Confidential File

Tijuana's Smell Not Like Peach Orchard

While Baja
California was busy electing a new governor this weekend, a drama
enacted in Tijuana's city jail and crammed with international intrigue
went unnoticed by the press.

The central figures were John
Moore, 24, a British comedian who's been working the clubs in San
Francisco, and his fiancee, Kerstin Schelin , 18, a blond, brown-eyed
Swedish girl who immigrated to the United States a couple of months
ago. They drove from San Francisco to Tijuana last Friday, with
intentions of spending a week's vacation on the Baja California seashore.

After relaxing most of Saturday on the beach south of Rosarito, they stopped in a small restaurant on the highway for an early dinner.

It
was there that circumstances began to work against them. A few
individuals who had spent too much time at the bar took a liking to
Miss Schelin.

 Immediately, they wanted to dance with her. Moore
and his fiance had no strenuous objections, so she accommodated the
gentlemen with a few dances.

But when the strangers suggested
that the couple accompany them to their "ranch" up in the hills, they
said no. And when the strangers began insisting they decided to get out
and head back to the border.

This, they did. They climbed into
their car and aimed it north. But the four men climbed into another car
and began following them. They'd follow for a while, then speed up and
try to run the couple's car off the road. Three times they tried it.

Finally, at Rosarito, the strangers turned off the highway — and Moore breathed easily.

He
was within a mile of Tijuana when a black sedan pulled alongside of him
and edged his car onto the shoulder. Two men stepped out, identified
themselves as Tijuana police officers and said the couple were wanted
for questioning at the jail.

One of the officers climbed into Moore's car: the other followed in the sedan. And off to jail they went.

From
8 p.m., when they arrived, until 3 a.m. Sunday, they answered question
after question. They sat in a small room in front of the jail. They
could hear a tape-recorder going. And the questions — they were
strange,weird.

Where's the boat? How did they get to Rosarito? Who drove the car into Mexico for them?

The officers studied the couple's passports and visas and papers. They read the comedy scripts which Moore was writing.

On one page was Moore's satire "Weekly Report to the Queen." It mentioned Eisenhower and golf. Was that code?

They found Moore's pilot wings. He had served in the RAF. Where was his plane, they demanded.

Repeatedly,
the couple begged to know what the questioning was all about. So
finally, the officers told them: They were suspected of being Russian
spies. A man from Rosarito had called the police and reported that a
submarine had surfaced offshore. A man and a woman had rowed to the
beach and climbed into the exact '41 Buick, with the exact license
plates, which they were driving.

Immediately, the couple connected the anonymous call to the men whose friendship they had spurned. They were very much relieved.

But
the police weren't. They refused to release the couple. And when Moore
suggested that Tijuana had "a bloody poor police department," they
found a nice cell for him, crowded with hypes going through withdrawal.

Tourists Are White Meat

By Sunday afternoon, Moore and his fiancee managed — on their own initiative — to get in touch with some Mexican immigration officers. They were "cleared" right away.

By this time, of course, they'd lost the $150 they entered jail with — $100 to an alleged attorney and $50 stolen from Miss Schelin's purse, which she was ordered to leave on the sergeant's desk when she was led out of the room for a few minutes.

But we've known all along that Tijuana police will steal tourists blind.

What's comforting to find out is that they'll do the same thing to suspected Russian spies.