The below story
originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.
The Horn of the Bull
Part One
By Paul Davis
I was told that
Lieutenant Edwin Fay was thrilled with being a naval intelligence officer back
in 1965.
James Bond-mania was
in full swing then and Fay was a huge fan of the Bond films and Ian Fleming's
James Bond novels. Fay was pleased to learn that his true-life hero, the late
President John F. Kennedy, a World War II naval officer, was also a fan of the
Bond novels and once dined with Fleming, who had been a British naval
intelligence officer in World War II.
Fay, a thin,
baby-faced young man of 28, was stationed in San Diego, California in 1965. His
assignment was to coordinate intelligence with the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Narcotics (FBN) and the Mexican Federal Judicial Police concerning a Mexican
crime lord suspected of smuggling vast amounts of narcotics into the United
States via a fleet of merchant ships.
Fay thought this was
the stuff of thrillers. He loved traveling down to Tijuana, Mexico in his
"civies" - his civilian clothes - for meetings with the FBN and
the Federalies. He told friends that after the Friday
meetings, he would drink in local bars, admire the senoritas, and
dream of his budding naval career.
According to the
Navy’s investigation report, it was after one of these meetings that Fay was
abducted after he stepped out of a Tijuana bar.
Witnesses reported
that Fay was accosted by two pistoleros as he left the bar.
The two gunmen beat Fay into unconsciousness and pushed him into the cab of a
truck. A FBN informant later reported that Fay was taken to a bull ranch
outside Tijuana. He was tied and bound to a chair in a dark room and then
revived. The two gunmen, identified by the informant only as Pedro and Alfredo,
began to beat Fay.
Off to the side of the
room stood a heavy, thick-set man with a large, flat face that Fay no doubt
recognized from the numerous surveillance photos he had viewed the previous
months. The man was Neron Rodrigo, the crime lord targeted by the FBN and the Mexican
police. Standing next to Rodrigo was the stunningly beautiful Mexican girl that
Fay and the FBN agents often lusted over in the photos.
Fay’s beating was
severe, and he eventually answered all of their questions. With a nod from
Rodrigo, the two men untied Fay, lifted him from the chair, dragged him out of
the house and stood him against the fence of a bull pen.
"Do you like the
bulls?" the informant reported that Rodrigo asked Fay. "Do you come
to Mexico for the girls or the bulls?"
The two gunmen laughed
loudly as they bound Fay’s hands tightly behind his back.
"You, my stupid
young friend, chose to face the wrong bull - me," Rodrigo explained
patiently to the beaten and bleeding naval officer. "And now you must face
this other bull."
Rodrigo motioned
towards the bull pen with his right thumb and the two gunmen lifted Fay and
tossed him over the fence.
With his hands tied
behind him, Fay had difficulty getting to his feet, but despite his wounds from
the beating, the young officer was up and moving as the powerful black bull
charged. The 1,000-pound bull slammed and tore into Fay’s back and Fay was spun
violently and fell to the ground. He lay in a twisted heap, trying to catch his
breath.
His abductors leaned
on the fence and cheered the bull on. Standing a few feet back from the pen,
the girl was expressionless. Fay somehow summoned the strength to get on his
feet and move, but the bull charged again and one of the ferocious animal’s horns
tore into Fay’s left leg, splitting it open from ankle to knee. Fay let out a
chilling scream and collapsed to the ground.
The bull loomed over
Fay, pummeling him as he lay helpless and semi-conscious. His wounds bleed
profusely into the sand. With a wave from Rodrigo, the man called Pedro
distracted the bull as Alfredo jumped in and dragged Fay out of the pen.
Rodrigo cursed the
young officer and delivered a severe kick to his head. He then pulled out a
knife with a six-inch steel blade and a handle made from a bull's horn. He
leaned down and spoke quietly to Fay.
"The horns of
that bull have torn you apart," Rodrigo said. "But it will be this
horn of the bull that will kill you."
Rodrigo grabbed Fay's
shirt and stabbed Fay in the chest repeatedly.
"Toss him in the
street as a message," Rodrigo told his pistoleros. "I
want everyone to know that it will take a stronger man to face this
bull."
Fay’s broken, bloody
and torn body was thrown into the street from a speeding truck. The Tijuana
police recovered the body and Fay was identified by his Navy dog tags. The
Mexican police notified the U.S. Navy in San Diego.
In 1970, five years
after Fay’s body was discovered, I was an 18-year-old enlisted sailor serving
aboard the USS Kitty Hawk.
The aircraft carrier
was home-ported in San Diego, and we were going to sea every Monday through
Friday, performing sea trials, damage control drills and air operations in
preparation of our upcoming combat cruise to Vietnam. When the carrier returned
to port in San Diego for the weekends, many of the Kitty Hawk's nearly 5,000
men, myself included, ventured down to neighboring Tijuana for the wild and
crazy nightlife.
There were at least a
dozen cautionary tales circulating at the time that illustrated how Tijuana was
truly a rough town. I recall one often-told, particularly gruesome and
seemingly far-fetched story of a Navy officer who was gored to death by a bull
and then dumped unceremoniously into the street.
The story was true, I
discovered many years later. I read the Navy’s declassified investigation
report, and I heard the details of the decades-old murder directly from the
Navy’s investigating officer. The Navy appointed an unusual officer to
investigate the grisly murder in Mexico.
The Navy sent a
frogman.
Admiral Gordon Gray
was walking history. Affectionately called "the old frogman,"
Gray was a legend in the U.S. Navy. Like Admiral John D. Bulkley and Admiral
Hyman G. Rickover, Gray was one of the few post-WWII naval officers who served
more than 50 years on active duty. Rising from seaman to admiral, Gray served
in three major wars and a dozen conflicts around the globe. He also participated in numerous intelligence operations and crime and espionage
investigations.
Over the course of his
storied career, Gray served as a PT boat seaman, a guerrilla in the Philippines
during WWII, an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) frogman in WWII and Korea, and
later a naval intelligence officer who was often assigned as an investigating
officer.
I was proud and
fortunate to have interviewed the old, retired admiral over the course of many
months. He allowed me to do a series of exclusive interviews with him and
he provided me with photos, declassified reports and his old notes. He also
allowed me to tape record my interviews with him.
There was only one
proviso.
I could not publish my
interviews with him until after his death.
Admiral Gordon Gray
died peacefully of natural causes. He died in his bed, surrounded by his wife,
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He was buried in the
Arlington National Cemetary with full military honors.
I first heard of
Gordon Gray from my late father, Edward M. Davis, who was a Navy chief petty
officer and UDT frogman during WWII. During the later years of the war, Gray
was a UDT petty officer who served under my father. My father, who was
medically discharged after the war due to combat injuries, often spoke proudly
of his former teammate.
I recall my father
being pleased to read my letter in which I described my brief encounter with
Gray when he came aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in 1971 while the aircraft carrier
was anchored in Da Nang Harbor in South Vietnam.
I became a writer some
years after leaving the Navy. Having been a student of crime since I was a
12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia, I went on to
write a weekly crime column for the local newspaper, and I became a contributing
editor to Crime and Security, a national monthly magazine that
covers crime, espionage and terrorism.
While on assignment
for Crime and Security, I interviewed a good number of World
War II UDT veterans and active-duty Navy SEALS for a piece on the UDT frogmen
of World War II and how those first frogmen influenced the modern-day Navy
SEALs.
One of the old UDT
veterans, a retired commander named Michael Roberts, told me that he served
with both my father and Gray. He said he was still in touch with the retired
and reclusive admiral, and although Gray did not usually speak to reporters, he
gave me the admiral’s e-mail address so I could contact him and attempt to draw
him out.
I e-mailed Gray and
requested an interview. Although he rarely granted interviews, I wrote that I
felt he owed it to history and his former teammates to speak publicly about his
career. I noted that many of the men he served with, like my father, had passed
on.
It must have been a
good pitch, as Gray called me a short while later. In an hour-long
telephone conversation, he said he fondly remembered my late father. He told a
couple of stories about serving under my father as UDT 5 hit the Japanese-held
beaches of Saipan, Tinian and Leyte.
"We swam ashore,
wearing swim trunks, face mask and coral shoes, and we went up against 40,000
enemy Japanese soldiers, armed only with a satchel of explosives and our combat
knives," Gray said proudly.
He laughed when he
also recalled my father getting him out of jail in Hawaii after he was arrested
for being drunk and disorderly.
"My father told
me that he knew every police sergeant in Hawaii," I said.
Gray laughed at the
memory of his old chief convincing police sergeants to let the UDT frogmen out
of jail so they could go back into combat. Gray also recalled visiting the
Kitty Hawk in Vietnam many years later and talking to a number of young
sailors, one of whom, I informed him, was me.
Gray said he did not
normally grant interviews, but he happened to read my newspaper column each
week, although he didn't know I was his old chief's son, and he also read some
of my magazine pieces, including the story on UDT and the modern SEALs. So due
to my Navy background and with respect for my father, Gray consented to a
series of exclusive interviews with me. I looked forward to interviewing
Admiral Gray about his amazing life.
We arranged to meet a
week later at his home. I knew Gray was originally from South Philadelphia, but
I didn't know that he settled back in the city after he retired from the Navy,
and that he lived quietly in a riverside neighborhood not far from my own South
Philly home.
When I arrived at his
home for our first interview, Gray answered the door promptly and welcomed me.
I followed him to the back of the house to his office. The room had an old
wooden desk and a black leather chair and in front of the desk was a small, round
wood table with two chairs. Behind his desk and chair was a set of glass doors
that led to a small yard and garden.
I looked around the
room and saw that in between the books on his floor-to-ceiling wood bookcases
there were framed photos of his family and a few framed photos of Gray in
uniform with other military people. A small model of a PT boat and a small
model of a destroyer were also on display on the bookshelves.
There was also an old
combat knife in a black leather sheath on a shelf. My late father's similar old
UDT knife, called a Ka-Bar, sat on a bookshelf in my book-lined basement
office.
I noted that there were no medals or military awards on display. The office was
tidy and neat and would easily pass a Navy inspection.
The admiral, a big man
with short-cropped iron-gray hair and a tanned and deeply lined face, looked
fit and healthy for a man of his advanced age. Despite his age and his casual
civilian attire, I could see that he retained his military bearing and command
presence. I read somewhere that a friend of his noted that Gray moved like a
panther. Even as the elderly admiral walked casually around his home, I could
see what the friend meant.
As we sat down at the
small table, I also recalled an historian writing about the Alamo who noted
that Travis, Bowie, and Crockett all had what the Mexicans called
"blue-gray killer's eyes." I saw that the old admiral had blue-gray
killer's eyes as well.
Gray offered me a cup
of coffee and a cigar in a deep, rich voice that a stage actor or military
drill instructor would envy. I set up my small tape recorder and laid my
notebook and pen on the round table and sat in one of the chairs. Gray sat in
the other chair, handed me a cigar, and poured us coffee from a carafe.
We drank the good and
strong Navy-style coffee, lit the fine cigars, and Gray asked me about my late
father and my family. He said he was sorry to hear that my father had passed.
He also asked about my doing security work in the U.S. Navy and later as a Defense
Department civilian employee before I became a full-time writer.
Gray noticed that on
my left wrist I wore a stainless-steel, black-faced Rolex Submariner diver's
watch, like the one he was also wearing on his left wrist. He asked me if I
were a diver.
Strictly a sports
diver, I replied, and an amateur at that. I spoke of my diving in oceans around
the world from the Philippines and Hawaii to the Virgin Islands and Jamaica,
places Gray also knew well. I told the admiral that my Rolex Submariner was my prize
possession, given to me years ago by a beautiful young woman as a 30th birthday
present. I married her a month later.
Gray cracked a smile
at that. He said that like many frogmen, pilots, astronauts, aquanauts and
other military men, he'd worn his Rolex Submariner during most of his
career.
Now I’m a proud Navy
veteran, an unabashed patriot, and a big supporter of the military, but even
after all these years, I still possess my enlisted man’s distrust of military
brass. I've always had problems with authority, yet I felt there was something
genuine and down-to-earth about this old admiral.
When I first addressed
him as "Admiral Gray," he responded, "I'm retired. Call me
Gordon."
Gray picked a
cardboard box up from the floor and slid it across the table towards me. I
opened it and saw that it contained records, files and photographs. The box,
one of two dozen I would eventually receive, contained Gray’s declassified
official investigation reports. The box also contained various other
declassified documents. Gray said he cleared the release of the records
to me.
I looked over a batch
of photos that I pulled out of the box, some of which were marked "Mexico,
1965″ and showed photos of Gray as a younger, leaner, dark-haired and ruggedly
handsome man.
I knew the public
legend, but I asked Gray to begin our talks by providing a brief overview of
his life and career before we concentrated on a specific time or incident in
his life to cover in this initial session.
Admiral Gordon Gray,
often described by friends as taciturn, looked uncomfortable talking about
himself, but he took a long draw from his cigar and then soldiered on to say
that like me, he was born in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the U.S.
Navy.
His father, a WWI Navy
veteran, moved from rural Pennsylvania to South Philadelphia to work on ships
at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Gray, an only child, was born in a row home
not far from the shipyard. His father instilled in him a love for the Navy and
a love of country.
Gray said he was a
city boy, but his father took him hunting up in the Pennsylvania Pocono
Mountains every winter and he spent several summers working on an uncle's
fishing boat off the South Jersey shore. This background helped prepare him for
his Navy career.
Gray went on to say
that he enlisted in the Navy at 17 and was sent to serve on a PT boat in the
Philippine Islands prior to the outbreak of WWII. During the Japanese invasion
of the Philippines, Gray’s PT boat was hit with a shell during an engagement with
a Japanese destroyer.
Blown clear off the
boat and into the night’s choppy, black water, Gray quickly recovered and
discovered that he was the sole survivor of the PT boat crew. Gray, an
all-round athlete who boxed for the squadron, was an excellent swimmer and he
swam ashore easily. With only minor injuries from the Japanese shell, he sat on
the beach and watched the naval battle rage.
Refusing to surrender
to the Japanese occupying forces, Gray joined the American and Filipino
guerrilla bands that were forming an active resistance. The young seafarer
learned new skills such as guerrilla warfare and the art of espionage. The
guerrillas harassed and spied on the occupying Japanese forces, providing vital
information via the radio to the American forces headquartered in
Australia.
Gray excelled in
performing acts of sabotage as he became proficient with explosives. He earned
a reputation as a fearless guerrilla fighter and a skillful intelligence
operative.
In his last act as a
guerrilla in the Philippines, Gray dropped silently into the sea from a fishing
boat, swam ashore and penetrated deep inside an enemy garrison. Once inside the
garrison he sought out a particularly vicious Japanese Kempei Tai colonel.
Armed only with his combat knife, Gray took the brutal Japanese Secret Service
officer in swift and close combat, killing him soundlessly. He then escaped
back into the sea and swam to the fishing boat without alerting the Japanese
guards.
The Japanese mounted a
massive manhunt for the colonel’s executioner. Gray hid out in the jungle, but
he was betrayed by a close Filipino friend in the guerrilla band, and he was
captured by the Japanese. Defiant in the face of torment and constant beatings,
Gray later escaped and rejoined his guerrilla band. With the Japanese mounting
another massive manhunt for Gray, the American colonel who led the guerrilla
band leader made arrangements for the young sailor to be exfiltrated from the
Philippines via an American submarine.
Gray boarded the
submarine secretly and he was examined by a medical corpsman and given dinner.
After dinner he had coffee with Commander Brad Hunt, a naval intelligence
officer that happened to be a passenger aboard the submarine.
He was debriefed by
Hunt. Considering Gray’s skills and experiences with swimming and explosives,
Hunt suggested that Gray volunteer for a new, classified, elite outfit that he
heard was forming back in Florida.
"That elite
outfit was UDT," Gray said.
Thanks to Hunt's
letter of recommendation, Gray joined UDT. He served as a UDT frogman in the
Pacific for the rest of WWII. Before General MacArthur waded ashore in
triumphant return to the Philippines, Gray, along with my father and other
members of UDT 5, swam in and performed night reconnaissance of the shoreline
and later planted explosives to clear the way for the forthcoming amphibious
landings. Gray had made this swim once before, but this time he was at the
spearhead of a mighty invasion force.
Gray remained in UDT
after the war and he later fought in the Korean War, where he earned an
officer’s commission as an Ensign.
While serving on the
staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Arleigh Burke, in the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Gray, like a number of other special operations
veterans, recommended expanding the mission of the UDT frogmen. When President
Kennedy, the Ian Fleming fan, later supported the Navy' thrust to develop a
Special Operations outfit akin to the U.S. Army’s Green Berets, some of Gray’s
ideas were adapted in the formation of the SEALs (Sea, Air and land).
In 1962, the Navy
selected a small group of UDT officers and enlisted men and commissioned them
as SEALs. The men were formed into SEAL Team One on the West Coast and SEAL
Team Two on the East Coast. On track to become a naval intelligence officer,
Gray remained a UDT officer assigned to the CNO’s staff.
Despite his often grim
and hazardous duty, or perhaps because of it, Gray was typical of the young men
in the Navy at the time. He had a reputation as a fun-loving, hell-raising,
hard-drinking, and girl-chasing sailor. Gray modified his personal behavior
when he married late in his life. He and his wife had a son who was now a
serving naval officer.
Although Gray did not
mention it, I knew that among his many medals and citations, he was awarded the
Navy Cross, three Silver Stars and four Bronze Stars.
Concluding the
overview of his career, Gray said that he wanted to begin our interview
sessions with a story of an operation in Mexico in 1965. He spoke of being sent
to Tijuana, Mexico as an investigating officer after the murder of a young Navy
officer.
"The suspect was
an international criminal with his own private navy." Gray said.
Gray began to recount
a meeting he attended at the Pentagon in 1965. Gray, then a newly promoted
lieutenant commander, was called to the meeting by Captain James Moore, a
special assistant to the CNO. Moore, a short, thin, gruff former combat
submariner, told Gray that the CNO wanted him to attend a meeting with a FBN
official.
The federal drug agent
came to the Pentagon to brief Moore on the vicious murder of Fay in Mexico. The
CNO was furious about the murder, and he was dissatisfied with the Naval
Investigative Service's report, which concluded that Fay was the victim of a random
robbery-murder, suspect or suspects unknown. With the new information from the
BDN, the CNO wanted action. His order to send for "the frogman," whom
he considered his personal troubleshooter, was a clear indication of
that.
Fay provided valuable
assistance to the FBN by coordinating the tracking of the drug smugglers’ ships
at sea by the U.S. Navy’s ships and aircraft, FBN Special Agent Tom Cobb told
Moore and Gray. He also said that the young, affable officer was well-liked by
the FBN agents and the Mexican police officers.
Cobb, a stocky man
with short brown hair and a tight-fitting, rumbled black suit, looked every bit
like a hard-nosed, world-weary cop. Cobb began the briefing, occasionally
glancing at the folder in front of him.
"We suspect that
Lieutenant Edwin Fay was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Neron
Rodrigo," Cobb told the two naval officers sitting across from him.
"Rodrigo is the legitimate owner of a fleet of commercial merchant ships,
but we believe he is also a major drug smuggler and a psychotic killer.
Cobb went on to say
that Rodrigo’s shipping line provided cover for his crime empire. He was known
in the criminal world as “El Toro," the Bull, for his strength, deadly
skills and a bull-like physique. Rodrigo made wide use of murder, violence, intimidation,
bribery and corruption to protect his growing legitimate and criminal
enterprises. His trademark weapon was a razor-sharp six-inch knife with a
handle made from a bull’s horn.
Rodrigo had criminal
partners all over the world and the FBN received information from confidential
informants that Rodrigo was a partner to Carlos Mendez, a major drug supplier
in Mexico, and they planned to partner with American organized crime in the Western
United States. This partnership, if established, Cobb explained, would flood
the U.S. with heroin. Heroin addiction, the agent explained to the naval
officers, was a growing national crisis.
Cobb helped himself to
a class of water from the pitcher on the table. He took a huge gulp as if to
wash down the distasteful story he had to tell the Navy officers.
"Rodrigo was a
street urchin who grew up in Tijuana. He had a nasty reputation for targeting
American sailors," Cobb explained. "His mother worked the bars and
entertained American sailors and when Rodrigo became a teenager he would rob and
assault sailors at knife-point, often stabbing them simply for his
pleasure."
According to the
Mexican police, Rodrigo hates Americans in general and American sailors in
particular, as he believes his father was an American sailor who abandoned him.
He also hated American sailors due to one young sailor who refused to be a
victim.
Although the sailor
had been staggering drunk when he left a Tijuana bar, closely followed by
Rodrigo, the sailor was able to quickly disarm Rodrigo and knocked him out
cold.
"He dragged
Rodrigo back to the bar and dropped him in the doorway like a sack of
mail," Cobb said bluntly.
Rodrigo was deeply
humiliated, and he soon extracted his revenge by targeting another unfortunate
American sailor who was walking tipsily down a back street. Rodrigo, armed with
a knife, savagely murdered the sailor.
The Mexican police
went all out to arrest Rodrigo, but thanks to a rising young drug kingpin - his
future Mexican partner, the Mexican police suspect - he was spirited away on a
cargo ship heading to South American ports-of-call.
Rodrigo became a
merchant seaman and over the years he became involved with criminal
organizations in several countries, acting first as a smuggler and later as a
paid contract killer for various crime syndicates. His reputation grew
steadily, and he invested his considerable criminal earnings into a small
shipping line. His shipping holdings were now so clouded in foreign registries
and fronts that investigators did not know exactly what he owned or controlled,
but they believed his holdings to be vast.
Cobb passed out
surveillance photos to Moore. Moore glanced at them with a disdainful look and
passed them to Gray. Gray saw that Rodrigo was in his early 50s and was a big,
thick and heavy man. His powerful arms and torso stretched against his shirt.
He had a flattened face, slicked back black hair and pitted-olive skin. He was
by no means handsome, but with him in nearly every photo was a stunning,
raven-haired beauty. Gray wondered who she was.
"Her name is
Adoncia Prado," Cobb offered, reading Gray’s mind. "She is Rodrigo’s
girlfriend."
According to their
source, Cobb continued, Rodrigo reacted angrily to the news that American
narcotic agents brought in the U.S. Navy to perform naval and air surveillance
of his ships. Rodrigo, the source said, personally supervised the torture of
Fay and stabbed and murdered him. He bragged about the murder to his chief
lieutenants, one of whom was an FBN confidential informant. Although the FBN
informant was willingly to provide information about the crime, he would not
testify against Rodrigo in a Mexican or American court.
Cobb said that America
had a strong ally in Mexico with Commandante Gregorio Alvero of the Mexican
Federal Judicial Police. Alvero was an incorruptible police officer who
supervised a small, tough squad of drug raiders. Cobb said that Alvero was a
fearless career policeman with a keen sense of humor that infuriated the
criminals he pursued, such as Rodrigo.
As Gray listened, he
stole another glance at the young woman’s photo. She possessed an angelic face,
but Gray also detected an underlying toughness.
When the briefing
ended, Captain Moore was clearly angered. He slapped the wood conference table
and stood up. He chewed on his wet, slim cigar for a moment, as if he were
chewing on his next words.
"This man, this
murderer," he said slowly, spitting out bits of cigar leaf that hit the
tabletop. "Why, he’s a clear threat to American national security. He’s a
damn criminal with his own damn navy!"
Moore told Gray that
the CNO had appointed him as an investigating officer and ordered him to go to
Mexico and investigate Fay’s murder and Rodrigo's possible involvement. He told
Gray that another intelligence officer had been assigned to provide naval surveillance
support to the federal drug cops, but he would remain safely in San
Diego.
Cobb thanked the
captain. Cobb handed Gray his business card and asked him to call later in the
day. Cobb then gathered up his files and left the conference room.
"If your
investigation confirms Rodrigo murdered Fay, we’ll take him down,” Moore told
Gray. “He may have gotten away with killing one American sailor when he was a
teenage Tijuana street rat, but he sure as hell will not skate on Fay’s murder.
You make sure of that.”
"Aye, aye,
Sir."
As they left the
conference room and walked down the Pentagon passageway, Moore advised Gray to
remember the Barbary War.
"The American
Navy has fought pirates before," Moore growled.
© 2002 Paul
Davis
