Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY
Cuban government shot down, executed my dad, daughter says
The child of a Bay of Pigs pilot files suit against Fidel Castro and the island nation under an anti-terrorism act.
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@herald.com
SEEKING DAMAGES: Janet Ray Weininger, right, talks about her lawsuit on Thursday at the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little Havana. With her is her daughter, Christina Weininger. TIM CHAPMAN/HERALD STAFF
CIA pilot Thomas ''Pete'' Ray believed he was fighting communism and helping Cuban exiles overthrow Fidel Castro when he signed up for the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Ray, 30, was shot down, captured and eventually killed by a bullet to the right temple -- a bullet fired at close range, not in the randomness of battle -- an autopsy done years later revealed.
Ray's death is the crux of the wrongful death lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Thursday by his daughter, who says her father was executed by the Cuban government, maybe on the order of Fidel Castro or his brother, Raul.
''They killed my father, I have no doubt of it,'' said Janet Ray Weininger, 49, of Southwest Miami-Dade, who stood by the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little Havana as she announced her plans to seek both punitive and compensatory damages in a suit that cites her father's motivation for participating in the invasion.
Ray Weininger joins a handful of relatives of victims of Castro's regime who have sued Cuba under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which allows victims of designated terrorist states to sue for damages.
Millions have been sought and won, the money coming from frozen Cuban assets or diverted from telephone payments for the island.
For Ray's daughter, who was 6 when he died, the lawsuit is the latest action in a three-decade battle. At age 15, Ray Weininger wrote the first of some 2,000 letters to Castro asking for the return of her father's remains, which Cuba kept for years as an odd trophy, frozen in a morgue. Cuba relented in 1979. He is buried in his native Alabama.
Ray had been recruited by the CIA from the Alabama National Air Guard to help Cuban exiles in the mission. Thursday, some of them spoke on his behalf.
''I'm here to say that he was there and he was a hero,'' said Mario Zuniga, 78, a Bay of Pigs pilot.
Oscar Martinez Roij, 75, the pilots' air controller that day -- April 19, 1961 -- said he remembers hearing Ray's plane had been hit.
``There was no transmission from him, but I heard from another pilot who saw Ray's plane that he was going to crash-land.''
From witness reports, the family has pieced together what happened. Ray and his co-pilot crash-landed and ran. They came under fire and were shot several times. Ray's autopsy showed other bullet wounds. Ray was captured and taken to a medical facility.
''While the Cuban doctors were treating Ray, Fidel Castro's Army carried out orders of Fidel and Raul Castro and summarily executed Pete Ray with a single shot to his right temple,'' the lawsuit alleges.
Other similar lawsuits have been successful.
In April, the family of Howard F. Anderson, an American businessman executed more than four decades ago by Castro's forces, won a $67 million judgment against the Cuban government.
In 2001, a Miami-Dade Circuit judge ordered the Cuban government to pay $27 million to Ana Margarita Martinez, the jilted Miami wife of a Cuban spy, declaring that Cuba orchestrated his sham marriage so he could infiltrate the Miami exile community.
In the most famous and most successful case, a Miami federal judge ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to relatives of three Brothers to the Rescue fliers shot down by Castro's Air Force over the Florida Straits in 1996.
The relatives collected half of that award.