'Vampire' hotel bomber from California dies after growing ill in Bolivian prison

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

'Vampire' hotel bomber from California dies after growing ill in Bolivian prison
ALVARO ZUAZO, Associated Press Writer



April 1, 2008 1:15 PM

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - A convicted hotel bomber from California who modeled himself on a fictional vampire has died after becoming ill in prison, officials said Tuesday.

Twenty-six-year-old Triston Jay Amero was serving a 30-year sentence for bombing two low-rent hotels in the Bolivian capital of La Paz in 2006. Two Bolivians died in one of the attacks.

Juan Carlos Limpias, a senior official in the national prison service, said Amero complained of stomach pains Monday night in his cell and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

An autopsy showed Amero died of pulmonary edema - a swelling or fluid in the lungs - said Antonio Torres, chief medical examiner for the Bolivian police.Torres said further tests will show if a poison or drug caused the death.
U.S. Embassy officials attended the autopsy but made no statements to the news media.




Read more: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565273019896170120

[C_U_L8R]

1. Vampire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXPnH0C9UA&NR=1

[Judi Lynn]

3. Different guy.

Tristan Jay Amero AKA Lestat Montevideo

[Hannah Bell]

2. something odd here...

pulmonary edema common in poisoning.

thought this story was funny when he was charged with the bombings, now smells worse.

[pitohui]

5. it's common in altitude sickness, a very common ailment for foreigners in the la paz area

if he was not moved to a lower elevation whilst suffering altitude sickness, then eventually he would get pulmonary edema and die

the la paz airport is a mile high and you are told that if you have trouble acclimating to go to a lower elevation immediately

a prisoner has no choice where to go or when and if i'm reading the article right, the prison is in the la paz area?

that said, if he's been captive there since 2006 seems he would have acclimated by now? wonder if he's been moved around or moved in an unsafe manner from a lower area to the la paz area?

[Hannah Bell]

8. yep, he'd been there since At leAst 2006.

some highly delAyed Altitude sickness.

the bombings occured in lA pAz, the triAl followed, & he's been in prison there since.

& he's 26.

[pitohui]

9. age and physical condition not relevant in altitude sickness

you can't predict who'll get it -- a young person might be affected very badly, an old person in otherwise rather shitty condition might not get it at all, it's one of those unexplained mysteries like why do some astronauts get motion sick in orbit while others don't since all astronauts are of an exceptionally high level of fitness

the length of time he'd been in la paz is more relevant

i would have expected him to be acclimated, but pulmonary edema is how people with altitude sickness die and it's the first thing you think of when you hear of a young person dying of pulmonary edema in la paz so...i dunno...i would wonder if for some period of time he'd been in another prison at a lower elevation and then returned too swiftly to this prison, would we know if something like that had happened?

is it possible for this to develop over a period of a couple years?

[Hannah Bell]

12. Or, alternatively, is it possible he was poisoned?

Or had an infection?

He'd been in la paz at least 2 years. Doubtful on the altitude sickness.

His lawyer is out of DC & has a strong interest in covert ops.

[pitohui]

20. i don't know why it wouldn't be possible

sure, i don't know why he couldn't have been poisoned, i just don't see why you would poison a guy like this

too easy to just let him die of not getting enough food or medicine -- not saying that i believe conditions in this prison are primitive, oh wait a minute, yes i am

i guess if i were the bolivian gov't, i wouldn't feel a need to "make it happen" if i could just "let it happen"

[DemoTex]

14. The La Paz airport is 13,313 ft above mean sea level (2.52 statute miles).

La Paz city is slightly less than 13,000 ft MSL. Everything about flying in and out of La Paz is tricky, especially managing aircraft pressurization and emergency oxygen systems. "Altitude poisoning" is a distinct possibility for the non-acclimated.

[Hannah Bell]

17. he'd been in bolivia since 2004. (age 22)

with no apparent means of support.

the bombings were committed in la paz in 2006.

he went to jail in la paz in 2006.

he died in 2008.

[Hannah Bell]

18. I think it's odd, the insistence it must have been altitude sickness.

When there's no evidence for that hypothesis.

in 2004, he was in potosi, the highest city in the world.

[DemoTex]

19. Well Hannah, I for one said nothing about Amero suffering altitude sickness.

I mentioned the un-acclimated, which presumably would not include the subject of this discussion. I, however, have been sick as the proverbial dog on a very short stay in La Paz. And I have, on other occations, handled La Paz very well.

[pitohui]

23. i think it's odd that you didn't seem to be aware of the most common cause of pulmonary edema there

neither of us are on the scene and, as another poster says, sometimes even with the same individual, your reactions and vulnerability to altitude changes

i see no harm in doing a tox screen on this guy, if only to remove all doubt, but a little common sense here

the guy is in prison, if you want to "off" somehow without lifting eyebrows in prison, you don't poison them, you have some gang member stick a knife in him

[Hannah Bell]

24. i was already familiar with the story since the trial. i knew he'd been in bolivia

for years.

i'm not sure why you think my mind should leap to "altitude sickness" when i heard he died.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Right after he was caught, we read stories, and they, too, took great pains to inform us that the

people he killed were in "low rent" hotels, as if it means those murders weren't actually as serious as they would have been had the people been wealthy.

Surprising to see them rush to instruct us all over again that the bombing murder victims were, after all, staying in inexpensive hotels.

Of course that excuses the deaths! Who needs more poor people?

[pitohui]

7. the deaths were not excused, they were aggressively punished

dude got a 30 year sentence in a prison system where he was unlikely to survive a decade -- i do not know if bolivia even has a death penalty but they don't need one, the chances of this guy surviving 30 years without local family support were virtually nil IMHO

the reason for telling that the hotels were "low rent" locals' hotels is because bolivia gets some of its badly needed hard currency thru tourism trade, esp. with adventurous young europeans and australians and others who get a "gap year," parents out of touch with kids on the road would want to know in the news immediately if the hotels were business hotels, backpacker's hostels where their kids might be staying, or, as is apparently the case, "low rent" places appealing to impoverished locals -- it's actually information that somebody might want to have

[Judi Lynn]

10. Then somebody should take the effort to find out where his dear one is. In the country a man bombs

he's seen as a terrorist, not a lovable kid on vacation.

The early articles indicate it's a miracle a larger number of people weren't murdered.

Hastening to sooth people worrying about tourist loved ones should be dealt with separately.

[pitohui]

22. no one thinks this terrorist is a lovable kid on vacation

try reading for comprehension it's amazing what you might learn

this guy appears to have been a severely mentally ill person who decided that the road to infamy was to become a terrorist and to bomb innocent people

lowlife scum with obvious mental health problems often have trouble gaining admittance into nice third or fourth world hotels because they tend to have security to chase off the weirdos and the self proclaimed vampires

i don't find it odd that he decided to bomb a "low rent" place at all, i think it rather shameful, but too often the evil and the disturbed prey on those who are most vulnerable

it is not wrong to describe the targets of his attack accurately, and i'm unclear why it offends you to know that poor people too are victimized by terrorist bombings

[Zorra]

6. There sure are some strange, violent people on this planet. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

11. His lawyer, paul wolf, has a strong interest in covert ops. Coincidence?

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/archivesindex.htm

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/

btw, one of the possessions wolf requested the bolivian gov to return to the defendant was "stock certificates".

Who carries their stock certificates around with them?


The lawyer's specialty regions:

Colombia

Iraq

Afghanistan

Iran

United States

Pakistan

[Hannah Bell]

13. See a pattern?

He bombed backpacker hotels in evo morales' bolivia.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Hmmm. Well, the Miami Cuban "exile" extremists have been trying to destroy

Cuba's tourist business, like former CIA creep, bomber/mass murderer Luis Posada Carriles, who last hired Central Americans to bring in bombs and plant them in Cuban hotels, killing an Italian tourist, and the other right-wing terrorist groups from Miami who cruise along the beach and shoot machine guns at hotels and people on the shore, f'r instance the F4 Commandos of Rodolfo Frometa, who boasts they go to Cuba, disembark, kill people and return home to Miami.

Some of the Miami "exile" terrorists also have been part of the organizations like Operation 40, which traveled around the world, killing "leftists," including the Chilean progressive diplomat who had been imprisoned and tortured by Augusto Pinochet, Orlando Letelier and his American aide, Ronnie Moffit, injuring her husband, on the streets of Washington, D.C. during the time _{George H. W. Bush} was the director of the C.I.A.

Easy to imagine these right-wing reactionary criminals are capable of bombing places where tourists would stay in Bolivia, in hopes of driving that business away.

[Hannah Bell]

16. His companion in crime, alda ribiero, was 45.

apparently he advertised for a girlfried in sa.

she was uraguayan, naturalied us citizen.

she dropped from the radar after the trial.

[Judi Lynn]

21. 'Vampire' convict dies in Bolivia

Page last updated at 15:01 GMT, Tuesday, 1 April 2008 16:01 UK
'Vampire' convict dies in Bolivia

American who called himself after a fictional vampire and who was serving 30 years for fatal bombings in La Paz has died, Bolivian officials say.

Triston Jay Amero, 26, was sentenced in January for the March 2006 blasts in which two people died.

A prison official said Amero had complained of stomach pains and was taken to hospital, where he died.

He went by the name Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo, derived from the vampire novels by US author Anne Rice.

Amero, originally from California, had been convicted of carrying out the attacks with his Uruguayan ex-girlfriend, Alda Ribeiro Costa, 47, who was also jailed for the maximum 30-year term.

He was serving his sentence in the Chonchocoro maximum security prison.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7324918.stm

[Hannah Bell]

25. no more pulmonary edema.

though it does says ribiero is also doing 30 years.

[Hannah Bell]

26. Some news from the time of the bombings...

Reuters 3/22/06

"(Evo Morales--the new indigenous Indian president of Bolivia)..., who has described his socialist movement as a nightmare for the United States, called on the international community to condemn the bombings and vowed tough punishment for the culprits.

"'Some groups in Bolivia, oligarchs, are interested in using foreign agents to make threats,' he said. 'We will deal harshly with the conspirators.....It is not the first time Morales's government has made unspecified suggestions about the existence of plots to destabilise his government...."


"Morales bomb remark angers Washington
AP

La Paz, Bolivia: US diplomats expressed concern at suggestions by Bolivia's left-leaning president that Washington had a role in hotels bombings that killed two people, saying his comments could impede efforts to cooperate in the fight against terror."

The US ambassador was recalle over morales'comments.


"Budget hotels"

"The American papers refer to the hotels as "budget hotels" without any reference to the fact that these are where government officials stay. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and they have two capitals, so it is quite normal for government officials to stay in (what would be to Americans) budget hotels.

Not to mention that the President of the country only makes about 22,000 dollars a year and by law and rule no other official can make more than he. So LA Times and the rest of you, give me a break with this "budget" hotel crap ok?"

"All I have to say is... very interesting. Even leaving all the tinfoil hat stuff aside, I cannot imagine that Lestat was not being monitored by U.S. intelligence if only for his wanting to renounce his citizenship and his non-mainstream religious assertions. The question is, did they ever warn the Bolivian police about his presence?

And who called whom to warn about the second bomb? And was it really C4 and not dynamite that was used? And who is this Jessica Wilson?"

http://www.floggingthesimian.com/?q=node/169

[Judi Lynn]

27. Now that rings a bell, concerning the residence hotels: I recall reading before Evo Morales was

inaugurated, he, also, lived in one of the modest hotels, and that when officials of other countries went to Bolivia to speak with him, they had to go to his austere, small quarters to meet him, and this was seen as completely unique.

When he became the President, he did request they cut the traditional President's salary in half, and he suggested similar adjustments being made for cabinet officials, as well.

He clearly IS a "man of the people," isn't he?

When I get some time I'll look for more on the bombings. You may recall reading the Miami (and New Jersey) Cuban exiles were proficient using C4, as it was taught to them in the CIA. Ricardo "Monkey" {"El Mono") Morales, an associate of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, former Batista henchman, member of the Venezuelan secret police, CIA, Iran/Contra, Congo mercenary was a C4 pro: they used it to bomb a Cubana airliner with 73 people, including children, in the first airliner bombing in flight, in history.

C4 is BIG among these filths. They even blow each other up with it.

Your bringing forward the fact that Bolivian government officials stay in hotels like this really DOES move this whole story to another level, as it opens so many possibilities not considered earlier.

[superconnected]

28. Bet it was something he ate.

[Throd]

29. As a vampire he can't die...

...merely feigning death for a few years until he can scratch back to the surface unnoticed.