September 7, 1974

By JOE OGLESBY

Two Cuban exiles were convicted Friday of illegally making a bomb which blew up in their faces.

The men, Humberto Lopez and Luis Crespo, both 33, face a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Circuit Judge Arden Siegendorf said he would sentence the men Oct. 21.

THE JURY deliberated slightly more than two hour , before finding the men, called terrorists by investigators, guilty of unlawful possession of explosives.

A third man originally charged in the March 20 event, Joaquin Miranda, was acquitted in mid-trial Wednesday when the state's two key witnesses failed to positively link him to the explosion.

A Dade sheriff's bomb expert, Tom Brodie, identified the device which blew up as a C-4 military-like plastic explosive.

A mousetrap triggered the bomb, which was in a book.

Three fingers of toper's right hand were amputated after the blast. Crespo's right arm was amputated blow the elbow and the fingers on his left hand were removed. Both men suffered other serious injuries in the blast.

"Look at their hands. If this isn't vivid proof of possession, then what is?" Assistant State Attorney James Woodard asked the jurors.

"What would have happened to the person who would have opened that book? What would have happened if it had gone off in the post office?"

Defense lawyer Melvin Greenspan tried to show that, although there was an explosion, Crespo and Lopez were never in possession of a bomb as they were charged.

"The basic question, of possession could he resolved by fingerprints but there are none," he said.

Greenspan also said that the tabletop on which the bomb was made showed burn marks beneath rather than tin top of it, suggesting that the bomb was not where investigators said it was.

Woodard, however, said that fingerprints would have been destroyed by the heat of the blast acid and that the table burn marks were as they should be.

Police believe that the bomb would have been sent to a Cuban embassy. The explosion occurred in the garage of a house at 2344 SW 16th St.