(2 of 2)
French timed a test run from Manhattan to Zahns Airport to see how long the car carrying Murphy's passenger would take (1 hr. 40 min.). A year later, in Rockefeller Center, French picked out Dominican Consul General Arturo Espaillat as the man he had seen talking to Murphy when he rented the plane. ("With FBI agents around me, I followed him into a candy store. I positively identified him, and my heart jumped clear up in my throat.") The clincher in the FBI files: Murphy's original flight chart to Monte Cristi, including his handwritten notes, left behind with French.
Ernst fell back on Dictator Trujillo's own offerings, e.g., 68 pages of Dominican stamps on Espaillat's passports, designed to prove that he was in Ciudad Trujillo when the whole thing happened. Ernst discounts, as the words of a habitual liar, Murphy's confessions to friends and his fiancée that he flew Galindez out.
The case stood exactly where it had before. Galindez is still listed as a missing person by New York police; Murphy is dead, and so is the Dominican pilot who admittedly killed him; the FBI still wants Espaillat to waive his diplomatic immunity for questioning. Sydney Baron, the ex-Tammany Hall pressagent who acted as go-between for Trujillo and Ernst, said that the inquiry was "very comprehensive and expensive," that both Ernst and Baron would probably get more than their original guarantees, boosting the cost past the first estimate of $160,000. Trujillo doubtless will cheerfully pay.