By Marc Lampson1
Assassinations are a tool of choice in any authoritarian’s arsenal. Accountability for that choice is rare.2 King County legal history, however, includes one of those rare instances: a federal civil suit in the Western District of Washington ended in holding Ferdinand Marcos and his co-defendants liable for the fatal shooting of two local political activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, on June 1, 1981. Two deeply researched books have been written about the case, but even they may not have been able to tell the whole story.3 Marcos was the president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. Ruling under martial law from 1972 to 1981, he had declared his style of governance, “constitutional authoritarianism.”4
The two young men whose deaths Marcos was held liable for were native Washingtonians, raised on each side of the State, educated in its schools and colleges, and politicized by local and international events. Their lives ended after both were shot multiple times on a June afternoon in downtown Seattle. It took four state criminal convictions and the federal civil suit to unravel the role that Marcos had played. The federal verdict was the first and only time in U.S. history that a foreign leader had been held legally accountable for the deaths of U.S. citizens.
Silme and Gene had become close friends and political allies, “inseparable” some said, despite their differences. Silme had been born and raised in big city Seattle and had attended the University of Washington. Gene was born and raised on the east side of the state, in the little farming community of Wapato, and had attended Central Washington State College in Ellensburg.
They first met in 1970 in the parking lot of their union hall after a shouting match over a lone parking spot. They met again in the summer of 1971 at the Anchorage International Airport on their way to work in different Alaska fish canneries. But both had actively opposed the Vietnam War and both fought against building the Kingdome, which would dismantle or disrupt much of the International District, a historic center for many in their Filipino community. Critically, they were also both leaders of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP), an organization formed in the U.S. to oppose the dictatorial rule of Marcos in the Philippines and to support pro-democratic movements there.
Viernes and Domingo were just 29 on June 1, 1981. They were working in the union hall of the ILWU’s Local 37, the Seattle-based Alaska Cannery Workers Union5 on Main Street and the Second Avenue Extension in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. Together, they had helped found the Rank and File Committee, a group of union activists working for union reform. Nemesio, Sr., Silme’s father, was vice president of Local 37. Tony Baruso was its president. Gene and Silme were also among the founders of the independent Alaska Cannery Workers Association, fighting to reform the seafood canning industry itself over its racially discriminatory practices. More recently, they had been elected as officers in Local 37, Silme as Secretary-Treasurer, Gene as Dispatcher. Right away, they reformed the union’s dispatch system, sending workers to the Alaska canneries based on seniority and work history, not on favoritism and how much workers were willing to bribe certain members of the union’s old leadership.
The foot soldiers who carried out the assassinations were members of the Tulisan gang, opponents of the new officers’ reform of the union dispatch system. The gang ran a gambling operation in Seattle’s International District and wanted to further extend those operations into the bunkhouses at the Alaska canneries. To do that, they needed assurance that their members would be dispatched up north. At a Local 37 dispatch meeting on May 26 that year, Tony Dictado, the head of the local gang, angrily insisted that his members be dispatched. Viernes refused.
At 4:20 p.m. on June 1, Tulisan gang members Benito Guloy and Jim Ramil entered the union hall and walked toward the offices of Viernes and Domingo. From a brown paper bag, Ramil pulled a .45-caliber MAC-10 revolver with a suppressor attached to it and fired at Gene, hitting him twice in the heart. Ramil then swung around and fired at Silme, hitting him four times. Ramil and Guloy left the hall and quickly disappeared down an adjacent alley, heading south. On the way out of the hall, they passed another gang member, the lookout, Boy Pilay (Teodorico Dominguez, murdered in 1983). He crossed the street and got into a black Trans Am with Tony Dictado at the wheel, and they drove away.
Silme was able to get out onto Main Street and then collapsed onto the sidewalk. Firefighters James Huckins and Frank Urpman were both at Fire Station 10, a block away. They were alerted to the distressed man on the sidewalk and both reached him in seconds. Silme told them he’d been shot by “Guloy” and “Ramil.” Urpman wrote it down. Silme corrected what Urpman had written, saying the name was "Ramil", not Rammo. The next day, Seattle police arrested the two assailants whom Silme had named.
Ben Guloy and Jim Ramil6 were tried together in a jury trial presided over by King County Superior Court Judge Lloyd W. Bever. They were convicted of aggravated first-degree murder, the aggravating factor being multiple victims in pursuit of a “common scheme or plan.” They were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Fortunato “Tony” Dictado, who had testified at their trial, was arrested for the murders soon after his testimony. A jury convicted him too of aggravated first-degree murder, in a trial presided over by King County Superior Court Judge Terrence A. Carroll, who sentenced Dictado to life without parole.7 King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joanne Maida was the prosecutor in all three convictions and had prosecuted them premised on their acting in “furtherance of a gambling scheme.” Case closed?
Not so fast. The Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes (CJDV), formed in the local KDP headquarters the day after the shootings, claimed the motive for the murders was deeper than gang-related gambling. Silme’s brother, Nemesio Domingo, Jr., and KDP activist Elaine Ko initially headed CJDV. They began plans for a march for justice in the ensuing days, some behind the banner, “Turn Anguish to Anger,” but the campaign would go on for years. Long-time and well-respected International District activist Bob Santos would later co-chair the CJDV, and Silme’s sister, Cindy Domingo, would eventually head the organization. Though many in CJDV suspected from the beginning that Baruso, Local 37’s president, and Ferdinand Marcos, were complicit in the murders, proving it would be daunting.
An early break came in July 1981, when the murder weapon was discovered in a trash can in West Seattle and records showed it was registered to Tony Baruso. When Seattle police detectives showed Baruso the gun, he claimed he didn’t recognize it. When they showed him the gun’s registration with his name on it, he claimed the gun had been stolen. But he had not reported the theft to either the police or his insurance company. So, when the police released him, with no pending charges, community incredulity turned to legal ingenuity.
No one was certain why he was free, but his connections ran deep. He was a long-time, well-respected member of the community, and in the Filipino community he was an outspoken supporter of Ferdinand Marcos. In an era still familiar with the revelations of the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate cover-up, Congressional investigations of CIA-backed coups and assassinations, and the U.S. role in toppling popularly elected Salvador Allende in Chile, many possible answers arose. It would take almost another ten years, and the investigative powers granted in a long federal civil lawsuit, to get closer to justice for Domingo and Viernes.
The legal team that crafted and pursued the federal civil lawsuit was headed by Michael Withey, who wrote one of the books referenced here, “Summary Execution.” Over the years, the other Seattle attorneys on the team included John Caughlan, Jim Douglas, Jeffrey Robinson, and Liz Schott. Summer law clerks who worked on the case included Howard Goodfriend, Sharon Sakamoto, and Yvonne Ward. The lead plaintiffs in the case, filed in the early 1980s and most often referenced as Estates of Domingo & Viernes v. Ferdinand & Imelda Marcos (Domingo v. Marcos), included Terri Mast, who was Silme’s spouse and mother of their two daughters, and other family members of the two men.
The theory of the case can be traced out in court documents and various less formal materials.8 Jeffrey Robinson’s opening statement at the jury trial in 1989 presided over by federal district Judge Barbara Rothstein stated it succinctly: the responsibility for the murders fell squarely on the shoulders of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and General Fabian Ver, the leader of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Robinson described a “Philippine Infiltration Plan” that had undercover military attachés in the U.S. who were to “monitor, harass, attempt to silence and intimidate the anti-Marcos organizations” in the U.S. It was this activity that “led directly to the murders” of Gene and Silme.9
The legal team had uncovered evidence of a secret intelligence slush fund that Ferdinand Marcos and his chief of staff General Fabian Ver had created in the United States. Dr. Leonilo Malabed of San Francisco, a childhood friend of Marcos, controlled the fund with money funneled through the Mabuhay Corporation, of which Malabed had been President. The men used the money to further Marcos’ political influence and for covert operations in the U.S. against the anti-Marcos opposition movement. Strong circumstantial evidence emerged indicating the slush fund was used to pay for the murders of Gene and Silme, who had become well-known anti-Marcos union officials.10
On Dec. 15, 1989, the jury returned a verdict finding the Marcoses liable in the deaths and awarding $15.1 million in damages. A month later, in a Memorandum Decision, Judge Rothstein awarded an additional $8.3 million to the estates, finding Malabed and Baruso part of the Marcos conspiracy. The decision stated in part as follows: “Plaintiffs have provided clear, cogent and convincing evidence that the Marcoses initiated, directed, and funded an intelligence operation against their political opposition in the U.S.” The methods included the same ones mentioned by Robinson: intimidation, harassment, violence. Rothstein stated Domingo and Viernes had posed a substantial threat to the Marcoses and she concluded just as the plaintiffs had long argued: “Marcos created and controlled an intelligence operation which plotted the murders of Domingo and Viernes and that Mabuhay funds were paid to Baruso and used to perpetuate the murders.”11
Tony Baruso, in February 1991, finally faced a jury trial in King County Superior Court for the two murders.12 He was convicted of aggravated first-degree murder in the case, which was prosecuted by Rebecca Roe and Kathy Goeter; Judge Frank L. Sullivan sentenced Baruso to life without parole.13 He died in his cell at Stafford Creek Corrections Center, age 80, in 2008.14 Ramil, age 73, remains at Stafford Creek. Dictado, 72, is at Washington Corrections Center, outside of Shelton.15
If this story did not involve the tragic, needless assassinations of two young men in 1981, we would call it a “fascinating” and “multi-faceted” legal story, but such labels gloss over the deaths. The books referenced in the endnotes are much more in-depth about the people, the intricacies, and the remaining mysteries in the story; they are highly recommended for anyone wanting more information.
I wanted to tell the story here because I told a shorter version of it in my book, “From Profanity Hill: King County Bar Association’s Story” (1993). I wrote the story quite accurately at the time, but the editor of the book inaccurately rewrote what I had written, twisting up the cases and attorneys involved, and doing so without telling me. He completely misidentified Joanne Maida's role in a photo caption and in the text and said nothing of the central role that Michael Withey and his legal team had played. When he sent me the final page proofs for the entire book, I did not review that section because of all the stories in the book, I knew that story the best. Before leaving for law school on the East Coast in 1981, I had attended some of the marches and meetings of the CJDV, and knew much of the story. I’m sure I made other errors in the book, but my error in not reviewing the page proofs of that section will forever dishearten me. The article above therefore is a long “errata” sheet: “Generally, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced during the publishing process) and a corrigendum for an author’s error.”16 If you own the book, I hope you’ll clip this article out and insert it between pages 88-89. I am grateful to Lee Nacozy, the editor of the Bar Bulletin, who agreed to my emailed request to make this apology and take this corrective action some 32 years after the book’s publication. And with this article, Lee and I hope to initiate a series of occasional Bar Bulletin pieces on other aspects of the legal history of Washington.
1 Marc Lampson is the chief review judge for the Board of Appeals at the Washington Department of Social and Health Services. He wrote a book on local legal history, with a spotlight on the King County Bar Association, “From Profanity Hill: The King County Bar Association’s Story” (1993), and co-authored a book on legal research, “Finding the Answers to Legal Questions” (2d ed. 2018). He was also the editor of the Bar Bulletin for several years prior to the turn of the century.
2 Well-accepted instances include Adolf Hitler ordering the assassinations of three of his political opponents during the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934: Ernst Röhm, Gregor Strasser, and Kurt von Schleicher. In the Great Purge or Great Terror of 1937, Joseph Stalin launched show trials and executions of many of his rivals, many in the Bolshevik Party; he was also likely instrumental in the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Ferdinand Marcos was convicted in 1939 of the assassination of a political rival of the Marcos family, Julio Nalundasan; his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of the Philippines. Many hold Marcos also responsible for the assassination of another of his rivals, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. in 1983, two years after the deaths of Domingo and Viernes. A later president of the Philippines (from 2016-20), Rodrigo Duterte, did not deny ignoring due process and using executions and assassinations against suspected drug dealers and others in the Philippines. El Salvador’s current president, Nayib Bukele, has been accused of similar behavior.
3 See Michael Withey, “Summary Execution: The Seattle Assassinations of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes” (2017); Thomas Churchill, “Triumph Over Marcos” (1995). See also http://michaelwithey.com.
4 Wikipedia, “Ferdinand Marcos”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos.
5 The union has a long, proud history and has had several names; see, e.g., “Waterfront Workers History Project: Cannery Workers and Their Unions,” at http://depts.washington.edu/dock/canneries_intro.shtml; see also Michael W. McCann & George Lovell, “Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism” (2020); Churchill, supra, note 3, refers to the union as the Inland Boatman’s Union. ILWU stands for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
6 State v. Guloy, 104 Wn.2d 412, 705 P.2d 1182 (1985).
7 State v. Dictado, 102 Wn.2d 277, 687 P.2d 172 (1984).
8 See, e.g., the “Resources” tab, http://withey.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CJDV-update-The-Smoking-Gun-Philippine-Agents-in-U.S.pdf and http://withey.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Anatomy-of-a-Cover-Up-Final.pdf, at http://michaelwithey.com.
9 Summary Execution, supra, note 3, at 275.
10 See, supra, note 8, http://withey.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Evidence-of-a-Secret-Intelligence-Slush-Fund.pdf.
11 Summary Execution, supra, note 3, at 309-10.
12 Barbara A. Serrano, Baruso Murder Trial Gets Started - Former Leader of Cannery Union Faces 2 Counts, Seattle Times, Feb. 15, 1991, at B12.
13 State v. Baruso, 72 Wn. App. 603, 865 P.2d 512 (1993), rev. denied, 124 Wn.2d 1008, 879 P.2d 292 (1994).
14 Convicted union leader dies in cell, The Seattle Times, Nov. 15, 2008, at B2.
15 Washington Corrections Center Incarcerated Search, http://doc.wa.gov/records/incarcerated-data-search/search-tools-disclaimer-terms-use. No record of Guloy turned up.
16 Wikipedia, “Erratum”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erratum.
