An Open Letter To Eric Volz

On The Eve Of Nine Months Within A Nicaraguan Penitentiary
by David Cook
posted July 20, 2007

Eric,

I teach American history, which often tells the story of justice and injustice, of oppression and freedom, of suffering and redemption. You, my friend, are living this story inside the walls of La Modelo, a maximum security penitentiary miles outside of Managua, Nicaragua.

Eight months ago you were handcuffed into La Modelo. The sensational newspapers in Nicaragua were calling for your head, and a lynch mob was on your tail. Your ex-girlfriend had been found hogtied, raped and murdered, and you, as a white "gringo'', became a popular criminal. Popular, yet unbelievably innocent.

Tomorrow you will sit on the doorstep of your ninth month inside La Modelo. Before you, 29 years of prison time await, for the judge sentenced you to 30 years for the murder of your ex-girlfriend. Your family lives in Nashville, you went to school in California, you worked and flourished as a businessman and journalist in Nicaragua before the sky toppled down on you last fall. I imagine your life to be one of incredible loneliness, and to this impossible loneliness that must encircle you within La Modelo, I write a letter of hope.

Eric, you are not alone. Truth, the greatest power among the living and the dead, sits with you. Truth has been inside the prison walls before, and makes Her way gracefully and quietly among people like you who are suffering unjustly. Truth befriends such people, and vows never to leave. Never to be extinguished. Never to lie down and die.

On the night of the murder of Doris Jimenez, 10 witnesses placed you in another town entirely, two hours away.

None of the blood, fluid, hair or other physical proof collected from the scene matches your own.

During the approximate time of Ms. Jimenez's death, your whereabouts are proven through cell phone records (which prove the location of the user), rental car receipts, instant messages and eyewitnesses that testify with minute and great detail the impossibility that you were involved in the murder.

A man named Nelson Lopez-Danglas was initially arrested for the murder. Lopez-Danglas later testified he saw you near the murder site. In return for such a testimony, Lopez-Danglas, who at the time of his arrest was a petty criminal and drug user, and also had injuries to his penis and scratches on his neck, arms and hands, was set free and all charges against him dropped.
During your trial, the Court refused entrance to US Embassy personnel, rejected the testimony of all the witnesses giving you an alibi, ignored the medical examiners' evidence barring any physical connection between you and the crime scene, discredited the cell phone records and then sentenced you to 30 years inside La Modelo.