Bio: Porfirio Rubirosa - the wild life of a Trujillo agent & Ferrari racer
Porfirio Rubirosa was born on January 22nd 1909 in San Francisco de Macoris, Dominican Republic. His father, Pedro, was a general in the local government-backed militia and advanced to become a diplomat; he was eventually made chief of the Dominican embassy in Paris during 1915.
In 1926, Porfirio Rubirosa left France. Now aged 17, he returned to the Dominican Republic where he studied law, played polo and enlisted in the military.
A coup in early 1930 saw military strongman, Rafael Trujillo, seize power in the country. His army deposed the United States-led occupation that had been installed in 1916 to counter the risk of the nation defaulting on its foreign debts.
Trujillo first met Rubirosa at a polo game in 1931. Rubirosa’s performance had impressed Trujillo and the two spoke at the country club afterwards. The next day, Rubirosa was made a lieutenant in Trujillo’s special Presidential Guard.
Soon afterwards, Rubirosa met Trujillo’s eldest daughter, Flor. Rubirosa and Flor married in December 1932.
Since Rafael Trujillo took power, his enemies had led a precarious existence. Although he rapidly industrialised the country, brutal oppression of political opposition was a key feature of his rule.
By the mid 1930s, influential exiles were beginning to publicise Trujillo’s corruption and human rights violations. Especially prominent were New York City-domiciled Angelo Morales and Sergio Bencosme, a pair of ex-Dominican ministers who were planning to return and run for president and vice-president respectively. They were backed by the wealthy du Pont family who had made substantial loans to the Dominican Republic that Trujillo had failed to repay.
Wielding his power behind puppet presidents, Trujillo ordered the assassination of Morales and Bencosme. On April 28th 1935, a gunman burst into the apartment they shared. Bencosme was fatally shot while Morales survived.
A New York City grand jury indicted Rubirosa’s cousin, Luis de la Fuente, for the murder. They heard that, in the build up to the murder, Rubirosa (armed with $7000 in cash) took his first visit to the USA to make the necessary arrangements.
Luis de la Fuente had flown back to the Dominican Republic immediately after the assassination and was promoted to a lieutenant in the army despite having no military experience. When the US authorities requested de la Fuente be produced for questioning, he mysteriously went missing.
In 1936, Rubirosa and Flor left the Dominican Republic.
Rubirosa took up a new position as head of the Berlin embassy. He then worked the same role in London during 1937 before moving on a few months later to Paris where he would subsequently spend most of his time.
Back in the Dominican Republic, 1937 saw Rafael Trujillo’s most infamous act - the Parsley massacre of 10,000 to 20,000 Haitians. To this day, the island of Hispaniola is split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Rafael Trujillo had a deep-seated racial hatred of his dark-skinned island neighbours and ordered the army to massacre all Haitians found in the Dominican Republic.
Although Rubirosa let his disgust at his father-in-laws actions be known, there was nothing he could do. Rubirosa began to spend more time in the clubs of Paris and, a year later, he and Flor divorced.
Without his wife’s largesse and unable to return home as Trujillo would have had him killed, Rubirosa began to sell Dominican visas to Jews who were trying to flee Nazi rule in Europe. Despite his hatred of Haitians, Trujillo had gained international attention throughout the 1930s for his open policy of allowing Jewish emigration from Europe. Rubirosa sold visas from $300 to $3000 depending on baggage.
In late 1938, an extraordinary chain of events turned Rubirosa’s fortunes around. He was approached by Manuel Fernandez Aldao, an exiled Spanish jeweller who lived in Paris after he had been forced to flee the Spanish Civil War. Hidden behind a false wall at his store in Madrid was a fortune in rare gems.
Aldao wanted Rubirosa to smuggle the gems out of Spain as his diplomatic status meant he could not be searched by customs.
Through Aldao, Rubirosa was then approached by a Polish man, Johnny Kohane, who also had $160,000 in cash and jewellery hidden in Madrid. However, Kohane insisted on travelling with Rubirosa who was happy to take the extra commission.
Kohane had false credentials made up as the Dominican embassy chauffeur and the two men went to Spain to recover several hundred thousands dollars worth of gems and cash.
Having circumvented the rebel areas, Rubirosa returned to Paris ten days later but there was no sign of Kohane. Rubirosa claimed they had been involved in an ambush and that Kohane had fled the scene. Kohane was never seen or heard from again.
Aldao got his gems, but the collection was incomplete and, without the inventory sheet Rubirosa had been told to recover, the Spaniard could not initially prove anything was missing.
Aldao did later recover an inventory from his assistant that proved the consignment was $180,000 light. The FBI were made aware of the Madrid saga. With his haul of jewels, cash and commission, Rubirosa made around $400,000.
By 1939, Rubirosa was suddenly back in favour with Trujillo as his wife and son, Ramfis, were relocating to Paris and Trujillo wanted Rubirosa to help get them settled. So glowing were his wife’s reports from Paris that Trujillo himself visited four months later. Impressed with his ex-son-in-laws set up, Trujillo made Rubirosa Commercial Attache to France.
On June 10th 1939, Germany and Italy invaded France and, four days later, Paris was taken.
Against the backdrop of war, Rubirosa met 23 year old Danielle Darrieux who was France’s highest paid movie star. They married in September 1942.
Rubirosa was supposed to relocate to Germany because of his and the Dominican Republic’s backing for the Allies but Darrieux continued to perform as an actress and a deal was struck that allowed Rubirosa to stay in France.
For this, Darrieux faced severe criticism from her compatriots and, when driving with Rubirosa in an open car in Paris, they were ambushed. While protecting his wife, Rubirosa was hit by three bullets near his kidneys. After the assassination attempt, they moved 30 miles west of Paris and lived on a farm for the rest of the war.
Following the cessation of hostilities, Trujillo had Rubirosa transferred to the Italian embassy in Rome.
The day after Darrieux arrived in Rome, she was interviewed by a journalist from Harper’s Bazaar who took an instant liking to Rubirosa. The journalist was Doris Duke, sole heir to the $100m American Tobacco fortune.
Duke reportedly paid Derrieux $1m to bow out of the marriage. Rubirosa and Derrieux divorced in May 1947 and Rubirosa married Duke in September. She bought him a stable of polo horses, a three-storey 17th century hotel in Paris and a converted B-25 bomber that he crashed within a year.
In 1948, Trujillo gave Rubirosa pick of any ambassadorship. He chose Argentina for the polo but soon returned to Paris. That summer, he was caught by Duke with his ex-wife and was promptly served with divorce papers.
The marriage was over by October 1948; Duke gave Rubirosa the Paris hotel and $25,000 per year until he re-married.
In 1950, while living a comfortable life chasing women, playing polo and doing little in the way of official work, Rubirosa had his first taste of competitive driving.
Wanting the best machinery available to an inexperienced privateer, he purchased a Ferrari 166 Mille Miglia (chassis 0050) and entered the little red Touring-bodied Spyder for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
The car appeared under a Luigi Chinetti entry and Rubirosa was co-driven by Pierre Leygonie.
Rubirosa and Leygonie were a fixture in the top ten until clutch problems forced their retirement in the sixth hour.
Although he didn’t race again until 1953, Rubirosa kept the Ferrari and frequently used it around Paris.
A disastrous attempt to recover sunken treasure from a Spanish galleon lying off the Dominican coast lost Rubirosa around $250,000 in early 1954. He had teamed up with maritime historian, Alexandre Korganoff, but after initial problems with a mutinous crew, the ship was heavily damaged in a storm.
While it limped back to port, another ferocious storm battered and sunk the vessel.
Rubirosa was left to pick up the tab.
Three years after he had purchased his Ferrari 166 Mille Miglia, Rubirosa upgraded to the latest version ahead of a planned outing at the Reims 12 Hour race in July 1953. He traded his old car back to Ferrari in exchange for a 1953-specification 166 Mille Miglia with white and blue Spyder bodywork by Vignale.
The trade took place in May 1953 and Rubirosa had Ferrari number the new car 0050 to avoid purchase tax. This was of course the same number as his original red example; the new car’s real identity was chassis 0328.
Once again co-driven by Pierre Leygonie, the Reims outing ended with an early retirement and Rubirosa sold the car back to Ferrari a couple of months later.
Having famously pursued actress Zsa Zsa Gabor during 1953, that summer, Rubirosa met Barbara Hutton at a polo game in Deauville. Hutton was the sole heiress to the Woolworth fortune and, like Doris Duke, was worth an estimated $100m.
Hutton and Rubirosa married in December 1953. The bride wore black and carried a scotch-and-soda down the aisle.
Rubirosa was Hutton’s fifth husband but, given her increasingly eccentric behaviour and highly medicated state, the marriage lasted only 53 days. Hutton gifted Rubirosa the biggest privately-owned coffee plantation in the Dominican Republic, $2.5m in cash and another luxuriously equipped B-25 to replace the one Doris Duke bought for him.
Once the divorce was settled, Rubirosa returned to Europe to win back Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Three weeks after his divorce from Hutton, Rubirosa was at Sebring for the 12 Hour race where he had negotiated to drive one of the works Lancia D24s (0001). This would have been a considerable step up from the two-litre Ferraris he had driven before but a steady pace and high attrition rate saw Rubirosa and co-driver, Gino Valenzano, take second overall behind the winning 1.5-litre OSCA of Stirling Moss and Bill Lloyd.
Rubirosa then bought a Le Mans drive in a similarly powerful Luigi Chinetti-entered Ferrari 375 Mille Miglia (0380). The car was owned and co-driven by Count Innocente Baggio but on only the fifth lap, Baggio planted the Ferrari into the Tertre Rouge sandbank and, despite his best efforts, was unable to dig it out.
Having taken Gabor to the race, Rubirosa never got his chance to drive.
Soon after Le Mans, Rubirosa took delivery of one of the first Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwings (chassis 4500087). The silver Mercedes was a regular sight in Paris; Rubirosa and Gabor were frequently photographed together in it.
Rubirosa’s third Ferrari racing car arrived a few weeks later. It was a 500 Mondial with Spyder bodywork by Pinin Farina (0438). Rubirosa had the dark blue car sent out to Los Angeles where, encouraged by Gabor, he took acting lessons ahead of a planned career change.
During September 1954, Rubirosa ran the little blue Ferrari in a race at Santa Barbara (finishing eighth) but almost immediately afterwards he sold the car to John von Neumann who ran Ferrari Representatives of California.
Rubirosa may have sold chassis 0438 as he had another 500 Mondial with the latest Scaglietti bodywork on order (chassis 0464). With this new red Spyder, he contested the end-of-season Carrera Panamericana co-driven by Ernie McAfee. Rubirosa and McAfee retired on the first of eight stages having gone over the allotted time limit.
When chassis 0464 was wheeled out for its next outing, it had been repainted with black flanks and a red centre. The full-width windshield had been switched for a conventional single aeroscreen. In this configuration, it was entered for the Sebring 12 Hours in March 1955 where Rubirosa was co-driven by Cal Niday and James Fargarson.
Rubirosa crashed out on the 14th lap. He didn’t race the car again and soon sold it to Jim Pauley.
Rubirosa acquired his third 500 Mondial in November 1955 - another Scaglietti-bodied Spyder (chassis 0556). Originally owned by Francois Picard and painted blue, it had been sold back to the factory and appeared as a Scuderia Ferrari entry for the 1955 Venezuelan GP where Rubirosa was a spectator. He concluded a deal to buy it after the race and lodged an entry for the end-of-season Bahamas Speed Week.
Rubirosa placed 25th overall and won class E in the Governor’s Trophy on December 9th. This was followed by twelfth overall and second in the under two-litre class in the Ferrari race held on the 10th. Rubirosa then had to fly back to Miami for a polo match so entrusted Ed Lunken to drive in the Nassau Trophy on December 11th. Lunken placed 15th overall and won class E.
After re-painting 0556 his preferred dark shade of blue, Rubirosa entered the 500 Mondial for his third consecutive appearance at the Sebring 12 Hours. He was co-driven by Jim Pauley who had purchased Rubirosa’s first 500 Mondial (the PF-bodied Spyder) twelve months earlier. Together they ran the distance to claim tenth place overall and win the two-litre class.
However, within two months the car had been sold to Charles Hassan as things were heating up in the USA and questions were being asked about ulterior motives for Rubirosa being in the country.
On the night of March 12th, Jesus Galindez, an outspoken critic of the Trujillo regime, had disappeared near a subway station at the intersection of 116th St. and Broadway in Manhattan.
Galindez was a Basque nationalist who had fought for the Republican side in the Spanish civil war. In 1939, he had fled to the Dominican Republic where he took work as lecturer and representative of the Basque Government.
Having started to investigate the Trujillo regime, Galindez was again forced to flee and this time headed to New York City in 1946. He became involved in a number of influential political groups and worked as international law professor at Columbia University where his doctoral thesis was about Trujillo’s rule.
Allegedly also an informant for FBI, Galindez had nearly finished writing a critical volume about Trujillo and made it known he feared agents of the Dominican Republic may kill him.
Assumed kidnapped and murdered by Trujillo’s operatives, police initially thought Galindez’s body had been dumped at sea as two Dominican ships were in New York that night and one left port only to return five hours later. The ship theory was soon discovered to be a hoax as explosive testimony revealed that Galindez’ body was actually flown out of the country by an American pilot.
Rubirosa went back to Paris and spent the summer staying with 17 year old actress, Odile Rodin, on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. They returned to Paris after the summer and married in October. Rodin was Rubirosa’s fifth and final wife.
However, the political fall out from the Galindez affair was about to blow up and Rubirosa was needed back home.
Perhaps as cover to legitimise his movements, Rubirosa purchased an ex-works Ferrari 625 LM direct from the factory (chassis 0644) and had it flown out for the Venezuelan GP on November 4th. The car was painted a familiar shade of dark blue and Rubirosa finished the race in twelfth position. He used 0644 only once before it was sold to David Cunningham.
At the same time as the Venezuelan GP, one John J. Frank went on trial in the US accused of being an unregistered agent for the Dominican government. Frank testified that Jesus Galindez had been under Dominican surveillance for some time and was offered $25,000 for his unpublished manuscript. When Galindez refused, Trujillo ordered his assassination.
Frank revealed Galindez’s body was flown out of the country by an American pilot named Gerald Murphy who worked for the national airline, Compania Dominicana de Aviacion (CDA). Murphy was told he would be flying a special patient back to the Dominican Republic.
Murphy rented a small plane equipped for long distance flight, arrived at the airport on the night of Galindez’s assassination and collected the patient. From here, he flew back to West Palm Beach and on to the Dominican Republic where the body disappeared.
On December 4th 1956, Gerald Murphy’s car was found abandoned near Santo Domingo. There was no trace as to his whereabouts and, after pressure was applied by the US State Department and Congress, the Dominican government were forced to look into it.
They charged fellow CDA employee Octavio de la Maza with Murphy’s murder alleging the two men had a brawl and that Maza disposed of Murphy’s body at sea.
However, Maza always denied any involvement.
On January 7th 1957, Maza found hanging in his prison cell with a suicide note admitting involvement. The note was later declared a forgery by the FBI.
When he was back in Europe, Rubirosa took delivery of a new car to replace his Gullwing Mercedes. It was a red Series I Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet, perhaps the most beautiful road car available at the time. He did not have long to enjoy it though as, a few months later, Trujillo moved him to the role of ambassador to Cuba.
Rubirosa was in Cuba for the last months of the Batista regime and the first months of Castro’s communist government. Castro was fascinated by Trujillo’s longevity and questioned Rubirosa for hours about how he had stayed in power for so long.
Whilst in Havana, Rubirosa also found time for a little motor racing. He leased drives in William Hellburn’s Ferrari 500 TRC for the 1958 Cuban GP (23rd overall) and Sebring 12 Hours (eleventh overall). At Sebring, Rubirosa co-drove with Jean-Francois Malle and William Hellburn. The trio finished second in class. For both these events, Rubirosa had paid for the Ferrari to be repainted dark blue with a white stripe.
Sebring would be Rubirosa’s last competitive drive. Later in 1958, he was transferred back to Europe where he become the Dominican ambassador to Belgium.
During 1959, Trujillo’s government was in financial trouble and he began to seize private assets including the coffee plantation given to Rubirosa by Barbara Hutton.
While stationed in Belgium, Rubirosa purchased his second Ferrari 250 GT Cabriolet (a brand new silver Series 2) and took delivery in January 1960.
Within 18 months, the Trujillo regime had fallen.
Having ordered a failed car bomb assassination of Venezuelan president, Romulo Betancourt, in June 1960, Trujillo’s few international allies turned against him.
The clamour for democracy at home was building and reached fever pitch after the assassination of the politically active Mirabel sisters (Patricia, Maria and Antonia) who were murdered by Trujillo’s secret police on November 25th 1960.
On May 30th 1961, Rafael Trujillo was himself assassinated when his car was ambushed on a road outside Santo Domingo. One of the assassins was Antonio de la Maza the brother of Octavio de la Maza who had been murdered in his jail cell in 1957.
Maza left the .45 pistol he had used in the attack at the scene. It was quickly traced to co-conspirator, Juan Tomas Diaz who, along with Antonio de la Maza, was killed when coming out of hiding five days later.
Rubirosa initially supported Trujillo’s son, Ramfis, until Trujillo Jr. fled the country in early 1962 leaving the treasury $200m light.
With a new Dominican government installed, Rubirosa was removed from his ambassadorial role and stripped of his diplomatic immunity.
The New York district attorney questioned Rubirosa over the disappearances of Sergio Bencosme (1935) and Jesus Galindez (1956) but he was never charged.
Rubirosa spent the next couple of years partying and playing polo in Paris.
He died early on the morning of July 5th 1965 aged 56. After a night out celebrating his team’s victory in the Coupe de France, Rubirosa was attempting to avoid another car when he crashed his silver Ferrari into a tree along the Bois de Boulogne.
Text copyright: Supercar Nostalgia
Photo copyright: unattributed
