PORT SECURITY CHIEF GAVITO IN HOT WATER ..AGAIN

By Juan Montoya
When I was a reporter at the Brownsville Herald in one of my former lives, I wrote a story about then-sheriff investigator George Gavito saying something manly about a suspected killer like: "You can be sure well get this animal off the streets."
Now, it just so happened that his uncle Oscar Castillo was the editor of the Spanish version El Heraldo and he sidled up to me and asked me whether his nephew (George) had really said that. I replied that he had and Oscar, a bantamweight boxer in his day, shook his head and said something like: "A que Jorge, one of these days it's going to get him into trouble."
Time passed and Castillo was proved right.

Before Gavito achieved fame for recycling the success of the Mexican investigators in solving the so--called Satanic murder of Mark Kilroy whose body was found in Matamoros Mexico in April of 1989, he got into more hot water trying to convince a secretary in theh Cameron County District Attorney's office to drop her sexual harassment complaint against his boss Luis Saenz in exchange for a job at a local state representative's office.

Alas, the studious lass was recording the conversation and made the tapes available to the local newspaper.

Now we understand that Gavito has been placed in administrative suspension this last week following a complaint of (you guessed it) sexual harassment by a victim at the port.

Now, sensitive as these things are, we were not told any details of the alleged offenses claimed against the head of security at the port.

Was it a female or male making employee the complaint?

Was he getting paid while he was in suspension?

Did the alleged harassment occur prior to or after his recent wedding to an Austin attorney?

When will the determination of the validity of the charges be concluded?

"At this point it's a 'he said, she said' situation," said a navigation district source. "We won't know until the investigation int the matter is concluded by Port Director Eddie Campirano."

We are in the process of submitting an Open Records request to the Brownsville Navigation District and will keep our readers appraised of the details as they become available.