ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611180053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on November 17, 1996.
A headline in Saturday's paper incorrectly suggested that a DEA agent
provided money for Javier Cruz's bond when he was arrested on a rape
charge last year. Cruz received a $15,000 unsecured bond, meaning he did
not have to put up any money to be released from jail. The DEA agent was
waiting for Cruz at the jail when he was brought in after his arrest and
helped him at the magistrate's office to get released, according to a
source at the jail.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which helped Javier Cruz get a break on first-degree murder and drug trafficking charges after he became an informant, also stood by Cruz after he was charged with rape last year.
Cruz, who has been acting as a drug informant in an effort to work off a life sentence hanging over his head, was arrested in Roanoke County on a rape charge in July 1995.
After being arrested, Cruz was taken to the Roanoke County-Salem Jail. Don Lincoln, a senior agent for the DEA, was waiting for him there and helped him make bond to get released, according to a source at the jail.
The DEA's chief spokesman said the agency's help did not extend beyond that, even though the case never went to trial.
"DEA did not in any way intervene in the charges or the dismissal of those charges," said James McGivney, chief of public affairs for the DEA in Washington, D.C. "We're as concerned with the safety of the community as the local police would be."
The rape is alleged to have taken place in Cruz's car in the early morning hours on a Saturday. The car was parked behind his wife's Colombian restaurant, Temptations, on Virginia 419. He was arrested at his Clearbrook home shortly before 9 a.m. and his car was impounded.
Cruz cooperated with police, Roanoke County Police Chief John Cease said. Police say they had a strong case, which included a statement Cruz made to them shortly after his arrest.
Within a week of Cruz's arrest, however, the woman told the prosecutor she didn't want to go forward with the case. Without her testimony, the commonwealth's attorney's office chose not to pursue the charge. It was dropped in September 1995.
Cruz is an informant in an international money-laundering investigation and has been living in the Roanoke area off and on since 1989. Cruz, a native of Colombia, had ties to the Cali drug cartel and agreed to work undercover for the DEA after getting caught trafficking from his car lot on Melrose Avenue in Roanoke in 1991, according to Cruz and the DEA.
The woman who made the rape complaint is a Bedford County resident who knew Cruz when he was in charge of transporting cocaine for a major Colombian trafficker. Through the car lot, Like New Inc., Cruz bought vehicles and modified them with hidden compartments to smuggle cocaine from the Mexican border to distributors across the country and into Canada, according to the DEA. He was working for the Cali cartel's largest U.S. trafficker until the DEA shut down the car lot in April 1991, Cruz said recently.
To transport the cocaine - millions of dollars' worth at a time - Cruz employed non-Hispanic drivers to avoid "profiling" by police looking for suspicious activity, according to a 1991 affidavit filed in Roanoke federal court by the DEA. The woman who reported being raped by Cruz was one of his drivers five years ago, the affidavit says.
A 1991 federal indictment charging Cruz with narcotics trafficking remains sealed because the investigation involving him is ongoing. By cooperating, Cruz hopes to walk away from the charges with no prison time, he said in an interview two weeks ago.
The woman may face charges for her alleged part in the trafficking. She declined to comment.
U.S. Attorney Bob Crouch, whose office prosecutes cases made by the DEA, said he had no comment on the rape charge.
"This office was not involved in that in any way," Crouch said. "You'll have to call the DEA."
Dick McEnany, resident agent in charge of the DEA's Roanoke office, said Roanoke County police were told to make the case if they could prove the charge. He said Lincoln went to the jail the morning Cruz was arrested partly to find out what the charge was.
McEnany said Lincoln was on leave Friday and could not be reached for comment.
"A lot of people get arrested and the charges get dropped," McEnany said.
He said the DEA's policy when an informant is arrested is "hands-off till the investigation is completed. Rape is a serious charge."
McGivney, the DEA's spokesman in Washington, said decisions about dropping informants who get in trouble are made on a case-by-case basis, depending on the informant and the charges involved. When first called Friday, McGivney said he hadn't heard about the rape charge.
"There would be a consideration to disassociate ourselves with him, but it would be made on a case-by-case basis. Rape, of course, is a serious charge, unquestionably," he said. "I agree somebody has to take responsibility, but I don't know the circumstances."
McEnany, who has been running the Roanoke office only since September, said he didn't know if Cruz was on the DEA payroll at the time of his arrest.
Cease, the Roanoke County police chief, said his department investigated the case against Cruz as it would any case. But, in a departure from the department's normal policy, he would not allow a reporter to interview the investigating detective.
"We immediately charged and arrested him," Cease said. "We handled it like any other citizen."
Cease said he has been concerned about Cruz's presence in the county, where the informant has lived for almost two years. But Cease doesn't have authority over a federal case, and he said the DEA has not told him much about its investigation.
He said the police department had checked out Temptations and found nothing to indicate that it wasn't a legitimate business. Cruz said his wife, whom he began dating in Colombia while working as an informant, is wealthy and that she bankrolled the restaurant.
Meanwhile, Cruz and his family have been relocated outside Roanoke County, McEnany said. Cease, however, said the DEA had not informed him of that and police have stepped up patrols around Cruz's house and around Temptations since newspaper stories about him appeared last week.
In an interview two weeks ago, Cruz said he did not fear the people he had informed on when the articles came out. The cartel leaders are businessmen, he said, and informants are just part of the business.
"Stealing makes them mad," he said. Being informed on "is a totally different story."
He said he had turned his life around since becoming an informant and that he was now a law-abiding citizen. "I love the United States," he said.
Cruz shot a Charlotte, N.C., man in the back of the head in 1987 and then fled. He was a fugitive for four years, wanted on a first-degree murder charge.
After he was arrested in 1991 and became an informant, Cruz served about 16 months in and out of the Roanoke County-Salem Jail. The DEA then helped him get a plea bargain to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter. He served seven more days in a North Carolina prison, then was released. Family members of the man he killed said they were assured that Cruz would spend years in federal prison on drug charges. Those charges have not been prosecuted, however, as the DEA's case continues.
Cruz's neighbors in Roanoke County said they have flooded the local DEA and U.S. attorney's offices with calls since reading about Cruz in the newspaper, as well as their congressmen and the Justice Department. They held a community meeting last weekend to discuss their concerns and whom they should contact.
They said they're glad he's gone, but one resident expressed concern that moving him could put another unsuspecting community in jeopardy. Several said they still plan to write their senators and congressmen to express their anger at the government's use of Cruz as an informant.
"I think his new neighbors are at risk," said one resident of his Clearbrook neighborhood who asked that her name not be used. "I think he should be out of Virginia. Reading [about him] scared me, that someone could be walking down the street with me and he can just break as many laws as he wants to and be sitting in a $288,000 house and operating a business."
Another neighbor, Charles Trail, said he and other neighbors will feel better when several people still living in Cruz's house are gone.
"I wonder how much of our tax dollars go to support this guy," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Javier Cruz Was charged with rape. color.by CNB