C. Roy ReynoldsCONTRARY TO what was first assumed, the two main suspects in the gruesome slaying of two men at 16 South Camp Road on January 28, 1935 did not leave the island as paying passengers on either plane or ship, but as stowaways on a Colombian ship. And they might have been apprehended right in Jamaican waters had the captain of that ship been more resourceful, though of course the murders had not yet been discovered.
News of how the escape was effected surfaced in The Gleaner February 13 and according to that report the vessel the "Colombia" sailed from Kingston on January 30, two days after the murders. The first man was discovered hiding in the cook's quarters on the journey from Kingston to Morant Bay where it was to load banana to supplement the cargo of the fruit it had picked up in Kingston.
Soon a second stowaway was discovered, but apparently the captain failed to notify the Jamaican authorities in Kingston, which might have been somewhat understandable since both men flashed Colombian passports and claimed to have boarded the boat in their country.
According to The Gleaner report the convention then was that in a case such as this the men would have remained on board until the ship returned to Colombia. But for some reason the captain allowed them to disembark in Haiti. From Haiti they secured passage on a plane to Puerto Rico but by then they were running short on luck. For meanwhile the police had been burning up the cable and radio waves between themselves and their colleagues in law enforcement throughout the region and the Puerto Rican authorities soon rounded up the suspects and took them into custody.
Perhaps this was to be the first documented instance of a drug connection between Jamaica and Colombia, for as the police continued to dig deeper into the matter it seemed that while the two men killed could have been described as victims, they were no innocent victims. For, as The Gleaner reported, "the murdered men Pollen and Gomez were themselves engaged in nefarious pursuits such as dope trafficking".
Although much of the details of the case would have been established at the sensational trial early evidence indicated that suspect Diaz was not a resident in Jamaica for any substantial time; the other Roubal, had been a barber here, working in a downtown barber shop. And according to The Gleaner their motive was robbery since it was known that Pollen had a large sum of money, proceeds of an illegal drug traffic between a number of Latin American countries and Jamaica. Essentially what this was saying was that it was a drug deal that lured the victims to their death at 16 South Camp Road.
On February 14 the first move in effecting the extradition of the suspects from Puerto Rico was set in motion when Inspector Higgins and a group of witnesses who could identify them flew to that island. Back in Jamaica the case was building. The dagger thought to have been used in the murders was recovered and identified by the man who had sold it for 4 shillings. The police also discovered clothing and footwear thought to have been left behind by the fleeing fugitives. Ironically, in apparent haste to change clothes a hundred dollar bill had been left in one of the pockets.
Charges
On February 19, The Gleaner reported that the men had been positively identified to the Puerto Rican court, paving the way for murder charges to be laid against them and for extradition action to be taken, a process which would have to involve communication between British and American authorities since the Puerto Rican court did not have the last word in the matter.
The intrigues of this case it seemed, could rival the plot of any novel. For instance it was discovered that the victim identified as Francisco Gomez was neither Francisco nor Gomez, and contrary to what had been claimed he was not a Cuban. His real name was Bartel Thorwald Adelar Metzgen, born on April 27, 1904 in British Honduras and so christened. His brother was a prominent person in British Honduras, holding down the position of Superintendent of the Colonial Treasury in that country.
Metzgen, alias Gomez, first came to Jamaica in 1921 from when he migrated to Cuba where he assumed the name Gomez, married and had several children. His connection with Jamaica apparently started when he was a pupil of the Rev. F.E. Smith, a Jamaican who taught for several years in British Honduras before settling back here in the St. Catherine district of Bartons.
Meanwhile in the Puerto Rican court counsel for the suspects sought unsuccessfully to have the extradition request denied and the men released, and soon a plane carrying the documentation of the court's ruling was on its way to Miami on the first leg of the journey to Washington D.C. where the British Ambassador and the American would review the matter.
