Confidential File

'Justice' in Tijuana Is Extremely Tricky

It's traditional for imaginative American youngsters to be infected with wanderlust.

This is the story of an American youngster whose wanderlust led him to the grim obscurity of a Mexican federal prison.

His name: Robert Petersen.

At
17, he wasn't a particularly cocky little kid. But he did have his own
brand of bravado — exactly the kind of bravado that you'd suspect a
17-year-old who didn't yet scale 100 pounds and lacked an inch of being
5 ft. tall to affect.

Bobby like sharp clothes, flashy cars, and
race horses weighing  nearly a ton. He liked walking "hots" – cooling
off thoroughbreds after they'd worded out — because someday he was
going to be a jockey.

That was the motivation to leave school,
to leave home. His folks were nice people. He'd keep in touch. But you
can't learn how to ride a horse in your living room.

He worked the fairs, picking up $10 or $20 a day and some feedbag tips worth five and 10 times his salary.

It was one of those tips, in his short career at the tracks, that led him to the races at Tijuana's Caliente track.

It was a good tip and his $5 mutuel
ticket netted him enough to pay the rent on a shiny, new U-drive car.
At least, for a few days. But Bobby wasn't old enough to sign for it
himself. So he found a taxi driver in Tijuana — a friend of a friend
— who would.

He reportedly paid him $25 in advance. Then, he headed for San Diego to pick up a girlfriend for a drive-in movie date.

Bobby
told the taxi driver that he'd probably be gone a day. But he made the
mistake of being gone two days before he headed back for Tijuana.

And then he made his second mistake. Instead of driving straight for the house of taxi-driver, he stopped off at Caliente to put down two bucks on a horse he'd heard was ready to run.

The
horse was good but Bobby's luck wasn't when he walked out into the
parking lot after the sixth race. The nervous taxi driver had spotted
his car while dropping off a customer, and had then called the Tijuana
police to tell them that the car had been stolen from him. The police,
and a jail cell, were waiting for Bobby when he arrived in the lot.

The
kid got a trial, just like everybody else in Tijuana — except his, in
certain respects, was better. The U-drive representative testified that
the bill was paid in full. And thecabbie added that the whole thing was just a mistake.

But the judge didn't see it their way. Bobby was guilty of stealing the car.

And
suitable punishment for the crime would be four years hard time, in the
dusty, sun-soaked federal pen on the eastern outskirts of Tijuana.

For
more than a year, that's been the home of this teen-age kid. He's got a
knife gash on his back and some sores and bruises to prove it.

He's
been sleeping on the ground until it's comfortable and eating mush
until it almost tastes good.  I've been told that he doesn't complain
any more. It's healthier not to. Even if your family sends you shoes
and shirts and socks and somebody else wears them, it's better not to
say anything.

Besides, he's going to get out soon. His parents have fought his case to the Baja California court of appeals, and now it's been decided that for $640 he can buy his conditional release.

'We'll Get the Money'

I telephoned his folks yesterday, at their home in Northern California.

They've
got other kids — other mouths to feed — they admitted, but maybe by
selling a few things and contacting all their friends, they'll be able
to raise it.

"We'll get the money somehow," his mother told me. "We've got to."

And from what I've heard about teenage American prisoners in Mexican prisons, they better raise that money. Real fast.