IPS Applauds the Convictions of Three Chilean Secret Police Agents in the 1976 Assassination of Ronni Karpen Moffitt 

Fifty years after the fact, a Chilean judge investigating human rights crimes under the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship has convicted three former secret police agents for the murder of U.S. citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt in Washington, D.C.

Agents of the Pinochet regime detonated a car bomb that killed Moffitt and her colleague Orlando Letelier as they drove to work at the Institute for Policy Studies on September 21, 1976. Moffitt was a 25-year-old IPS development associate who also ran a music center in a low-income neighborhood in the U.S. capital. Letelier was a former Chilean foreign minister and ambassador who had become a prominent critic of the dictatorship while living in exile and working at IPS on international economic policy. 

The Chilean courts sent high-level military officials to prison for Letelier’s murder in the 1990s, after the country’s return to democracy. In 2012, the Santiago Appellate Court ruled that Moffitt’s killing should be investigated separately, as part of a broader initiative to prosecute dictatorship-era human rights abuses. 

On June 18, Judge Paola Plaza González, who serves as a special minister for human rights, sentenced each of the three agents — Pedro Octavio Espinoza Bravo, José Octavio Zara Holger, and Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann — to 15 years in prison for their roles in Moffitt’s assassination. Espinoza and Iturriaga are already serving lengthy prison sentences for other human rights crimes. Zara was released from prison in August 2025 after serving time for separate atrocities, but Plaza immediately had him arrested on charges related to Moffitt’s murder. 

The Institute for Policy Studies has kept the memories of Moffitt and Letelier alive through the annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards program. 

“For a half century, IPS has turned this heinous act of international terrorism into a force for justice and for lifting up new human rights champions in the United States and Latin America,” stated IPS Executive Director Tope Folarin. “We are thrilled to see this huge step towards accountability for the murder of Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a young American woman whose work to improve lives in her community and her world was cut tragically short.”  

IPS has worked with deeply committed lawyers, family members, policymakers, journalists, and other human rights activists to achieve a number of measures of justice in the Letelier-Moffitt case, including the prosecution of numerous individuals involved in the bombing, a successful civil suit against the Republic of Chile on behalf of family members, and the indictment of Pinochet himself in his home country. In 2025, the Chilean government recognized IPS staff members Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh’s work in these efforts by inducting them into the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins, an honor bestowed on foreigners who have made a special contribution to Chilean society. 

Statements by family members in response to the Moffitt ruling: 

Rebecca Karpen, niece of Ronni Karpen Moffitt: The recent sentencing of three of the men responsible for my aunt’s murder comes 50 years after their crime was committed — 17 years after the death of my grandfather, Murray Karpen, who dedicated his life to fighting for justice for his daughter, and four years after the death of her brother, my father Harry, who carried her picture in his wallet for decades after his big sister was murdered.  

It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied. So many of my family members who loved Ronni never lived to see this measure of justice applied, and that is a tragedy.

Words cannot begin to describe the gratitude I feel for the work that so many human rights organizations and Juan Pablo Letelier have put into ensuring Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old passionate, brilliant, and talented activist did not disappear, that her life and her contributions to this world were not forgotten simply because she was senselessly murdered so young. 

As Ronni’s death was collateral to the murder of Orlando Letelier, her existence has often been diminished in historical accounts: her name has been misspelled, her age misreported, her job title inaccurately recorded. As her niece, I have dedicated myself to trying to correct these errors and ensure the beautiful, driven, kind person I was named for is acknowledged and respected by a world that has largely forgotten her. 

These sentences are not just a victory for our family, but are a reminder that the countless lives ruined by the Pinochet regime are still being fought for, that the pain of the Chilean people will not be forgotten.

Juan Pablo Letelier, son of Orlando Letelier and former Chilean Senator: This is an act of justice. Truth has prevailed. Many years have gone by in this effort for truth and justice. Yet, with perseverance and with conviction, we’ve reached the point where in a Chilean court this act of terrorism in which an American citizen was assassinated by Chile’s secret police in 1976 has finally had a case, an investigation, and a sentencing of the three main people responsible.

We hope that U.S. government authorities will now consider that what has been done in Chile should also be done in the US regarding the investigation and the sanctioning of those responsible for this terrorist act.

There are persons who are responsible for Ronni Karpen Moffitt’s death 50 years ago who are still in liberty on U.S. soil and there are pending Chilean requests for their extradition with which the U.S. government has not complied. 

The Chilean government has a pending request for the extradition from the United States of former DINA agent Armando Fernández Larios in connection with the assassination of Ronni Karpen Moffitt. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained the retired army captain in Fort Myers, Florida in 2025, but he has not been formally handed over to the Chilean government to stand trial. 

Additional Resources:

Measures of Justice: Milestones on the Path to Accountability for the Assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt 

50th Anniversary Letelier-Moffitt Awards Program details

Press contact: Olivia Alperstein, Institute for Policy Studies: olivia@ips-dc.org