The Toledo Times
March 17, 1961.
Yank Describes
Trial As Faked
HAVANA, March 16 (AP)—American adventurer William A. Morgan, executed by a Castro firing squad last Saturday, left behind a letter charging he was killed because “I am the last anti-Communist with the rank of commandante (major) in the rebel army.”
The 32-year-old Toledo soldier of fortune, whose career in Cuba moved from that of top Castro hero to alleged traitor, wrote that his military trial was “a history of lies and injustice.”
Major Morgan’s six-page letter was handed to the defense attorney, Edilberto Marban. It became available here after the lawyer fled Cuba because pressure from young rebels had cost him his job as director of Vedado High School.
Major Morgan, who was executed with his aide, Maj. Jesus Carreras, claimed his captors three times tried to kill him with poisoned food to avoid the necessity of trial.
The chunky Cleveland-born ex-paratrooper who came to Cuba to join Prime Minister Castro’s forces in the hills during the revolt against former dictator Fulgencio Batista, described events leading to his arrest and trial.
He accused Mario Marin, his former driver and chief prosecution witness, of testifying falsely in order to save his own life. The military court which condemned Major Morgan gave driver Marin 15 years imprisonment.
“. . . Marin was taken prisoner in the mountains with gun in had fighting the militia,” Major Morgan wrote. “He surrendered when he was out of ammunition and two days later accused me of sending him to the mountains. But he went to the mountains two weeks after I was in solitary confinement. The law of the revolution says a man caught fighting receives the death penalty—he accused us falsely to save his own life.