Ex-Union Chief Guilty in Murder : Crime: A prominent Filipino-American is convicted of arranging the death of a Seattle labor reformer who opposed Ferdinand Marcos.

In a murder case spiked with union corruption, political conspiracy and Chinatown gangs, a King County Superior Court jury on Friday found a Tacoma man guilty of arranging the slaying of a union reformer who opposed former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Constantine (Tony) Baruso, 63, once president of the Cannery Workers’ Union Local 37, was accused of paying for and providing the gun used to kill fellow union officials Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes nearly a decade ago, authorities said.

But the jury convicted the prominent Filipino-American community leader of masterminding the killing only of Viernes, who was gunned down by three Seattle Chinatown gang members.

“It was his gun used in the killing” of both men, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Roe said. “I’m sure that was the leading factor for the jury.” It was not immediately clear why the jury did not convict him in connection with Domingo’s death.

Roe said she intends to seek a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for Baruso, who headed Local 37 for six years.

In closing arguments heard Monday, Roe said Baruso wanted the men dead because of their efforts to reform the union, and because of their opposition to Marcos, who died in exile in September, 1989.

“The person who stood to gain the most from their deaths was Tony Baruso,” Roe told the jury. “They were undermining his authority and encroaching on this man’s power and territory.”

“I feel gratified and numbed,” said Nemesio Domingo Jr., 42, older brother of the slain union worker who had been very close to Viernes. “We’ve waited 10 years for this.”

Roe’s case hinged on the activities of a wealthy San Francisco physician and longtime Marcos supporter, Dr. Leonilo Malabed, who was one of the last witnesses in the monthlong trial. Malabed was not charged in the case.

Roe said Malabed, who acknowledged heading a dummy corporation that handled money in the late 1970s and early 1980s for pro-Marcos propaganda and “special security projects in this country,” funneled $15,000 to Baruso to pay for the killings.

“We believe the murders here were one of those special security projects,” said Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kathy Goater.

Although Malabed denied in court ever meeting or talking with Baruso, a witness testified that he had seen the men together on three occasions.

In an interview, defense attorney Anthony Savage dismissed Roe’s suggestion of a Marcos connection. “That Marcos theory is the most bizarre notion to come down since the last time I read a Robert Ludlum novel,” Savage said.

“Baruso did meet Marcos once in the late 1970s . . . and had his picture taken shaking hands with him,” Savage said. “But this was . . . when nobody knew about Imelda and her shoes or that Marcos was looting his country right and left.”

Savage also said that Baruso’s .45-caliber MAC 10 semiautomatic pistol was stolen before the killings and that his client had nothing to do with the killings of the men he acknowledged were “young, up-and-coming powers in the union.”

“What kind of a nut is going to lend his gun to an assassination team?” Savage asked rhetorically, “particularly when the assassination is done by a group of thugs with more guns than the 5th Infantry.”

The case has been a cause celebre among the 25,000 Filipino-Americans in Seattle, who remain deeply divided over the legacy of the once powerful labor leader.

“Mr. Baruso was respected in the community and was a good union president,” said Emiliano Francisco, editor of the 40-year-old Filipino-American Herald, a monthly newspaper with a circulation of 7,000. “Now, some people feel very sorry for him. They don’t understand these charges.”

But some younger members of the Filipino-American community here do not share Francisco’s sense of loyalty to what has been labeled the “old guard.”

“I can respect what people think Baruso has done for the community,” said Rich Gurtiza, 34, a business agent for the union. “But the things I know he did in the union while he was president were not positive.”

Domingo and Viernes, both 29, were shot to death in a union hall near the Puget Sound docks on June 1, 1981. Viernes, a dispatcher for the union, died immediately. But Secretary-Treasurer Domingo lived long enough to whisper the killers’ names to an ambulance attendant.

Three members of a Seattle Chinatown street gang called Tulisan were convicted of the murders, which were blamed at the time on fighting over control of the union and gambling in the canneries. Pompeyo Benito Guloy Jr., Jimmy Bulosan Ramil and Fortunado Tony Dictado were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Baruso had been arrested a month after the shooting but was freed after prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge him. In court, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self incrimination 140 times.

Baruso became a key figure in the case again in 1989 during a civil case brought against the Philippine government in federal court here by families of the slain union men.

In that trial, which centered on allegations that the men were shot as part of a conspiracy to “surveil, harass and intimidate” Marcos opponents in this country, the families won judgments totaling $15 million from the late President Marcos and his estate.

In a deposition related to the civil case, Baruso provided “inconsistent and conflicting explanations surrounding the murders,” said Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County prosecuting attorney’s office.

In addition, attorneys for the families of Domingo and Viernes charged that alleged disbursements of Philippine government money by Malabed’s Mabuhay Corp. coincided with Baruso’s 1981 visits to San Francisco. The disbursements were disclosed in documents Marcos took with him to Hawaii when he fled Manila on Feb. 25, 1986.

The disbursements, along with additional evidence obtained after “poring over hundreds of pages in the civil suit,” moved prosecutors to charge Baruso with two counts of premeditated murder in 1990 for allegedly masterminding the slayings, Donohoe said.