Old Faithful Murder

Book excerpt: From three documented mysteries of the Spanish Civil War of 1936 the author has woven fictional accounts that may explain the mysteries. First is the account of the Joy Riders' at the Siege of the Alcazar. A car drove deliberately to the street between the opposing forces. A young woman slowly emerged and sat on the fender lighting a cigarette and calmly awaited the flood of bullets from both sides that destroyed her. Who she was no one knows. Only the car remained as proof of the incident. The famous offer by Franco of seven thousand Republican prisoners for the return of the Statue of Our Lady of Victory, turned down by the Government, good atheists all, for fear of her effect on the fighting and reported as lost'. Where was she? No one knows. The "Massacre" of Badajos was a savage battle true, but only elevated to a Massacre" by a propagandizing reporter of the Paris Tribune, the Havas Special Correspondent' who used as an eye witness an American correspondent who was at the time 400 miles away. It scored the biggest propaganda scoop of the war setting permanently a false character on the Franco forces in the minds of the world.