Cold Case

Chile Will Investigate Neruda's Death

Nobel poet may have been murdered. 

Could Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda have been murdered? Chilean officials are launching an investigation into the poet's 1973 death, responding to a request by the country's communist party. Official accounts say Neruda died of prostate cancer just 12 days after a right-wing military coup took control of the country. In addition to being a poet, Neruda was a member of Chile's communist party, a lawmaker, and an ambassador to France. Many of his friends were imprisoned by the Pinochet regime or fled into exile. Last week Chilean officials exhumed the body of former President Salvador Allende to determine whether he killed himself, as official accounts have it, or was assassinated during the 1973 coup.