Rodrigo Rosenberg's Murder in Guatemala

As Castresana looked deeper into Rosenberg’s life, he began to see a tormented soul—“someone like Raskolnikov.” After the death of the woman he loved, Rosenberg wrote to a friend that he felt as if he were “disintegrating, little by little.” He initially tried to do what he had always done: find justice through the law. Based on the intelligence he had gathered—primarily from the legendary spy Mendizábal but also from other sources—he was convinced that the government had killed Marjorie and her father. But, as a lawyer, Rosenberg knew that this intelligence was not strong enough to stand up in court. And Mendizábal warned Rosenberg that it would be futile to fight the President, the First Lady, and Alejos. In a country where crimes were virtually never punished, Castresana says, Rosenberg felt powerless. In a meeting at his law firm, Rosenberg complained, “There is no justice in Guatemala.” And so, Castresana theorized, Rosenberg had set his plot in motion. 

In hindsight, Rosenberg’s actions in his final days made it evident that he was not trying to evade death but, rather, was preparing for it. He had his will drawn up; he bought two adjoining plots in a cemetery, one for himself and one for Marjorie; he gave away family heirlooms. He had then constructed a counterfeit reality, believing, however perversely, that it was the only way that the guilty parties would ever go to jail. And he employed the very methods—hit men, misdirection, stagecraft—that, in the past, had been the province of corrupt states and intelligence outfits. Rodrigo Rosenberg had democratized the art of political murder.

[From New Yorker: "A Murder Foretold"]