Readers who don’t know the story of Candid Flowers won’t get it, so let me show you the picture:
Yes, after almost two months in which it was glaringly obvious who slaughtered Carmen Paredes, her husband has at last been put in esposas (wives or handcuffs) and charged with first-degree murder, lying to a federal agent, and destruction of evidence.
The New Day is following it minute by minute. The morning radio is flooded with the story. And yes, it does raise questions.
My questions, though, may not be the ones everybody is asking.
OK—let’s review. Carmen Paredes was a successful insurance broker, married to Pablo Casellas, the son of a senior federal judge. Paredes was killed on July 14th of this year.
According to her husband, he returned from visiting his father early in the morning, saw an intruder leaping over a ten-foot wall, and went to get his guns. Casellas is a marksman, and has permits for 33 guns. (Rather, he had—the permits were revoked after the murder.) He fired several shots, but the intruder fled. Casellas then found his wife dead, sitting by the side of the pool.
To say that the story was flimsy is to be generous. It held together like wet toilet paper.
The vegetation on both sides of the wall was un-trampled. There were bloodstains in Casellas’s car. The bullet used was from a gun that Casellas had reported “stolen” after he had left the shooting range. Which, by the way, was closed that day.
That’s an oops!
Well, there’s a saying in Puerto Rico: you fart in San Juan, they smell it in Ponce.
So I wasn’t surprised when I ran into someone who had seen Pablo Casellas throughout his youth. And the report wasn’t flattering.
Nor, I’m sorry to say, was the report on the judge.
Because it’s he, more than his son, that plagues my imagination. The judge was permitted into the crime scene. OK—I can get that. A distressed father, a confused situation—what parent wouldn’t rush to his child’s aid?
But where was Pablo on the morning he summoned? At his father’s house.
Here, I say farewell to the judge. For I am sure that my father would not have harbored me had I done what Pablo Casellas did. And I hope I would have the backbone to do the same, had I a son in such a dilemma.
I think it was V. S. Naipaul who said that the tragedy of the Caribbean is that it doesn’t have a narrative, a story it tells itself that guides it, provides the framework. But it may be untrue. We have a terrible story of piracy, of violence and greed. And in the Spanish Caribbean, we have some unpleasant leftovers from Spain: arrogance, cruelty and entitlement being three of them.
The person who witnessed Pablo’s childhood was reticent, not wanting even years later to speak much. She did say that he was a little monster.
And I will say—he grew into a big one.
Oh, and Candid Flowers? Here’s a link….
