Article content continued

Nothing except what was revealed in the CIA documents is known about Louis Martinez, a man who worked as an attorney in the U.S.

Photo by John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Martinez’s former girlfriend, Viola Krajcik, served as a CIA informant after the agency suspected him of being involved in the robbery of more 300 weapons from a national armoury in Ohio in 1958. Krajcik made it clear that Martinez was working on behalf of Castro and the Cuban rebels — who hadn’t yet defeated Batista — to secure weapons and medicine.

In either July or September 1958, Martinez brought Krajcik with him to Toronto for the purpose of buying 10 surplus fighter jets for Castro.

The pair stayed at the Conroy Hotel, a two-storey building at Dufferin St. and Lawrence Ave. once known as a New Years Eve hotspot for couples. Krajcik said they travelled to the municipal airport to see planes that were only described as silver. But the Panamanian pilots who were hired to fly the planes out of Canada were not allowed into the country, the CIA wrote. The deal still went down and without telling the CIA how, she said the planes were stashed in New Jersey.

The man who helped the deal go through, Krajcik said, went by “Vic.” Vic was 5’3, 60 years old and owned an expensive home in Milwaukee. He told her that he once lived in Canada and had served as a pilot in the Canadian Air Force. Now, he appeared to be working as an industrialist of some sort in the U.S.

Photo by City of Toronto Archives

Before Martinez was eventually arrested in New York for kidnapping, Krajcik said her former lover was given $30,000 for an arms deal that never went through. He also allegedly tried to buy rifles in Brooklyn, N.Y. for Castro. At one point, Martinez flew to Cuba where he said he was thinking of taking $10 million from Castro to construct a Pan American building in Miami. When he was arrested, Martinez denied all involvement with the Cuban rebels. No other information about his alleged ties to the rebels is known.