by Barry Miles
Marker and Eddie Woods were sitting on the sofa. Burroughs was sitting in the dining room, separated from Woods by an arm’s length by the room division. Joan was sitting across from him with her drink at her side. Although Burroughs was not addicted at that time, the conversation appears to have turned to the subject of how to get through a cure when there are so many ways of getting junk to threaten the addict’s resolve. One idea Burroughs discussed was to retreat to an island that was reachable only by summer tides, and that there would be no way to leave until the water was once again high enough, by which time he would be long cured. There were apparently such places in the Amazon and the Orinoco. Bill said they would survive by eating wild hogs. Joan dismissed the idea, saying, “We’d starve to death! Because you won’t be able to shoot, you’d be so shaky if you try to come off it, you’ll shake, you won’t be able to shoot anything.”7
“Nonsense,” Burroughs said. Provoked by Joan’s remarks, he said he didn’t get the shakes, and was still a good shot. It was then that he said, “Put that glass on your head, Joanie, let me show the boys what a great shot old Bill is.”8 According to Eddie Woods:
That’s exactly what happened, so she did, and she said with a giggle—and she turned her head, she is balancing the glass on her head, and she said, “I can’t watch this, you know I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
I remember this vividly, and that’s exactly what she said. And then it dawned on me, he was actually going to pull the trigger. […] So I started to reach for the gun, as he actually aimed it, and then I thought, “You’d better not, because if it goes off just when you reach it, and it hits her—” […]
So I didn’t grab it, and then bang!—the noise, that’s the first impression I had, was the noise. Next thing I knew, the next impression I had was that glass was on the floor, […] rolling around in concentric circles on the floor. […]
Then I looked at her, and her head was over to one side. Well, I thought “She’s kidding,” you know. That’s the first thing you think, and then I heard Marker say: “Bill, I think you hit her.”
And then [Bill] said, “No!” And he started towards her, you know, and Marker got there first, and I got over there, too, and then I saw the hole in her temple, a little blue hole, and Burroughs jumped on her lap and he said, “Joan! Joan! Joan!”
I mean he was out of it, in shock that this happened. Again, to me, that’s evidence it was absolutely an accident. He was shocked that he had hit her, and he was trying to wake her up. This guy was out of it.9
Marker got to her first and saw the red trickle of blood. He rushed to the roof, where a Mexican medical student lived, but he wasn’t in, so they found Juanita Peñaloza, the building manager, and told her. Marker knew that Bernabé Jurado was Burroughs’s lawyer, so Peñaloza called him first, who said he would be right over. Next she called the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) hospital just four blocks north at Durango and Monterrey, and finally called the nearest police headquarters at the Octava Delegación (Eighth Delegation). She told Marker that Jurado’s advice to him and Woods, as the eyewitnesses, was to lay low, move to a hotel, and call him that evening when he would tell them what to do.
The Red Cross received the phone call at about 7:30 p.m. and ambulance No. 4, manned by Lieutenant Tomás Arias, was dispatched to 122 Monterrey, where the emergency personnel found Joan slumped in an easy chair with a wound in her forehead flowing with blood. She was unconscious but still breathing. Her cane was on the floor to the right of the chair. The medics took her straight to the hospital, where she was given a blood transfusion, serum, and oxygen. The type-O blood was taken from twenty-year-old Manuel Mejía, the porter at 122 Monterrey, who had run to see what was happening when the police and ambulance arrived. He had accompanied Burroughs on foot to the hospital along with the reporters, and after the transfusion he asked the Red Cross how much his blood was worth. Later, when Burroughs was out of jail, Mejía told Burroughs that he owed him money for the blood, and a month or so later, Burroughs gave him 250 pesos.10 It is unclear how long Joan survived at the Red Cross hospital: some reports say an hour, others just a few minutes.
In addition to the ambulance, the police arrived accompanied by a number of reporters whom they had presumably tipped off. Burroughs reached the hospital on foot shortly after Joan, followed by a pushing, jostling group of reporters. In his confused state he was interviewed by Lieutenant Luis Hurtado, in front of the reporters in the courtyard of the hospital, giving them a more or less accurate account of what happened. This was later contradicted by Jurado. The report in El Nacional, on September 8, 1951 read:
At first the killer declared that in the said gathering, after there had been a great consumption of gin, he tried to demonstrate his magnificent marksmanship, emulating William Tell, and to that end he placed a glass of liquor upon the head of his wife, and aiming over the glass, at a distance of two meters, he fired, but as a consequence and result of the state of drunkenness in which he found himself, he missed the shot lamentably and injured the forehead of his wife with a bullet.11
While Burroughs was being interviewed by Lieutenant Hurtado, a message came from the doctors that the wounded woman had died. Excelsior reported that at that moment Burroughs “cried bitterly, tearing out his hair in desperation.”12
Just as Burroughs finished giving his account of what happened to Lieutenant Hurtado, Bernabé Jurado arrived and told Burroughs, in front of all the reporters, that he would not be saying that before the authorities, only that the pistol had fired accidentally—and if he didn’t, he would surely go to jail: “Don’t say anything Bill, this is a shooting accident!”13 The newspapers reported the entire proceedings. La Prensa wrote:
Minutes later he changed his mind, as the result of a chat that he had with a lawyer. He stated to the journalists that this professional told him: “Don’t be stupid; don’t say you wanted to make a target [of the glass]. Testify that you were examining the pistol, very drunk, and then the shot went off, that penetrated the forehead of Joan.”
From that moment on, William changed his first testimony, but not without first arguing, “But how am I going to say that the shot went off [that way], when several people saw the facts?” […] Then, on the way to the scene of the crime, Bernabé Jurado himself went on saying to the reporters that he, in his capacity as the killer’s defender, was obliged to do everything possible so that the punishment would be the least possible for his client.
“I will prove that it was an accident,” said Jurado. “The point is, William has not testified before the authorities [yet], and before he does, he will know perfectly what he has to say.”14
Lieutenant Hurtado then arrested Burroughs for murder and he was taken to the Eighth Delegation police headquarters, where he was questioned by investigative agent Lieutenant Robert Higuera Gil. The police also arrested John Healy and John Herrmann, who had walked in on the scene later. Joan may have gone to Healy’s that day to visit with Herrmann; Herrmann was an older writer, born in 1900, and had been part of the expat scene in Paris in the twenties. Herrmann and his wife knew Joan and he told the police he had visited with her both in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Joan probably visited him in Guadalajara, where he lived, when she went there with Allen and Lucien. He appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he was not held for long, as it soon become known that he wasn’t a witness to the shooting, nor did he know Burroughs.
As the police were interrogating John Healy, they set up the apartment ready for the news photographers, making it look as though much more of a party had been going on. There were thirty empty bottles in the cupboard, evidence of a party some days before, and some of these, bottles of Glorias de Cuba rum, were put on the tables, ashtrays tipped over, and dirty glasses placed around the room. Then the reporters were let in. Healy was released that night.
Late that night, with the aid of Bernabé Jurado, Burroughs worked on a written statement, which he read aloud to Lieutenant Higuera Gil, in front
of a group of news reporters. La Prensa reported his statement verbatim. His revised statement read:
I am 37 years old. Three days ago I arrived in Mexico, accompanied by my wife, with whom I have been married for five years. We installed ourselves in 210 Orizaba, Colonia Roma.
At 3:00 P.M. I went to apartment 10 in 122 Monterrey to visit my friend John Healy. Hours later, we were all drunk.
I took my pistol from a valise and put it on the table; then I picked it up again, to demonstrate to those present how to handle it, and while I was playing with it the shot was produced that killed my wife, who was seated before me.
She fell to the floor and I thought she was playing a trick, but one of my friends informed me that she was hit. Then I lifted her up and seated her on an easy chair.
All my friends left. After that, my wife was taken by persons from the Red Cross. I went to that institution to find out her condition.
Later, from a friend of mine, I knew that Joan had died.
Joan’s body was formally identified by Juanita Peñaloza and John Bensmiller Rogerson, a student who lived at 122 Monterrey, who knew Joan from the Bounty but was not a close friend. The next day, Joan’s body was transferred from the Red Cross Hospital to the old Juarez Hospital for the legally required autopsy. It was found that she died from a bullet that entered her brain 4.5 centimeters to the left of the middle line of her forehead. There was no exit wound, consistent with a short-load shell. At some time after her death, someone had placed a religious medal at her throat as a blessing for the dead.
That same day Burroughs was transferred from the police station, where he had spent the night, to the infamous Black Palace of Lecumberri, on the avenida Eduardo Molina. He was admitted to Cellblock H, the remand wing, detained as being “presumed responsible for the crime of homicide.” Meanwhile, Bernabé Jurado swung into cocaine-fueled action. On September 8, Burroughs was questioned in his first formal hearing. He testified from behind a wire cage as his lawyers and the prosecution, led by Mexican novelist Rogelio Barriga Rivas, augmented by translators, argued it out. He was questioned first by Judge Eduardo Urzaíz, the juez instructor, and then by Lieutenant Barriga Rivas. Barriga Rivas was an old friend of Bernabé Jurado from law school. The whole procedure was new to Burroughs, who recalled, “The judge has his office there in the prison. He and Bernabé Juarado would be pushing each other away from the typewriter. He’d say, ‘Well,’ Bernabé would say, ‘Strike that out.’ And the judge would say, ‘Leave it in,’ and they would sort of tussle at the typewriter to get something in or out. The prosecuting attorney said nothing, it was really so strange a procedure.”15 It was at this hearing that it was revealed that Bill and Joan had filed for divorce in Cuernavaca the previous year on the grounds that “they were tired of each other,” with two newspapers reporting “continual arguments” and Burroughs’s drunkenness as the reason. But it was also noted that they had reconciled and dropped the formal proceedings.
At the end of the day, Jurado told Judge Urzaíz that he was going to petition for Burroughs’s release from prison, because “he only committed a crime in a manner mostly accidental, or through imprudence.” But the judge did not agree and ordered Burroughs to be bound over for more hearings and also issued subpoenas for Marker and Woods to appear for questioning. Marker and Woods were coached by Jurado in what to say, and they made two or more visits to his apartment, where they were followed, rather obviously, by plainclothes policemen when they left. Mexican law required that the exact charges against the prisoner must be determined within seventy-two hours of his arrest. At the hearing on September 10, Eddie Woods, Lewis Marker, Betty Jones, and John Healy testified, in that order, all sticking to the same story; that Burroughs had been handling a gun that fell onto the table and discharged. At the end of the hearing Judge Urzaíz determined that, all things considered, Burroughs could rightfully be held for formal prisión, saying, “In the opinion of the undersigned, the investigation lays out enough facts to make possible the legal guilt of the detainee William Seward Burroughs in the crime of murder that is imputed to him, for he himself confesses that the shot that wounded and caused the death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs was produced by the pistol that, in the event, he had in his hands.” Burroughs was charged with homicidio—murder.
In the event, Burroughs spent only two weeks in the Black Palace of Lecumberri. Jurado obtained his release and he walked free on September 21. His release on bail may have been granted by the director of the penitentiary, who had no legal necessity to consult Judge Urzaíz, who had intended him to be held until trial. It is possible that his release may have been assisted with a bribe. It is possible, also, that Jurado’s petition cast enough doubt on the case to free him on bail. There is certainly no evidence that the two presiding judges, Judges Urzaíz and the first judge of the Distrito Federal for penal matters, Lieutenant Antonio Fernández Vera, were in any way corrupt. They made every effort to uncover the facts of the case in the face of an ever-changing story.16 Burroughs put up a bond of $2,312 and paid Jurado a fee of $2,000 plus $300 “to bribe the four ballistics experts appointed by the court,” though there is no evidence that any such experts were in fact appointed.17
Burroughs was eventually sentenced, in absentia, to two years in jail—suspended. He was ordered to report each Monday, before 8:00 a.m., to the Lecumberri prison until his case was settled. If he was only a minute late he could have been put right back in jail. He could get permission not to sign in, or to sign twice to go on a vacation, but otherwise he had to be there. His two weeks in jail do not appear to have been arduous, and his experience changed his previously derogatory views about Mexican police. He told Jack Kerouac, “While sojourning in the box I was greatly impressed by the kindness and decency of the Mexican people. Can you imagine during my preliminary interrogation at the precinct the cops were telling me what to say: ‘You must deny that. You must say this.’ And in prison a man gave me one of his 2 blankets, and believe me it is cold in there at night sleeping on a slab of tin.”18
Meanwhile, the children had been looked after by Doña Marina Sotelo and the other women who had previously cared for them when Bill and Joan were asleep all morning or too out of it to feed them. Billy Jr. claimed to have been present at the shooting, but he was not. When Bill was in the Lecumberri, John Healy and Marker, at Burroughs’s request, went to his apartment and cleaned out anything that might be incriminating. They had to climb up the back and get in through the window because there were squad cars patrolling the area all the time. They found a pipe and a couple of syringes, which they took away. Mort had reluctantly flown down on September 9, the third day of his brother’s incarceration, sent by his parents to see what he could do to help. His first action, on the day he arrived, was to make arrangements with the Tangassi funeral parlor for Joan’s body to be interred that day at Panteón Americano. Her body was placed in fosa 1018 in Section A/New, where it remained for seven years for a fee of 320 pesos. The cemetery had no way of contacting Burroughs subsequently, and in August 1990 they published an official notice in the Diario Oficial de México asking the family to renew the interment arrangements as more than thirty years of back rent were due.19 When no one came forward, her remains were moved to a nicho marked only with a chalked reference number: Number 82, Class R, Section PR. Burroughs was eventually made aware of the situation, and in January 1996 paid for a stone covering to be made, inscribed with the words:
Joan Vollmer Burroughs
Loudonville, New York
1923
México, D.F.
Sept. 1951
In August 2000, on a visit to the grave, James Grauerholz paid for gold leaf to be rubbed into the lettering.
From his room in the Reforma Hotel, Mort dealt with Jurado and his partners and also had the uncomfortable task of confronting Joan’s parents, who had flown down from Albany. They remained in Mexico City long enough to have a meeting with Burroughs himself when he was released on bail. Burroughs never forgot t
his excruciatingly painful confrontation. It was arranged that Mort would take the children to St. Louis, where Bill’s parents had offered to raise them both, but in the end the Vollmers decided to take Julie to Albany and raise her themselves. Mort was also present in court when Eddie Woods and the other eyewitnesses testified, and he was able to visit Bill in jail, where the visiting rules were very lenient. Burroughs had not seen Mort for about three years, not since Bill passed through St. Louis on his way to the Lexington Narcotic Farm in 1948. Mort was under a lot of stress in Mexico City, a city he did not know, dealing with a foreign bureaucracy in an unfamiliar language, and was, by all accounts, drunk much of the time. Burroughs’s friends were not impressed by him.
On one occasion, on Jurado’s instruction, Mort, John Healy, Lewis Marker, Betty Jones, and Eddie Woods went again to Burroughs’s flat to make sure that nothing had been overlooked, because the police had a reputation for entering and planting evidence, as well as taking away anything that they fancied. Eddie Woods said, “He made a very ungraceful direct pass at Betty Jones, who was also a little drunk, and I felt insulted on behalf of my friend, Glenn, the absent husband, and said something to that effect to Mortimer—and Mortimer referred to her as ‘just another cheap broad,’ or something like that.”20 Mostly they found him to be arrogant and a whiner, denigrating Bill and complaining that Bill got all the breaks and was the favorite. Woods remembered him griping, “But I had to go to night school and get my degree, and I’ve always worked […] and that son of a bitch has never worked.” No doubt these were very real complaints, but this was not the occasion, with Bill in jail possibly facing a long prison term, to air them.
