Fugitive Actor ‘Wasn’t Hiding in No Basement’

NEW YORK (AP) _ On the screen, in ″Fort Apache, the Bronx,″ Tito Goya was a cop. On television, in ″Miami Vice,″ he was a killer. In real life, he was a fugitive, wanted for murder in Texas.

From 1978, when he allegedly shot a man in Austin, until last month, when he was stopped in a car on Long Island, Goya appeared in two feature films, a top-rated television series and several television commercials and stage plays.

″He wasn’t hiding in no basement,″ said Miguel Pinero, an author who met Goya while both were in prison. ″He was there on the screen, bigger than life.″

Although police described Goya as a murderer with a long criminal record, his friends and colleagues offer other views.

To Pinero, he is an actor ″with this incredible magnetism. When he’s on stage, you know he’s there.″

To Robert Young, who directed Goya in the 1977 film ″Short Eyes,″ he is ″a beautiful guy who has had terrible experiences.″

To Miguel Algarin, in whose cafe Goya jammed on piano and percussion, he is a ″respected member of the cultural community″ and a hero in the barrio.

But to Texas police he is Andrew Butler, who shot a man and ran.

The 33-year-old Long Island resident was arrested in the town of Bay Shore on Jan. 22 after a policeman noticed he was not wearing a seat belt in his car, a violation of a new New York state law.

Police said Goya, who was born Andrew Butler, has been charged with more than 30 crimes since 1966, including assault, robbery, grand larceny, bribing a witness and possession of drugs.

Goya’s lawyer, Philip Murphy, says his client never knew he was wanted. If he did, why would he have spent the next seven years trying to appear before as many people as possible?

″I don’t know, sir,″ replied Austin police investigator John Cochran, who said Texas authorities had no idea the fugitive was an actor. ″I can’t answer that.″

Goya was born April 4, 1951, to Puerto Rican parents. He grew up in several tough New York neighborhoods, and police say he was first arrested at 15. By 1972 he was in Sing Sing prison for violation of parole following an armed robbery conviction.

Goya’s chest is covered with scars of prison life. ″Tito was young and handsome when he went in, and he went through a lot of changes there,″ Pinero said.

Pinero turned their prison experience into ″Short Eyes,″ a play first staged in 1974 by ″The Family,″ a troupe of ex-con actors. Goya played ″Cupcakes,″ the cellblock sex object. Reviews were excellent, and ″Short Eyes″ moved to Broadway. A film was released in 1977.

Goya landed roles in several films, including ″Fort Apache″ and ″Going in Style.″ In ″Marathon Man,″ he played the street youth who helped Dustin Hoffman out of a jam.

On the streets of the lower East Side, ″the kids loved him,″ Algarin said. ″I mean, that was Tito Goya. You saw him on TV and you saw him in the movies.″

Still, there was trouble: arrests for robbery, larceny and illegal possession of a weapon, according to police, and drug problems, according to friends and colleagues.

″Short Eyes″ director Young described Goya as ″a very volatile kind of guy″ who always seemed to need money or clothes or a car, who once visited a drug shooting gallery and reported late to the movie set, unable to function.

The film was shot on an unused floor at the Tombs, a New York City jail. One evening, while Young was watching scenes from the day’s filming, he learned that Goya had been arrested for robbery - and was being held at the Tombs.

After ″Short Eyes″ was released, Goya went to Austin, where he stayed with his brother, Hector Butler, who now is serving a robbery sentence in Sing Sing.

On Feb. 18, 1978, according to police, the brothers got into an argument with Rudolph Trevino outside a nightclub. Shots were fired, apparently at the brothers.

A few hours later the brothers found Trevino at a restaurant and shot him with a low-caliber rifle, police said. Police won’t say who they believe pulled the trigger, and both brothers are charged with murder.

When he was arrested last month Goya insisted that he had never been to Texas. On Thursday he changed his story. ″He’s anxious to go back and fight (the charge),″ Murphy told a judge.

Did the streets and the jails make Goya an artist, or a criminal, or both?

″He’s really an artist, and criminals are a lot like artists in some ways,″ Young said. ″They’re both outside society, and they have that special kind of edge.″

″I almost felt some of these guys (in The Family) had to go back to jail - it was the source where they got their batteries recharged,″ he added.

The director recalled the last scene of ″Short Eyes,″ in which Goya’s Cupcakes is leaving prison. Another inmate, the crazy, vicious Juan, makes a leering reference to the inevitability of Cupcakes’ return: ″I ain’t lost you yet.″