Did Colombian Leader Have `Blondie' Killed? -- Millionaire Was Link To Shady Money

BOGOTA, Colombia - Elizabeth Montoya de Sarria, the suspected drug-money fund-raiser for President Ernesto Samper, owned 300 thoroughbred horses worth millions - and "died like a rat," her former associates say.

Someone murdered Montoya on Feb. 1, leaving her body in a shabby apartment in a poor neighborhood, shot 12 times. Since then, at least three key witnesses have come forward to say she played a much bigger role in Samper's 1994 campaign than originally suspected, and at least one asserts she was about to testify against the president.

Now, as this nation is torn by one of its worst political crises, homicide investigators pursue motives. Was her slaying:

-- A deliberate hit to silence her before she spoke to government prosecutors about money raised from drug traffickers for the Samper campaign?

-- A vendetta from rival drug traffickers because of business debts?

-- A crime of passion - sparked by a new relationship after her husband went to prison?

Or could it be a combination of scenarios - someone in government, taking advantage of her troubles with the underworld, encouraging drug-cartel gunmen to kill her?

Some anti-Samper politicians, among them Sen. Enrique Gomez Hurtado, have openly accused the government of being behind the murder. Samper angrily described such allegations as preposterous.

Animal sacrifices

Death came to "La Monita" - Blondie, as everyone called Montoya - on Feb. 1. She and Humberto Vargas, a meat salesman, had gone to see two Cuban Santeria priests at their apartment in a working-class suburb of Bogota.

The gunmen killed Vargas, too. Some friends say he was the man who got animals for her Santeria sacrifices. Others say he was her new lover.

According to some of Montoya's former associates, she had gone to the priests that day to consult with them about an important decision - whether to cooperate with Colombia's attorney general.

Montoya, a 46-year-old millionaire thoroughbred horse breeder and diamond collector, had raised about $2 million for Samper's campaign - much of it from drug connections, according to testimony from Samper's former campaign treasurer.

Montoya's murder occurred during a national outcry over Samper's reported acceptance of $6 million in drug cartel funds during his campaign and after two of his top former aides - campaign treasurer Santiago Medina and Defense Minister Fernando Botero - testified that the president knew of the drug-tainted donations.

When Medina first testified in mid-1995, he said Montoya had channeled $150,000 from "some very well-known people, who are very much wanted" by law-enforcement agencies.

Montoya had married Jesus "Chucho" Sarria, a retired police sergeant, in the mid-1980s.

By the early '90s, the couple owned the $37 million Marazul Hotel on the resort island of San Andres and one of Colombia's biggest horse-breeding ranches, the Lady Di, near Bogota.

She lived in Miami until the late 1980s and at one time owned a jewelry store and two bayfront apartments. She commuted to Bogota in one of several private Learjets.

She had a $1 million bulletproof mansion in Bogota, drove a gold, bulletproof BMW 735 and was known to have one of Colombia's most expensive collections of diamond jewelry.

Sarria, her husband, was jailed in September on charges of illicit enrichment. A Santeria priest ordained in Miami in 1981, he had long been suspected of drug trafficking by U.S. authorities.

Montoya had had her own brushes with the law, several years before she became a fund-raiser for the Samper campaign. She was arrested in Los Angeles in 1986 for possession, transportation and sale of cocaine, but the charges were later dropped.

Asked about the origin of the couple's wealth, Sarria told Colombian prosecutors he had amassed $5 million from an emerald mine he discovered while he was warden of the La Gorgona island prison on Colombia's Pacific coast.

According to one source, Montoya had become increasingly worried over the past year, especially since her husband's jailing.

"Elizabeth became paranoid," one of Montoya's former associates said. "She began to tell people that unless Samper freed her husband, she would begin to talk to prosecutors about the campaign contributions."

Attorney General Alfonso Valdivieso said she had contacted his office through a third party.

Samper and Monita

Elizabeth Montoya's name burst into the limelight last summer, when Medina, Samper's campaign treasurer, first denounced the drug-tainted campaign contributions and identified Montoya.

According to Medina's testimony, much of the money was given by Montoya to police Maj. German Osorio, chief of Samper's bodyguards. Osorio left Colombia this month to take a diplomatic job as military attache at the Colombian Embassy in Rome, according to Colombian news reports.

Montoya's name made headlines again Aug. 8, 1995, when the weekly magazine Semana published a tape of a conversation she had with Samper in February 1994, four months before the election.

In the tape, Samper called her "Monita" and asked her affectionately whether she didn't miss him. She, in turn, asked Samper not to buy anything for his wife's birthday - saying she would give her a diamond ring.

In the same taped conversation, Montoya told Samper she had arranged for a meeting between him and a group of bankers who had just arrived from Brazil. She identified them as "the people . . . from Philip Morris" - a code word for what Colombian officials believe is a well-known Colombian tobacco smuggler.

According to a second tape, which includes the voices of Montoya and campaign treasurer Medina, Samper and the bankers agreed at the meeting that a campaign contribution would be made after March 13. Medina would later say the donation was $500,000.

Contrary to Samper's assertions that he never got money from Montoya or her husband, sources close to the prosecution say they have traced at least three checks from the couple - totaling $92,000 - to the Samper campaign.

Alleged bag man slain, too

Montoya's was the second mysterious death surrounding the drug cartel campaign contributions.

Last August, Interior Ministry driver Dario Reyes was killed in his car by two men on a motorcycle, in what a police report at the time ruled a traffic brawl.

Sources close to the case say Reyes was one of the Samper campaign aides who used to pick up bags full of cash from the drug lords.