A California eccentric who named himself after a literary vampire was sentenced to 30 years in jail without parole for bombing two La Paz hotels in 2006, attacks that killed two and put a bizarre kink in already delicate Bolivia-US relations.
Triston Jay Amero, 26, who answers to Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo, a variation on a character in Anne Rice's vampire novels, was convicted on Tuesday of bombing two low-rent hotels in the La Paz, an attorney close to the case confirmed on Wednesday.
The court based its verdict largely on testimony from the Placerville native's estranged common law wife, 47-year-old Alda Ribeiro Costa, of Uruguay. Riberio was also sentenced to 30 years for her role in the crime.
PHOTO: AP
Amero, who has called for the murder of supporters of Bolivian President Evo Morales, maintains his innocence and says the pair were eating pizza across town when the bombs went off.
But he's not shy about a knack for blowing things up, a skill he says he discovered lighting fireworks with his grandmother.
"There's no school where you can go to learn how to be an explosives expert," Amero told reporters during the trial. "You either have a talent for it or you don't."
Morales, meanwhile, has repeatedly insinuated that Amero is part of a larger US plot to destabilize his leftist government.
"The US government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists," Morales said after Amero's arrest.
He later backed off any specific accusations, but still cites the hotel bombings in his frequent criticisms of US involvement in Bolivia.
US officials deny any ties to Amero, and say such comments have hurt relations with Bolivia.
An attorney monitoring the case on behalf of Amero's family said Morales tainted the trial.
"You have the president of the country saying this guy is guilty. That's not fair," said Paul Wolf, a Washington-based lawyer.
Amero's mother, Dawna Scheda, declined on Wednesday to comment on the verdict.
US court documents show Amero has received psychiatric treatment since age seven, spent years at a juvenile detention center and often made threats of suicide and violence against authorities.
A similar pattern continued in Bolivia, said a former prison official who supervised Amero's pretrial solitary confinement at Chonchocoro prison. Amero will return to serve his sentence at the grim maximum-security facility on the wind-swept outskirts of La Paz.
In travels through South America, Amero described himself as a Saudi Arabian lawyer, a pagan high priest, a public notary and even a vampire. At one point, he was jailed for bombing an automatic cash machine in northern Argentina.
He moved to Bolivia in 2004 and settled in the mining town of Potosi, where dynamite is freely sold.
He obtained the license required to sell the explosives and opened a shop -- even printing a promotional poster of his wife posing nude with a box of dynamite.
SOFT TENNIS: Yu Kai-wen and Huang Shih-yuan narrowly defeated their Japanese rivals to capture Taiwan’s first gold at the Asian Games in Nagoya Yu Kai-wen (余凱文) and Huang Shih-yuan (黃詩媛) won Taiwan’s first gold of this year’s Asian Games, defeating a Japanese duo in a nail-biter in the soft tennis mixed doubles final in Nagoya, Japan, while Johnny Sun (孫家閎) won silver in wushu and Shih Cheng-chung (石政中) won bronze in men’s kumite. Yu and Huang narrowly defeated Japan’s Toshiki Uematsu and Rena Temma 5-4 (2-4, 5-3, 4-2, 1-4, 1-4, 4-0, 1-4, 4-1, 7-5) to give Taiwan its first gold in soft tennis mixed doubles at an Asian Games since 2018. Sun secured Taiwan’s first wushu medal at this year’s game, with a combined score
UNITY: Lai thanked the nations who spoke up for Taiwan, saying that democracies must stand together to face global authoritarian expansion Taiwan yesterday thanked eight European and Indo-Pacific countries for opposing unilateral changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait in a joint statement earlier this week, as well as three of Taiwan’s allies for speaking up for the nation’s participation in the UN at the body’s General Assembly in New York. Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) welcomed the support and expressed his appreciation for the countries’ stance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Foreign ministers and senior representatives of Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea and the UK issued a statement on Tuesday
AT-RISK GROUPS: Of the accumulated 1,586 severe cases and 304 related deaths in this flu season, 65.8% were older people and 83.2% had chronic diseases, an official said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said that 165 severe flu cases and 30 flu-related deaths were reported last week, the highest weekly numbers in this flu season, and that cases might continue to increase, urging people to take precautions. Medical visits for flu-like illnesses increased by 1.4 percent to 141,374 last week, with 11.8 percent being emergency visits, showing that the seasonal flu is still in its epidemic period, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said. From Tuesday last week to Monday, 165 severe flu cases and 30 flu-related deaths were confirmed, the highest weekly numbers
FACTS DISTORTION: The MAC rejected Xi’s remarks that the US and ‘China’ fought side-by-side during WWII, saying the ROC was Washington’s true ally during the war Taiwan yesterday denounced Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) comments to US President Donald Trump on the nation’s future, after Xi appeared to push Trump for a subtle change in stance that could erode US support for Taiwan. Xi told Trump in Washington on Thursday that he hoped the US would adhere to the “correct position” of opposing Taiwanese independence, according to a Chinese readout of the talks. That would be a tougher version of Washington’s long-standing formulation that it does not “support” independence. There was no immediate White House readout of the exchange. Xi’s remarks represent “the consistent Chinese approach of distorting facts
RSS