--- aliases: - Charles Edmund Horman - Charles Horman Lazar - Charles E. Horman - Charles Horman Jr. category: "Victims & Witnesses" tags: - Person - CharlesHorman - Chile - ChileanCoup1973 - StateDepartment - CIA - Missing - HormanVKissinger - Hinchey summary: "American writer seized at his Santiago home on September 17, 1973, and shot the next day; a 1976 State Department memorandum said U.S. intelligence 'may have played an unfortunate part' in his death." died: 1973-09-18 location: "Santiago, Chile" created: 2026-09-21 updated: 2026-10-15 relations: - type: subject_of with: "[[Ray Davis]]" start: 2011-11-29 role: "named as an accomplice in the 2011 Chilean indictment" fn: 3 - type: subject_of with: "[[Pedro Espinoza]]" start: 2015-01 role: "convicted in the Horman and Teruggi killings, sentence raised to fifteen years in 2016" fn: 22 - type: subject_of with: "[[Rafael González (Chilean intelligence)]]" start: 2015-01 role: "convicted as an accomplice in the Horman killing" fn: 3 - type: subject_of with: "[[Henry A. Kissinger]]" start: 1977 role: "named defendant in Horman et al. v. Kissinger et al., Civil Action No. 77-1748" fn: 14 - type: investigated with: "[[Frederick Smith Jr.]]" reverse: true start: 1976-07 end: 1976-12 role: "five-month review of State Department and embassy files" fn: 6 --- Charles Horman was an American writer and filmmaker living in [[Santiago]] who was detained by the Chilean army six days after the coup of September 11, 1973, and executed. He and [[Frank Teruggi]], detained days later, were both shot at the [[Estadio Nacional (Chile)|National Stadium]].[^1][^2] His case was the subject of the 1982 film [[Missing (1982 film)|Missing]] by [[Costa-Gavras]], and of a Chilean prosecution that in 2011 indicted the former head of the [[United States]] military group in [[Chile]].[^2][^3] ### Viña del Mar On the day of the coup Horman was in [[Valparaíso]] and [[Viña del Mar]] with a friend from [[New York City|New York]], [[Terry Simon]]. Over that day and the next four they met officers and contractors of the [[United States Military Group]], all of whom were enthusiastic about the coup. A Navy contractor, [[Arthur Creter]], repeatedly suggested that "it had gone smoothly."[^3] The notes contain nothing that could be construed as secret.[^4] [[Edmund Horman]]'s memorandum records that "Captain Davis" drove Horman and Simon to Santiago. The memorandum gives only the surname, which matches that of the Military Group's commander, Navy Captain Ray Davis.[^5] Simon kept notes of the conversations with names and addresses. After Horman's death she dictated them to the American academic [[Stephen Volk]], who typed them on onion skin and carried them out of the country in an empty Chapstick tube.[^1][^4] A month before his death, on a visit to New York, Horman had persuaded four friends to give him money to buy weapons for the cordones industriales, the belts of worker-run factories that supporters of [[Salvador Allende]] expected to resist a coup. A few days before September 11 he and his wife, [[Joyce Horman]], moved to a house in the Vicuña Mackenna industrial district.[^1] ### September 17 An army unit took Horman from the house in the late afternoon of September 17. Neighbors saw the arrest, and two callers reported it to the United States consulate, where the calls were entered on the note cards kept on the case.[^1] The Smith report of December 1976 described the arrest as the work of ten to fifteen armed men in Chilean Army uniforms, who took Horman and some of his belongings away in a truck. It recorded that calls on the following morning, relating to his detention, reached a former neighbor and a friend.[^6] Less than 24 hours later his body and those of six labor leaders from a nearby factory were delivered to the morgue. He had been shot at the stadium on September 18.[^1] A Chilean official stopped the morgue from completing a fingerprint comparison, even after the family supplied prints from [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] records.[^5] In mid October two Chilean military intelligence sergeants, [[Raúl Meneses]] and Jaime Ortiz, who had been assigned to find him, pressed the morgue to make the comparison, which identified body 2663. They told his father that the body had been "interred in the wall of the [[Cementerio General de Santiago|Santiago Cemetery]] on October 3."[^1] ### The Embassy An embassy cable of September 25, number 4565, reported that the embassy had "no firm info on his detention." The same cable recorded that military authorities continued to deny that Horman was held at the National Stadium, and that the consul's review of the detainee list as of September 19 did not show his name.[^7] Edmund Horman arrived on October 5 and, with his daughter-in-law, saw Ambassador [[Nathaniel Davis]], who, in Joyce Horman's account, "said that the Embassy feeling was that Charles probably was in hiding." When Edmund Horman mentioned the two calls received at the consulate reporting the arrest, the ambassador looked at the consul, [[Frederick Purdy]], and asked if he knew anything about them. Purdy said: "No sir." Joyce Horman reminded him that both calls were recorded on the consulate note cards kept on the case.[^3][^5] The vice consul handling the case, [[James Anderson (CIA)|James Anderson]], was identified as a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officer under diplomatic cover by the journalist [[John Dinges]].[^1] In a 1976 interview with an embassy consular officer, [[Rafael González]] said that he had sought out Anderson, whom he considered a CIA agent, to accompany him to obtain Horman's body.[^6] On July 15, 1976, [[Rudy Fimbres]] wrote to [[Harry Shlaudeman]] that "Vice Consul Anderson's participation in this matter will eventually be the subject of further probing."[^8] The junta of [[Augusto Pinochet]] told the embassy that Horman and Teruggi had been killed by leftists in stolen army uniforms.[^1] A foreign ministry official, [[Enrique Guzmán]], told an embassy officer that "we may never know" how they died, that both men had been deeply involved in leftist activities in the "Communist industrial areas," and that they "perhaps had been shot by their own comrades of the left for some unexplained reason."[^9] The embassy gave this account to journalists for years.[^1] Three American diplomats later acknowledged that embassy officials exerted no real pressure on the junta, because of instructions from [[Henry Kissinger]] to defend the regime that had overthrown Allende.[^3] At the time of the coup Horman had been looking into the killing of General [[Rene Schneider|René Schneider]] in 1970. Assistant Secretary [[Jack Kubisch]] raised the case with Chile's foreign minister in February 1974 "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult."[^10] Edmund Horman wrote of the embassy's conduct: "Whether it was incompetence, indifference, or something worse, I find it shocking, outrageous and perhaps obscene."[^5] ### The Man Who Knew Too Much In June 1976 Rafael González, a Chilean civilian intelligence agent who had taken asylum with his family in the [[Italian Embassy in Santiago|Italian embassy]], told American reporters, among them [[Frank Manitzas]] of [[CBS]] and [[Lewis Diuguid]] of [[Washington Post|The Washington Post]], that he had seen Horman interrogated with an American in the room and had heard that he "had to disappear" because "he knew too much."[^3] Senator [[Edward Kennedy]] and others wrote to the [[State Department]].[^1] Inside the department, Rudy Fimbres wrote to Assistant Secretary Shlaudeman on July 15, 1976, that the department had "'withheld' for almost two years any reference to a Chilean memorandum which accused Teruggi, and Horman, of leftist activities," that "we have done nothing about it," and that the public claim to be pursuing every lead "is overdrawn." His memorandum also reported that Diuguid said he had a source who told him embassy superiors were informed early of Horman's fate and did not follow up.[^8] A memorandum of August 25, 1976, by Fimbres, [[Robert Driscoll]], and William Robertson of the Bureau of American Republic Affairs, stated: "This case remains bothersome. The connotations for the Executive are not good. In the Hill, academic community, the press, and the Horman family the intimations are of negligence on our part, or worse, complicity in Horman's death."[^10] It stated that the junta "sought Horman and felt threatened enough to order his immediate execution," and that it "might have believed this American could be killed without negative fall-out from the USG." The memorandum addressed the possibility of American involvement in terms that recur throughout the record: "U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the GOC. At worst, U.S. intelligence was aware the GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and U.S. officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC paranoia." It recommended further inquiry and noted that the CIA's "lack of candor with us on other matters only heightens our suspicions."[^11] Fimbres said later that the language was meant to force an inquiry: "I was trying to smoke something out."[^3] [[Frederick Smith Jr.]] then spent five months in the files. His report of December 10, 1976 concluded that the evidence in the files "strongly indicates that they were deliberately killed by the GOC," described the Chilean government's disclaimer as "difficult to credit," and stated that "apart from Gonzalez' statements and accusations, there is no evidence in the files that any element of the USG played a responsible role, directly or indirectly, in the death of Charles Horman." The report also found no evidence in the files of what Horman was supposed to have known. It recommended "high-level inquiries" of intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, into whether any information had been furnished to the forces that became the junta, and asked whether those agencies had taken action, formally or informally, "that may have led the Junta to believe it could, without serious repercussions, kill Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi."[^6] Embassy officers interviewed González on tape in late January 1977 and transmitted their conclusion "that Gonzalez is not reliable." They described him as intelligent and well informed, and willing to say what would get him out of Chile.[^3][^12] In a sworn affidavit drafted in November 2001 and submitted to the Chilean court in 2003, González called his June 1976 statements "an absolute falsehood," made under duress to secure a safe exit from Chile for himself and his family. He said that the phrase about knowing too much came from a [[London Times]] article by [[William Shawcross]], which Italian diplomats had shown him, and he stated that no American officer was present at Horman's interrogation.[^13] ### The 1987 Approaches In April 1987 an informant whose name the State Department redacted sought asylum at the embassy and offered an account of Horman's death, which the embassy reported in a cable of April 28. Under Secretary [[Michael Armacost]] questioned the informant's credibility in a May 14, 1987 reply and directed that State Department officers stationed in [[Uruguay]] interview him.[^2] In March and April 1987 Meneses approached the embassy four times, offering what he knew in return for help leaving Chile. He said that "to his knowledge, no U.S. official played any role in the death of Charles Horman since he was dead before anyone in the Embassy would have known of his detention." He also criticized the embassy for failing to help the family locate Horman. A cable on a visit by [[Mariana Callejas]], who came at the same period, left his name uncensored, misspelled Menesas, and expressed concern that the two were "plants" of the Pinochet government. The embassy turned him away, and later reported that it could not find him.[^1][^3] ### Horman v. Kissinger The family's civil suit, [[Horman v. Kissinger|Horman et al. v. Kissinger et al.]], Civil Action No. 77-1748, was filed in 1977 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Henry Kissinger and other American officials.[^14] Agency correspondence in 1977 and 1978 identified the case by that caption, and a CIA memorandum of July 15, 1977 recorded a meeting with Representative [[Dante Fascell]] concerning H.R. 6689 and the Chilean colonel Rafael Gonzales.[^14] According to a 1998 report, the suit named Kissinger and eleven other officials, and was dismissed in 1982 because the information was classified top secret.[^15] The [[Center for Constitutional Rights]], which filed the case on October 1, 1977, states that the Hormans voluntarily dismissed it because key witnesses could not be deposed and evidence classified as secret could not be obtained, and that it could be reinstated if new disclosures emerged.[^16] ### The Hinchey Report The CIA's report to Congress of September 18, 2000, prepared under the [[Hinchey Amendment]], addressed the deaths of the two men in a section headed "Death/Disappearance of US Citizens." It stated that allegations of CIA complicity in Horman's death were "unfounded," and that the agency had "no prior knowledge of the circumstances leading to the death in Chile of US citizen Frank Teruggi in 1973."[^17] ### The 1999 and 2000 Releases State Department cables from the Chile Declassification Project carry the release number S199900006, and the cable of September 25, 1973 is among them.[^7] On June 30, 2000, the government released hundreds of formerly secret CIA, Defense, State, Justice and National Security Council records on the two deaths, and the [[National Security Archive]] published ten of them as Electronic Briefing Book No. 33.[^2] The August 25, 1976 memorandum's passage on U.S. intelligence was withheld from the family and released intact in October 1999.[^10] The Archive's 2025 editor's note states that new information had cast doubt on the theory that the United States had a role in Horman's death or that he was killed because he had stumbled on evidence of U.S. involvement in the coup.[^2] ### The Chilean Case On November 29, 2011, Judge [[Jorge Zepeda]] indicted Navy Captain Ray Davis, the former head of the Military Group, as an accomplice who knew of the detentions and did not prevent the deaths "although he was in a position to do so." The documentary evidence he cited for foreknowledge was cable 4565, which his ruling placed "at the very moment when the victim was still alive."[^3] The cable is dated eight days after Horman was taken from his home and a week after his body reached the morgue.[^3][^7] On October 17, 2012, a panel of the Chilean Supreme Court voted 4 to 1 to approve the extradition request: Justices Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller and Haroldo Brito and the acting justice Jorge Lagos in favor, and Ricardo Peralta dissenting on the ground that the offenses had prescribed.[^18][^19] Davis was never extradited. He died at a Santiago nursing home in 2013.[^3] In 2015 Zepeda convicted [[Pedro Espinoza]], who had been in charge of interrogations at the National Stadium, and González as an accomplice. Espinoza had been sentenced at trial to seven years.[^3][^20] The Appeals Court of Santiago upheld the sentences on September 5, 2015.[^21] On July 21, 2016, the Supreme Court raised Espinoza's term to fifteen years and González's to three.[^22] Dinges, who read the 6,976-page court record, named as responsible for the arrest Colonel [[Fernando Grant Pimentel]], Lieutenant [[Enzo Cadenasso]], and Lieutenant Colonel [[Roberto Soto Mackenney]]. He found no evidence in the record of American involvement in the killings, and wrote that the ruling ignored González's recantation.[^1][^3] The Archive's 2025 posting presents Dinges's findings alongside the documents.[^3] ### Davis v. Costa-Gavras Ray E. Davis sued the director Costa-Gavras, Universal Studios and MCA for libel over the film Missing (Civil No. 83 Civ. 2539, S.D.N.Y.), alleging that the film portrayed him as having ordered or approved a Chilean order to kill Horman. The film, drawn in part from Thomas Hauser's 1978 book *The Execution of Charles Horman*, names no Ray Davis; its character Ray Tower is a fictional composite of the American presence in Chile. On March 2, 1987, Judge Milton Pollack granted summary judgment to the defendants, finding no evidence of actual malice after an evidentiary hearing at which Davis called no witnesses.[^23] ### Joyce Horman Joyce Horman's typewritten statement of November 10, 1973, runs to thirty pages and gives a day-by-day account of her search for her husband from September 10 to October 18, 1973. It is the earliest and most complete account of that search in the record.[^3] ### Frank Teruggi The case of Teruggi was joined with Horman's in both Chilean and American inquiries.[^3] An FBI report of December 14, 1972, concerned Teruggi's attendance at a 1971 conference of the Committee of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and his membership in the Chicago Area Group on the Liberation of the Americas, and the Archive's 2000 briefing book notes that it raises the question whether this information was shared with the Chilean military.[^2] The Smith report, which covered both men, found little information in the files on Teruggi's activities in Chile.[^6] ### Footnotes [^1]: Dinges, John. *Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing after the Coup*. 2025. Summarized in Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "Chile in Their Hearts," National Security Archive, May 7, 2025. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2025-05-07/chile-their-hearts [^2]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. "New Information on the Murders of U.S. Citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi by the Chilean Military," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 33, June 30, 2000, documents 1 (FBI, "Frank Teruggi," December 14, 1972), 2 (Embassy Santiago, April 28, 1987) and 3 (State Department, May 14, 1987, Armacost), with editor's note of 2025. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB33/index.html [^3]: National Security Archive, "Chile in Their Hearts," posted May 7, 2025, with documents 1 to 15 of the Chile Documentation Project and Dinges's summaries of the 2011 indictment, the 2015 verdict and the 2003 González affidavit. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2025-05-07/chile-their-hearts [^4]: Stephen Volk, notes of conversations with Terry Simon, September 1973, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 3. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges3Volkchapsticknotes-ocr.pdf [^5]: Horman, Edmund C., "The View After Three Years," personal memorandum, December 22, 1976, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 11. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges11EdHormanreflections-ocr.pdf [^6]: Smith, Frederick, Jr., report on the Horman case, State Department, December 10, 1976, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 10. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges10Smithrpt-ocr.pdf [^7]: Embassy Santiago, cable 4565, "W/W: AMCIT Missing in Chile," September 25, 1973 (251518Z), Chile Project release S199900006, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 4. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges4Zepedacable-ocr.pdf [^8]: Fimbres, Rudy, memorandum to Ambassador Harry Shlaudeman, "The Charles Horman Case," July 15, 1976, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 8. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/dinges8fimbresmemoonKennletter-ocr.pdf [^9]: Embassy Santiago memorandum on a conversation with Enrique Guzmán regarding Horman and Teruggi, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 6. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges6Stevenmemo-ocr.pdf [^10]: Kornbluh, Peter. *The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability*. New Press, 2003, pp. 269-272, 278. [^11]: Fimbres, Rudy, Robert Driscoll and William Robertson, memorandum to Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman, "The Charles Horman Case," Secret, August 25, 1976, with "Gleanings" attached, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 9. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges9FimbresDriscoll-ocr.pdf [^12]: Embassy Santiago cable, "Investigation of Horman Case: Interviews with Rafael Gonzalez," Secret, February 18, 1977, NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 12. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges12EmbassyonGonzalez-ocr.pdf [^13]: Gonzalez, Rafael, sworn affidavit submitted to the Chilean court, drafted November 2001 and filed in 2003 (Spanish original with English summary in NSA Chile in Their Hearts, document 15). https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Dinges15GonzalezRecantation-ocr.pdf [^14]: Horman et al. v. Kissinger et al., Civil Action No. 77-1748 (D.D.C.), as cited in CIA correspondence of February 8, 1978 and January 16, 1978, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 33, documents 5 and 8, and CIA addendum of July 15, 1977 (document 4). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB33/index.html [^15]: Democracy Now!, "Delayed Justice for Pinochet's Victims," December 10, 1998. https://democracynow.org/1998/12/10/delayed_justice_for_pinochets_victims [^16]: Center for Constitutional Rights, "Horman v. Kissinger," case page (date filed October 1, 1977), archived December 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/horman-v-kissinger [^17]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Report to Congress on CIA Activities in Chile," September 18, 2000, section "Death/Disappearance of US Citizens," issued under Section 311 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000. https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/chile/index.html [^18]: "Navy officer extradited for 1973 Chile killings," The Volunteer (albavolunteer.org), October 18, 2012, reporting that the Supreme Court of Chile approved the extradition request on Wednesday against Retired Capt. Ray E. Davis, indicted the previous November. https://albavolunteer.org/2012/10/navy-officer-extradicted-for-1973-chile-killings/ [^19]: "Abogado valoró fallo que autoriza pedido de extradición a EE.UU. por caso Horman," Cooperativa, October 18, 2012, reporting the 4 to 1 decision of the Second Chamber and the dissent of Ricardo Peralta. https://cooperativa.cl/noticias/pais/dd-hh/abogado-valoro-fallo-que-autoriza-pedido-de-extradicion-a-ee-uu-por/2012-10-18/110141.html [^20]: "Sentencing in Chile begins to bring closure in 41-year-old murder cases of US citizens Frank Teruggi and Charles Horman," *The Tico Times,* January 30, 2015. [^21]: "Chilean appeals court upholds convictions of 2 in killings of Americans portrayed in 'Missing,'" Fox News, September 5, 2015, reporting upheld seven-year and two-year sentences for Pedro Espinoza and Rafael Gonzalez. https://www.foxnews.com/world/chilean-appeals-court-upholds-convictions-of-2-in-killings-of-americans-portrayed-in-missing [^22]: "Chile eleva penas a militares por morte de dois americanos na ditadura," Swissinfo, July 21, 2016, reporting that the Supreme Court sentenced Pedro Espinoza to 15 years and Rafael González to 3 years. https://www.swissinfo.ch/por/chile-eleva-penas-a-militares-por-morte-de-dois-americanos-na-ditadura/42317540 [^23]: Davis v. Costa-Gavras, 654 F. Supp. 653 (S.D.N.Y. 1987) (Pollack, J.), No. 83 Civ. 2539, decided March 2, 1987. https://static.case.law/f-supp/654/cases/0653-01.json