Published: Wednesday, May 18, 1983

ALIBI IS FOOLPROOF: SUSPECT WAS IN JAIL

AL MESSERSCHMIDT Herald Staff Writer

Low on gas, Raul Borges pulled off Interstate 75 in Mount Vernon, Ky., after midnight last May 30 and pumped $6.58 worth into his tank.

He didn't have $6.58. He offered a gold chain as payment. The man at Gulf station said nope -- and called the cops.

Borges, 26, a unemployed Mariel refugee, went to jail in Kentucky.

At the time, Borges had no idea how lucky he was. This week he found out. Unwittingly, he had established a perfect alibi.

And, as it turned out, he needed it badly.

On the same date, May 30, 1982, a gunman jumped from a red car on North Miami Avenue and robbed Maximo Martinez, 49, a construction worker.

Martinez resisted. "I grabbed ahold of his hand and pulled this measuring tape. I hit him on the head and he yanked away."

The gunman fired six shots, striking Martinez in the leg, back and buttocks.

Three days after the shooting, Pedro Saavedra, a Miami officer, showed Martinez six photographs at Jackson Memorial Medical Center. One was Borges. The officer had arrested Borges four days before the shooting -- for driving without a license.

Martinez looked over the photographs and identified Borges. "I got a good look at him; his face," he later testified.

That was good enough for the officer. "I wanted this guy bad," he said. It wasn't until Sept. 30 that he found him. He charged him with armed robbery and attempted murder. Again Borges went to jail.

"He kept telling me he was out of the state at the time," Officer Saavedra said. "He kept changing his story. He was giving me basically B.S. He said he had been up in New York. He couldn't give me an exact date."

"Did you check it out?" asked Ron Gottlieb, an assistant public defender. "No," said the officer.

For the Dade County public defender, investigator Brian McGuinness also began to check out Borges' story. He heard that two other Cubans were arrested in Kentucky for the unpaid $6.58. He started tracing long-distance telephone calls, then went to Kentucky himself.

He found the owner of the Gulf station, Sam Carroll. He found the cops and the jailer. Everyone remembered.

Reprinted with written permission of The Miami Herald.