Manuel Esquivel was a scientist at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a lonely-hearts seeker who traveled alone to exotic lands. But after a trip to Cuba last November, he was found dead under an overpass on the 110 Freeway. Police ruled it a suicide. But missing JPL keys, a company camera, two unsolved robberies, and the legal record of a tour organizer only deepen the mystery.

Blanca Esquivel could hardly believe that was really Manuel lying in that coffin. Even a mortician's magical touch and a new suit could not diminish the bruises and puffiness around her 37-year-old brother's battered face.

Just three weeks before, Manuel Esquivel was a highly honored and respected engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, talking excitedly on the Internet with Blanca about his other passions, soccer and salsa dancing. He told Blanca how he'd received permission from his boss at JPL, Manuel Franco, to travel to Cuba, a trip arranged by a man her brother met through dancing salsa at various clubs around Los Angeles.

It is unknown if Esquivel knew about the complicated past of Cary Podell, director of the Salsa Teachers Association, a government-connected salsa and cultural tour organization with a license issued by the Treasury Department to allow for such exchanges. But for a time, he and Esquivel traveled in the same salsa circles. And Podell soon told him of his weekly trips to Cuba.

Podell's operation seemed kosher. But Esquivel's sister urged caution. "Play it safe," she wrote in an email sent the afternoon of November 25, 2002, a day after Esquivel arrived in Havana, where he checked into the historic Hotel Habana Libre. "Take lots of pictures to share with the family," Blanca added.

In his emails, Manuel didn't talk only of dancing. He spoke also of the poverty and class struggles that still exist in Cuba, a turbulent political history playing out against the backdrop of 19th-century Spanish colonial architecture. Manuel wrote of the old, battered cars that still dominate Cuban roadways and how they would "disappear like smoke" if Cuba were allowed to trade with the United States.

In an exchange a few days later, Esquivel told another sister, Rosa, "Don't send me messages of this type until I get home ... the Internet down here is probably being sniffed all the time." After that email message on November 28, the two women never heard from their brother again.

Manuel Esquivel was due to arrive in L.A., via Mexico City, on December 2nd. But a day earlier, his battered body - absent shirt, shoes, and a sock - was recovered by California Highway Patrol officers under an overpass of the 110 Freeway at 182nd Street in Gardena. He was barely breathing. Esquivel was taken by ambulance to UCLA Harbor Medical Center in nearby Torrance, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

He carried no identification, so his body remained in cold storage with the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office, listed as another John Doe. Ten days later, after coroner's investigators finally identified Esquivel's remains through fingerprints, Blanca and her mother were notified.

No one knows what happened to Manuel Esquivel, why he abruptly left Cuba, or how the JPL scientist ended up alone under that freeway overpass. Not his family, not the people he worked with on the Deep Space Network for NASA, and not the people he traveled with to Cuba. Worse, say Blanca and other family members, apparently no one cares to know.

The last time Blanca heard from any of Esquivel's co-workers at JPL was at Green hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, where the viewing was held. Franco attended the rosary service, but he was the only colleague from the lab to pay respects. Which seemed odd, considering the gregarious Esquivel had worked at JPL ever since graduating from college 17 years earlier. But, as Blanca would soon learn, Franco wasn't there just to convey condolences.

Franco, who twice declined to be interviewed for this article, had unfinished business with Esquivel. At the viewing, he pressed Blanca to find out what happened to the company camera that Manuel took with him to Cuba. It was a five-million-pixel digital camera used regularly by Manuel and others at the lab. There were also four keys to the renowned space lab that Esquivel had in his possession before leaving for Cuba. All were stamped "DO NOT DUPLICATE" and were now missing.

"I thought he shouldn't be asking me that," Blanca recalled. "That's not something you express at a viewing."

Then other thoughts began racing through her head. By then, the family had learned that Manuel had left his 1997 Acura right where he parked it - in Lot B at LAX - the day he left for Mexico City. How did Manuel get to the freeway overpass that day? And why did he leave Cuba without his luggage, which finally arrived from Mexico City at his mother's house a few days after his death?

Inside the suitcase were his car keys, but not the keys to JPL that Blanca would later be asked repeatedly to produce, via email, by Franco and his secretary, Paula Brown. At least that answered the question of why he left his car at LAX. But why would a detail-oriented man like her brother, a person who learned to speak English at age eight and attended Stanford, Occidental, and Caltech before going on to a six-figure, high-level career at JPL, get on a plane from a foreign country without his luggage?

Was he running back home from Cuba? If so, what was he running from? And why would Franco, whose agency demands some of the highest security clearances in the federal government, arrange for Manuel to travel to Communist Cuba for, of all things, a salsa tour?

Now Franco stood at poor Manuel's viewing, expressing his regrets, looking uncomfortable, but also pressing Blanca about that digital camera, the missing keys. She was not comforted. "There are just way too many questions, too many holes, too many gaps, and no one has bothered to pick up the investigation," said Blanca of the mysteries surrounding her brother's death. Months later, she still has trouble discussing the case without crying. "All we are asking - demanding - is that someone find out the truth."

A Hollywood scriptwriter could not concoct a more tragically comic scenario as to how officials arrived at their version of Esquivel's death. It seems that every agency involved - from JPL to the county Sheriff's Department to the county coroner to the LAPD to the CHP to NASA's own Inspector General - has done little else but pass the buck. They have not determined what happened while Esquivel was in Cuba, nor explained his death. Two robberies connected to Esquivel's ATM card following his death also remain unsolved. And not for a lack of evidence.

A man was videotaped making more than $600 worth of purchases on Esquivel's ATM card at Chin Shoes/Shoe Box on Imperial Highway in Lynwood just days after his death, but no arrests have been made in that case. Nor have there been any leads regarding the purchase of a $250 leather jacket also bought with Esquivel's ATM card. That purchase was made on December 4, according to the sales receipt, three days after Esquivel died, at El Charro, 6429 Pacific Boulevard, in Huntington Park, just a few miles from where Esquivel was first found by CHP officers.

The buyer of the leather jacket even left a California driver's license number on the receipt. But, incredibly, neither Sheriffs nor CHP ever ran that number to determine if it belonged to anyone other than Esquivel, according to CHP Sgt. Cathy Moore, who is heading up that agency's investigation. CityBEAT provided Moore with the driver's license number on that receipt. Moore did not return calls after acquiring that information last week.

Knowing what he knows of the case, all Sgt. Jeff Cochran of the Sheriff's Century Station could offer was, "It's a weird one, that's for sure."

According to the county coroner's office, no drugs were found in Esquivel's body, and his head wounds and other trauma were consistent with damage that could be caused by a nearly 30-foot fall from an overpass onto the paved shoulder of the freeway.

"Multiple blunt traumatic injuries" are listed as the cause of death on the final autopsy report, filed March 18. But was it suicide? The answer "could not be determined," according to the report, which was originally written December 8, while Esquivel's identity was still unknown. The final report shows the initial finding of "suicide" scratched out.

"We know what killed him," said coroner's spokesman David Campbell. "The question is why."

But CHP officials have no doubt what happened, at least according to eyewitness accounts phoned into the department's 911 emergency phone system the morning Esquivel's body was found. The CHP is calling it a suicide, in spite of the coroner's reluctance to firmly affix a cause for Esquivel's death. And since the CHP was the lead agency investigating the incident, that means the entire case - Esquivel's death and the two unsolved robberies - is as good as closed.

The LAPD was called in by family members a few days after Esquivel was due to arrive home, but the findings of its missing-person investigation were turned over to the CHP soon after Esquivel's body was identified at the morgue.

"If anything could go wrong, it did go wrong," Moore said of her agency's attempts to get to the truth. "It's bad enough to lose a loved one. You want to give the family what it wants, but I don't know how we can do that."

Moore said a number of people called 911 that Sunday morning to report a man preparing to jump, followed shortly after by other calls reporting a man lying still below the 110 Freeway. After determining the calls were related to the same incident, CHP investigators went back to two of the callers who had left a name: Taylor Robinson and Andrea Vines.

CHP investigators re-interviewed Robinson, a resident of Los Angeles, who repeated his story, according to Moore, and became the sole witness on which the CHP hung its final determination that Esquivel had jumped. Robinson repeated roughly the same story for CityBEAT, that he had seen Esquivel jump from the rail. Witness Andrea Vines also held true to the account she gave officers, saying she saw a man standing on the rail and apparently positioning himself to jump.

Since that time, Esquivel's family has also been in contact with NASA's Inspector General's Office. IGO investigator David Edmon declined to comment. But Joe Kroner, the IGO's acting executive officer, said his agency was aware of Esquivel's death, but also declined to explain the agency's interest in the case. One thing he could say was, "We are not investigating his death. That's being handled by the CHP."

While Esquivel's death has already been explained to Moore's satisfaction, the two ATM robberies, though not being actively investigated, are still open. "Yes, we would like to know who those guys are," she said, referring to the users of Esquivel's ATM card photographed at Chin Shoes. "There is nothing in the coroner's report to indicate there are any defensive wounds." This, she added, makes it difficult to close with any real resolution. "It's hard. It's a hard case."

Moore did express frustration that the Sheriff's Department relinquished its responsibilities in the two robbery cases. "Again, another bad taste in the family's mouth," she said.

The CHP does have one remaining question, "and that's where was he for those three days" prior to coming back to Los Angeles, Moore said. "But even if we knew, that doesn't change what the witness saw. That's the sticking point that we always come back to."

Though otherwise charming and outgoing, at 5'2", Manuel Esquivel was not what one might consider a ladies' man. Bespectacled, bookish, thin, and never married, he lived at home with his parents and maintained a close relationship with his family.

As an engineer at JPL, Esquivel made good money, which he mostly spent on his parents or for trips around the world, particularly to Japan and Korea for World Cup soccer games, and Australia and Spain, where NASA has satellite-monitoring installations. He didn't drink, smoke, or take drugs. And he loved soccer, enough to regularly schmooze with members of the Galaxy pro soccer team when they played home games at the Rose Bowl, just a few miles south of JPL at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Last summer, Manuel began taking salsa classes at Let's Dance in Alhambra. By September, Cary Podell was inviting Esquivel (according to a September 17 email) - actually, more like pleading with him - to come along on one of the two ½ trips to Cuba his group takes each week. He even offered him a price break. Esquivel went for the program, but didn't use Podell's airfare package.

"The program includes your lodging," Podell wrote to Esquivel. "Do you need a ride back home on our airliner or?" He continued: "The Washington approved Cultural exchange program is for a full itinerary. I can work out a price break ... please give me more information. Please call me or e-mail me."

Although he has never been interviewed by law enforcement about Esquivel's death, Podell has seen his share of trouble with the law. In 1989, he was arrested in Beverly Hills for violating a restraining order and carrying a loaded and concealed firearm, according to court documents. After 13 months of delays, the case finally went to trial but was dismissed due to a lack of evidence, according to court records.

In January 1999, Podell found himself in trouble again, this time after being arrested by officers with the LAPD's West Valley Division for suspicion of inflicting spousal abuse. Court records indicate that Podell failed to appear in court and a $50,000 warrant was issued for his arrest on February 9, 1999. The record does not indicate whether Podell ever formally resolved the matter.

Podell said he was arrested in the 1989 case following a messy divorce. He was leaving the house, but returned to say goodbye to his child when his ex-wife called Beverly Hills Police, who then found two loaded .45-caliber handguns in his moving van. Podell said he had no memory of the second set of charges.

Franco, too, has had a recent run-in with authorities, but only in Mexico. The officer who detained him, Jose Gabriel Vera of the Municipal Police of Tijuana, told CityBEAT Franco was detained for suspicion of soliciting prostitutes. He was not charged, primarily because he told officials that he was a manager at JPL, and he was escorted to the border at San Ysidro and released.

"The guy impressed me because he spoke to me about satellites and the space shuttle, he told me he was a very important person working on those projects, so I gave him a break and escorted him to the border," Vera told CityBEAT newspaper, speaking in Spanish.

Franco admitted that he was pulled over and escorted back to the United States, but said he was detained for running a red light. He also said before hanging up the phone that he did not use his influence as a high-level U.S. government official to get out of trouble with Mexican authorities.

In contrast to the nearly pleading tone of his September missive to Esquivel, Podell said in an interview in May that Esquivel was not on his registered itinerary for the trip to Cuba. He came along by himself, or "illegally," as Podell put it, by traveling to Cuba by way of Mexico. "He came illegally to see a girl who lived nine hours away in Santiago," Podell said, adding that he did not see Esquivel until a day after the group arrived. But he did see him shortly after with a "beautiful girl and someone who appeared to be her mother."

As Podell remembered, the JPL scientist "was out of money - that he couldn't afford it." After a few days at the Hotel Libre, with rooms going for anywhere from $80 to $300 a night, Esquivel moved into a small private home near the hotel. Podell's story changed numerous times in the course of three separate conversations with CityBEAT. At first, Podell said Esquivel had been evicted from the place he was staying after leaving the hotel after the landlord told Podell that Esquivel was "unhonorable," as Podell said without further explanation.

Then, just last week, Podell said he was unaware of where Esquivel was staying after leaving the Habana Libre. Later, in another discussion, Podell said Esquivel had to move from the hotel because he offended one of the female tour guests by following her to her room in the Habana Libre. That, Podell said, sparked the ire of three of the men on the tour, all of them much larger than the diminutive Esquivel. "The other guys didn't like him," Podell said.

He did not provide the names of those three guests on the tour, but Podell said one was an LAPD officer, another worked for KTLA Channel 5, and another worked for the Discovery Channel.

In addition, Podell's recollection of his encounters with Esquivel varied. First Podell said he saw Esquivel one or two times, and then that he met up with Esquivel a total of five times, the last one being at a nightclub where Esquivel showed up with two native men not part of the tour and looking for a free pass inside. Podell said Esquivel was heartbroken over being dumped by a girl he had met there. "I told him to trash her. After that, he was with those guys."

Somehow, Esquivel had run out of money the very day he arrived because no sooner did Podell see him than Esquivel was asking him for money, he said. According to Podell's recollection, Esquivel showed up at another salsa club prior to the encounter with the two strange men and the "beautiful girl." None of them had enough money even to cover the cost of admission.

"Some guys [on the tour] said he asked them for drugs. I heard he was gay. Someone said he was a double-agent," Podell told CityBEAT. "I don't think he was that way. He just wasn't good with girls," he said. "Guys who know how to dance are good with girls."

The group arrived back in Los Angeles the Friday prior to Esquivel's return. Podell said he learned of Esquivel's suspected suicide through Channel 4 news reporter David Cruz, who had done a story about Esquivel's death. "I said to myself, 'This guy's too much of a pussy. He'd never jump from anything.'" Podell said.

After learning of Esquivel's death, Podell said he wanted to attend his memorial service, but didn't because he knew Blanca Esquivel and her sister, Rosa, did not like him. They had been calling for information on the whereabouts of their brother several days prior to the identification of Manuel's body.

Podell was one of the last Americans to see Esquivel alive but still has not been interviewed by CHP investigators, a fact confirmed by Moore. The CHP sergeant was also unaware of Podell's criminal history. And Podell's depiction of Esquivel as a penniless, panic-stricken, gay, heartsick heterosexual dope-addict doesn't exactly fit with the tone and images presented in the emails Esquivel sent home during his time in Cuba.

"La Habana is a cool place for a vacation ... it's a mix of the poverty that we grew up in Villamar [Mexico] with the colonial part of the Old Center + the class difference between those that have and those that don't," he wrote in a November 25 email to his sister Rosa, two days after he had arrived at the Hotel Libre. "More when I return ... Next Sunday I'll fly back to Mexico City (will stay at the airport hotel and fly to LA on Monday) ... but first I'll have to visit Trinidad and Varadero (maybe Vinales). Check them out on the web."

It sure didn't seem as though he was out of funds that day, the very day Podell said he was begging him for money. And in another email to Rosa three days after that, Esquivel wrote, "I'll arrive in Mexico City Sunday (Dec. 1), stay at the airport that night and fly into LA on Monday." If Esquivel was having financial, personal, and emotional problems during his brief stay in Cuba, he certainly wasn't letting on in his correspondence.

In the months following Esquivel's death, JPL did nothing to commemorate his passing. No tributes and no public announcements. It was as if his colleagues had no knowledge or interest in this man who had devoted 17 years of his life to JPL.

When first contacted at work last month, Franco was initially prepared to talk about Esquivel, saying he was a "good friend." He also confirmed that his daughter also attended classes at Let's Dance, but did not go on that trip to Cuba. When asked about the missing camera and keys he urgently sought at Esquivel's viewing, or his relationship with Podell, Franco deferred all comment to a JPL spokesperson.

JPL's Veronica McGregor downplayed the significance of the missing keys, saying that Esquivel, while a senior engineer working on sensitive space projects, "did not have any security clearance." Blanca Esquivel took exception to those remarks. "He was not a John Doe. He was not a nobody," she said. Now her family is offering a $30,000 reward for information about Manuel's death. (The number is 877-6MANUEL, or 662-6835.)

In a letter, a clearly frustrated Blanca lashed out.

"My brother was a JPL/NASA engineer with top national clearance. His prints were registered with the National Security Agency. He was a productive member of this society," she wrote. "He had a family who loved him very much and would like to know the truth as to why he died."