Jimmy Hughes

James "Jimmy" Hughes was the security director of the casino and bingo operations of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians for four years, until 1984.¹ In a statement to investigators reported by the Los Angeles Times in 1985, he said that in the summer of 1981 he had been instructed, in the presence of the tribe's financial adviser Dr. John Philip Nichols, to take 25,000 dollars to Idyllwild and give it to a man as partial payment for the killing of Fred Alvarez.¹ He later described himself as a former Army Ranger who had become a "Mafia hit-man," said he had worked for the CIA abroad and been protected by the FBI in exchange for information, and alleged that Nichols issued murder contracts and that the tribe's gambling enterprises were fronts for government-sanctioned covert military activity and arms shipments to Central and South America.²

The Alvarez Murders

Fred Alfred Alvarez, 32, a Cabazon tribal leader, Ralph Arthur Boger, 42, and Patricia Roberta Castro, 44, were shot dead at 35040 Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage, California, in 1981.³ Alvarez's sister Linda said her brother "was afraid for his life because his mailbox had been shot out and his motorcycle had many unexplained breakdowns and missing parts." Alvarez told Paul Zalis of the Indio Daily News, "I'm living in a hovel while all these guys are getting rich off the casino," and told its editor, Jim Lycett, twice, "I just know too much, and they're going to kill me." He was killed before a meeting at which he was to hand evidence to the attorney Stephen Rios.¹⁴

The tribe had entered a joint venture with the Wackenhut Corporation. Peter Zokosky, former president of a nearby munitions plant, said Wackenhut asked him to write a proposal "to build an arsenal and manufacture tank ammunition on tribal land"; a former Wackenhut spokesman, Patrick Cannan, said the venture was formed "to win government security contracts," "fizzled when it failed to get bids," and to his knowledge "did not involve weapons." Michael Riconosciuto and Robert Booth Nichols (no relation to John Philip Nichols) alleged in separate filings that it was meant to develop night-vision goggles, machine guns and chemical and biological weapons for the Contras; Booth Nichols said he withdrew "because Wackenhut didn't provide State Department approval." A 1995 tribal history portrayed Alvarez as "a renegade involved in criminal activity" and denied tribal involvement in his death.⁴

Arrest and Dismissal

In 2008 Boger's daughter, Rachel Begley, recorded Hughes with a hidden camera at a religious conference saying that Alvarez died in a "mafia hit" that was "a lot bigger than the murder of this guy or that guy."⁴ In August 2009 the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, after a joint investigation with the state attorney general's office, obtained a warrant, whose supporting affidavit was sealed. A felony complaint alleged that the murders were a hit orchestrated by the casino director and the tribe's financial adviser to cover up illegal activity on the reservation, and that Hughes conspired with the adviser and others and did the shooting himself. Hughes, by then a minister, was arrested on September 26, 2009, at Miami-Dade International Airport. He waived extradition on December 3, 2009.² The attorney general took the prosecution because the Riverside County district attorney, Rod Pacheco, was a distant cousin of Hughes.¹³ The lead detective, John Powers of the sheriff's department, said: "What Fred was doing was trying to get rid of the Nichols family out of Cabazon. That is what got him killed because there was literally millions of dollars at stake," and "If it was the story Jimmy gave back in 1985, we wouldn't be charging him with murder."⁴

Hughes was held without bail for nearly nine months. On July 1, 2010, Deputy Attorney General Michael Murphy told Riverside Superior Court Judge Dale Wells, "We have lost confidence in our ability to proceed with the prosecution of this case," and the charges were dismissed without prejudice. Begley told Hughes in court that she would "not give up seeking the truth and justice for my dad"; Powers said he would "resubmit the case every day, to anyone who'll be willing to hear it." Hughes's son said the family would return to Honduras "in good time."³⁵

Honduras

Hughes joined the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International in 1987 and founded Jimmy Hughes Ministries, Free the Oppressed, in Honduras, where he ministered to and trained military personnel at Zambrano. In February 2008 he spoke at a fellowship dinner in Fresno, California, with General Daniel Lopez Carballo of Honduras. The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that he was involved in planning the June 2009 coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya; its leaders, Generals Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and Lopez Carballo, who installed Roberto Micheletti, were members of the fellowship and friends of Hughes.²