Editor’s Note: With the breaking news out of Chile that a retired army chief suspected of human rights violations under dictator Augusto Pinochet has flung himself from a 18th floor balcony at a Santiago apartment tower to his death (say that in one breath?), we thought it was odd timing that we were working on a profile of a monument remembering another violent passage from the Pinochet era right here in D.C.: The Embassy Row car bombing.

The first time Orlando Letelier lived in Washington was from 1971-73, as Salvador Allende’s Chilean ambassador to the United States. Upon returning home to Chile, Allende named him foreign minister and then defense minister. He was serving in the latter capacity when General Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973. Letelier was arrested, imprisoned on Tierra del Fuego, and tortured. His fingers were broken, twice. In late 1974 Pinochet ordered him released, and a few years later he was back in Washington, D.C., living in exile, working as a fellow at the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies.

On the morning of Sept. 21, 1976, Letelier drove into Washington as usual, via River Road, then 46th Street and finally Massachusetts Avenue. In the car with him were IPS colleagues Ronni and Michael Moffitt, recently married. Ronni was a fundraiser, Michael was Letelier’s research assistant. She sat in the front seat, he in the back.

The trio only made it far as Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, when the car exploded.