The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

ing he would stay put. “Our concern early on was that he was practicing medicine,” says Osterhout. “But we can’t do anything until the extradition request arrives.” Sometimes, he adds, “The hard work is getting them out of here.” Finally, on Oct. 7, 2004, Grinage, the Belize police- man, staked out Silvestre’s house all night long. When Silvestre walked out to the main street in his white medical coat to wait for his ride to work, police moved in and arrested him. “He was all red and trembling,” says Grinage.” Searching his home, they found evi- dence of a clinic downstairs, where he had apparently been seeing patients. At first, Silvestre pledged to fight the extradition. But after a short spell at Belize’s squalid prison in Hattieville, he dropped his appeal and was sent home to Miami. “They go to Hattieville and decide it’s not for them,” says David Chi, a Belize police sergeant detailed to the embassy. “That’s how we get rid of a lot of them.” Silvestre’s trial was sched- uled to begin in late August. Sometimes, the fugitives make it easy. Police in the popular tourist town of San Pedro, on Ambergris Caye, noticed Charles Mendenhall, who was wanted for attempted murder back in Florida, after he got into a dispute with a bar owner over his bill. Another American fugitive got arrested for allegedly burgling a bar. Paul Linney had been released and disappeared, however, before Osterhout learned he was wanted back in Texas for parole violations. It took several more weeks, but Osterhout located one of Linney’s former girlfriends. She promptly agreed to call him with the story that she wanted to get back together with him. He suggested a reunion at a local restaurant, where police were waiting to arrest him again. Victor Bradley, wanted in Oklahoma on charges of raping a mentally retarded woman, practically fell into Osterhout’s lap. He showed up at the U.S. embassy to apply for a new passport. A suspicious consular officer pointed him out to Osterhout, who discovered he was a fugitive. (About the same time, Osterhout learned that Victor’s brother, Crel, was also a fugitive in Belize, wanted for parole violations on a child molestation con- viction.) Osterhout set up a small sting operation. Instructing the consular official to have Victor return in three weeks to pick up his new passport, Osterhout worked quickly to obtain the necessary warrants to deport them both. A few weeks later, Crel showed up at the embassy looking for his brother’s passport, saying Victor was in Mexico. Consular officials showed him his brother’s passport, but said Victor would have to pick it up himself. Victor showed up the next day, and was promptly arrested by the Belize police. It took another few weeks to track down Crel, who had moved deep into the jungle on a government surveying pro- ject. Both are currently awaiting trial in the United States. “Semper Gumby” Informally, DS agents joke that their motto should be “Semper Gumby,” combining the U.S. Marines’ slo- gan with the name of the flexible green cartoon char- acter. “There is no way to anticipate everything and have rules and regulations for it all,” says Osterhout. He remembers a local coming into the embassy one day with a tip about stolen American luxury cars. The “walk-in” described how a business contact was pur- chasing a brand-new Cadillac Escalade from the United States, but only paying half the sticker price. “I had never worked stolen vehicles before,” Osterhout says. “It’s not a normal DS thing.” But armed with the vehicle identification number and the car’s color, he discovered that the car had been “cloned.” In other words, thieves had altered the VIN number of a stolen car to match a legitimate one, masking the theft. The car was then whisked through Belize customs, thanks apparently to the buyer’s political connections. In the next months, another Escalade and two Hummer-2s came in with suspiciously low sale prices. Eventually, with the help of U.S. customs experts, Osterhout was able to convince the Belizeans to impound them and return some of the cars. In all, he has helped return some $800,000 worth of stolen luxu- ry cars to the United States. “We’re getting these vehi- cles back, which is not the case in most Central American countries,” says Osterhout, noting that there are suspicions that some of the stolen cars are tied to terrorist financing. One day, Osterhout even got a tip about a parasail boat stolen from Florida. As it turned out, two men had sailed the boat to Cuba, where they ran out of gas and were picked up by police there. After somehow getting released, they sailed to Mexico and then south, until they hit Belize. By the time Osterhout found F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5