In 1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas and was planning to go public with his personal knowledge of HHMI [Howard Hughes Medical Institute] “front door” grants being diverted to “back door” black ops bioresearch. The next day, Trias and his wife were found dead in their Chevy Chase, Md. home. Chevy Chase is where HHMI is headquartered. Police described the killings as a Professional hit.
1) Trias and his wife were not scientists
The article was about the supposed rash of deaths of microbiologists thus one would presume Trias was one or at least a bioscientist / doctor, but he and his wife were both lawyers. Trias and his wife seem to be the only non-biologists amongst the “victims”. I doubt Ruppert simply forgot to tell his readers what Trias’ profession was.
2) “The next day, Trias and his wife were found dead”
Trias and Julie Gilbert, his wife, were found on Monday, May 16, 1994, they were last seen alive the afternoon of Saturday the 14th “Police estimate that they died between 9 p.m. May 14 and 9 a.m. Sunday”
3), 4)“…dead in their Chevy Chase, Md. home”
They lived in Bethesda but were found dead in their weekend home near Annapolis.
5) “Police described the killings as a Professional hit.”
This is the most significant error and the one most indicative of an attempt to mislead. The earliest newspaper articles and all subsequent ones indicated robbery was the suspected motive. Most also mentioned that one of the couples Acura Legends was missing. Police quickly identified and arrested the culprit, Scotland Eugene Williams, a cat burglar/petty thief who was photographed by security cameras using Gilbert’s bank card and in one driving her car, when he was arrested he had her watch and a two pairs of handcuffs in his possession. Despite the papers saying the Trias’ were not bound both were handcuffed. He admitted to having robbed them and forced them to give him the PIN numbers of the bank cards. He denied entering the house but was placed there by DNA and a shoe print. Additionally he had plead guilty to a previous break-in and was a suspect in various others but no cases of robbing people or stealing cars from public place were mentioned in media reports
The closest any newspapers came to saying the police thought it was “a Professional hit” were two articles which said the police considered the possibility but concluded the motive was burglary or thought the latter more likely. A May 18 article in The Capital, an Annapolis newspaper entitled “Mystery surrounds lawyers' murders” reported the following:
Although police still consider robbery the motive in the slayings of wealthy attorneys Jose Enrique Trias, 49, and Julie Noel Gilbert, 48, the circumstances of the crime raise many questions.
The killer or killers didn’t break into the home at 1624 Winchester Road, police said. Neither victim was bound, and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.
And unlike most burglaries or robberies, the house was not ransacked.
And detectives have been unable to determine what, if anything, is missing from the house near Winchester on the Severn, said Officer Randy Bell, a county police spokesman. As a result, police are wondering if Mr. Trias and Ms, Gilbert were victims of an execution-style killing.
“I’m sure that’s one of the many, many options that has run through (detectives’) heads,” Officer Bell said.
From THE YEAR IN CRIME; Few Big Cases End in Clean Getaways, a December 29 review of notable crimes in 1994 in the Washington Post:
A pair of influential Washington tax lawyers were found shot to death execution-style in May at their $725,000 weekend retreat in Anne Arundel County.
Although the slayings of Jose Trias, 49, and his wife, Julie Gilbert, 48, seemed like a professional hit, police said they were prompted by a simple burglary. When investigators released pictures of a man who used Trias's bank card at an automated teller machine, an Anne Arundel detective recognized him as Scotland E. Williams, 31, a suspect in a string of cat burglaries the previous fall.
So an honest accounting of what happened would have indicated that though the police said the murders bore traces of a professional hit they quickly concluded they were the result of a simple burglary and quickly identified arrested a suspect who is currently serving life with out parole for killing the couple.
6)? “In 1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas …”
None of the news articles about the murder mention him having been to Houston or even having left town. It is unlikely he would have travelled during the work week if he did not want to attract attention at the HHMI. Since “neighbors said Mr. Trias arrived at the home about 3 p.m. May 14” he would hardly have been time for a trip on the Saturday. In theory he could have flown out on the Friday after work and returned the next day but that begs the question if he and his wife were killed to shut him up why didn’t they kill the friend in Houston as well? If the friend were killed why isn’t he (or she) cited?
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