In Paraguay, the tale of a vice president's 1999 assassination -- or was it? -- continues to take strange turns and endless twists.

BY KEVIN G. HALL
Knight Ridder News Service

ASUNCION, Paraguay - Dead men tell no tales -- except in Paraguay, where one is telling a whopper.

The case on all lips here features the late Vice President Luis María Argana and a bodyguard. Both died in a hail of bullets fired into Argana's red Nissan Patrol on March 23, 1999. It was an assassination. Or so it seemed.

Today there are credible allegations that Argana died in the manner of U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller: in bed with a lover. Argana's ''assassination,'' the revised story goes, was staged the next morning to influence the scramble for power that his death sparked in the country's long-ruling Colorado Party.

Paraguayans find this unusual approach to leadership succession more colorful than shocking. It could have dramatic consequences, however. The populist general who fled the country amid suspicion that he was behind Argana's apparent assassination says he's coming back next week.

NEW VERSION

The new version of events comes mainly from Luis Recasens Molinas, 33, an Argana family flunky who says he hauled the vice president's underwear-clad corpse from a luxury apartment that Argana kept for trysts.

Leaders of the Colorado Party, which has ruled Paraguay for six decades, allegedly showed up at Argana's home before dawn. Over his dead body, they supposedly decided to use his demise to purge Gen. Lino Oviedo's opposing wing of the Colorado Party and seize power.

Their door to power opened wide days later when the sitting president, Raúl Cubas, an ally of Oviedo's, fled to Brazil after government troops killed seven students who were protesting Argana's death.

Cubas has since returned and faces charges over the dead protesters. Asked by Knight Ridder whether he thought Argana died of bullet wounds or pleasure, Cubas was noncommittal.

''I don't want to express my opinion right now,'' he said.

The faked-assassination story surfaced in April in a seven-page sworn statement that Recasens, the family retainer, made to a notary public.

It alleges that current President Nicanor Duarte Frutos was in on the plot, and that two bullets were fired into the vice president's corpse after it was taken back to the Argana family home.

LINGERING QUESTIONS

That could explain one of many lingering questions about his death: Although Argana seems to have been shot five times, only three bullet holes were found in the right rear side window of his Nissan. The two other bullet wounds, goes the conspiracy theory, came earlier.

Recasens' allegations gained credibility when Argana's chauffeur, Victor Barrios Rey, who was wounded in the shooting that killed his boss and his boss' bodyguard, changed his testimony to say that Argana was dead before his supposed assassins attacked the car.

In addition, in a plot twist Agatha Christie would have rejected as impossibly contrived, there's a wee inconsistency in the visual evidence. An independent cameraman's video of Argana's dead body being loaded into an ambulance after the attack shows him wearing an impeccably white dress shirt, not a drop of blood on it. A subsequent autopsy photo, however, shows a classic bullet-riddled chest.

Carolina Ramírez, a witness, told Knight Ridder that she heard the shots and saw Argana's dead body slumped in the car's back seat minutes later. The body was rigid, she said, with no blood on it.

THE GRENADE

Moreover, police found a grenade -- which had failed to explode -- on the ground next to the rear right door of Argana's car.

Paraguayans just know it was intended to obliterate all evidence of the faked assassination.

Argana's vast clan denies that the patriarch died in the bed of his alleged lover, TV personality Fabiana Casadio. She does, too. The real villain, the Argana family says, is Oviedo, whom the Arganas have fought for power since the end of dictator Alfredo Stroessner's 35-year rule in 1989.

The Arganas say the assassination was merely the most violent of Oviedo's many coup attempts.

''We are totally and absolutely sure of it,'' said Nelson Argana, who became defense minister after his father's death and is now an influential senator. ``We consider Oviedo a sad and frustrated clown in a bankrupt circus.''

For what it's worth in a country whose judicial system is widely suspect, three courts have upheld the convictions of three men imprisoned for allegedly carrying out an Oviedo-plotted assassination.

OVIEDO'S SILENCE

Oviedo, until now, has said little. He fled to Argentina and then to Brazil after Argana's death. Recently, he announced he'd return to Paraguay on June 29 to face justice, apparently betting that the new allegations will help him beat any charges of involvement in Argana's death.