Epiphany

After Victor Gerena surfaces to take credit for the robbery, money starts showing up in the heart of Hartford’s Puerto Rican community. Then, a missile strike thousands of miles away reveals an unassuming piece of evidence that provides investigators with a huge break – and a new suspect. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
It's been a year since Victor Heraina stole seven million
dollars disappeared into the night. By this point, the FBI
has taken over control of the case, leaving the West
Harford Police Department at a dead end in their investigation.
Other than Victor being placed on the FBI's infamous Top
ten most Wanted Fugitives list, public interest in the case fizzled.

(00:34):
That is, until January six. Three Kings Day, also known
as Dia de los Reyes or Epiphany, is a religious
holiday marking the day the Three Wise Men visited Baby Jesus.
In many Spanish speaking communities, it's a celebration rivaling Christmas. Today,

(01:03):
in Hartford, there's an annual parade featuring community members dressed
as King's riding camels down Busy Park Street, much to
the delight for children and onlookers. There's music, food, toy giveaways,
even a chance for a photo op with the Magi.
But if we go back several decades, was more of

(01:24):
an unofficial celebration, kind of like a block party, And
on that day, in a very different type of procession
caught everyone's attention, you know, all of a sudden, somebody
showed up with this big tractor trailer full of toys
and started luring into kids on Park Street, which is
the heart of the Puerto Rican commuter at Hartford. The

(01:46):
weather was in the brisk thirties, but that didn't stop
curious community members from gathering around the local moving company's truck,
parked a few miles away from the parade route used today.
Over two hours, three men just as the MAGI handed
out forty dollars worth of toys, food and cash. It

(02:09):
was an exciting occasion for locals, but to West Harford
police officers, something just didn't feel right. Fromhow there must
have been some information passed on to the copts. There
are somebody took them the number of the trackers. They
found out about it, and the truck was sees eventually
and brought to the detective. The worst hapic they used

(02:29):
the Prince who identified these guys in the truck. And
then the amazing thing is that we've found it. Surprising
was when the the money shows up that was traceable money.
He showed up there because some of the builds were traceable,
you know, so that I'm thinking myself, my god, there's
some kind of control of all his money. Where did
it come from? How how these guys getting this money?

(02:52):
The answer to that question would breathe new life into
a stalled investigation. How did thousands of dollars stolen the
previous year from Wells Fargo end up being used to
buy a truck full of toys for kids? Now he's
standing to think of something. It's organized here previously on

(03:12):
White Eagle. It's like all of a sudden, this guy
just existed and there wasn't a lot of background, a
bottom to the head. Each day we put another piece
of the puzzle together, you know, pieces here, and there
was not the fit. Everybody figured that Victor herain it
was the inside man, and everybody's waiting for his body
to pop up someplace. My name is zem William Phelps.

(03:36):
I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than forty
true crime books. What you were about to hear is
the true story of a heist, one that funded an
international independence movement and sparked an investigation spanning nearly four decades.
This is White Eagle. Every story has its origin. This

(04:16):
one is no different. Investigators looking to understand how and
why Victor Harrain has stole seven million dollars in cash
needed to first consider his connection to Puerto Rico. There
was a time and maybe the seventies and at least
end of the early eighties, when I think they were
more Puerto Rican people in Hartford on a per capita basis,

(04:39):
and we were any place Celts except for Puerto Rico.
It was a very, very big influential immigrant group, immigrants
that the United States citizens for the people from the
island looking at Hartford were a big part of the
stake's makeup. That said Mahoney, the Hartford current reporter who
spoke in the last episode. He caught himself during our discussion,

(05:01):
but people often forget that Puerto Ricans are in fact
U S citizens, maybe because they lacked the right to
do basic things such as vote in a presidential election.
But more on that later. For now, it's important to
understand that Hartford is home to one of the largest
Puerto Rican communities in the United States. More than forty

(05:22):
of the city's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, and
according to some estimates, one out of every three Harford
residents is of Puerto Rican descent. It's an important group,
and it was an important group then I mean candidates
for office in Puerto Rico would occasionally campaigned in Hartford,

(05:43):
the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and kind of like the
quasi embassy in Hartford. There were so many people in Hartford,
did the government of the commonwealth headed office to look
after them. Hartford had reciprocity agreements with Puerto Rico. Puerto
Rico would send groups of teachers from university students who

(06:04):
are studying to become teachers to work in Harvard, either
as trainees or to work at Hartford, which kind of
made sense because so many kids in the school system
or from Puerto Rico. Large groups of Puerto Ricans first
started coming to Connecticut after World War Two, looking for
seasonal work on one of the countless tobacco farms along
sections of the Connecticut River. Many stayed and built the

(06:26):
vibrant community in Hartford in parts of West Harford. Park Street,
which runs east to west along the city's south end,
is the community's main artery. If you're dropped off on
Park Street, um, you're definitely going to get the food,
You're going to get the language, and you're gonna get
the vibe. Joel Cruz is a lifelong Hartford resident and

(06:48):
senior director of the city's Institute for the Hispanic Family,
which is part of Catholic Charities and co sponsors the
Three Kings they parade every year. You'll see people you
know talking outside and connecting. The embracement you know, for
us is very important. The close proximity of like the
hugs and the kisses, and Joel describes Harford's Puerto Rican

(07:11):
community as extremely tightening. It had to be, he says,
because for decades there was little to no public support
for Spanish speakers in the city. That's part of the
reason the Institute for the Hispanic Family grew into what
it is today. It provides opportunities for support and connection,
help that wasn't made available for people like Joel's grandfather

(07:33):
who left Puerto Rico in the fifties and came to
Hartford seeking opportunity. I think that's the sense of people
that came to Hartford and settled in Hartford, specifically from
the Puerto Rican community. It's more like I'm just trying
to survive, and if you ask me, I don't agree.
I'm not happy, but I'm just trying to survive for

(07:54):
folks who like my dad who saw the racism, who
saw the the abuse, who saw all the inequalities, especially
like you know, US versus Puerto Rico. He has his
reservations about, like how Puerto Rico has been treated like
a colony, and I see it, like when I go
to Puerto Rico, I can see it's treated like a

(08:14):
colony more than part of the U s or with
fair treatment. It's a world Victor Harana would have known well.
His mother, Gloria, was born in Puerto Rico and migrated
to the US, settling first in the Bronx and later Hartford,
where she raised Victor and his four siblings. Like Joel,

(08:39):
Gloria worked at the Institute for the Hispanic Family. She
was one of the region's first bilingual social workers and
spent forty five years with the organization, working primarily with
young kids. Joel says everyone called her La Madrina, which
translates to the godmother. He says they'd often eat lunch together,

(09:02):
and he loved hearing her stories about sports, Hartford and
Puerto Rico. She was a big time Giants fan, and
so I'm a Patriots fan, and so we will always
talk about that. We will go back and forth They
were just fun conversations. We will talk about the community.
We will talk about like the riots and Hartford and

(09:22):
how it was sad that the US would continue to
treat Puerto Rico um like a colony when we have
so much to bring. You know, she will talk about
her dislike of that. She she was very vocal about
making sure the younger generation understood we must stand up
for our community. There was one unspoken rule when it

(09:45):
came to talking with Gloria never ever mentioned her son
Victor or the Wells Fargo heist. We always knew not
to bring up Victor because you know, I mean, imagine
a mother regardless so what happened, She's still a mother,
and um we always knew we respect to her enough

(10:08):
not even to bring it up. And for good reason.
Gloria is a controversial figure in this story. A number
of people I spoke with said they thought she knew
about Victor's plan to rob the Wells Fargo depot. A
few even thought she put him up to it, though
I should know I have never found any evidence to

(10:30):
support that theory. Getting in touch with Victor's mother has
been nearly impossible. During this investigation, I was told by
a very close source. She did not want to be
interviewed by me. I respected that, and it's no surprise.
In the years after the heist, she refused to cooperate

(10:51):
with grand Juries looking into Victor's disappearance, which fueled speculation
that she had something to hide. But any hope of
making last attempt was dash when Joel Cruz revealed something
during our interview an amazing maybe she actually passed away
last week. Gloria Harraina died on February. She was eight four. Today,

(11:16):
I'm dressing black because I'm actually going to go to
her funeral. And um, every time we met in the
lunch room, before I got up and I was leaving,
she will always tell me, don't forget your culture, don't
forget your background. She was just a very instrumental person,
very wise, kind, but she you know, she had this

(11:36):
fighting spirit, even at her age. She had this fighting
spirit in her of always making sure that we stood
up for our rights. Gloria Horana was a staunch supporter
of Puerto Rican independence, regularly attending rallies and protests in
and around Hartford. She was also a member of the
Hartford chapter of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, a pro
independence group. She said, died in the role independent Easter.

(12:01):
That's her politics and that's what she lives for. I mean,
whenever there's a protest, you know, involving some kind of
independence issue, she's always there. Victor was a complicated figure
as well. Friends and co workers described him as a loner,
not nearly as active in the community or as vocal
about politics as his mother. But the heist made Victor

(12:23):
something of a folk hero overnight. The stories that we
were told, you know, talked about him as a very
respectable man and just frustrated with systems and the racism
that we were experiencing. I think even in the community
people will talk about it from a perspective of like, look,
he took some of that and he gave out toys,

(12:45):
and you know, he did it out of frustration. I've
never heard throughout the stories of anyone actually judging him
in a negative way. Plus, Victor wasn't violent, not really.
That's actually something former Starford police officer Jack Casey pointed
out during one of our initial conversations. You see, Victor

(13:06):
could have seriously hurt those security guards, even killed them,
but he didn't. And I think that's why throughout Hartford
he became kind of almost like a robin Hood character,
where they'd have his picture up in some of the
little bodegas and the stores on Park Street and people
looked at um. And then when they came back on
Three Kings Day and they were passing out the money

(13:29):
and the food or whatever. So they got a lot
of goodwill in the community from it. Victor didn't appear
at the Three Kings Day parade, but the money he
stole more than a year earlier did. West Harford police
were able to confirm that serial numbers on the banded
bills matched those stolen from the Wells Fargo depot. But

(13:50):
what many weren't aware of at the time was that
over in Puerto Rico, the FBI had already spent months
making huge investigative strides in the case. The question is,
you know, why why did they pick hard for Why
was this nobody from nowhere Bill? You know, Victor Herrina
the inside man. Yeah, there's only one explanation. Before the

(14:26):
robin Hood like stunt on Three Kings Day. The last
anyone heard from Victor Haraina was in the form of
three handwritten postcards sent to various news outlets in which
he vowed to explain why he robbed the Wells Fargo depot,
while also teasing a major announcement about the missing money.
About a month later, Victor delivered on his promise. A

(14:50):
typewritten letter was sent to the San Juan offices of
United Press International in Puerto Rico. This time, however, Victor
was not the author. The letter came from an insurgency
group claiming responsibility for the Wells Fargo robbery. In it,
they claimed they spent a year and a half planning

(15:12):
every stage of the heist and had waited until the
seven million dollars was out of the country and in
a state of quote maximum security before going public. It's
a communicate, but reads more like a manifesto. The group's
leadership said the money was being used to fund its
revolutionary movement. Quote in the same manner in which we

(15:35):
have sees seven million dollars from the very bowels of
American imperialism, the organized force of the Puerto Rican people
will know how in its own time to seize the
liberty which will allow us to choose our destiny as
a people. End quote. It goes on to read in part.

(15:56):
We want to report that Comrade Harrena is in a
perfect state of health and has joined the struggle which
our people carry out to obtain our liberation. That was
the Maga Taros, the mas teros, who are upset that
they weren't getting the attention that they thought they deserved
for this patriotic express presation. They wanted to get some

(16:16):
publicity for it, and the police weren't helping him because
the police weren't linking him to the crime, so they
had to take some steps on their own. Los MACHOs,
formerly known as the Boricua Popular Army, are a revolutionary
nationalist group fighting since nineteen seventy six for Puerto Rico's
independence from the United States. Depending on who you ask,

(16:38):
Los mace Tero's translates to either the machete wielders or
the cane cutters, a reference to Puerto Ricans who harvested
sugarcane under Spanish and later American sugar monopolies, some of
whom used their tools as weapons in the Spanish American War.
Half of the people I spoke with described them as

(16:59):
ter arrests, the other half said they were a pro
independence group. We can say that they were radical in
the sense of the means that they were using to
fight for or struggle for independence. Dr Jose A. Tellis
is a professor at the University of Illinois or ban
As Champagne. My areas of research as mainly Puerto Rico.

(17:24):
I studied the legal and political relationship between Puerto Rico
and the US, with special emphasis and colonialism and legal
mobilizations and pro independence movement. He's also from Puerto Rico
and grew up hearing stories about Los mach Terros exploits.
There were a small group and they were described in

(17:48):
the media as terrorist criminal. The fact that Puerto Rico
still being a colony kind of chose you that they
didn't get the supper or that they wanted right and
that this society were not behind these the type of actions.
It's important to bear in mind that they were part

(18:10):
of historical context, right. That was what prow independence, Antiicolonian
movement we're doing in there's seventies and eighties everywhere, not
only Puerto Rico, pot Ireland, the Basque Country, Catalunia and elsewhere.
Experts say that Macha Terros are not a major player today,

(18:32):
but in the late seventies and early eighties. The group
was engaged in armed conflict with the US government, with
cells in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and barrios across the continental
United States, including Hartford, Connecticut. A lot of Puerto Ricans
that joined prow independence movement in the seventies sixties seventies

(18:55):
either were first generation Puerto Rican Puerto Ricans who migrated
with the parents that grew up facing discrimination, racism, poverty,
So it was not hard seeing that Puerto Rican would
join uh struggle that advocated for independence from Puerto Rico,

(19:17):
social justice or economic justice, and also some anti racism,
anti oppression at large. Can you tell me about yourself,
Robert s Hibe, But we're in October thirty one, nineteen

(19:39):
seven Halloween birth He had it better than that. Bob
Hyble as a former FBI agent and Deputy chief of
the Bureau's counter Terrorism Division. He's been stationed all over
but spent the early part of his career in San Juan,
Puerto Rico work in the island's separatist movements. We were
having a series of bombings and I was fortunate enough

(20:02):
to have the case on the key player Philiberto Terrios.
Bob would go on to study and investigate Philiberto Ojeda
Rios's life, which included the founding of Mirra, a pro
independence group in the sixties, followed by Los Macha Terros
and its sister organization, the f a l N in
the mid seventies. Here's reporter at mahoney. There were two

(20:26):
wings of the nationalist movement. I mean there was the
f a l N, which was in charge of the
quote unquote activities on the mainland, and there were the
Macha Terris who were involved supposedly in activities. The FA
l N was doing his damage in Chicago and New York.
All right, they were blown up France's tavern, They're blown up,

(20:51):
you know, the mobile oil building. They're blown up, things
like that. Over the course of nearly a decade, both
Los Macha Terros and the f a l N claim
responsibility for over one attacks in the continental United States
and Puerto Rico, including the murder of a police officer,
the bombing of eleven unmanned aircrafts on a National Guard airfield,

(21:13):
and an attack on a Navy bus which left three
people dead and eight sailors wounded. Back then, things were
getting blown up quite a bit too because of the
Machan terrorist In late October, just six weeks after the
Wells Fargo heighst the group used the shoulder launched rocket

(21:34):
to strike a federal building in Puerto Rico. They called
a laws rocket l a WUS Laws and somebody you know,
initiated a missile attack on the federal building in a
place called at del Rey, which is the commercial center
of San Juan. They were aiming for the FBI officers

(21:54):
and they actually hit, you know, for the part of agriculture.
No one was killed, but the harget was clear. One
year firing rockets into buildings in the middle of downtown
San Juan, chances are, you know, you're taking a risk
of hurting somebody. You know this that law missile it
was fired again, Bobbe. They recovered the two from that

(22:20):
law missile. It was part of a lot that was
left in Vietnam and the Vietnamese furnished it to the
Cubans and they given furnished it the mar barrels. When
they fired the law missile at the FBI building and missed,
they discovered the car that was used and the search

(22:44):
of the car was so thorough that they recovered a
traffic ticket. So what they did is they identified where
the car had been parked from the ticket was issued.
They set up with surveillance and took some pictures, and
I got a call from the supervisor and saying on

(23:06):
it said, Bob, can you come down to Puerto Rico.
I want you to look at some pictures. Because I
was one of the only two FBI agents that everything
Philip Bertho in person, and uh, sure enough, it was
fully better to the photographs. So from then on they
were able to identify where he was living in The

(23:28):
whole investigative approach to this changed and it became a
major case. From that point on, m the FBI began

(23:50):
a detailed surveillance of Philip Berto Ojeda Rios, tracking the
comings and goings of anyone associated with los Ma Terosh.
Over the next six months, the bureau collected enough evidence
to obtain a search warrant for one of the group's
safe houses. Inside they found a treasure trove of documents.

(24:15):
To the surveillance, they were able to do microphones and
wire taps, and because they had a microphone in Philip
Bertor's car, it was in those wire tapped conversations that
investigators first heard chatter of the missing seven million dollars.
Here's reporter Ed Mahoney again. No one ever conceived, No

(24:38):
one law enforcement had any clue or even thought or
imagine you know that a group of radical independent east
is at an island in the Caribbean. We're knocking off
armored cars in Hartford, Connecticut. It's just never occurred to anybody,
and there's really no reason why it should have occurred anybody.
The timelines in this case are actively confusing. The discovery

(25:02):
made by the FBI happened before Victor Herrina and the
Macha Terros took credit for Wells Fargo. But it's important
to remember that the FBI's field office in Puerto Rico
was investigating a rocket attack in San Juan, not a
robbery in West Harford. They were focused on their own investigation.

(25:23):
The discovery of the stolen money was a surprise. The
FBI in Connecticut never woke up to this thing, you know.
It was the FBI in Puerto Rico it put all together,
and it was almost by accident that they did. From there,
the bureau began piecing together Victor Herrina's connection to Los

(25:46):
macha Ros. For one, they learned how long Victor had
prepared for the operation, where he fled after the robbery,
and who else was involved. But one of the biggest
questions in this case has always and did Victor just
happen to start working at Wells Fargo and Los Macha
Terros saw an opportunity to recruit him? Or was he

(26:09):
groomed by the group to apply for the job. Do
you know how they recruited Victor Harena? I think that
it was through his mother. Through his mother, I think,
how does a guy like that though drive away with
thirt hundred pounds of money and then disappear. It was
well prepared. One thing about Ajit, he was a tremendous planner.

(26:35):
Everything Philiberto Oheda Rios did was intentional. Take the date
of the heist as an example to a lot of folks.
September twelve is just another day to Puerto Ricans. It's
the birthday of Pedro L. Bzoo Campos, a leader in
Puerto Rican's independence movement, a man seen to this day

(26:56):
as a national hero and patriot. I spoke to a
former member of Los Machateros. He wouldn't confirm how the
group came into contact with Victor, only that a quote
friend helped identify the opportunity at Wells Fargo and made
the introduction. It's worth pointing out here that Victor started

(27:19):
his job at Wells Fargo in May two, just shy
of a year and a half before the heist. In
the communic at which the macha Ros take credit for
the robbery, it's noted that the planning took a year
and a half to fully execute. That former Macheterro member

(27:41):
told me that at the time, Victor was angry about
Puerto Rico's political status and eager to do something about it.
He felt the US treated the island like a colony,
using it for military exercises, stripping it of its natural resources,
and depriving residents of basic opportunities. Like many Puerto Ricans

(28:02):
in the early eighties, Victor was also reeling from a
shocking act of police violence a few years earlier, the
seroh Mara Villa murders in eight wherein two pro independence
activists were ambushed and killed by police in Ponce, Puerto
Rico after being set up by an undercover agent It

(28:25):
was hugely controversial, and government investigations into the killings in
an attempted cover up we're still going on at the
time of the heist. Here's Jose Attila's again. Every time
that they stayed carry out a act of this type
of violence or carry out of some sort of assassination,

(28:49):
pro independence movement will react, and Cerro Mario was especially radicalizing.
For many young people that saw this grows some auction
us pulling of no return. So I cool reminded that
or that and understood that this was kind of too much.

(29:15):
From all of it, a picture pulls into focus. A smart,
highly capable young man, deeply connected to his Puerto Rican roots,
takes a dead end job while secretly training for a
meticulously planned robbery. But it wasn't just some gas station
hold up or common burgle. This was a military operation,

(29:36):
a criminal enterprise that involved elaborate disguises and a daring
international escape, an organized heist with the code name White Eagle.
And those security guards who suspected Victor had some help
that night, well they were right. What nobody knew then

(29:58):
and would not know for decade to come, is that
there was at least one other man a top Los
MACHOs operative waiting around the back of the Wells Fargo
building for Victor on the night of the robbery. You see,
Victor knew this, Victor planned for this, Victor trained for this,

(30:26):
and within hours of loading all that money into a
rented buick, Victor Heraina had successfully completed the first step
in the macha ter plan. The second step, well, that
would involve the twenty five year old testing his look
at attempting to smuggle millions and stolen cash across the

(30:46):
US border. Next time, I'm White Eagle, So he practiced
grabbing me by the night and taking right out to
the ground. We hear from the man who made it happen.

(31:08):
White Eagle has written and executive produced by me Em
William Phelps and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional
writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer
and script supervisor is Darby Masters, Audio editing and mixing
by a Bouzafar and Christian Bowman. Our series theme forms

(31:30):
Regal or Grant is written by Aaron Kaufman and special
thanks to Arlene Santana and will Pearson at I Heart radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio Apple Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.