Living a 'Nightmare'
Eric Volz survived to tell the tale of life in a Nicaraguan prison
By Carl Kozlowski 08/19/2010
Six years ago, Eric Volz was one of millions of American college graduates launching the career of his dreams. As a Latin American studies and political science major, he was doubly qualified for a special gig in Nicaragua: helping a friend launch a bilingual pop culture magazine called El Puente (The Bridge). So he heeded the call to travel to the Central American nation and have a go at publishing.
Things were great for awhile, including the fact that Eric quickly fell in love with a beautiful woman named Doris in his new home. But when the magazine’s growth necessitated a move to the capital city of Managua after a year, the couple broke up amicably and Eric assumed that Doris would be both a pleasant romantic memory and a long-term friend.
Little did he know that Doris would be brutally murdered six months later or that, despite the fact he lived in a different city and had barely seen her in half a year, he would be accused of her murder and thrown into a series of hellish prisons. Volz’s harrowing yet ultimately successful battle for survival and his exoneration and release have now formed the basis of his new memoir, “Gringo Nightmare: A Young American Framed for Murder in Nicaragua,” which he will discuss and sign Wednesday night at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.
Speaking by phone from Lake Tahoe, Volz was quick to explain that while his experiences can serve as a cautionary tale for American tourists and expatriates, his story was also atypical in many ways.
“I wasn't somebody enamored with Latin culture or who wanted to find paradise in Central America, and that’s a stereotype I had to rewrite for a lot of people,” says Volz. “The mainstream press portrayed me as a surfer dude, but that’s not who I am by any means. When I went to Nicaragua for the first time in 2000, I was a tourist, but I was learning about the people. I avoided tourist centers and went off the beaten path to authentic neighborhoods. I truly cared about the culture.”
Volz notes that he understands it is standard procedure to question ex-boyfriends in the murder of women, and he also notes that he stood out in people’s minds because the town where he and Doris had their affair only had 20,000 people and everyone seemed to notice him as an American expatriate. His American citizenship also provided a convenient boost to the cover-up orchestrated by police and government officials working under the anti-American regime of President Daniel Ortega, who in the 1980s led the Communist-tied Sandinistas in defeating the corrupt Samoza regime in that country’s revolution.
“We know now that because I was an American citizen who was successful, police knew the press would take that story and run with it and reporters would overlook shady procedures and anomalies yet to be answered,” explains Volz. “Police were knowingly covering for the person who did the crime.”
Volz believes that person was an American citizen of Nicaraguan ethnicity who grew up in Miami and came to Nicaragua to share in his family’s great wealth. The man has never been formally charged with the murder, despite the fact he had a strong motive and that numerous other clues point to him. Volz says that the man’s family is so powerfully connected that their son is “unarrestable.”
But after enduring numerous forms of physical and psychological human rights violations — including everything from sensory deprivation to unsanitary conditions, battling rats and tarantulas in his cell, and near-starvation — Volz is happy to be back home and able to look back on his ordeal from a distance.
“The only word I got close to describing it is the waiting room to Hell — that’s the chapter about my time in prison,” says Volz. “I saw murder, rape, people commit suicide and people die from simple medical neglect. Nobody cares about them or comes to visit them. I had nothing in common with any of these people. I knew that my family and friends would not stop fighting for me, and I’ve been reading that that peace of mind keeps hope alive. It was a tidal wave of effort, and once it reached the tipping point there was no going back.
Eric Volz discusses and signs “Gringo Nightmare” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromans.com.
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