By SAM DILLON
MEXICO CITY --
When Frederick Mc Phail Jr., a 27-year-old New York University
graduate student,
was found dead here at dawn last fall in his parked car, reeking of alcohol,
only his family
knew something was outrageously wrong with official accounts of his death.
The police said
he had drowned in his own vomit after a late-night binge with liquor and
women. But
his family knew
Mc Phail as a virtual teetotaler. At his last dinner, on Nov. 17 during
a visit here, he
drank one beer
and three Diet Cokes.
Mysteries like
this usually disappear, unclarified, into the Mexican Government's chaotic
files, feeding
the frustrations
of a society fed up with police corruption and ineptitude. But with Mexico
City in the
hands of a reform
government that is seeking to root out police graft, this case ended differently.
An enterprising
detective checked Mc Phail's bank records and found cash withdrawals from
automatic teller
machines all over Mexico City in the hours before his death. That led to
another
stunning discovery.
Videotape from bank security cameras showed three men withdrawing Mc
Phail's money,
all of them Mexico City police officers. One was wearing his bullet-proof
vest, his
badge number
visible.
A subsequent
investigation came to a climax the other day with the arrest and indictment
of five
officers for
Mc Phail's death. The authorities said the officers forced Mc Phail to
drink an entire
bottle of liquor
to make him incapable of identifying them as the assailants who stole his
bank cards.
Prosecutors
have identified a dozen other victims, including three foreign tourists,
who they believe
were victimized
by the same rogue officers.
The case has
attracted special attention here because the murdered student's father,
Frederick Mc
Phail Sr., a
wealthy American businessman who lives in Mexico, bought newspaper advertisments
calling his
son "one more victim of the violence" here. Mc Phail Sr. says the ads have
brought an
outpouring of
public outrage, with 250 Mexicans and Americans telephoning him, many describing
their own victimization
by the police.
Mc Phail Sr.
has formed a nonprofit association, called Fredy Protects, that he says
will seek to help
crime victims.
"This case shows
how corruption and police violence have just become rampant in Mexico,"
he said
in an interview.
The photograph
of Mc Phail Jr. in the advertisement shows a handsome athletic man with
an
easygoing smile.
Born in Mexico City to American parents, Mc Phail attended high school
at the
Kent School
in Kent, Conn.
"Frederick contributed
a lot to our school," Don Gowan, Kent's former dean of students, said in
a
phone interview.
"He was outgoing, had a great sense of humor, just a super personality."
The younger Mc
Phail studied business administration at Universidad Iberoamericana in
Mexico
City. After
receiving his B.A. in 1994, he moved to Jersey City, commuting to Murray
Hill in
Manhattan to
work as a planner for a shipping company.
In 1997, he married
an analyst for a Manhattan brokerage firm and last spring began attending
banking courses
at New York University's School of Continuing Education. Enrolling in the
fall in a
graduate finance
program, he returned to Mexico City to pick up his college transcripts,
his father
said.
On Nov. 17, the
night before his scheduled return to New York, he dined out with his father
and
brother. The
three left the restaurant at 11:15 P.M., and Mc Phail drove off into the
Mexico City
night.
His body was
found the next morning, slumped in his car a few blocks away. Forensic
examiners
found high levels
of alcohol in his blood.
Initially, city
detectives assumed that he had got wildly drunk in the red light district,
but the case was
not dropped.
Examination of his bank records showed several automated withdrawals totaling
about
$800 before
his death, and investigators subpoenaed videos from the banks. The photos
showed
three men huddled
around the cash machines, including a uniformed officer whose badge number
identified him
as Lucio Tapia Galindo. Police records showed that on Nov. 17 he had been
assigned
to a patrol
car alongside Francisco León González.
With suspicion
falling on the police, the case was transferred to a special anti-corruption
unit, headed
by Hugo Vera
Reyes, the prosecutor whose investigation of fraud last year in a computer
procurement
contract led I.B.M. de México to repay $37.5 million to the city
treasury.
Reviewing police
files, Vera's investigators turned up a June 1998 complaint by a Salvador
Castillo
Prieto, who
said he had been seized by police officers who stole his bank cards and
forced him to
drink five tumblers
of vodka. The officers were later tentatively identified as Tapia and León.
The detail about
the vodka led investigators to search through hundreds of case files, identifying
10
other victims
who had complained of being pulled over by patrol cars, compelled to drive
to parking
garages or vacant
lots, robbed of their bank cards, and forced to guzzle large amounts of
cheap
liquor. The
victims included tourists from Germany, Brazil and Norway.
Some were beaten
with nightsticks to force them to drink, but most agreed after psychological
pressure, Vera
said in an interview.
Getting wind
of the investigation, Tapia and León abandoned their patrol car
on Dec. 7, leaving
behind uniforms
and service revolvers, Vera said. They fled north, crossed illegally into
the United
States, and
found construction work in Florence, Tex. Investigators who befriended
their wives
tracked their
movements, and Mexican detectives traveled to Texas and photographed Tapia,
León
and three other
Mexico City officers living in a trailer park. The other officers were
also traced to
Mc Phail's murder
and other crimes, Vera said.
The rogue officers
were deported by American authorities, arrested and charged with Mc Phail's
murder and multiple
counts of robbery.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company