Witness in Nicaragua Arms Trafficking Dies

A self-described soldier of fortune who was cooperating in a federal investigation of gunrunning by Nicaraguan rebels died from an apparent overdose of drugs and alcohol early Saturday in Panorama City, police said Sunday.

Steven Paul Carr, 27, died at about 3 a.m. in the driveway outside a town house where he was staying. There was no evidence of foul play, police said.

Carr had gained notoriety by providing information to investigators who have been looking into allegations of wrongdoing by the contras and some of their American backers.

Carr had told the FBI that he helped deliver weapons, earmarked for the contras, from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to El Salvador’s Ilopango military airport in March, 1985. He said the arms were shipped two weeks later to a rebel base camp in northern Costa Rica.

“Carr was the only guy who came forward and said he was on the plane in the March, 1985, shipment,” a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday. “There were other people who said they knew about it, but Carr was the best first-hand witness. We have tapes of what he said, and we have notes of what he said. But we don’t have him to testify in court.”

According to reports published by the New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters, Carr also said he participated in a foray into Nicaragua from the camp, but was captured by Costa Rican authorities.

Carr was arrested and incarcerated in a Costa Rica prison last year on charges of violating that country’s neutrality. After being released on bail last summer, he fled to the United States.

Carr moved to Panorama City in mid-November and rented a room in a town house, according to Jackie Scott, his landlord and friend.

Scott said Carr, who was worried about his safety, had told her that he received death threats in connection with the contra investigation before he arrived in the San Fernando Valley. Scott said Carr constantly checked to make sure the doors were locked, kept the lights on and rarely ventured outside.

Scott said she first knew something was wrong at 2:30 a.m. Saturday when her daughter Jakki woke her up after hearing a commotion. She found Carr lying in the driveway.

Before he died after convulsing on the driveway, Scott said, Carr told her, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I paranoided out--I ate it all.”

Scott said she did not know what Carr meant by that statement. She said she had not seen Carr drinking or ingesting drugs that night.

An autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office did not reveal the cause of death, said Dean Gilmour, a coroner’s spokesman. Toxicology tests will be conducted, he said.

Carr also was scheduled to be a witness in a $23.8-million lawsuit filed this spring in Miami on behalf of two American reporters who were at a press conference where a bomb exploded. The free-lance journalists allege that contra leader Adolfo Calero, along with several Americans with ties to the CIA and the White House, were involved in planning the bombing of the 1984 press conference held by a rival guerrilla leader. The plot, the reporters allege in the suit, was financed by cocaine-smuggling money.