6E 
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY 
MURDER IN PANAMA-THE CASE RECONSTRUCTED 
By SYDNEY GRXJSON 
Special to The New York Times. 
PANAMA , Jan. 29— A com* 
mission of the Panamanian Con¬ 
gress is nearing the end of its in¬ 
vestigation into the assassination 
of President Jose Antonio Remon. 
What it has discovered so far has 
not been revealed. But from 
published accounts and talks with 
officials and police investigators 3 
it has been possible to piece to¬ 
gether the following chronologi¬ 
cal recomtruction of the crime. 
President’s Slaying and the Event’s'SSoS 8 S5S 
Aftermath Have Shaken Country 
M 
President Jose Antonio Remon, 
the nation’s No. 1 sports fan, was 
enjoying a drink and talk with a 
small group of friends after the 
day’s racing at the Juan Franco 
track on Sunday, Jan. 2. The 
President was in a jovial mood. 
One of his horses 4iad won the 
last race of the day and cham¬ 
pagne was being served to cele¬ 
brate. The world looked good to 
“Chichi” Rem<5n, a jovial, portly 
man of 46. 
In the year and eight months 
that he had been in office, PresL 
dent Remdn had established a po^ 
litical tranquillity and social 
progress that Panama had never 
before known. The bullyboy police 
chief, who over a decade made or 
broke Presidents, was now a 
matured, statesmanlike leader. 
The high spot of his career, the 
signing of a new treaty with the 
United States on the Panama 
Canal, lay immediately ahead. 
As the racetrack party con¬ 
tinued into the early evening, 
a crackling noise was heard from 
the distance. “Firecrackers,” 
someone in the illuminated Pres¬ 
idential box remarked. A few 
minutes later an angry-sounding 
crackle came from near the rac¬ 
ing strip directly in front of the 
Presidential box. 
“That’s no firecracker,” some¬ 
one in the party said, and just 
then President Remdn dropped. 
Machine-gun bullets had sprayed 
the box, killing two of the party 
immediately and mortally wound¬ 
ing the President. He died two 
hours later in a hospital, his liver 
shattered by a single bullet that 
entered his stomach. 
Suspects Rounded Up 
As the stunning news spread 
through the country the National 
Guard, over which President Re- 
moh had ruled for ten years, 
went into action. By the next 
morning—Jan. 3—about sixty 
people had been taken into cus¬ 
tody, including Dr. Amulfo Arias 
former President of Panama, 
who was arrested on his coffee 
plantation in Chiriqui Province 
about 300 miles from the scene of 
the shooting. Most of those ar¬ 
rested were Arnulfistas. Arnulfo 
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Jos© Ramon Guizado. 
Photos by Associated Press 
Jose Remon. 
of independence. A state of siege, 
suspending civil liberties, was de¬ 
clared to help in the search for 
Ihe assassin. 
In a funeral orayon Catalino 
Arrocha Graeli, Minister of Gov¬ 
ernment, described Sefior Gui¬ 
zado as the “worthy successor” to 
President Rem6n and ascribed 
the murder to “mercenary hands” 
armed by his political enemies. 
Miros Arrested 
On Jan. 6 the police picked up 
Ruben Miro, 43-year-old lawyer, 
and his brother Carlos. Ruben 
Miro had the reputation of being 
a brilliant lawyer but an erratic 
politician. He had gambled away 
a fortune and was bitter in the 
belief that his brilliance had not 
been sufficiently rewarded. He 
held a Government job as Public 
Defender but aimed considerably 
higher. Carlos Miro was known 
mainly for the one-man crusade 
he waged against foreign-owned 
companies operating in Panama. 
The Miros were held principally 
because the police heard that 
Ruben had been talking for some 
time of an impending coup 
against the Rem6n Administra¬ 
tion. 
Both Ruben and Carlos Miro 
denied any knowledge of the 
killing. And so far as official¬ 
dom was concerned, Arnulfo 
Arias was still considered the 
villain of the plot. On Jan. 
7 the National Patriotic Coali 
tion which President Remon 
lawlessly are responsible intel¬ 
lectually and materially for this 
horrible crime.” 
But, unknown to the President, 
the web in which he was to be¬ 
come enmeshed was already be¬ 
ing woven. Some time between 
Jan. 6 and 11 a teen-age girl’s 
tip that her sweetheart, a for¬ 
mer cadet in the Guatemalan 
Military Academy, had smuggled 
a machine gun into Panama and 
sold it to Ruben Miro for $150 
led to the arrest of Jos6 Edgar do 
Tejada, the former cadet, and 
his fellow-student at the military 
academy, Luis Carlos Hernandez. 
Early on the morning of Jan. 
12, after eight continuous hours 
of questioning, Ruben Miro made 
the first of two confessions. He 
said then that he alone had done 
the killing “to tear down the 
framework that was being raised 
to set up a dictatorship in Pan¬ 
ama.” In this statement Miro 
said the idea of killing the Pres¬ 
ident was a sudden one, con¬ 
ceived on Jan. 2 when he saw 
the President at the races. 
protec 
tive custody” and Guizado him¬ 
self described it as “house ar¬ 
rest.” 
That night President Guizadol 
sent a letter to the Congress 
asking for leave of absence to] 
enable the investigation to be 
carried out “in the fullest pos¬ 
sible liberty and impartiality.’” 
He described as “senseless” Mi¬ 
ro's charges and Miro’s assertion 
that he had confessed because 
“Guizado and Saint Malo turned 
their backs on me.” 
Guizado Suspended 
In a dramatic pre-dawn ses¬ 
sion on Jan. 15, the Assembly 
rejected President Guizado’s re¬ 
quest for leave, suspended him 
from office and appointed Ricardo 
Arias (no kin to Arnulfo Arias) 
to the Presidency. Sefior Guizado 
was removed from his home to 
an apartment in the model jail 
in downtown Panama City. 
On Jan. 17, the Assembly named 
a five-man commission to inves¬ 
tigate and decide whether or not 
Sefior Guizado should be tried. 
Senor Guizado’s lawyers moved, 
meanwhile, to have him tried 
by the Supreme Court, but 
on Jan. 18 the court ruled that 
the Assembly had jurisdiction. As 
the police investigation continued 
Ruben Miro finally named Al¬ 
fonso Hyams, a garage mechanic, 
as the driver of the car on the 
night of the murder, and the 
mechanic was arrested. 
For a while there was an 
openly expressed disbelief in 
Miro’s story that Guizado had 
been involved, and was, in fact, 
the “intellectual author” of the 
crime. Even President Arias listed 
himself among the doubters in a 
statement to The New York 
Times correspondent that “I am 
not at all certain of the truth” 
of Miro’s statement as it involved 
Guizado. 
New Confession 
headed, after expressing “unre- 
Arias was a logical suspect asjstricted support” for President 
what Latins call the “intellectual 
author” of the crime. Leader of 
a fanatical political organization 
opposed to President Rem6n, he 
had been ousted from the Presi¬ 
dency in bfoody fighting with Re- 
mdn’s National Guard a few 
years before. 
The National Assembly swore 
in Jose Ramdn Guizado, 55-year- 
old millionaire engineer and First 
Vice President, as President Re- 
mdn’s successor, Panama’s twen¬ 
ty-ninth President in fifty years 
Guizado, said the date of the 
assassination was one of “deep 
political significance” for “cer¬ 
tain fanatical elements.” 
Jan. 2, the date of the killing, 
was the twenty-fourth anniver¬ 
sary of the first successful revo¬ 
lution in Panama. This was led 
by Arnulfo Arias. 
On Jan. 10, in a radio address 
to the nation, President Guizado 
said: “I shall not rest until the 
full weight of justice has fallen 
upon those who godlessly and 
Apparently on the basis of this 
confession President Guizado said, 
on Jan. 13, that a definite trail 
to the slayers had been uncov¬ 
ered. But that night Miro talked 
again and this time he told a 
completely different story. Pres¬ 
ident Guizado, he said, had 
known of the plot all along. He 
also implicated Guizado’s son, 
Jose Ramdn Jr., and the Presi¬ 
dent’s two business associates, 
Rodolfo Saint Malo and Jos6 
Nieves Perez. 
On Friday, Jan. 14, National 
Guardsmen surrounded President 
Guizado’s house and a committee 
of Cabinet Ministers informed 
him of the charges against him. 
Miro had said, they told the 
President, that he was promised 
an important Cabinet post in 
Guizado’s Administration so as to 
get money to pay off his heavy 
gambling debts. President Gui- 
Action Awaited 
But this kind of talk has died 
down in the past week. The As¬ 
sembly’s investigation commis¬ 
sion is expected to report next 
week, and the report is expected 
to call for Sefior Guizado’s trial 
by the Assembly. 
President Remdn’s death has 
thrown out of kilter the Pana¬ 
manian political scales he had 
balanced s5 firmly after years of 
upheaval. Before he took office 
in 1952, five men had shared the 
Presidency within four years. 
Now all the old political rivalries 
have beep loosed. There is no 
one of his stature around to 
check thfc plotting that had be¬ 
come au everyday affair in Pan¬ 
ama’s political life. Already the 
country is full of rumors about 
the ?ole the National Guard wants 
for itself, about how this or that 
party is becoming restless under 
restraints President Remdn im¬ 
posed within the coalition. 
All these are questions that| 
make the situation here explosive 
In the extreme. The coming weeks 
will provide the immediate an¬ 
swers. For it is recognized that 
the new President must make 
his mark felt quickly or else 
succumb to pressures that will 
continue to mount. 
