Was it smuggling for love or loot?

When Monroe County sheriff's deputies stopped Canadian retiree David Butler on the Overseas Highway with seven undocumented Cuban immigrants stuffed into his Toyota Camry, he had a ready explanation:

He happened across the Cubans in the parking lot at Porky's, a popular hangout in Marathon, and offered them a ride to Miami.

But in his pockets, deputies found $2,000 in cash. In his trunk were charts of Cuba and a global positioning device. At Porky's, a waitress said Butler had treated a dozen Cuban men, women and children to lunch. And in a boat yard across the road, the deputies found a dilapidated fishing vessel Butler may have ditched. ``A piece of crap,'' the boat-yard owner called it.

In Canada, though, his sister says Butler is no smuggler. Doreen Woods said her brother married a woman in Cuba and bought a boat to go see her.

Did he sail back with his bride and her family?

Nonsense, the Border Patrol agents say. They don't know whether Butler's wife was among his passengers. But they're certain he was charging them $5,000 a head.

``He was definitely involved in smuggling,'' said Border Patrol spokesman Keith Roberts.

Whatever the truth, Butler is in deep trouble. He, his seven passengers and five other Cubans who may have been smuggled in with the first group are being held at the Krome immigration detention center in West Dade.

Recent landings

The case is only the latest in a recent spate of landings by undocumented Cuban immigrants in the Keys that investigators believe were organized by smugglers. Earlier this week, authorities detained three groups of Cubans, one in Key Largo and two offshore. One of the groups -- 15 Cubans and two suspected smugglers intercepted off Marathon on a 26-foot bayliner -- had two vans waiting for them at Sunshine Key marina, the Border Patrol said.

The issue of motivation has been important in one recent case, when the U.S. attorney's office in Miami declined to prosecute a Miami-Dade County man caught with 19 Cubans aboard his stalled motorboat.

The alleged smuggler, Juan Garcia, is being held at Krome for possible deportation. But most of the 19 passengers were his relatives, and prosecutors believed they could not win a criminal case against him in front of a potentially sympathetic Miami jury.

Butler's curious misadventure began Wednesday afternoon at Porky's, a roadside tiki bar and restaurant.

Group gathered for lunch

Owner Susan Neugent said a group of Hispanic men, women and children showed up at lunchtime at a picnic table by a dock behind the restaurant, as if someone had just dropped them off by boat. Her cook and a waitress, unable to communicate in Spanish, gave them water and crackers.

Shortly afterward, a tall man showed up in front with another small group of people who spoke Spanish. Both groups then sat together for lunch inside the restaurant. The man paid the $105 tab in cash.

Then he and seven of the Cubans piled into a gray Toyota with Ontario plates and drove off.

Her employees found the sequence of events ``just a little bizarre,'' Neugent said.

About 2 p.m., Butler sailed an old fishing boat alone into the Marathon Boatyard, just across the road from Porky's.

Butler ordered some maintenance work, owner Bruce Popham said, then got into a waiting car with people ``just jammed in there'' and left, followed closely by a new-looking sport-utility vehicle. Popham said he could see several more people through the darkened windows of the trailing vehicle.

`Very suspicious'

``It was very suspicious,'' Popham said. ``He was real evasive. He said he had money and wanted to fix up the boat as a kind of project. When I went out to look at the boat, it was just a wreck. I don't know how he ever steered that boat.

``I think they accomplished what they wanted to, and just intended to abandon the vessel here.''

Popham was going to call authorities. But someone beat him to it. Minutes after Butler left, sheriff's deputies arrived.

Twenty miles up the road to Miami, deputies stopped Butler's Toyota and his seven passengers, including two women.

According to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, Butler's passengers told deputies they had come from Cuba on a boat they ditched before landing. They said other members of their group had been picked up by another vehicle, but denied that Butler had brought them from Cuba.

Later, Border Patrol agents detained the other five, though agency spokesman Roberts provided no details. Roberts said Butler apparently had been spending 30 days at a time with his wife in Cuba because the Cuban government would not allow a longer stay.

In a phone interview Thursday from Ontario, Butler's sister said she was unaware her brother had been detained. But she said she did know he had gone to Cuba in a recently purchased boat to see his wife, a woman he met and married on an earlier trip to the island.

Woods said she was expecting her brother home any day -- alone -- to have a doctor check out a skin lesion.

``He told me, `I'm taking the boat across from Cuba to Miami and then I'm coming straight back,' '' Woods said. ``My brother would never do anything illegal. He's been going back and forth to Cuba. He's quite happy to be in Cuba. He retired and he just wanted a place in the sun.''

Herald staff writer Frances Robles contributed to this report.