THE JIG-SAW MAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505290019-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 37
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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r/o,~ ? X X U / /! il/o, ~1
B}~ Stephen Foehr
The Jig-Saw Man
On A/nrch l6, 1969, Thomas Andre Karl Riha,
professor of Russian histor}? at the Universit~? of
Colorado, m}?steriously disappeared. He eras never
been found. The case has been a cause celebre
touching off a major rift between the C/A and the
FB/, causing speculation oJskullduggerl? benreen
the intelligence and the academic communities,
and the commitment of Gloria Tannenhaum, the
enigmatic roman in his life, to a state mental
hospital x?here she committed suicide. There are
several theories on what happened to Riha: he x?as
a C/A agent, a double agent who defected to
Czechoslovakia, aman on the run from his wife, a
murder victim. '
A light snow was falling Saturday evening, March
8, 1969 as Hana Hursokva Riha approached her
darkened Boulder, Colorado, house with appre-
hension. She hoped her estranged husband and
that other woman had left. It was because of the
other woman, who called herself a colonel in the
U.S. Army Intelligence, that Hana had checked
into the Boulderado Hotel for the day. The
colonel, Gloria 'Gayla' Tannenbaum, had been
badgering her about her immigration status. Hana
was afraid of the woman and felt bitter toward her
husband.
Two nights before, Tannenbaum had come to
the house and insisted that Hana sign some papers.
She had been very aggressive, and as Hana
recalled, had threatened,-"If you refuse, I'll deport
you." Hana knew she could not be sent back to her
native Czechoslovakia and refused. Tannenbaum
angrily replied, "I'll not take no for an answer,"
and said she would return later for Hana to sign the
papers. "If you refuse, I'll go to the Pentagon on
Monday and have you deported," Tannenbaum
warned. She continued to harass Hana to turn over
her driver's license, bank account, and a
photograph. Hana again refused. "!'m your
sponsor," Tannenbaum screamed, "I've taken care
of your case, and I'm not going to let you or anyone
else kick me in the ass."
When Tannenbaum left, Hana called her friend
and attorney, David Regosin, in New York to ask
for advice. Regosin told her to sign nothing. The
next night, Regosin was awakened at 1:45 a. m. by
another call from Hana. She sounded terribly
shaken. Hana started to say something where
Tannenbaum grabbed the phone and started a
vitriolic tirade, stumbling so over her words that
Regosin had difficulty understanding her. "I'll
have her deported," Tannenbaum shouted. She
added angrily that she knew more about
immigration law than all the lawyers put together.
When Regosin tried to calm her, "Tannenbaum
slammed down the receiver.
The rest of the night was terrifying for Hana.
Tannenbaum drove her around Boulder threaten-
ing her with deportation and trying to force pills
down her. Tannenbaum was a stout, strong
woman who could easily overpower the slight
Hana. When Hana tried to jump from the car,
Tannenbaum reached across the seat and held her.
After hours of aimless driving, Tannenbaum took
Hana home. She said she would be back at 11:00 in
the morning and expected the papers to be signed.
"Don't try to run away," she warned sternly. "No
matter where you go, I'll find you." That day Hana
checked into the Boulderado Hotel.
That was not the first incident of harassment
Hana had suffered. For about a month, ever since
her husband had filed for divorce, she had received
strange phone calls at all hours. There was never
any conversation, just a silent phone, and then a
click. Perhaps it was a tactic to drive her out of the
house, but she refused to leave. Once Tannenbaum
brought some salami and a jar of orange juice to
61
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the house and urged Hana to try some. The meat
had flecks of white powder on it. Hana said she
wasn't hungry and put them in the icebox. The
next morning, her husband drank a glass of the
orange juice. He became pale, nauseous, and
slightly dizzy. After that, the meat and the juice
disappeared.
~'~~hen Hana returned to the house, she slowly
opened the door and stepped inside. As her eyes
adjusted to the darkness, she heard whispers and
saw Thomas's study door close. She rushed to her
bedroom and locked the door. It made her uneasy
that Tannenbaum was in the house, but there was
little she could do about it. The woman was
constantly meddling and even had a key to the
house so she came and went as she pleased. Hana
undressed, pulled her nightgown down over her
head, and slipped beneath the blankets, pulling
them tight around her against the cold March
night. "Tension kept her awake. She vaguely wished
for a drink to make her relax. 'T'homas had
complained about her drinking, but why should
she care now? In the stillness she heard
"Tannenbaum's and Thomas's voices outside her
door. She saw the knob turn.
"What are you doing?" she called out, sitting
upright in the bed. ]n a loud voice, Tannenbaum
demanded that she open the door.
"If you don't, 1'll shoot through it."
Hana felt the panic of the previous nights churn
her stomach. She very much believed that
Tannenbaum was capable of blasting through the
door and killing her on the spot. She did not
answer, waiting with quickening breath for the
pair to make their next move. There was no noise
from the other side of the Moor. Then a sickly smell
filled the room. At first Hana thought it came from
the furnace vents, but then it seemed to creep from
under the dour. She felt faint, horrified that they
were trying to gas her. Shc scrambled out of bed,
ran to open a window, ]caned halfway out into the
biting night air, and called out, "Holly!"
Robert Hanson and his wife, Nancy, ~~'cre sitting
in the living room of their neighbors, Uick and
Helen Wilson, enjoying the last moments of the
evening before going home. It w'as 12:30, and all
the other guests had left. The party had been
pleasant with socializing and shop talk among
fellow professors from the University of Colorado.
Suddenly Hanson sat listening intently, not to the
com-ersation, but to a sound outside the house. He
heard it again, "Holly!" (his daughter's name). He
glanced at his wife. She had heard it, too. They
thought their daughter must be in trouble and led
the Wilsons in a dash down the stairs and out the
front door. They heard the call again, not from
Hanson's house, but from the opposite direction
where the Rihas lived. Hanson and ~4'ilson ducked
around the hedge separating the houses and saw
}ana leaning out the window. The one person she
really knew in the neighborhood was Hanson's
daughter, and in her panic Holly was the only
name Hana could think of to call for help.
The iwo men ran across the yard, lightly covered
with snow, and half-lifted, half-pulled }iana by the
forearms out of the window. Neither Riha nor
Tannenbaum were in sight. Both men noticed a
strong smell of ether clinging to Hana's nightgown
and hair. She shivered as she walked between the
two men back to \Yilson's house. The snow turned
her feet red. Helen Wilson threw a coat around her
shoulders, and they ushered the thoroughly shaken
Hana to the upstairs living room where the odor of
ether became more pronounced: Helen Wilson
opened windows to air out the house. They tried to
question Hana about what happened, but her
English was so halting that they could make little
sense of it. They could only understand, "That
woman. She is trying to do away with me." And
that }]ana had locked herself in her bedroom to
escape "that woman," but "they" had put ether in
the heating system to circulate into her room.
Hana was hardly able to speak, but she did manage
to make clear that she did not want to return home
and that she wanted to call Regosin.
At that moment the door bell rang. Wilson
answered it and found Riha on the door step, who
abruptly asked that his wife be returned. Wilson
remembered that Riha arrogantly "demanded that
} turn over his wife to him." "She doesn't want to
come, and } will not force her in light of the
circumstances," \~'ilson replied. "Now kindly get
off my property." Riha shrugged and walked
away.
~~'hile Riha tried to retrieve his wife, Tannen-
baum called the Boulder police. She met the two
officers in front of Riha's house and identified
herself as an officer with the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalisation Service in Denver. She told the
officers that Hana was in the country illegally and
was to be deported. The only identification she
could produce was an old Illinois driver's license.
She also phoned the director of the immigration
service, a Mr. hold, and told him that there ~'as
trouble at Riha's house. He could remember little
later of the call except it had a~s~oken him at 2:00
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a. m. and he was too sleepy to comprehend what
the woman at the other end of the line was trying to
say. Tannenbaum explained to the police that
Hann had locked herself in her room and started
screaming when she and Riha tried to get her to
come out. "1 think this gal is high," she told the
policemen. "She is on a trip."
The officers went to Wilson's house to question
Hann. After hearing her story, they advised Wilson
to turn Hana over to Riha.
"She doesn't want to go," Wilson told them.
Nevertheless, the husband has rights to her, they
answered.
"But the woman has rights as a person, and
you're not going to take her out of this house unless
you have a warrant to remove her," Wilson shot
back.
The policemen demurred and went to Riha's
house to hear his side of the story. While searching
the house, they found several empty ether jars and
ether-soaked pads in Hana's bedclothes. The call
seemed a bit bizarre, but the officers treated it as a
domestic disturbance. When they returned to the
Wilson's house, Hana was pouring out her story to
Regosin in Czech. The officers spoke to Regosin
who told them he wanted his client to spend the
night at a hotel. The officers told him they had to
check with Riha and left to confer with him. Before
going, they explained to Hana that unless she filed
a complaint they could do nothing. She refused.
Riha agreed that it was best that Hana stay at a
hotel. She would not return to her home to fetch
some clothes so Nancy Hanson went to get them.
Then the Hansons drove Hana to the Boulderado
Hotel where she stayed for nearly a month before
flying [o New York with her aunt. Before she left,
she filed a countersuit for divorce. Both Riha and
Flana claimed cruelty as grounds.
The police ran a check with the National Crime
Information Center on Hana. She was in the
country legally.
On Thursday evening, March 13, five days after
the incident at the Wilson's, Riha's nephew Zdenek
Cerveny, who was then living in Denver, received a
call from his uncle inviting him to Tannenbaum's
house. "We are on the same street," Riha said.
"You must come visit." It took Cerveny some time
to find Tannenbaum's house. They did live on the
same street but several miles apart. Cerveny had
only been in the United States three months and
did not understand the street system very well.
Vb'hen he did arrive, he found Riha dressed in a silk
kimono and in good spirits after ahome-cooked
meal. Riha told him, in Czech, tf~at Tannenbaum
had attempted to take Hang from his house by
pouring ether under- her door to knock her out.
"Gayla was outside the door waving a pistol and
threatening to break the door down," Riha said. "I
took the gun away and put the ether where she
couldn't find it." The acrimony between Riha and
his bride of four months was very unpleasant.~Riha
wanted her out of his house, but Tannenbaum's
tactics were too much.
Several days earlier, Riha had confided in a
neighbor that Hana would be forcibly removed
from his house because she had failed to meet the
deadline for a permanent visa, and that she would
be put on a plane and sent to Prague where her
famil}' lived. Seeing the look of surprise on the
man's face, Riha added jokingly, "It isn't as if she
were being sent to Siberia. Her family is wealthy,
and she has friends there."
Riha and Tannenbaum did not seem to be on
bad terms because of the bungled job. They
debated the case good-naturedly, and Tannen-
baum assured Riha that she could get Hana
deported, according to Cerveny. Riha began to
have doubts about Tannenbaum's methods,
Cerveny said, but he wanted Hana out of his life so
badly that he was willing to suspend disbelief and
let Tannenbaum handle the problem. Cerveny said
he believed that Tannenbaum intended to kill
Hana, and Riha did not want to probe too deeply
her intentions. That night was the last time
Cerveny saw his uncle.
Two nights later, Friday, March 15, Riha
attended a dinner party given by Ken and Jan
Sorensen. Jan, a graduate student of Riha's, was
taking private lessons in Czech. Riha seemed
distracted and nervous during the evening, but he
would not discuss the reasons. At 12:30 a. m. he
drove home, and as was his habit, set the breakfast
table before retiring. In the morning, a friend,
Carol Word, called to remind him of a dinner at
her house the next day. She called throughout the
day but received no answer. That evening, she
called Cerveny and inquired after his uncle.
Cerveny had received other calls from various
friends of Riha's asking of his whereabouts.
Tannenbaum also called that evening but not to
ask about Riha. She told Cerveny to say nothing to
anyone about his uncle but to come to her house,
and she would explain everything. Vb'hen he
arrived, Tannenbaum said Riha had gone to
Canada, and Cerveny would be hearing from him
soon. If questioned, she advised Cerveny to say he
knew where his uncle was and that his reason for
leaving was because of the impending divorce. She
also added that Cerveny would be receiving a
power of attorney from Riha.
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On April 6, Cervenr? did receive a letter from
Canada that had been notarized in Chicago
containing a pox?er of attorne-? and signed b}~
Thomas Riha. It x~as later proved a forgerti~.
Tunnenhawn told authorities, x~ho began their
investigation into the case eight months after
Riha's disappearance, that Riha fast rent to
Brooklyn, where Hana's aunt and uncle lived and
then to Canada. She also mentioned that Riha
might he in Michigan seeking peace and quiet to
x~rite a hook. t4'hen x~riting his first book, he had
gone to ~lfichigan, she added. ,
On Monday morning, Robert Skotheim, who
shared an office with Rif~a, found Tom's briefcase
open on his desk and papers and books lying
about. The office looked exactly as he remembered
it on Friday, giving him the impression that Riha
had not been in over the weekend. Shortly after
8:00 a. m., he took a call from a woman reminding
Riha of an important appointment that day at the
Denver immigration service. Skotheim ]eft a
memo on Riha's desk.
Riha did not make his morning Russian history
class. He also missed a noon faculty meeting. That
u~as unusual for he was a punctual and reliable
staff member. But it did not cause undue alarm.
Later that afternoon, the history department's
secretary answered a call from a woman who said
Riha had injured himself in a fall, and he had been
taken to a hospital. The caller said she would pick
up his briefcase, but she never fetched it. Denver
and Boulder hospitals show no registration of a
Thomas Riha on that day.
Riha's colleagues became worried and contacted
Hana's Boulder attorney, Gerald Caplan, who
called the police. Caplan and a police officer
stopped by Riha's house, but saw nothing
suspicious. Peering through the windows of the
modest, single-story house, they saw the untouched
cereal bowl and the silverware he had set out. Fl is
art collection, appraised at $19,605.00, hung on the
walls. Flis 1967 Volkswagen was parked at the
curb. }lis personal papers and books were in the
house along with his shaving gear and suits.
Nothing looked amiss e~ccpt Thomas Riha had
disappeared. Later that night, two patrol cars
followed by a station wagon arrived at the house.
Three uniformed policemen, two men in civilian
clothes, one being Rilia's attorney, and a woman
~~~alked around the house shining f)ashlights in the
~~~indows. ~I~hcy searched the. backyard bomb
shelter, built b}' the previous owner, but found
nothing.
Riha's disappearance came as a shock to his
friends. He was not the type to simply vanish
without a word, they claimed, and if he did go off
because of marital problems, he would have
informed them that he was safe. Nor did it appear
that he anticipated a sudden departure. 1-Ie had
written to the University of Chicago Press
requesting W-2 forms on royalties for his book
published by the company. Income tax forms were
found on his desk. His calendar pad listed
appointments and engagements through April 15.
One entry noted a dinner with "the Colonel," as he
often referred to Tannenbaum, and another a
meeting of history professors in Denver on March
15. He did not attend the meeting.
Nothing in Riha's background indicated that he
took radical actions or made irresponsible
decisions on the spur of the moment. He was a
scholarly man who enjoyed long walks and hours
of research into the past. A quiet man, he spoke
with a winsome accent. He liked jokes, although not
the knee-slapping kind, and had a quick smile. He
was witty, charming, with a touch of the Old
World tastes. He was a good cook and was
notoriously tight with his money.
Thomas Riha was born on April 17, 1929, in
Prague to Ruth Anna and Victor Riha one year
after their marriage. Both parents were lawyers
and came from solid middle-class backgrounds.
The marriage was placid, but it rested on a
foundation of sand. The mother was never close to
Thomas or his half-sister, Luda, offspring of
Victor's first marriage. In the summers, the family
vacationed at a summer cottage on Lake Seeboden
in southern Austria. Thomas and his father
traveled around the Czech countryside buying art
from churches scheduled for demolition. When
Thomas settled in the United States, he was made
presents from the family art collection. It was the
art collection that planted in the minds of his
friends the first seeds of suspicion that he had met
with foul play. He was very proud of and
sentimentally attached to the wooden carvings
dating back to the 13th Century and spent many
painstaking hours restoring them. His friends felt
he