Crimen de los Existencialistas

Americans Sentenced in Spain

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – A Spanish civil court sentenced four Americans, a Spanish woman and a British girl to long prison terms today [1964/03/16] for the robbery-murder of a Barcelona furniture dealer.

THE SENTENCES were:

• James Bell Wagner, 23, of Union Beach, N.J., 30 years;
• Mrs. Maria del Pilar Alfaro Velasco, 32, Spanish mother of two daughters, 23 years;
• John Joseph Hand, 40, Southfield, Mich., and James Stephen Johnston, 30, Bluejacket, Okla., 21 years each;
• Mrs. Nancy Karen Hand, 25, Detroit, Mich., 12 years and one day.
• Joan Douglas Bryder [Bryden?], 22, a British librarian, 6 years.

The prosecution had asked the death penalty for Wagner and the Spanish woman, 20 years for Hand and Johnston, 12 years for Mrs. Hand and six years for Miss Bryder.

Court attaches said the prison terms would be cut at least in half by an amnesty which Generalissimo Franco ordered upon the election of Pope Paul VI and a second amnesty expected April 1 in connection with the 25th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War.

The six prisoners were arrested after the slaying Nov. 17, 1962, of Francisco Robirosa, 50, in his shop. The crime netted only $33 in loot.

Wagner admitted he entered Robirosa’s shop to rob the man. The prosecution contended the Spanish woman planned the crime and the others were accomplices.

BECAUSE OF THE defendants’ admissions of illict relations, of the use of drugs, and of other activities, the case was called by Spanish newsmen «The Trial of the Existentialists.»

The prosecutor described all six defendants as drifters who lived by their wits.

Wagner, a deserter from a U.S. Army Signal Corps battalion in Germany, and petite Maria del Pilar Alfaro escaped the death sentence – and execution by Spain’s garrote – because there was no proof of premedidation in Robirosa’s murder, the court indicated.

More than 1,500 persons jammed the old provincial courtroom to witness the sentencing.