The IAPA investigation has discovered many irregularities.

Despite strong suspicions by Lajud’s colleagues and his family that he was killed because of his reporting, the case was closed a year after the murder, without determining who ordered the murder. Colleagues and legal sources who requested anonymity told the IAPA that Lajud’s murder could have been part of a well-planned conspiracy that involved influential businessmen and politicians concerned about documents describing corruption in municipal privatization contracts. Strong suspicions fell on Bernardo Hoyos, a former Roman Catholic priest and Barranquilla’s mayor at the time of the murder, as the potential ringleader. Hoyos, who has angrily denied any connection to the murder, had engaged in public jostling with Lajud. The circumstantial evidence included a speech he gave to a crowd of followers the day before the murder.

The investigation carried out by Barranquilla’s regional attorney general failed to question Hoyos fully as well as several other influential politicians and businessmen who were potential suspects. Leads developed from preliminary investigations were not sufficiently followed up, according to legal sources. Some allege that the investigation has been thwarted by higher-ups in the Barranquilla government.

The IAPA was made aware of incriminating testimony given by a relative of the alleged killer, who is not among those detained, linking the murder to influential citizens. In what seems like gross negligence, the testimony was not filed in the same case docket number in the regional attorney general’s office. This testimony was therefore overlooked by the investigators.

The review of the case determined the strong but not conclusive possibility that those being detained are innocent, victims of shoddy investigative procedures, that investigators have ignored key evidence and potential leads, and that a cover-up by well-placed government officials might have occurred in this case .

The impunity in the Lajud case has had a chilling effect on journalists in Barranquilla. Immediately after the murder, Lajud’s reputation was attacked. One colleague wrote that he was a "kamikaze journalist." The murder and the surrounding climate of impunity has curbed critical journalism in the city. Now, there is no reporting on contraband, municipal corruption and drug trafficking. "Lajud was a well-known personality, and he still got killed; what can we expect?" said a colleague.

For Colombian journalists the case illustrates how a judicial process can be influenced by local politics to thwart the course of an investigation.

THE CRIME

It was 7 a.m., April 19, 1993, only a few hours before the tropical heat would scorch the streets of Barranquilla, an important coastal city in northern Colombia. Lajud, a well-known radio commentator, walked the same route to work every day. The morning traffic was heavy. Lajud, 42, had suffered a heart attack in 1986, and his doctor had told him to walk for exercise. Previously, Lajud had confronted other dangers. His radio reports had angered powerful people and he was receiving death threats.

That fateful morning, Lajud seemed self-assured. But he had told his wife Betty to be careful, because his enemies could attack the children. He seemed unconcerned about his own safety. A few days before, he told radio listeners that he was not afraid of threats, and invited his enemies to join him in his daily walk to work. He described the route he took every morning . "Come and get me, because I’m not afraid," he said.

The two young men standing by a parked red motorcycle locked eyes with Lajud. Sicarios, as paid assassins are called in Colombia, often travel on motorcycles for quick getaways. Lajud crossed the street , away from them, without speeding up his pace, according to a witness. Suddenly, one of them ran after Lajud, came up face to face with him and shot him point blank through the side of the nose. Lajud fell mortally wounded. The witness hid behind a door. He did not see a gunman rifling through Lajud’s small briefcase and fleeing the scene.

A bustling port city where a pleasant laid-back lifestyle is often the backdrop for political intrigue, corruption, drug trafficking and contra-band, Barranquilla was the perfect city for a reporter like Lajud. Short, with blond curly hair and green eyes, Lajud loved to expose the city’s secrets in his morning radio show. He mixed his morning sports show with political and social commentary. "It’s the best way to get to people who are complacent when their soccer team wins a game, but need to get interested in the problems of the city," Lajud once said. Many in Baranquilla tuned in to the radio program, which beat all competitors. "People listened because of the political gossip," said reporter Carlos Llanos. "You could not miss the show, because he always had something important," said Héctor Pineda, a leftist politician.

The day Lajud was killed, he was expected to divulge on the air the names of local politicians who had received payments during contract nego t i ations involving a French-Colombian telephone privatization plan. Various sources say Lajud had received documents implicating several politicians in illegal payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Friends and family members say that a set of incriminating documents in his small briefcase disappeared when he was shot.

Many in Barranquilla felt uncomfortable with Lajud’s reporting. In a town where few colleagues dared to confront tough stories, Lajud was seen as "yellow journalist" by those he confronted, or a good journalist by those who enjoyed his frankness. He had demeaning nicknames for politicians and others. He focused on people’s personal lives and revealed personal peccadilloes. Several times he attacked the wrong persons, his colleagues admit. But he was the only one with guts to report certain stories, and people leaked information to him.

"He was irresponsible, but that should not have gotten him killed," said Ernesto McCausland, a Bogotá-based reporter and television anchorman who began his career in Barranquilla.

Emisoras ABC functions out of an unassuming building in downtown Barranquilla. Even after the murder, only a buzzer and a glass door protect those inside the radio station from harm. The station’s owner, Ventura Díaz, said that "Lajud was the best." This elegant man, dressed in the typical white guayabera and white pants, said: "We still don’t know who killed him and why." The impact of Lajud’s murder on his colleagues is palpable three years later. In a town where so many know each other and rumors travel fast, few will talk on the record about the suspects in Lajud’s murder. All seemed to talk in hushed tones when asked who could be responsible. The names of possible suspects are mentioned rapidly. Then, people shrug their shoulders and say it’s all up to the authorities. "This case will never be solved. Nobody is interested in having it solved," said Lajud’s brother-in-law, Gustavo Cogollón, who now presides over Lajud’s radio show.

"You have to understand that whoever killed Lajud stopped most critical political reporting in Barranquilla," said Ernesto McCausland. "Nobody dares to criticize government officials the way Lajud did."

A sports writer who worked for several major dailies, Lajud ended up in radio reporting accidentally. He became famous. When criticized, he increased his denunciations. His friends told him to tone down his rhetoric, but he always said he was not afraid. He did worry that his children would be targeted. The day he was killed, he told his wife Betty to be careful with their son.

Days before his murder, Lajud told his radio listeners that he "wouldn’t be silenced with death threats." When his colleagues were cleaning up his office after the murder, they found the baseball bat he kept at the radio station to fight anyone who might attack him for his reporting.

The only person with whom Lajud is known to have talked about his fears was his ex-wife Josefina Llanos, who lives in Bogotá. "A month before he was killed, he came to visit me in Bogotá, and told me he had been sentenced to death," recalls Llanos, who is the mother of Lajud’s oldest son, 23-year-old Carlos José, a radio journalist with RCN network in Bogotá. "I convinced him to move his family to Bogotá. But he went back and never did it," said Llanos. "I don’t know whether he truly believed someone could kill him. But he said he knew who was interested in killing him."

Llanos said she and Lajud’s second wife, Betty, were terrorized after the murder. When she and their son attended Lajud’s funeral in Barranquilla, strange men started following her son. "We decided to stay away from the investigation. Betty did the same. That’s why it hasn’t gone anywhere," she said. "A lot of people know who killed him. It was a conspiracy among several important people in Barranquilla," she said, refusing to give more information.

In Barranquilla, Lajud’s wife Betty is even more fearful of talking about the murder. Tall, with brown skin and green eyes, she refuses to venture almost anything on the investigation. "I live here and would be in danger if I get involved in the investigation," she told the IAPA. Right after the murder, she pressed publicly for a strong investigation. She told the press then that she did not believe the three young men picked up as the alleged killers two days after the murder were guilty. She stopped talking after receiving several death threats, unidentified men followed her children. "It took me and my children so much time to get adjusted to (Lajud’s) absence," she says, begging understanding for not wanting to talk more about the case.

Another friend of the family said that his widow had been told to keep quiet. Influential friends of her husband helped her buy an apartment in a modest middle class neighborhood in Barranquilla. But they have cautioned her against getting involved.

Among those who helped Betty Lajud were politicians attacked by Lajud in his radio program. Some of these same people helped her find a job with a fiscal agency in Barranquilla’s municipal government.

"Betty has been affected by the threats," said Mrs. Llanos, the former wife. "Because she is alone in Barranquilla, she has been influenced by people who don’t want justice done in this case."

Lajud was despondent the last night of his life, said Mrs. Llanos, who spoke with him around 10 p.m. "He complained about the corruption and said every politician in Barranquilla was a crook."

Lajud died a poor man, his burial and other expenses were paid with money collected by friends and colleagues.

THE INVESTIGATION

The month before his murder, the threats multiplied. Two days before Lajud’s murder, the radio operator at the Emisoras ABC received this warning: "Carlos Lajud will be killed today." It was a male voice. "I was so worried. I didn’t want to leave the station with him," said Lajud’s best friend, Robinson Menco, who did the sports segment in Lajud’s show. Lajud lived two more days.

A handful of people in Bogotá and Barranquilla were willing to talk about the investigation into the Lajud murder, but most did so when promised anonymity. Several said they would go on the record, when and if the Lajud investigation is reopened.

"If you quote me by name, I will be in danger," said one source close to the investigation who agreed to talk at length about the case.

Sources said that the murder investigation was carried out superficially and too fast. Two days after the murder, three men known as small-time hood-lums were detained with much fanfare. Other leads were not pursued. The three suspects — Johnny Alberto Merino Arrieta, 30, the alleged triggerman; Eduardo Antonio Campo Carvajal, 25, the alleged driver of the motorcycle, and Eliécer Peña Navarro, the man who supposedly hired them to murder Lajud — were condemned by the regional judges ("faceless judges") in Barranquilla on May 10, 1996, to individual prison terms of 40 years for being criminally responsible for the crime of homicide with terrorist objectives.

Gen. Brigadier Pablo Rojas Flores, police chief in Atlantic Province at the time of the murder, said he was satisfied with the investigation. But the arrests were made solely on the testimony of two witnesses who remained unidentified until the attorney general’s investigation. The defendants, later learning the identities of the witnesses, told investigators that these people were their personal enemies and, hence, their testimony was untrustworthy. Investigators never checked these allegations, the case files show.

Police were also negligent in finding María Inés Pérez Tordecilla, or Carmen "La Guajira." Police investigators identify her as the intermediary between the killers and the intellectual authors. She is still at large.

Alibis from the three defendants indicate they were somewhere else at the time of the murder. But investigators have not fully pursued these alibis, say defense lawyers.

The case has been under the jurisdiction of Colombia’s faceless justice system, thus shielding the identities of judges , witnesses and investigators. That has been accompanied by shoddy procedures and apparent interference from influential citizens of Barranquilla.

A watchman who saw the crime through a peephole has told Lajud’s colleagues important details about the identity of the murderers. He has never been fully debriefed. Sources close to the investigation said that this witness has informed the court that the two accused killers do not resemble the men he saw kill Lajud.

More over, investigators in the attorney general ’s regional office in Barranquilla, have ignored important testimony given to the court in May 1994. This testimony was given by a relative of a man who was known by the alias of "Garnacha," and who is the killer, according to the relative. The testimony, the contents of which were made available to the IAPA, indicated that Lajud was killed for political reasons by influential citizens of Barranquilla. This testimony was either foolishly or purposely misfiled by the attorney general’s office. The testimony identifies a middleman,Alfredo Lievano, a well-known bodyguard for then Mayor Bernardo Hoyos. The testimony was made available to the court after Garnacha , whose real name is Enrique Somoza, was mysteriously shot to death March 23, 1994.

Investigators also ignored the murder of John Ulloque, a small-time hoodlum and one of the secret witnesses, on whose testimony police detained the men who are in prison for the crime. Ulloque was murdered under suspicious circumstances, in November 1993, six months after Lajud’s murder. Court-appointed defense lawyers have told journalists that Ulloque was thinking of reversing his testimony.

Police also failed to designate special protection for Lajud’s widow, Betty, who received telephone death Threats for six months after the murder. That’s when she Stopped demanding a serious investigation of the murder.

POLITICAL ENEMIES

When Lajud was killed, the list of possible suspects was long. He was hated by most of the political class in Barranquilla. But two people immediately stood out: Father Hoyos, a former Roman Catholic priest and then Barranquilla’s mayor, and Roberto Ferro, a lawyer and former supporter of Hoyos. Both testified before the court. But the investigations into their potential roles in the murder were not pursued diligently, Lajud’s colleagues maintain.

Lajud had been a fierce critic of Hoyos, who was elected in 1992 on a political platform that included the participation of former guerrillas. Hoyos’ temper was legendary. Two months befo re Lajud’s murder, Barranquilleros were startled when their mayor got into a public fight at a baseball game with a man who had criticized his politics. The day before Lajud’s murder, Hoyos attended Sunday Mass at Rincón Latino, a poor neighborhood where Hoyos had worked as a priest for 12 years before being elected mayor. That Sunday he gave a vituperative speech against journalists, especially one he did not identify by name but seemed to be Lajud. "They are hired dogs, and not professionals. They use their microphones to create havoc and divide the community," said Hoyos.

Intensely popular among the poor of Barranquilla, Hoyos was elected as part of a political movement to bring people without traditional political connections to office. He was elected with the help of the Democratic Alliance-M19, known as AD-M19, a former guerrilla group that accepted a peace offer from the Colombian government in 1990. But according to a leading member of that group, AD-M19 pulled its support from Hoyos after the mayor struck alliances with the traditional, and allegedly corrupted, political groups.

Lajud often used his program to attack the former priest. His accusations ranged from charges of corruption to personal mocking. He insinuated that Hoyos was a homosexual, a particularly serious insult in a macho society.

Two weeks before the murder, a group of Hoyos supporters marched to Lajud’s radio station to protest his program. Some of the marchers threatened Lajud physically. Lajud didn’t back off. "Those who think they can frighten me into silence are wrong," he shouted in the microphone a few days later.

Days before his murder, Lajud had accused the mayor of gross corruption linked to Metropolitana de Teleco municaciones (Metrotel ) , a Colombian-French telephone project negotiated during the early days of the Hoyos Administration. According to the contract, the company could install 100,000 new telephone lines in Barranquilla. But Lajud maintained that the companies that won the contract had to pay fees under the table to local government officials.

Hoyos denied any connection to corruption. In 1995, in fact, he accused the telephone company administrators of soliciting payoffs in the name of his administration.

Hoyos also denied any connection to the murder. "I didn’t order his murder," he told the press. "But I can’t say whether one of my followers decided to take justice in his hands ." Later, Hoyos said Lajud was killed by those in government who wanted to blame Hoyos for the crime. Juan Pabón, a friend of Lajud and close collaborator of Hoyos says: "Whom does it serve to accuse Hoyos of the murder?" attempting to connect the accusations to a smear political campaign against Hoyos.

Another person under suspicion was Roberto Ferro, a lawyer who also had had several confrontations with Lajud, especially over Lajud’s accusations that Ferro was a drug trafficker and corrupt. Ferro responded to Lajud in a letter published in the daily El Heraldo a week before the murder: "It is a pathetic case of that poor man who every morning from a local radio station vomits all his hate and resentment, hoping that someone will react to his attacks and put an end to his miserable existence." Initially called to testify, Ferro was apparently never investigated further. He said publicly that he never intended his words to bring Lajud any harm.

Lajud never showed his fear. "He even called on his killers to come and meet him during his daily walk to work," says Lajud’s Robinson Menco. "Maybe he would still be alive, if he had listened."

CHRONOLOGY: CARLOS LAJUD CATALÁN

April 1993
A group of protesters and supporters of Father Bernardo Hoyos, mayor of Barranquilla, marches in front of the Emisoras ABC to protest the reports of radio commentator Carlos Lajud Catalán.

April 10
Roberto Ferro, a lawyer and former aide to Father Hoyos, writes a column in the daily El Heraldo, implicity criticizing Lajud.

April 18
In a dramatic speech at the local church in the working class neighborhood of Rincón Latino, Mayor Hoyos calls Lajud a "dog for hire" who pretends to be a journalist.

April 19
Lajud is killed by two gunmen at 7:15 a.m., as he walks to work at the Emisoras ABC, for his daily morning radio program.

April 20
Barraquilla’s police detain Johnny Alberto Merino Arrieta, Eduardo Antonio Campo Carvajal and Eliécer Peña Navarro, accusing them of being the material authors of the murder. Carmen Tordecilla, alias "La Guajira," is identified as the intermediary between the killers and those who ordered the murder. She has never been found by authorities.

April 21
The regional attorney general hears testimony from Betty Lajud; Carlos Lajud Llanos, son of the victim; Jorge Guarin, a businessman who had engaged in a fight with Lajud; lawyer Roberto Ferro Bayona, and Mayor Bernardo Hoyos.

July 28
Nine of 13 members of the Barranquilla City Council ask the regional prosecutor to investigate Hoyos for trying to involve them in corruption schemes connected to public works contracts. A month earlier the prosecutor begins an investigation of Hoyos because the mayor received furniture from a public contractor.

November
John Ulloque, one of the surprise witnesses against the three defendants, is found dead. He was known to be contemplating a retraction of his initial testimony.

March 1994
A surprise witness testifies before the attorney general. She says Enrique Somoza, alias " Garnacha," or "Venerio," or "Popeye," and a man named Fernando, are the contract killers hired to murder Lajud. She says that in exchange for her testimony she was hired to work in a hospital. Her testimony is never included in the final case file.

March 23
"Garnacha" is killed in the neighborhood of Carrizal. He dies of 27 bullet wounds.

April 5
The regional attorney general closes the investigation.

July 2
A faceless regional judge pursues a homicide case against the three detained men.

April 18, 1995
The case comes before the faceless regional court of Barranquilla.

April 21
The regional faceless judge orders the case closed against the three detainees, with 20 days to issue sentences.

May
A defense appeal is denied, followed by another appeal in September 1995.

Dec. 1
The case was sent to the National Tribunal for a final decision. But the defense appeals.

May 10, 1996
Regional judges in Barranquilla ("faceless judges") sentence Johnny Alberto Meriono Arrieta, Eduardo Antonio Carvajal and Eliécer Peña Navarro to prison terms of 40 years.