Free How to Get Away With Murder in America by Evan Wright Page B

Oso in prison and asked him about his old boss, El Oso launched into a tirade. Albert was the worst boss he’d ever had. Too cheap to buy a remote starter, he made El Oso start his car every day to check for bombs. He once ordered him to beat a man because he’d dated a girl Albert had a crush on in high school. El Oso had finally quit after Albert ordered him to kill a pathetic old Cuban dope smuggler over a ten-thousand-dollar debt. He told Fisten, “I can’t kill a man for ten G’s.”
    When Fisten brought up Alex, El Oso told him that was an alias for his best friend, Ricky Prado. “They were friends,” Fisten says, “so whenever he brought him up, I acted like I wasn’t interested. The more he talked about Albert, the more he gave up Alex.” Fisten adds, “I almost felt bad for El Oso. He hadn’t intended to hand us Ricky, but he did.”
    El Oso detailed many an adventure with Ricky when they had donned their Transworld detective badges and taken care of business for Albert. He confirmed the bolita story, bragged about how clever Ricky was at making bombs, hinted at his role in murders, and described numerous arsons they had set, including some that targeted Albert’s family members. According to El Oso, they had torched Albert’s aunt’s house because of a business dispute, and burned Albert’s cousin’s car after he declined to work for Albert as an accountant.
    While El Oso gabbed about Ricky, Detective McGruff tracked down the title to the 1973 Grand Prix that Manuel Revuelta claimed he’d stolen from him. The title showed that ownership of the car had been transferred to Ricky and Maria Prado by means of an unusual power-of-attorney document on which Revuelta’s signature appeared to have been forged. When McGruff questioned the notary public who’d certified it, she admitted that she had done so fraudulently.
    The forged transfer document was a smoking gun. It corroborated witness statements and linked Ricky to numerous predicate acts. One of the peculiarities of RICO law is that normal statutes of limitation—five or seven years for most crimes—don’t apply. Offenses Ricky committed in the 1970s could still be prosecuted fifteen years later. Says Fisten, “The moment [McGruff] came back with that forged title, Ricky’s ass was cooked. The problem was we didn’t know where to find him.”

The CIA
     
     
    The OCS obtained Ricky’s employment files and a photograph from the fire department, to create a court-admissible photo lineup. When they showed it to Valdez, the drug runner who’d spoken of a “quiet and muscular” man at a 1983 meeting to plan cocaine trafficking, he picked Ricky from the lineup.
    Two investigators called on Ricky’s ex-wife. His daughter, who was thirteen, answered the door. When one of them asked where her daddy was, she answered, “He’s in the Philippines. He works for the CIA.”
    The OCS went through Albert’s phone records since his release from jail in 1989 and discovered that he had frequently called the U.S. embassy in the Philippines, as well as a number in Virginia that was associated with the CIA. The investigators queried the CIA about Ricky and received confirmation that he was an employee. After they informed the agency that he was a subject in a RICO investigation, a CIA associate general counsel named E. Page Moffett began handling the matter. Through the 1980s, Moffett had defended the agency in legal actions related to its covert wars in Central America. Moffett arranged for Ricky to fly in from the Philippines and sit for an interview with OCS investigators at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
    On June 29, 1991, the OCS sent two of its members, Detective McGruff and special agent Fred Harden of the FBI, as well as an MDPD homicide sergeant, Al Singleton, to Langley. Moffett led them to a conference room and left them alone with Ricky. He was forty-one. His hairline was receding, but he was visibly muscle-bound even in a suit. He