The Diplomat's Widow: The Urdanivia Tragedy
It's not every day that the widow of a Peruvian diplomat makes headlines for being a mass murderer, and it's even rarer when the widow of a Peruvian diplomat commits a mass murder in Pennsylvania-- but that's exactly what happened in Allentown in the fall of 1959. This is the shocking story of Ruth Mae Urdanivia. On a cool November night in 1957, a diplomat and his family stood inside a San Francisco airport checking their baggage when the diplomat, 42-year-old Jose Urdanivia, felt a twinge of pain in his chest. His companion, Gustavo Silva, the Peruvian vice consul in San Francisco, promptly drove the Urdanivias to Park Emergency Hospital, but Jose suffered a massive heart attack along the way. By the time the car reached the hospital Jose Urdanivia was dead, leaving his wife and their five children in a state of grief and confusion. The Urdanivias were supposed to be going to Yokohama, Japan, where Jose had recently been appointed as the Peruvian consul. The son of a Peru...
