The other two plaintiffs are out of the country -- former consul Frederick Purdy is now head of the U.S. consular section in Brasilia and Capt. Ray E. Davis (ret.) is in Santiago.

"They feel very strongly about it," says Nathaniel Davis. "It isn't just my interest."

The suit says Ray Davis is the model for the character named Ray Tower in the movie. He is portrayed as a lecherous military official who tries to make a pass at Charles Horman's wife one evening while she is taking a bath.

The characterization has apparently brought Ray Davis some unwelcome attention from embassy personnel in Santiago when Davis has business at the embassy. "I think he said they snicker and giggle," says former ambassador Davis. "He's pretty deeply unhappy."

Nathaniel Davis said he considered suing when Hauser's book, originally titled; "The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice," appeared in 1978, "but... it's a big decision and it's also a big decision if you're not wealthy," says Davis, who makes $58,500 a year as a Foreign Service officer. "Eleven of us were, in fact, sued first by the Hormans." That suit was dismissed in 1981 without prejudice, which means it can be brought again.

Edmund Horman said last year he requested the dismissal because government documents important to the case had been withheld.

"At that point we were being represented by the attorney for the Justice Department," says Davis, "and this attorney made it clear to us that although he would assist us in defending ourselves against the [Horman] suit, in any action we might take, the U.S. government was not prepared to involve itself."

Asked how he feels about this lack of legal support, Davis says, "I'd prefer not to comment on that."

The post-Allende Santiago of the Costa-Gavras film was one of grim chaos -- soldiers in tanks rolling down boulevards, bloodied and mutilated bodies lying at the curbside, a flash of a white horse galloping wildly through the city.

"Well, I didn't see the white horse running down the street," says Davis. "There were a lot of guns going off." But he did see bodies in the streets. A couple of blocks from the Moneda, the presidential palace, which was being bombed, embassy staff blocked the windows with mattresses.

"If you get someone like Costa-Gavras trying to depict this, the image you get is of utter butchery," says Davis. "If you get right-wingers, on the other hand, they'd like you to think Costa-Gavras' image is an utter, vivid lie... My image is not embracing either extreme."

Davis says the first time he heard of Charles Horman was when a consular official informed him of a telephone call from a Horman friend. Two people who knew Horman had received mysterious phone calls from Chilean military intelligence and relayed them to the embassy.

"I took all kinds of actions in trying to find him," says Davis, "and bear in mind that he wasn't the only one we were concerned with. How many were missing or known to be picked up by the military? About a couple dozen."

Davis says he even went to the new head of the Chilean government at one point. "I personally carried the inquiries all the way up to [Gen. Augusto] Pinochet," says Davis, who recalls discussing a number of items of business during his visit with Pinochet. "I asked him about both Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi [another American picked up by the military and later found dead].

He said he'd do his best to find out."

Hauser comments that that's the first time he's ever heard Davis mention going to Pinochet.

What Davis finds especially stinging is a scene in the film that is cited in the suit:

Horman: What is your role here besides endorsing a regime that murders thousands of human beings?

Ambassador: Let's level with each other, sir... This mission is pledged to protect American interests, our interests, Mr. Horman.

Horman: They're not mine.

Ambassador: There are over 3,000 U.S. firms doing business down here and those are American interests. In other words, your interests. I am concerned with the preservation of a way of life.

Says Davis: "... I'm depicted having a set of values in which I'm perfectly prepared to order or acquiesce in the killing of an innocent American in order to defend some business interests. That scene talks about 3,000 businesses doing business in Chile. That's nonsense. You could count the number of U.S. businesses in Chile in September of 1973 on your fingers."

The Chilean government now says officially that Charles Horman was found dead on a street in Santiago and delivered to the morgue on September 18, 1973.

Davis has not been back to Chile since 1973. A year ago, when he appeared on "Good Morning, America" with the Hormans for a discussion of the film, Edmund Horman refused to appear on the same screen with him. Instead, Davis sat on one side of the set for his interview with host David Hartman. On another side of the set, Edmund and Joyce Horman sat for their interview with Hartman.

"As best I know, Charles Horman was dead when those phone calls [to the embassy] were made," muses Davis. "Now, if that's true, there's not a thing in the whole world we could have done. Now, I suppose in a sense that's a consolation for the successes and failures we had." He pauses. "I suppose I have a little bit of hope that if he had been alive, we could have found him."

Source: washingtonpost.com, 18 January 1983

Chilean judge charges former U.S. military officer in 1973 deaths

A Chilean judge is seeking the extradition of a former U.S. military officer to face murder charges in the 1973 slaying of freelance journalist and filmmaker Charles Horman, a case dramatized in the Oscar-winning film “Missing,” court sources confirmed Tuesday.

Judge Jorge Zepeda wants former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis, whose whereabouts were not immediately clear Tuesday, to face trial in Chile for his alleged involvement in the deaths of Horman and U.S. student Frank Teruggi. The two Americans were arrested and executed by Chilean forces shortly after President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a military coup on September 11, 1973.

Horman, 31, was working as a screenwriter for state-run Chile Films when military rebel forces led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet attacked the presidential palace La Moneda. Allende committed suicide that day rather than surrender.

Horman was arrested September 17 and executed the next day, according to court documents. His body later was found on a Santiago street. Teruggi, 24, was killed on September 22 and his body also dumped on a street in the capital. Davis then was head of the U.S. military group attached to the American Embassy in Santiago.

A recent truth commission found that 41,000 people were arrested, tortured or killed during Pinochet’s 16-year reign of terror. At least 3,200 are thought to have died.

Zepeda wrote in court documents that his investigation bore out suspicions from the outset that “there was participation [in the murders] by citizens of the same nationality.” Zepeda wrote that Davis did nothing to stop the execution of the two Americans “although he had the opportunity of doing so,” and that he is suspected of giving Pinochet officials a “list of subversive U.S. citizens in Chile.”

A former top official with Chile’s DINA intelligence agency, Gen. Pedro Espinoza, was also charged with homicide in the cases.

In documents seeking authorization of the Davis extradition, Zepeda said he received cooperation from the U.S. State Department in preparing the case.

The State Department does not comment on specific extradition matters, but the U.S. government supports a thorough investigation into the Horman and Teruggi deaths, said spokesman Will Ostick.

The 1982 film directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon as Horman’s father and Sissy Spacek as his wife, won an academy award for best screenplay.

Source: latimes.com, 29 November 2011

Ex-US Navy officer wanted for murder dies in Chile

The anonymous death in a Santiago nursing home of a former U.S. Navy officer wanted for trial in the 1973 killing of two Americans in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film “Missing” is generating frustration and questions in Chile and the United States.

Courts in Chile have long sought former Capt. Ray E. Davis, believing he was living in Florida. Last October, Chile’s Supreme Court approved an extradition request for Davis to face trial for the deaths of American journalist Charles Horman and U.S. student Frank Teruggi, who were killed in the early days of the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

But Davis was secretly living in the Chilean capital all along. A Chilean death certificate says he died at age 88 of “multisystemic failure” at a nursing home in an affluent Santiago neighborhood on April 30.

“They were working to get Davis extradited and he was literally less than a couple of miles down the road,” said Peter Kornbluh, author of “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.”

“You’d think that the foreign ministry has records of who enters the country and when, and that those documents get shared with official authorities,” Kornbluh said.

The surprising discovery that Davis lived and died in Santiago not only thwarted Chilean justice, but also has left Horman’s widow, Joyce, deeply frustrated and questioning of the news.

“I just don’t like what I hear and would like to have additional proof from the U.S.,” Joyce Horman told The Associated Press. “After 40 years, this is extraordinarily frustrating.”

Mrs. Horman wants the U.S. government to demonstrate that Davis’ pension was suspended to confirm he is dead.

“I need to get real verification from the United States that this man is either dead or alive,” she said. “And I don’t see that happening because the U.S. Embassy is accepting the death certificate from the Chileans, which sort of absolves the U.S. about having to say anything about this man. And that’s wrong.”

Judge Jorge Zepeda, who requested Davis’ extradition, also seems not to be convinced of the death and has asked the U.S. government to confirm the information. Documents obtained by the AP show Zepeda told Chile’s Supreme Court in June that “there is no record that can help conclude without a doubt that the death certificate ... belongs to the person wanted internationally as there are five U.S. citizens named Ray Davis” in Chile.

The U.S. Embassy in Santiago said it found out about Davis’ death on May 10 and added that “the U.S. government was not aware that Davis had been living in Chile.”

Citing “privacy concerns,” the embassy would not provide details on when Davis left the U.S. and entered Chile. It declined to comment on Davis’ pension or whether the U.S. would provide any further proof of his death.

After Davis was charged with murder in 2011, the AP contacted his wife, Patricia Davis, at her home in Niceville, Florida. She said her husband previously denied any involvement in killings. She also said he no longer talked because of Alzheimer’s disease and was in a nursing home that she declined to identify.

Records obtained by the AP say Davis was cremated at Santiago’s Parque del Recuerdo cemetery.

Davis commanded the U.S. military mission in Chile at the time of the September 11, 1973, coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Marxist President Salvador Allende. Davis was investigating Americans as part of a series of covert intelligence operations by the U.S.

Embassy targeting those considered subversives or radicals, said lawyer Sergio Corvalan, who represents Horman’s widow.

Horman, a freelance journalist and filmmaker, was arrested September 17, 1973, just days after the coup and taken to Santiago’s main soccer stadium, which had been turned into a detention camp. He was 31.

A national truth commission formed after the dictatorship ended said Horman was executed the next day while in the custody of Chilean state security agents.

The commission said Teruggi, then a 24-year-old university student, was executed September 22.

The search for Horman by his wife and his father was the topic of the 1982 movie “Missing,” which starred Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon. The film won a best screenplay Oscar.

The film suggested U.S. complicity in Horman’s death and at the time drew strong objections from U.S. State Department officials.

The case remained practically ignored in Chile until 2000, when Mrs. Horman came and filed a lawsuit against Pinochet. She said she was acting on behalf of all victims of the dictatorship.

The government estimates 3,095 people were killed during Pinochet’s rule, including about 1,200 who were forcibly disappeared.

Source: apnews.com, October 4, 2013

Court: U.S. military spies had role leading to 1973 deaths of Americans in Chile

A Chilean court said U.S. military intelligence services played a key role that led to the 1973 killings of two Americans in Chile in a case that inspired the Oscar-winning film "Missing."

A court ruling released late Monday said former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis gave information to Chilean officials about journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi that led to their arrest and execution just days after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.

"The military intelligence services of the United States had a fundamental role in the creation of the murders of the two American citizens in 1973, providing Chilean military officers with the information that led to their deaths," the ruling by Judge Jorge Zepeda said.

Zepeda also upheld the decision to charge retired Chilean army Col. Pedro Espinoza with the murders, and Rafael Gonzalez, a former civilian counterintelligence agent, as an accomplice in Horman's murder. The two Chileans and Davis had been indicted in 2011.

Davis commanded the U.S. Military Mission in Chile at the time of the September 11, 1973, American-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected government of leftist President Salvador Allende. Davis was investigating Americans in Chile as part of a series of covert intelligence operations run out of the U.S.

Embassy targeting those considered to be subversives or radicals, according to lawyer Sergio Corvalan, who represents Horman's widow.

Courts in Chile had long sought Davis, believing he was living in Florida. Chile's Supreme Court had approved an extradition request so he could face trial. But Davis was secretly living in Chile, and he died in a Santiago nursing home last year.

Horman, 31, a freelance journalist and filmmaker, was arrested September 17, 1973, and taken to Santiago's main soccer stadium, which had been turned into a detention camp.

A national truth commission formed after the Pinochet dictatorship ended said Horman was executed the next day while in the custody of Chilean state security agents. The commission said Teruggi, a 24-year-old university student, was executed September 22.

The search for Horman by his wife and father was the topic of the 1982 movie "Missing," directed by Costa-Gavras, starred Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon. The film won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay and was also nominated for best picture, actor and actress.

The film suggested U.S. complicity in Horman's death and at the time drew strong objections from U.S. State Department officials.

The case remained practically ignored in Chile until 2000, when Horman's widow, Joyce, came and filed a lawsuit against Pinochet.

"More than 40 years after my husband was killed, and almost 14 years since I initiated judicial proceedings in Chile, I am delighted that the cases of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi are moving forward in the Chilean courts.

At the same time, I remain outraged that, through death and delay, a key indicted U.S. official, Captain Ray Davis, has escaped this prosecutorial process," Joyce Horman said after the judge's ruling was released.

"Judge Zepeda's ruling both implicates and incriminates U.S. intelligence personnel as playing a dark role in the murder of my husband," she said. "My hope is that the record of evidence compiled by the court sheds further light on how and why Charles was targeted, who actually ordered his murder, and what kind of information on one of its own citizens the U.S. government passed to the Chilean military who committed this heinous crime."

Chile's government estimates 3,095 people were killed during Pinochet's dictatorship, including about 1,200 who were forcibly disappeared.

"The judge's ruling brings the Horman and Teruggi families one step closer to a courtroom verdict, as well as a verdict of history on the role of the U.S. government and the Chilean military in these atrocities," said Peter Kornbluh, author of "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability."

Source: cbsnews.com, July 1, 2014

Judge Zepeda issued convictions for the crimes of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in 1973

Missing: Espinoza, González, and the mysterious "gringo" Davis

41 years after the murders of American journalist Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, a political science student of the same nationality, which occurred at the Estadio Nacional after the coup d'état, Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced Brigadier and former DINA second-in-command Pedro Espinoza Bravo to 7 years in prison as the perpetrator of both homicides.

He also sentenced former Chilean Air Force civilian agent Rafael González Berdugo to two years of supervised release as an accomplice to Horman's murder. At the same time, he ordered the state to pay $200 million to Horman's widow, Joyce, and the same sum to Janis Teruggi, Frank's sister.

On the night of September 10, 1973, Horman and his friend Terry Simon arrived late in Viña del Mar. At eleven o'clock at night, they entered the Hotel Miramar and asked for a room. They were given room 315.

Joyce, Horman's wife, could not travel with them to Valparaíso and Viña because she had to renew her passport. It was a trip to show Terry the beauties of both cities. But Horman was not in Chile for tourism. He had settled in the country, like Teruggi, to follow closely the revolution toward socialism.

The two were part of the press agency Fuente de Investigación Norteamericana (FIN), of which Horman was a co-founder. Horman sensed that a coup d'état against President Salvador Allende would occur in the coming hours, and that it would be initiated by the Navy in Valparaíso.

However, what he did not know was that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Navy Captain Ray E. Davis had been following his steps for some time. He was also following Teruggi and all U.S. citizens established in Chile who showed sympathy for the Unidad Popular government.

The DIA was dependent on the U.S. Department of State based at the Pentagon.

Davis was the Chief of the U.S. Military Assistance Group in Chile, an entity responsible for centralizing the coup-plotting intervention of the Richard Nixon administration to overthrow Allende. A man accustomed to walking in the shadows, far from prying eyes.

On the night of the 10th, the U.S. Embassy in Santiago learned of Horman and Simon's stay at the hotel, according to a declassified document: “The two registered at the Hotel Miramar in room 315. Horman gave the address of 425 Paul Harris in Santiago and said he was a writer.” The information came from U.S.

Navy officer Art Creter, who was also in Chile for the coup preparations and was staying at the Miramar.

In parallel, CIA agents stationed in Santiago had established the so-called "The MHCHAOS Program," whose objective was the tracking, telephone tapping, surveillance, and espionage of journalists and U.S. citizens who remained in Chile interested in covering the Allende government's progress toward socialism. The file they created in this operation was called "The Family Jewels."

After the coup, on September 15, Davis called Chilean Navy Captain Raúl Monsalve Poblete, a liaison officer between the Chilean Navy and the group commanded by Davis.

–I need a safe-conduct to travel in my car from Viña del Mar to Santiago… I am carrying guests.

Davis drove his car to the capital: his guests were Horman and Terry Simon.

During those hours in Valparaíso and Viña, they had been introduced by U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Ryan, who had been in Chile for nine months and came from the Pendleton Military Base in California. A fierce anti-communist who had been in the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs.

At the Miramar, Ryan approached them in the lobby in a friendly manner to have the pleasure of meeting them, he told Horman and Terry.

Davis arrived at three in the afternoon in a Santiago besieged by military patrols and left the guests at the Hotel Carrera, diagonally across from the Palacio de La Moneda, where they tried to deceive him by saying they were staying there. But Davis knew it was a lie. The U.S. Embassy was located right in front of the Carrera on Agustinas Street.

Meanwhile, the Internal Security Jurisdictional Area Command (Cajsi), created in Santiago with its five groups, had taken control of all repressive operations since September 11, establishing itself above the National Defense General Staff (EMDN), which was presided over by Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal and included Army General Augusto Lutz and Air Force General Nicanor Díaz.

Until then, the EMDN had always been the superior military command structure in Chile. The Cajsi were created in each province of the country, and the superior commands of the provinces of the three branches of the Armed Forces and their respective intelligence services were represented in them.

In Lutz's office

Left at the Hotel Carrera and due to the curfew, Horman and Simon decided to have dinner and stay there that night. The next morning, they left to go to where Joyce was waiting for them at a house on Avenida Vicuña Mackenna.

It was September 16. On the 17th, Terry stayed at the Hotel Riviera in downtown Santiago. Charles and Joyce would look for her there the next day, the 18th. The couple would handle the paperwork at the U.S. consulate across from Parque Forestal to try to get the three of them to travel back to their country quickly. Chile was now a guillotine hanging over their necks.

But they did not arrive on the 18th. On September 19, Joyce looked for her at the Riviera to give her the news through tears: “They arrested Charles the day before yesterday.”

Captain Davis had informed General Augusto Lutz, head of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), of Horman's arrival in Santiago.

On the evening of the 17th, Horman was taken to Lutz's office in the Armed Forces building, at the corner of Alameda and Zenteno.

There, he was awaited by Air Force civilian-rank Colonel Rafael González Verdugo, an old intelligence agent who had been infiltrating social and union organizations since the early sixties. It was he who interrogated him.

The interrogation was extensive and exhausting, but without violence. From there, they took him to the Estadio Nacional, which was already operating as a center for political imprisonment, torture, and extermination.

He was only there for a few hours. The next day, September 18, the date of the installation of the First Government Junta of Chile, his body appeared lying on a street in Santiago with multiple gunshot wounds. They took him to the morgue and buried him in a mass grave at the General Cemetery of the capital. He did not manage to cross paths with his friend Teruggi at the stadium.

On September 20, 1973, General Lutz communicated with the Carabineros Intelligence Directorate and ordered Teruggi's arrest. They arrested him along with his friend David Hathaway. They took them to the Non-Commissioned Officers School of that police force.

The next day, they took them to the Estadio Nacional, where they killed Teruggi. On September 22, they threw the body into the street and it appeared in the morgue. Hathaway was released six days later and is still alive.

Espinoza of power

Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo was in charge at the stadium. This is one of the novelties of Judge Zepeda's investigation, because until now it was always known that the commander of that place was another Espinoza: Colonel Jorge Espinoza Ulloa.

The same one who later was the commander of the National Secretariat of Detainees (Sendet). Although the latter was in command of the stadium, he remained under the command of Espinoza Bravo.

Espinoza Bravo, the man of the "Caravan of Death" and many other caravans of terror, operated in the EMDN's Department II of Counterintelligence and was head of the same department of the Army. At the stadium, he was the one who decided who should die, both foreigners and Chileans.

And not only did he decide it, but he also took it upon himself to verify that the deaths occurred. This was established by the proceedings, although he continues to deny it.

On October 12, 1973, Captain Ray E. Davis and U.S. Ambassador Nathaniel Davis met with Pinochet to discuss the Horman case. But they reported nothing of his death to his father, who was already in Santiago to look for him. Nor did they inform his wife, Joyce, who resided in Chile.

On October 30 of that year, General Lutz issued an official report on the “investigation” carried out by the military regime regarding the deaths of Horman and Teruggi, requested by Ambassador Davis. “The information available is that the citizens Horman and Teruggi were killed by extremists disguised as military personnel,” Lutz reported.

Faced with pressure from the U.S. government, which described the Horman-Teruggi case as a “pretty scandal,” on March 21, 1974, agent González Verdugo, accompanied by U.S. Vice Consul James Anderson, located Horman's body in the mass grave at the cemetery.

He had eight bullet wounds. They took him to the San Pancracio funeral home to be embalmed, and four days later his father was able to take him back to his country.

In 1982, filmmaker Costa-Gavras immortalized the Horman case with the film "Missing."

Lawyer Sergio Corvalán, who represents Joyce Horman and Janis Teruggi in the proceedings, told El Mostrador that “the crimes committed against U.S. citizens at the Estadio Nacional occurred in the context of a genocide against foreigners after the military coup.”

According to official Chilean information, there were as many as 29 U.S. citizens detained at the Estadio Nacional.

The jurist added: “The Chilean military personnel who arrested and carried out the homicides of Horman and Teruggi did so in concert with the U.S. forces that intervened in the coup d'état. They used precise information provided by Navy Captain Ray E. Davis, who directed the secret investigations tracking U.S. citizens in the days leading up to the coup.”

The Chilean State is not a party to this trial through the Ministry of the Interior's Human Rights Program.

The last mystery

On October 18, 2012, the Chilean Supreme Court requested the extradition from the United States of Navy Captain Ray E. Davis, who had already been duly prosecuted in absentia by Judge Jorge Zepeda. But, faithful to always walking in the shadows, the "gringo" was hidden in Chile under a false identity and married to Patricia, a Chilean woman who today lives in Miami.

However, in Santiago, he continued to collect his pension as a former agent under his real name. Of all those mysterious steps taken by Davis, U.S. authorities never informed the Chilean courts.

Far from the madding crowd, the key man and coordinator with the Chilean coup-plotters of U.S. activities in Chile to, first, destabilize the Unidad Popular government and then overthrow Allende, died on April 30, 2013, at the age of 88.

Abandoned by his wife, he was admitted to a nursing home in the Providencia commune. In the Parque del Recuerdo Cemetery, there is a record of his body's cremation. His ashes disappeared.

Years after the murders of Horman and Teruggi, Rafael González Verdugo changed the V in his last name to a B. Now as Berdugo, in 1977 he sought asylum in the Italian Embassy, saying that the DINA was persecuting him.

There, in January of that year, he was interrogated by U.S. Embassy officials. His agent badge had the number 27759. “I was the only officer of the Chilean Air Force who participated in the takeover of the Palacio de La Moneda on September 11, 1973,” he told them.

Italy got him out of Chile. One afternoon in 1980, posing as a dissident of the Chilean dictatorship, he went to have tea with Horman's father.

After 1990, he returned to Chile and posed as a political exonerated person. Today he is accredited as such and receives a pension from the State.

Source: El Mostrador, February 3, 2015