Excerpt Re Fred Alvarez and FriendsFrom The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith
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In 1982 Fred Alvarez, a Cabazon tribal leader, and two companions were found murdered on the Indio reservation. Alvarez had been critical of Nichols' and Wackenhut's dealings with the Cabazon tribe (citing US News & World Report, 8/23/93), and he had mentioned to friends that he had received death threats. Investigative reporter Virginia McCullough later came to believe that Alvarez had discovered that monies rightfully belonging to the Indians were being embezzled by the partnership called Bingo Palace Inc. (cMcCullough, Virginia, Interview w/Kenn Thomas, 1/27/94). Alvarez knew what he was getting into, however. He had told the Indio Daily News, "My life is on the line. There are people out there [on the reservation] that want to kill me."
According to Riconosciuto, "Alvarez was present at all the meetings, and he was gung-ho behind Nichols, and everything that was going on there. OK? We were all red-blooded Americans, and we believed in the things that were going on! The way things were shaping up with the Reagan Election Committee and the things that were being orchestrated made us all concerned. And Alvarez wrote a detailed letter to Ronald Reagan expressing his concern. All the details of the October Surprise hostage issue were outlined in the letter. I mean, in specifics."
Linda Streeter-Dukic, Alvarez' sister, described early relations of Alvarez and the inner circle around Nichols as being amicable, but says that when he started objecting to some of the schemes coming down from Nichols and the other tribe leaders, they began to send him on business trips. One trip was to Denver, In June 1981, to attend a conference. Streeter says that while in Denver Alvarez was offered a large amount of money to carry drugs back to Indio, but had turned the offer down.
"When he got off the plane," she says, "the police grabbed him, threw him spread-eagle against a car and searched him and his bags." Alvarez's mother says that only Nichols and his son were aware of Alvarez's trip to Denver. (Connolly)
On the morning of July 1, 1981, a meeting was scheduled by Alvarez with attorney and former Cabazon chairman Joe Benitez. The intended topic of discussion was how to oust Cabazon control from Nichols. When Benitez arrived at Alvarez' home in Rancho Mirage he found Fred Alvarez shot through the head as he sat in a chair. Alvarez's girlfriend and another friend were also nearby, shot dead (Littman and Taylor, "Bizarre Murders").
[Note: In the spring of 1991, Linda Streeter-Duvic and former tribal chairman Art Welmus attempted again to organize the Cabazon tribe to oust John Philip Nichols and clan as administrators of the Cabazons. They were kept from assembling in the tribal hall by eleven guards, but held their meetings instead in a nearby mobile home. In response, the Nicholses initiated expulsion proceedings, and flew in a parliamentarian from Wisconsin to conduct hearings. Armed guards took twenty Cabazons to a trailer next to a bingo hall, where they witnessed the parliamentarian accuse Welmus of the theft of a cheesecake, the attempt to use the tribal hall, and of maligning the Nichols management in the local press. The vote to banish Welmus and Streeter-Duvic was dead-locked until votes were received from five Nichols supporters recently registered as voters. The new voters were non-Cabazon, distant relatives (stepchildren) of the Nichols faction. The final vote expelled Welmus, age 60, from the tribe and Streeter-Dukic, age 44, for twenty years, and fined them $50,000. (Littman, Johathan, "Tribal Managers Tough To Challenge," San Francisco Chronicle, September 4, 1991; a letter from counsel to the Cabazons to the San Francisco Chronicle dated Sept. 19, 1991 challenged the details of this report and Jonathan Littman's entire series on the Cabazons and demanded a retraction, which it did not receive.)]
The murder of Alvarez and his friends took place during a period when Nichols, Zokosky, and a Wackenhut associate named Bob Frye were traveling around the country on munitions business. Zokosky told reporter John Connolly that "I felt like they were stalling. We had no meetings scheduled." (Connolly). Zokosky returned to Indio, and the following day the bodies of Alvarez and his companions were found. The day after that, Nichols returned to Indio. When Zokosky told Nichols about the murders, "Nichols seemed unaffected, like he already knew." Zokosky states that Nichols, "...dialed a number and asked for Bob Frye. 'Alvarez has been murdered,' he said into the phone a few seconds later. After another few seconds, Nichols said, 'Okay, so long," and hung up." (Connolly)
Suggestions have been made that the investigation of the deaths by the police was slipshod and hurried. Police familiar with the case note the friendship of Nichols with one of the investigating detectives. One police investigator believed he was removed from the case because of pressure put on his superiors from the outside. When the investigator pursued further on his own, he received death threats, one from a crossbow-wielding man. Fearing for his family, the man gave up and moved out of town. (Littman and Taylor).
In any case, the investigation languished until the appearance of Jimmy Hughes. Hughes had been Nichols' Wackenhut bodyguard, and he reported to Indio police officials that he was Nichols' bagman for the murders of Fred Alvarez and his friends. Hughes described Nichols and two of his sons, Mark and John Paul, as having doled out $5,000 in cash in front of him, with orders to deliver the money to two men in the nearby town of Idyllwild. Hughes stated that, "Nichols admitted to me the ordering of the Alvarez murder. He stated there was a U.S.-government covert action...Pressures from unknown Washington, D.C. government agencies have caused a possible shutdown of this case." (Connolly).
According to Hughes, the murderers included several ex-Green Berets employed as firemen in Chicago. Hughes went into hiding in Sonoma and Lake counties after the murders, under the protection of the Riverside county District Attorney's office and the California Department of Justice. The FBI offered Hughes protection under a witness protection program, but he turned it down, fearing "Nichols has made a deal with the FBI through the Wackenhut Corporation. Possibly...he himself has been protected by the FBI." (Connolly). Hughes also stated that the Alvarez investigation had been interfered with by "an agency out of Washington, D.C." Offering no other specifics, he said, "The FBI is small potatoes compared to the agency."
NAPA Sentinel editor Harry Martin details curiosities about the investigation that followed Hughes' revelations: "The chief investigator for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office was later taken off the case and transferred to the Juvenile division and then given early retirement. Shortly after his retirement, the DA investigator states that he was pulled off the road one day by a CIA agent and told to forget all about the 'desert' if he wanted to enjoy his retirement." (Martin, Harry, NAPA Sentinel).
After Jimmy Hughes came forward with information he left the country, reportedly traveling to Guatemala. Hughes was said to be in possession of documentation linking the men at Cabazon to a hit list of political targets including Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was murdered in 1986; Israeli intelligence agent Amiran Nir, who died in a mysterious plane crash; and Cyrus Hashemi, a key player in the events of October Surprise, also murdered in 1986.
pgs. 32-34
Alfred Alvarez on his motorcycle. His body, shot in the head with a .38 caliber bullet, burned in the desert heat for a day. It sat in a wooden chair behind Alvarez's house in a yard on Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage, located in Riverside County.
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