By JEFF LEEN

Heruid Staff Winter

Alberto Elio San Pedro held a strange power over Dade County in 1986. Prominent politicians, the governor and Metro-Dade mayor included. fell all over themselves to deny knowing him. "I never met Alberto San Pedro." said the butions at the Metro Justice Building.

San Pedro came from obscurity and quickly grew before the public eye in the hottest political scandal to hit the county in more than a decade. Before events had run down, he had become known in Hialeah as "El Gran Corruptor." a man whose house, with 84 bathrooms and bulletproof windows, drew sightseers.

San Pedro was, at the beginning. a mysterious figure. Now 37, he was then an influential Hialeah real estate developer known primarily for throwing lavish parties for politicians, police officials and Judges on the eve of each Dec. 17 in honor of his favorite saint, Lazarus

The parties were well attended. The host was powerful enough to consult privately with the Hialeah mayor and chief of police. San Pedro's father ran a stable at the Hialeah race track. The son had more ambition than that. He wanted to run for public office.

He had come to the United States from Cuba at age 5, grown up an outsider in Anglo Hialeah and earned money in his late teens as street muscle. A stream of youth crime peaked with a murder conspiracy conviction in 1971 for taking part in a drug rip-off in which the drug dealers were actually undercover police officers. Four years later, someone riddled San Pedro with bullets on his doorstep. He survived and, as Cubans ascended to power in Hialeah, prospered.

He attracted police attention in an arson-for-hire investigation in 1983, but he was not charged. He was on the verge of getting a pardon for his murder conspiracy conviction, clearing the way for his political ambitions, when things unraveled.

Charged with bribery

The scandal broke on Feb. 13, 1986, when Metro-Dade police arrived at San Pedro's massive house and took him into custody along with his small muscle-bound bodyguard, Carlos Redondo. The charges were bribery, for $13.000 allegedly paid to undercover police officer Kennedy Rosario for investigative files with San Pedro's name in them.

"The untouchable has been touched," said a sign tacked to the bulletin board at the Hialeah Police Department.

That same day a story ran in the newspaper about Don Dugan. An Opa-locka city commissioner working in a Metro-Dade police investigation said Dugan gave him a $4.000 bribe Within days Dugan would come to be known as San Pedro's public relations man.

San Pedro was eventually charged with the Dugan bribe, but at first no connection was made between the events.

It wasn't until San Pedro's second arrest 17 days later - for murder conspiracy and cocaine trafficking that the full scale of the scandal came into view. Police said they arrested San Pedro, who was out on $50,000 bond on the bribery charges, to prevent the murders of two men who owed him money.

Within two weeks, the Hialeah police chief retired, a local TV news reporter went on leave and Florida's leading gubernatorial candidate dropped from the race. All were victims of being publicly "linked" to San Pedro.

It didn't stop there. San Pedro seemed to have fingers in every political pie.

Note on mirror

Gov. Bob Graham had to explain how a 1958 Orange Bowl queen managed to get a letter to Graham's wife supporting a pardon for San Pedro taped to the governor's bathroom mirror.

"My wife has found out that is a good way to be sure that I see things," Graham said, innocently

Metro-Dade Mayor Steve Clark had to hold a press conference to deny that San Pedro had summoned him to Hialeah and slapped him following a police raid on San Pedro's nightclub.

In March, the scandal exploded when prosecutors released thou. sands of pages of documents and wiretap transcripts to defense attorneys and the public as part of the pretrial discovery process. The transcripts revealed San Pedro's unguarded conversations, recorded by a police bug hidden inside his house. The public learned about San Pedro's expletive-filled philosophy of life. coupled with boasts about some of the most sensational corruption allegations ever heard in Dade.

According to San Pedro, virtually any politician in the county could be bought.

"Listen, I got 15 judges in the Circuit Court alone." San Pedro told an undercover officer. "I've learned to use my money to make friends."

The boasting brought angry denials.

"This guy's making a circus out of Dade County government, and the media's putting a tent around it," said John Gale, an administrative judge who was mentioned once by San Pedro on the tapes. "It's so preposterous and outrageous, it's incredible. No one could have that kind of power."

The scandal picked up a femme fatale when it was revealed that Roxanna Greene, San Pedro's 23year-old girlfriend, had set her boyfriend up. planting the police bug inside his office.

Greene had gone to police after San Pedro bugged her phone and threatened her.

Bugs in house

The next month. it became apparent that not everything San Pedro said about bribery was idle boasting Mounting evidence of San Pedro's illegal payoffs emerged. The amounts were relatively small: a parole commission examiner caught on tape accepting $700 from San Pedro in return for writing a favorable memo on San Pedro's behalf to Tallahassee: a Southern Bell supervisor who swept San Pedro's house for police bugs $1.200 and later admitted to bugging phones for San Pedro $1.000 a throw, a School Board member who admitted accepting two illegal $1.000 campaign contributions from San Pedro.

Eventually investigators learned why San Pedro was so eager to buy his police files from the undercover officers. why he would pay for favors from a parole examiner: He craved legitimacy. He desperately wanted a pardon to clear his criminal record so he could run for political office.

"All I wanted was my pardon. that was it." San Pedro said on the tapes The slate would have been clean "

The police arrested Don Dugan in August. By then. Dugan. once one of Dade's busiest political operatives, was occupying himself selling cable-TV subscriptions in South Dade San Pedro was charged with being behind Dugan's alleged $4.000 bribe to Opa-locka Commissioner Brian Hooten.

Gradually the scandal faded from the headlines. The grinding schedule of hearings and deposi tions lasted more than a year.

Greene's appearances, in over. sized floppy hats and over-much makeup. were early highlights for the sensation mongers, but interest eventually dwindled.

With no new arrests, and none of the big three (San Pedro, Redondo and Dugan) turning state's evidence, the case settled down. The political damage had been done. It was now a matter of a man who, allegedly. may once have been a one-man. minor organized crime cloud in Hialeah, with big dangerous dreams that were nipped in the bud.