Ilona Marita Lorenz—a German woman known as the ‘Mata Hari of the Caribbean’—has been part of two assassination attempts and a love story that ended in despair. Born to German parents in Nazi Germany, she was sent to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp along with her mother for her anti-Nazi sentiment. Her life is nothing less than an adventure, full of danger, mystery killings and classified information.
It the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Marita was on board with her father on a small cruise ship—MS Berlin. When the ship docked at Havana, Cuba, a cohort of young men sporting a beard boarded, carrying weapons entered the vessel. Amongst them was the Cuban revolutionary Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz.
The weapons and ammunition carried by the revolutionaries had alarmed members on board the ship. But the young Marita—who did not think about the consequences—went towards Fidel Castro, stopped him and asked why he was getting on board the ship. In response to her question, one of Castro’s men said:
Boss has never seen such a big ship before.
In response, Maria turned to Fidel Castro and told him he could get on board on one condition: he could not bring weapons with him as long as he was on the ship. Impressed by Marita’s bravery and confidence, Castro obliged and said, “Cuba surrenders.” Later, Castro invited her for dinner, and they spoke for hours. Then, Castro asked Marita where he would find her again. Marita took his matchbox and wrote a telephone number on the side.
After dinner, the ship was headed for the United States of America. Marita disembarked in Manhattan, where she was supposed to live with her brother Joachim, a student at the University of Columbia. Although Marita had shared Joachim’s telephone number with Castro, she did not expect him to call her. A few days later, Marita’s brother, Joachim, received a call. On the line was a rough male voice asking for Marita. It was Fidel Castro.
Castro wanted Marita to fly to Cuba. He had even sent a plane to fly her. Marita decided to go. At the Havana airport, a jeep, which was waiting for her, drove her to Havana Hilton—where Castro was living, the residence where he carried out his operations.
Soon, their love story flourished, and Marita was pregnant with Castro’s child. And, as it seemed, Castro did not separate the private and the personal. So Marita found herself in the middle of important meetings—operations that would be historically important to Cuba.
In October 1959, when Marita was seven months pregnant, a member of the hotel staff brought her a glass of milk. As soon as Marita drank it, she blacked out. Hours later, she woke up at a physician’s clinic, but there was no sign of her baby. There was no evidence of what happened to the baby; some believe she had suffered a miscarriage or the baby had been forcefully aborted without her consent. Later, Marita said she gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Andre. However, she had no proof she gave birth.
Marita, who was in distress, was secretly recruited by the CIA, who brainwashed her to believe that Fidel Castro was behind this incident. To seek revenge against Castro, she left Cuba and joined the anti–Castro activists in Florida. In later testimonials, Marita claimed that a CIA agent named Francisco Fiorini—also known as Frank Sturgis—hired her to assassinate Castro. Marita said she was given poison pills – botulinum capsules, which she was supposed to add to Castro’s food.
As planned, Marita flew back to Cuba and reconnected with Castro. However, her heart came in the way of her vendetta, and she was caught in a dilemma. When Fidel asked: “did you come to kill me?”, she said “yes” and revealed the plot to Castro, claiming that she still loved him. Later, Marita flew back to the States.
Fourteen years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Marita Lorenz was featured on the front page of the New York Times. In it, she claimed that her companions in a car trip to Dallas—Lee Harvey Oswald, CIA contract agent Frank Sturgis, Cuban exile leaders Orlando Bosch and Pedro Diaz—were members of Operation 40, an assassination squad formed by the CIA in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In the meeting, the men spread out street maps of Dallas on the table and studied them. However, their intentions were unclear to her. She had thought, perhaps naively, that they were planning to raid an arsenal. After the meeting, they left in two cars—filled with weapons—for Dallas. Upon reaching Dallas, they all checked into a motel room.
The men did not want a woman on the job, so Marita flew back to Miami. Given her failure to carry out the previous mission, they had possibly considered her a liability. On her flight back to Miami, she heard about Kennedy’s assassination. However, after interviewing her for a long time, the House Select Committee found her account unreliable.
Marita Lorenz has been dubbed as ‘Patron of a saint of conspiracy buffs’ by Vanity Fair in 1993. Her fascinating life story has been the plot of movies such as ‘My Little Assasin’ and ‘Dear Fidel.’ Several books have been written about her mysterious life.
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