The Milwaukee Ex-Con Who Became "The Butcher" for Fidel Castro
The Milwaukee Ex-Con Who Became "The Butcher" for Fidel Castro
When Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries overthrew the corrupt Cuban military dictator Fulgencio Batista on New Year's Day, 1959, a 37-year-old American mercenary born and raised in Milwaukee would soon become known as “The Butcher.”
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Herman Marks, "The Butcher," Associated Press, The Milwaukee Journal, June 2nd, 1960 |
Herman Marks was an unlikely person to be caught up in a revolution. He was born on August 1st, 1921 in Milwaukee. His long rap sheet started when he was 16 years old in 1937. For the next 15 years, he was arrested 32 times from Maine to Hawaii for disorderly conduct, vagrancy, drunkenness, drunk driving, stealing cars, burglary, robbery, assault and what was then referred to as carnal knowledge (rape of a minor), which chucked him into Waupun for three-and-a-half years. Warden John C. Burke described him as a "real stinker."
After being released in 1956, Marks drifted away to Cuba and joined Castro's rebels in December 1957, claiming he served many years in the U.S. Merchant Marine. He never served in World War II and was arrested for draft dodging, but the charge was dropped when he proved he could not report to the draft board due to his extensive criminal record.
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Herman Marks, stateless American, Associated Press, The Milwaukee Journal, January 31st, 1961 |
He was improbably promoted to Captain in Castro's guerrilla army. During the Cold War, Congress passed a law to strip citizenship from Americans who served as officers in the militaries of other countries. The State Department warned him and William Morgan to renounce their American citizenship. Marks hoped to avoid that by acting as a civilian adviser to the Cuban army.
Instead, Castro's top lieutenant, Che Guevara put him in charge of the La Cabaña fortress to execute members of the overthrown corrupt Batista dictatorship. Marks ordered the firing squads, "Atenciõn, Preparen, Aputen, Fuego!" ("Attention, Ready, Aim, Fire!") for more than 200 needless executions. Then he made sure the victims were dead by shooting them in the head, which he relished.
His left arm had a “Love, Nellie” tattoo and a snake coiled around a dagger plunging into a skull with “Death Before Dishonor” tattooed on his right arm. His growing reputation as "The Butcher" and news about his lengthy American rap sheet led Castro and his Communist revolutionaries to become wary of the Yanqui (Yankee) in their ranks.
They soon transferred El Capitan Herman to become security director of Principe prison. On February 17th, 1960, the State Department revoked Marks’ American citizenship. He vowed to contest the loss of citizenship. Sensing that his days in an increasingly communist Cuba might be numbered, he and American freelance reporter Jean Secon fled on a fishing boat in May 1960. When it ran out of fuel in the Gulf of Mexico, they jumped ship onto the St. George, an American shrimp boat that took them to Tampa, Florida.
Stateless, Marks went to Mexico, intending to seek asylum, but slipped back into the States to visit his mother, Martha Yelich, in November 1960. She told him to shave. Off came the revolutionary beard. She said her wayward Herman “would give you the shirt off his back,” drink and fight, and his “hobby was spending money on girls.” Briefly working as an orderly at the now-razed Deaconess Hospital at 1821 W. Wisconsin Ave. after World War II was the only job she knew he ever had.
He was arrested in New York on January 24th, 1961 for illegally entering his homeland. The February 6th, 1961 Newsweek described him looking like a “henpecked shoe clerk.” In a November 12th, 1962 brief asking the federal Court of Appeals to restore Marks citizenship, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that since he neither renounced his citizenship nor received Cuban citizenship, “the unqualified right to American citizenship of the native born is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”
However that argument fell on deaf ears during the height of the Cold War with the failed 1961 CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The federal court system upheld stripping citizenship from Marks and rejected his appeals, but Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department could not deport him because they could not find a country that would accept him. Not even Cuba, which presumably had an interest in executing him for desertion, would take him to a firing squad.
Marks, in a stateless limbo, temporarily faded from the headlines, but his proclivities got him into trouble again. In May 1964, he was arrested in New York for making threatening telephone calls to Secon. On Friday the 13th, August 1965, he fell from a tree and broke his right leg after using binoculars to peep into a neighbor’s window.
Even returning to Milwaukee did not keep Marks out of trouble. An arrest warrant for indecent behavior with a 6 year old girl was issued on August 18th, 1966. The Milwaukee Journal reported on September 2nd, 1966 that he was spotted driving during the previous week. He has never been seen again. Four years later, Yelich pleaded for him to come home. She died a year later in 1971. Some have speculated that he might have limped away to Mexico. It is unlikely that he is alive at 95 to see his old boss Castro die.
To research the clippings file on Marks, call the Frank Zeidler Humanities Room at (414) 286-3061 before visiting.
Dan, Local History Librarian