George Rose's adopted 18-year-old son and the youth's natural father were among four people charged in the slaying ofthe Tony award-winning actor, police said.
The natural father said Rose had sexually abused his son, Domingo Antonio Ralfe Vazquez, as well as other youths.Police and doctors also said cocaine was found on the 68-year-old Rose and that laboratory tests performed in Miami showed traces of a cocaine derivative in his body at the time of his death.
In a sworn statement police gave reporters on Thursday, Juan Antonio Vazquez Padilla, the natural father of Ralfe Vazquez, said the British-born performer was held for eight hours on May 4 before being clubbed to death.
Vazquez said the killers tried to make the death look like the result of a single-car accident, on which initial police reports blamed it.
A statement read by police spokesman Col. Aquiles Cruz Gomez at a news conference said Vazquez, Ralfe, and the youth's uncle, Maximo Padilla Vazquez, were arrested. A fourth suspect was at large.
The statement said the three had "confessed to police that they planned the crime when they noticed Mr. George Rose felt certain amorous weaknesses for another 14-year-old minor."
The three appeared at the news conference and told reporters they took part in the actor's death.
"What I really wanted was to take revenge on the American Rose because of his homosexual activities, since he was hurting a lot of boys in this sector, in addition to mine, whom he had already prostituted since the age of 13," Vazquez said in the statement.
However, Bea Garcia, a longtime friend and neighbor of Rose in the north coast town of Sosua, told The New York Times in a telephone interview that Rose had adopted Ralfe in January because he wanted an heir, but had become disenchanted with the youth because he was not attending to a business in which the actor had invested $25,000.
She added that, two weeks before he was killed, Rose told her he wanted to make changes in his will.
Vazquez said Ralfe, Padilla and another man he paid $200 agreed to take Rose to an isolated location and kill him.
On May 4, when Rose was driving his car to the city of Santiago with Ralfe, the three other men waited by the side of the road near Sosua and forced the car to stop.
They got in, leaving Ralfe behind, and drove to a nearby farm, where they held Rose for eight hours before killing him, it said.
"Around 8 p.m. we clubbed him to death, beating him on the head," the statement said.
Vazquez's statement said the men took the money from Rose's pockets and divided it, but left his documents intact. They then put Rose's body in the car and drove to a small ditch, where "we flipped the car over to make it look like a traffic accident."
Pathologist Sergio Sarita told reporters Thursday that the car was determined to have been traveling under 10 mph when it went into the ditch, so Rose's injuries had to have occurred earlier.
He also said tests in Miami showed traces of a cocaine derivative in Rose's urine but none in his brain.
Police said cocaine was also found in Rose's wallet.
The actor had owned a beach home outside Sosua for the past nine years.
Ralfe, who lived in the house, said in a sworn statement released by police that he met Rose six years ago when he was a student and that Rose suggested adopting him in 1985.
He said Vazquez agreed and the adoption was legal.
Ralfe said in the statement that on April 30, he told his father Rose was returning to the island in a few days and that "I felt bad because he had shown he felt a certain weakness for a minor . . . who lived in our house."
Rose, who had lived in New York City since 1961, was a versatile actor who was as much at home playing Shakespeare as he was in a comedy or a musical. He preferred the stage, but also appeared in scores of motion pictures and television productions.
A memorial service is planned for May 25 at the Shubert Theater.