Chapter 5: A View to a Kill

January 1999

It was a few days later I got my answer regarding my request to interview Cordero (off the record) as a matter of research as opposed to writing a story for the news. Lou was nervous when I called him the first time about it and said that he could only attempt to pass my request through channels. I did know the chief of police and the chief of detectives of the homicide division. When Lou gave my request to them, I was surprised that they would even consider it. As requested, he presented me as a subject matter expert of this field and not as a reporter. His superiors agreed to allow me to see a videotaped interrogation of Cordero.

When I got there, I found out that there were almost as many questions for me as there had been for Cordero. The experts were very confused as he talked about a lot of stuff of which no one could make any sense or reason. This is how my friend Lou Martinez got me inside. They all thought I could get answers from his gibberish. Perhaps they thought I knew the language of the devil. Lou had convinced them that I just might.

Watching the video over again several times, I continued to write notes on a legal pad. I would write down the tape counter number and then a note next to it explaining what I thought Francisco Cordero meant. His language was in broken English, sometimes more in Spanish, but at least it was interpretable. My Spanish was limited as was his English. With enough of Miami’s finest police officers translating, I was able to determine that Cordero was a member of a cult that had its roots in Colombia. It was an ancient cult that I was not familiar with at all. Perhaps no one was. I still find it hard to believe that in this day people still hold on to beliefs known to be archaic and false. However, people say the same thing about my faith. In college, we studied the psychology of believing in the forces of nature and other forces, which mystify man. Man has always held in awe that which he could not explain. Therefore, it allows for the deification of it. I began to see that in man’s effort to disprove the existence of a supreme being, many scholars are touched by the hand of the One that they genuinely believed didn’t exist.

One of those scholars was a fellow classmate of mine who, not being raised as anyone particularly religious with no church or group affiliation, found the one thing he needed in his life, the very thing he had sought to prove did not exist. He had found God through His son, Jesus Christ. Oddly, by either fate or just coincidence, his name was Paul. Yes, just like the great apostle! He too, had tried to quell the church and its beliefs, and in his attempt, met the very One he had been persecuting. Paul Vetter was a friend of mine whom I had not heard from him in a while. I was to meet up with him again later.

Francisco Cordero held up well during his interrogation. At the beginning of it, he had been reluctant to talk at all. Now, I sensed he had an air of relief to be talking about it, as if he were finally able to lay down a great weight he had been carrying. After a while, one of the interrogators asked him why he was willing to talk now whereas before he was as tight-lipped as one could be. He responded with, “It doesn’t matter now. They know that you have me, and that I will talk eventually. I only need hold out a little while. Besides, my life is over. They will send someone for me. To make me an example.” He said all this as if in a trance, his eyes staring straight at the interrogator, his voice a monotone as if he were reading off a cue card. Cordero’s face became wet with sweat running down it in long sluices. His reluctance had progressed to resolve, then had moved on to fear. Fear! It made me think about the fear I had sensed when I was at Cordero’s house. All his neighbors had exhibited that fear. It is natural to fear that which you do not understand, or feel you have no control over. That is why true believers in God fear Him. However, being able to sense fear in others is something else.

I finished writing my notes, and then I gave Lou my legal pad. “What do you think?” he asked.

I shook my head, and said, “Lou, I don’t think you should let him go, bail or no bail. Some of the things that this guy was saying leads me to believe that what I had said before about this being the tip of the iceberg was right on target. He’s Colombian, from an area that I know is under intense archaeological research.

He’s part of a cult that has long worshipped blood sacrifice.” “Well, no joke, Malcolm! Tell us something that we don’t know!” Lou was irritated because he thought I was being vague or even perhaps trying to hide something.