The Moretti Cadillac and the Man Who Almost Saved Beria

By Frédéric Levaux, Moretti Registry Curator

For more than 10 years now, I’ve been managing the Moretti registry. Having lived through the crazy adventure of restoring one of these diminutive Italian spyders from the 50s, I fell in love with this little brand, so innovative and so unloved. So much so, that over the years I’ve continued to add to the register of discoveries I’ve made through discussions, conversations, phone calls and e-mails with owners and lovers of these little cars all over the world. And indeed, as the register has grown in size, a certain reputation and visibility has now been attached to the site I manage (www.moretti-registry.com).

That is why I wasn’t all that surprised to receive a somewhat unreal message from Forest (Jay) Nichols, an American cattle farmer, in October 2023. Jay wrote that a Moretti, which looked very much like a Cadillac, had been seen by his son’s girlfriend deep in Nicaragua, and that he wanted to know what the vehicle was worth.

It was the kind of highly credible message I usually gently sidestep, but in this particular case, curiosity prevailed. Under what excuse of mental illness or unhealthy perversity would some poor soul have had the idea of mating a Moretti and a Cadillac? When you consider that Moretti is a specialist in small, agile and sporty cars, and that a 750 Gran Sport is almost exactly half the length of a Cadillac Deville, you can’t help but wonder about the result of this operation. So to be sure, I asked my friendly interlocutor for photos of his unicorn.

To my great surprise, I received the photos in question, which, after several minutes of contemplation, generated two quite distinct feelings in me: firstly, relief that we weren’t faced with one of those infamous “freaks” where two poor innocent chassis had been forcibly welded together, but rather with a Cadillac Deville Convertible (very) slightly modified, almost tastefully, just to remove its too ostentatious American pin-up appendages and make it more Mediterranean, perhaps more Sofia than Marilyn.

The second distinct feeling was perplexity, but why? By whom? For whom? How?

And it was in trying to answer these questions that I followed Alice down the rabbit hole when I was sent a copy of the registration and learned that the car was titled to one Fabio Gallo.

This was followed by a period of intense online research which revealed one of the most bizarre and convoluted stories we’ve ever encountered in the car world. The story involves Fabio Gallo, a young Nicaraguan who found himself embroiled in a plot to save one of the most notorious figures of the Soviet regime, Lavrentiy Beria, whose name still sends shivers down the spine. This story, set against the backdrop of the McCarthy era’s anti-communist fervor, is a cocktail of intrigue, absurdity, and a touch of dark humor.

Lavrentiy Beria

To understand the gravity of Gallo’s involvement, one must first appreciate who Beria was. Lavrentiy Beria was Stalin’s right-hand man, the head of the NKVD, and the architect of the Great Purge. His name was synonymous with terror, and his fall from grace was as dramatic as his rise. Arrested in June 1953, Beria was accused of treason, terrorism, and a laundry list of other crimes. By December 1953, he was executed, but not before a series of events that would make any spy novel seem tame.

Fabio Gallo

Enter Fabio Gallo, a man whose life was far removed from the shadowy world of espionage. According to the two blog sources I have, he was born in 1925 in Nicaragua; his mother was Spanish. Young Fabio was educated in boarding schools in Europe, he was a lively person and boasted of having a villa in the suburbs of Rome, and as neighbors and friends Sofia Loren and Carlo Ponti, whom he invited to Nicaragua to drive around San Marco in a Cadillac and Maserati. Gallo had a penchant for adventure and a knack for finding himself in the most unexpected situations.

A Most Unlikely Story

As in most rabbit holes, one lead led to another. Most of the below information was found in a series of articles published in the San Diego Union newspaper in the early 1950s and later confirmed by CIA documents.

Fabio Gallo’s involvement in the Beria affair began on September 16, 1953, when he claimed to have met Beria somewhere in Spain. Beria was, at the time, just after the death of Stalin, in disgrace and wanted to defect to the U.S. What followed was a series of events that could only be described as surreal.

Gallo’s first meeting with Beria was shrouded in mystery. In the back of a black Austin, Gallo found himself face-to-face with the man who had once been one of the most powerful figures in the Soviet Union. Beria, now a fugitive, was desperate to escape the clutches of his former comrades and was asking for assistance to escape in exchange for data on Soviet agents in the State Department and the CIA as well as data on the Soviet atomic spy ring in the USA. At some point, even escape logistics were discussed, the plan was audacious: Smuggle Beria out of Spain in a submarine. It was the kind of plot that would make James Bond proud.

Mystery in Malaga

Most of the action, including the location of the hotel in which Gallo was staying, the Miramar, centered around Malaga, then a known spies’ nest and full of intrigue. The editor from the San Diego Union, Gene Fuson, was a firsthand witness and working undercover for the U.S. in this affair. He met with Gallo several times in Malaga and even served as an intermediary, carrying papers signed by Senator McCarthy assuring safe haven would be provided to Beria. He documented the whole story in numerous newspaper articles between October and December 1953. On September 20, 1953, Gallo received a telegram from Fuson, indicating that he would arrive in Madrid to make contact with Beria. Fuson worked closely with Gallo and Spanish authorities to establish contact with Beria, although these efforts were fraught with challenges and skepticism. The early 1950s were the height of the McCarthy era in the United States. Anti-communist sentiment was at an all-time high, and the mere suggestion of communist sympathies could ruin careers and lives. In this atmosphere of paranoia, Gallo’s involvement in a plot to save a high-profile communist fugitive was nothing short of lunacy.

Backfire

After a few discussions between Gallo, Fuson and the Spanish police, Gallo was arrested by the Spanish police on charges of espionage. He was placed under house arrest, guarded day and night by four police officers. Eventually, the Spanish authorities released Gallo. The entire episode, however, left Gallo with a story that was as unbelievable as it was true. In a public statement, Gallo denied ever meeting Beria, calling the whole affair a misunderstanding or fabrication. However, a few months later and a few days before the news from Beria’s execution were made public, Fabio Gallo gave an interview and said: “I spent more than $10 000 of my own money doing what I thought was a move to help the United States and all the Americas. I was almost ready to deliver the man who called himself Beria when a U.S. Department representative in Spain threatened me and turned me over to the police there because I refused to cooperate with him.”

The world learned of Beria’s execution on December 23, 1953. By then, Gallo’s involvement had become a footnote in the larger narrative of Cold War intrigue.

Gallo, Nicaragua and the Moretti Cadillac

After the Beria affair, Fabio Gallo returned to Nicaragua, where he led a life that was as colorful as his earlier escapades. Gallo settled in San Marcos, where he lived in a grand hacienda known as the “Gallo house”. The property, originally belonging to his family, was a testament to his love for luxury and opulence. Gallo was known for his sumptuous lifestyle, often seen driving his Cadillac on the roads of Nicaragua. Fabio Gallo’s life was marked by his affirmation of connections to numerous high-profile figures and events. He claimed to have attended the wedding of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly in Monaco, and asserted that he was the godfather to a son of one of Mussolini’s daughters, further highlighting his ties to influential and notable personalities of his time. In the late 1970s, during the Sandinista insurrection, Gallo supposedly helped a guerrilla commander of the Sandinista National Liberation Front escape an attack by hiding him in the trunk of his (Moretti ?)-Cadillac. He also claimed that he was the only Nicaraguan invited to the grand coronation ceremony of the Shah of Iran in Persepolis, an opulent event, which was marked by its luxurious arrangements, including air-conditioned tents set up in the middle of the desert to accommodate the guests.

But little did he know that he would be famed today as the owner of the most improbable Etceterinis ever, the Moretti-Cadillac. That’s next week!

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Etceterini Registries