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Portsmouth — It’s almost beyond belief. How does someone make it through the worst of two wars only to be gunned down on the streets of home for the few bucks in his pocket?
It’s been 40 years since the murder of Heren Cabacar, a soldier who survived the Bataan Death March of World War II and the prison camps of the Korean War.
Forty years since Portsmouth police knocked on the family’s door at 4 a.m.
Forty years since the headlines shouted “Ex-POW killed on walk home.”
Forty years of wondering who did it. And trying to make sure the crime isn’t forgotten.
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Traffic barrels by the spot — a wide, grassy median on Frederick Boulevard, not far from where the road ducks under I-264.
There’s no reason to expect anyone in the stream of cars and rattling trucks to remember. It happened in 1981. Dust in the crime logs.
But Donna “Nina” Valdez, one of Cabacar’s daughters, can’t drive this stretch without picturing her father strolling along here after a late-night bingo session at Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s Drydock Club.
Her dark hair flutters with the whoosh of passing vehicles as she stands on a sidewalk, staring at a tree in the median that’s long been her landmark.
“This is the horrible way people like me think: My father’s blood soaked into this ground,” she says.
She’s quick to widen the lens, reeling off statistics she now knows by heart:
“One-third of murders are cold cases. There’s a whole lot of families like ours.”
Valdez belongs to a large Filipino-American clan — a middle child now in her mid-50s with a household of her own. She lives in Churchland and works as an accountant for the city school system. She recently “had a fire lit under my butt” when she was told that Portsmouth police could no longer find her father’s file, which PPD now says wasn’t quite so.
In the meantime, Valdez has learned a lot about cold cases. Consumed by her father’s death, she’s been retracing his life, a task made harder without her mother, Carol, who passed away nine years ago.
Valdez was only 15 when her father was killed, but she recalls a “happy” dad who loved to fish, garden and play tennis.
The children noticed some of his scars — a 4-inch curve furrowing the hair above his right ear and something not quite right about his fingers — but he said little about the explosions, bullets, frostbite and hardships he’d endured.
“He told us about eating rats. And he told us they had to squeeze the liquid out of animal manure to get something to drink. That’s pretty much all he said about the bad stuff. You’d think after all he went through he’d be a little crazy — and in hindsight, I know he must’ve had PTSD — but I never saw any signs of it.”
She has pieced together much of his past using scraps of military records, research and a single page of cramped type her dad titled “A Short History Of My Services In The Arm’d Forces (Army).”
Every family has its story.
“And this,” she says, eyes locked on the median, “is part of ours.”
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Dec. 8, 1941. Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Army of Japan invaded the Philippines.
Heren Cabacar was in his mid-20s, a husband and father who scrambled to protect his homeland.
The Philippines, a scatter of islands between China and Australia, was a U.S. territory at the time, and Cabacar fought with the Philippine Scouts, a component of the U.S. Army.
Thinly equipped — some were on horseback facing tanks — the Scouts earned respect, fighting hand-to-hand and striking behind enemy lines.
“He was a farmer with an eighth-grade education,” his daughter said, “and he wasn’t a big guy — only about 5 feet ― but he was tough.”
Cabacar was among 75,000 troops who wound up trapped on a peninsula called Bataan, where they held out for three months. Crippled by starvation and disease, they were forced to surrender in April 1942. Tens of thousands died during the forced march that followed — 60-plus miles under brutal treatment and intense heat — or in the prison camps at the other end.
Cabacar’s brief memoir doesn’t dwell on it — just a few sentences for one of the most notorious wartime episodes in history. After 16 months, he and other sick or wounded Filipinos were released by their captors in August 1943.
“The only thing I felt sorry for,” he wrote, “was my co-American fighting men who were left in the prison camp.”
One month later, Cabacar was back in action, working with a resistance force called the Western Luzon Guerrillas. After his islands were finally liberated, he joined the U.S. Army, became a naturalized citizen and got his “first look over the beautiful country of the United States” in 1949.
“He was a proud, proud Filipino-American,” his daughter said. “He loved the U.S. and everything it represents.”
When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, Cabacar was with the 25th Infantry Division in occupied Japan — among the first American troops deployed. In November, after months of fierce fighting, his company was overrun.
“In the afternoon of the same day,” he wrote, “the enemy captured me wounded.”
Of the 7,245 American soldiers and airmen captured during the war, more than a third died in captivity, according to the Korean War Legacy Foundation. Forced marches. Torture. Starvation. Dehydration. Temperatures below freezing.
Cabacar withstood it for nearly three years. When possible, he used his farming know-how to plant a little corn around the prison camps. In time, he was trusted with a pair of scissors and allowed to cut the hair of other captives.
His daughter recalled him saying it was his way of making them “feel more human.”
The North Koreans released a propaganda photo of Cabacar in the early 1950s, a smiling haircut scene that was printed widely in U.S. papers.
Cabacar’s memoir ends with his release after the war, part of a prisoner exchange in August 1953. After seven months of recovery “including the most wonderful reunion I ever had in my life” with kin in the Philippines, he returned to active duty in California.
His daughter isn’t sure exactly how things unfolded from there. She knows he landed at Fort Eustis and retired as a master sergeant in 1962. He met Carol, settled in Portsmouth and started a second family.
“They were married for 20 years,” Valdez said. “Seven kids, but one died when she was just a few months old.”
Cabacar appeared in a 1963 story in The Virginian-Pilot after he addressed a gathering of ex-POWs, where he said more than usual.
He talked about the cruelty of his captors, saying 2,400 POWs died in his WWII camp alone.
In Korea, he said, he crawled, bloody with shrapnel wounds, into a tiny cave near the Yalu River after 179 of the 192 men in his company had been killed. He told of how he’d been forced from his hiding place, smoked out when the enemy lit a fire at the mouth of the cave.
Long after Cabacar’s military career, most people still called him “Sarge” — a sign of deep-seated respect.
His daughter was too young to truly understand why. She does now.
“And now I find myself using his military record to get attention for his murder.”
She shook her head.
“You really can’t make this stuff up.”
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Cabacar’s wife didn’t want him to play bingo that night.
The games were at the shipyard’s Scott Center Annex, about two miles from the family’s small house on Dartmouth Street, in a blue-collar, Midtown neighborhood. It was a Wednesday — Dec. 2, 1981 — and he’d just played the Sunday before.
At 65, Cabacar was still working — now as quartermaster for the Mount Mitchell, a survey ship commissioned to produce oceanographic maps. But with six kids still at home, there was never much money to spare.
He charmed her into it, Carol Cabacar said in a statement to police, coming into the kitchen with his coat on, hat in hand, grinning.
“Honey-coo,” he said, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a lucky streak going and I can’t stop now.”
He’d won a $334 jackpot his last time out.
Cabacar often walked to the Drydock Club, if the weather was nice or the games were in the afternoon. He liked to stay in shape. But if it was cold or dark, he usually arranged a ride. He didn’t like driving at night himself anymore. His eyesight was getting worse.
On this evening, a family member dropped him off, with the understanding that he’d call home when he was done. His wife’s statement says he left the house with $15.
At the club, Cabacar’s optimism didn’t pan out. When play ended around 11:15 p.m., he headed out into the misty dark, stopped at the security gate, chatted with the guard and walked across the street to use a pay phone.
“We’ve never been able to understand that part,” said Valdez, who was waiting up with her mother. “Our phone never rang.”
Cabacar started walking. He stopped by the George Washington Tavern for a nightcap, then went north on Elm, past the cemetery where his infant daughter was buried. He took a left on Portsmouth Boulevard and a right on Frederick.
“We’ve asked ourselves so many times, ‘What was he thinking?’ Everyone knew it wasn’t safe in that part of town at night,” Valdez said. “But after all he went through in the wars, I guess he just wasn’t scared of Frederick Boulevard.”
Cabacar made it about halfway home.
Around 1:45 a.m., police dispatch received reports of a man lying in the median. Cabacar was found dead, beaten and shot three times. His pockets were torn or turned inside out. His wallet was missing.
A red marker — a bingo dauber — was on the ground, a clue police used to backtrack to the nearest game and eventually identify Cabacar. They showed up at the family’s house before dawn, a knock that started “the day that never ended for us,” Valdez said.
Police could find no eyewitnesses or solid leads. The crime scene yielded little evidence.
Rick Williams, a now-retired Portsmouth detective, remembers the case well. Back then, he was a sergeant in charge of the city’s homicide squad and Cabacar was one of his neighbors.
“I hadn’t been living there long,” he said, “but we’d wave over the fence.”
Williams was PPD’s spokesman in local stories about the murder, which were picked up by the wires and fed to papers in other states. Crime Line offered a $1,000 reward.
But nothing surfaced that led to any arrests.
“We just couldn’t find any links,” Williams said.
The family was gutted. Emotionally. Financially.
“Everything changed,” Valdez said.
Her mother had to get a job and whenever she left the house one of the younger children would run down the street after her, crying, afraid he’d never see her again.
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Jay Cabacar, a son from Cabacar’s first marriage, lives in Northern Virginia. He was 42 when his father died, and as the case grew colder, he took over the family’s effort to stay in touch with police.
Cold-case families navigate a fine line.
“You try not to be annoying but you also don’t want to be forgotten,” he said. “I’ve been going to or calling Portsmouth police once or twice a year since my father’s murder. I’m always polite, just asking if there’s anything new to report, and the answer has always been the same: No.”
Arlington National Cemetery, where his father was buried with a chest full of medals, is a regular stop for him.
“I go to my dad’s grave and I tell him I’m doing my very best to find out who did this,” Jay Cabacar said.
In 2017, he wrote Portsmouth police a letter asking for copies of his father’s file “just to see for myself what’s been done.”
His request was returned with a small, yellow sticky note from a records technician: “Sorry. I researched the files and couldn’t find any info on this case. I wish I could have been helpful.”
Jay Cabacar sat on that news for a while, unsure what to think or do. Eventually, he turned it over to his half-sister, Valdez.
“I’m 82 now,” he said, “and I don’t have much time left. I need to make sure somebody stays on top of this.”
Valdez was incensed.
“I know the odds aren’t good of ever solving this case,” she said, “but it damned sure won’t happen if they don’t even have any records of it.”
In early March, Valdez started prodding PPD, where a detective quickly assured her that the file wasn’t lost, just hard to find.
Newer investigative files have electronic versions, explained PPD spokeswoman Victoria Varnedoe — easier to retrieve. But anything much older than 20 years is still in paper form only, stored in a records unit that must be hand-searched.
“I know they’re busy,” Valdez said. “They’ve got new crimes happening all the time. But you do think someone at least looks at the cold cases now and then. That’s how it works in the movies, right?”
In real life, not so much, said Freda Washington-Perez, lead victim advocate with Project Cold Case, a Florida-based organization that offers support groups and a database of nearly 25,000 unsolved homicides.
“Families are often under the assumption that police are actively working these cases but it depends on whether the department has a dedicated cold case unit or detective,” Washington-Perez said. “There may be no funding for it.”
Only 7% of the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies do, according to 2016 research by the National Institute of Justice. Portsmouth isn’t one of them.
“Unfortunately, current staffing does not allow for a full-time cold case squad,” Varnedoe said in an email.
The city has 328 cold case homicides on the books — the oldest, from 1970. Generally, they get reviewed if new leads come in.
It took two months for PPD to dig out Cabacar’s file. Inside was a status report officially declaring the investigation “inactive” and a note: “Information is still being developed, however due to current workload this case is not being actively worked.”
The note was dated Jan. 20, 1982 — 49 days after the murder.
“And from what I can tell,” Valdez said, “that’s the last time anyone opened his file.”
Williams, the retired homicide detective, believes Cabacar was the victim of a random crime and his killer is already dead.
Carlton Jerome Pope was executed for robbing and fatally shooting a woman in 1986 in the same area. When Williams searched Pope’s house on Bagley Street, he looked out a bedroom window and saw a perfect view of the Frederick Boulevard stretch where Cabacar was killed.
“I think Pope saw him walking and went out after him,” Williams said.
Hoping to bring the Cabacars closure, Williams said he asked Pope’s attorney to see if the condemned man would confess before he was put to death in 1997.
“But the attorney refused,” Williams said. “I wish I’d gone to the prison myself to ask but it just didn’t happen. I’ve thought about that many, many times.”
But if Pope did it, Valdez said, there were indications he wasn’t alone. The case file holds hints, she said, and there are other details this story won’t include on the off chance there’s ever a prosecution.
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“Someone might still be out there who’s been carrying this all these years,” she said.
For survivors, the fallout doesn’t end when the trail cools. Tentacles can reach across generations.
“It literally takes some family members out,” Valdez said. Some of hers are “in counseling to this day.”
She says she’s “tired of just feeling angry about it all. I’m going to start advocating for more resources for Portsmouth police. Not just for my family but for everybody’s sake.”
Her dad “was a small man who did big things. Bullets whizzing all around him in two wars — death marches and prison camps — and he gets dropped in Portsmouth. And now it’s 40 years later and still no answers.”
Valdez says she “gets it. How things are. No manpower. No money. But getting it and accepting it are two different things.”
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Joanne Kimberlin, 757-446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com