---
alias:
- Ines Callejas
- Inés Callejas
- Ines Townley
category: Intelligence & Government
created: 2026-09-21
location: Santiago, Chile
summary: Chilean wife of Michael Townley, hired with him by DINA in 1974, who travelled
  as an equal member of his assassination team to Buenos Aires, Mexico, and Rome.
tags:
- Person
- MarianaCallejas
- DINA
- MichaelTownley
- Chile
- CarlosPrats
- PatriaYLibertad
updated: 2026-09-21
---

Inés Callejas, called Mariana, was the daughter of the registrar of births and deaths of Rapel, in Coquimbo province. In July 1961 she married the American [Michael Townley](/people/michael-townley/) against his father's wishes. A friend said of Townley's politics in the Allende years that he "sounded like a regurgitation of Ines Callejas repeating Pablo Rodriguez," the leader of [Patria y Libertad](/organizations/patria-y-libertad/).[^1]

At seventeen, in 1950, she left school in secret after her favorite teachers, Jewish refugees from Europe, were dismissed, and married. Her father "banished her instantly from the family" on learning of the marriage and her "conversion to Zionist socialism." The marriage was annulled after three months. She sailed for [Israel](/places/israel/) and joined a kibbutz in the Negev, where she "carried a Sten gun on regular night patrols before her eighteenth birthday." She had three children by a later marriage when Townley, then seventeen, met her in 1960.[^2]

In 1974 Colonel [Pedro Espinoza](/people/pedro-espinoza/) of [DINA](/organizations/dina/) "hired both Michael Townley and Ines Callejas for a combined salary of about $600 a month." She went with Townley to Buenos Aires that September to kill General [Carlos Prats](/people/carlos-prats/). Her attempt to fire the bomb failed, and a second attempt killed Prats and his wife. In 1975 she, Townley, and [Virgilio Paz](/people/virgilio-paz/) "set off on a nine-month, eight-country DINA mission to terrorize targeted Chilean exiles and the enemies of the [Cuban Nationalist Movement](/organizations/cuban-nationalist-movement/)," in which she "participated as an equal member of the DINA team." They prepared six detonators for an attempt in [Mexico](/places/mexico/), stopped at Munich, "where DINA had cultivated contacts with former Nazi sympathizers associated with Christian Social Union leader Franz Josef Strauss," and in [Rome](/places/rome/) engaged the Italian fascists who shot [Bernardo Leighton](/people/bernardo-leighton/). In September 1976, from National Airport in Washington, Townley telephoned her "a coded message to pass on to DINA: the bomb was in place."[^1][^3]

[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 21, 95-96, 106, 130, 152-157.
[^2]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth*. Viking, 1982, pp. 483-486.
[^3]: National Security Archive, "The Pinochet Regime at 50: The Assassination of General Carlos Prats and Sofia Cuthbert," October 1, 2024.