May 20, 2020 • 37 mins
After Duquesne made it to the U.S., he started a whole new life for himself, and worked for the rest of his life as a journalist, saboteur and spy. But eventually, all those lies caught up to him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. Okay, this
is a part two of our two parter on Fritz Duchane,
(00:21):
and we are going to pick up right where we
left off in the story of the life of Fritz Duchane,
adventurer and spy. So if you did not listen to
the first part, you really should, or this is probably
gonna make no sense whatsoever. So when we left off,
Fritz had made his way after an escape from Bermuda
to Paterson, New Jersey. He had done this through a
(00:43):
network of Boors sympathizers. After a few weeks in Patterson,
he got word that the American Transpall League in New
York would be able to help him. He got set
up in the city and worked first as a subway conductor,
which he really hated, and then as a subscription collector
for the New York Hair World. Fritz wasn't really content
in that role either, but he was able to parlay
(01:05):
it into work as a reporter, and that launched a
nice little career for him. He started writing about some
of his adventures back in Africa, and these articles in
the Herald were so popular that other papers started to
become interested in him. So for the five years from
nineteen o four to nineteen o nine, Duquesne was moving
from paper to paper as one after another made him
(01:27):
more lucrative offers, and this reputation and income also offered
Duchese the best payment of all, the opportunity to craft
an identity for himself entirely to his own liking. He
wrote several novels and plays and even started lecturing in
his own chameleon way. Ducaine had made himself into a
perfect New York gentleman with enough celebrity to stay employed.
(01:51):
Fritz wrote about all kinds of globe trotting travel and
embedded reporting that he was doing, but most of these
claims are unsubstantiated, although he did seem to do quite
a bit of traveling during this time. Still, at the time,
readers believed that he was rubbing elbows with important people
and that he was an expert on big game hunting
(02:12):
in Africa. Both of those were pretty true because of
his upbringing, and it was that writing that piqued the
interest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Eventually, Fritz as well as
the number of other experts on the subject of safari hunting,
were invited to the White House, and this was precipitated
in part because of as Roosevelt's interest in big game
(02:35):
hunting and his plans for an African trip once he
left office were made public, Ducaine started writing a series
of articles titled Hunting ahead of Roosevelt in East Africa.
Ducaine's visit to Washington, d C. To visit the President
was sensational enough that a cartoon about it ran in
the Washington Star. The art by Clifford K. Berryman, which
(02:56):
is titled Seeking Pointers, features an excited game caricature of
the President showing Ducane, who is clearly identified by his
name scrawled across the band of a cap that's on
the floor, all of the animals that he's interested in,
and he is using a pointer. Of course, there was
no boasting needed after this. Ducane was associated with the
(03:17):
President as someone who Roosevelt sought out for advice, and
that made him sought out by more and more people.
And he saw how lucrative this position was, and he
started a lecture tour about Roosevelt's travels while the President
was in Africa, titled East Africa The Wonderland of Roosevelt's Hunt.
Fret's knew that tension sold papers. He started writing articles,
(03:41):
many of which were printed all over the country through syndication,
about how doubtful he was that Roosevelt could handle East
Africa's challenges. He would boast of his own level of
comfort with the various perils like animals and tropical diseases,
just shooting them off as so common to him that
they seemed mundy dane, But then he would mention that
(04:02):
they were potentially deadly to a tourist hunter like the President.
He also dropped in comments about just how poor Roosevelt's
health was to get readers wondering if the next article
would be reporting Teddy Roosevelt's death. And it was because
of all of these articles and his lectures that Louisiana
Representative Robert F. Broussard got in touch with Duquesne about
(04:23):
Hippo's just how I discovered Duquesne when I was working on, uh,
those two episodes. Obviously this is all covered in those episodes,
So we're gonna give you just the broad Strokes. Here,
Brussard was trying to solve the problem of a US
meat shortage by introducing a bill that would fund the
import of hippos to the United States. Those hippos, in theory,
(04:44):
could live off of the hyacinth that was a problem
because it was overgrowing much of the South, and then
they could be slaughtered for their meat. This may seem
like it solves two problems, but is in fact a
terrible idea that's did not work uh all the details
in those other episodes, Decane testified before a Senate committee
that he was an African animal himself and that hippo's
(05:06):
were easy to raise and delicious. He also had a
list of other species that they might want to think
about importing as livestock, and to support this plan to
Kane started writing articles explaining what a good idea it was. Again,
it was not a good idea, and thankfully, for a
variety of reasons, this whole hippo plan fell apart. Something
(05:28):
else had happened once Ducane got to the US. Aside
from this launch of a strange career in journalism. During
that brief day we mentioned when he was in New Jersey,
Alice Wortley, the young American woman that he had met
while he was a prisoner in Bermuda, found him, presumably
through the system of Boer sympathizers that he had been
(05:48):
in contact with and that she would have known about
because she was living on Bermuda at the time, and
the two of them started a courtship and then they
were married in the summer of nineteen Even after the
less than flattering articles he had written about Roosevelt, Ducaine
campaigned for him in nineteen twelve, doubts about his physical
fitness aside, it seemed that Fritz Ducaine respected Roosevelt so
(06:10):
much that he wrote a lengthy brochure about why Roosevelt
should be elected president once again. The ending statement of
his brochure read quote, your vote will decide whether the
people shall rule or the corrupt corporations. The fight will
be between Woodrow Wilson, the writer of history, and Theodore Roosevelt,
who makes it. Undoubtedly, Ducaine was also hoping for a
(06:32):
little favor to fall his way if Roosevelt won the election,
but he never found out because Roosevelt lost to Wilson,
and while that defeat may have cast a shadow over
nineteen twelve. Fritz was part of another project that year
that had greater success, and that was the founding of
the Adventurers Club of New York. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman was
(06:52):
the editor of Adventure Magazine and one of the club's
co founders, and he was a fan of Duquesne, having
been publishing his writing for some time. There is a
great quote in a Fritz Duchane biography called Counterfeit Hero
that I read about Fritz's involvement in the club that reads,
whenever in New York or not in prison, he faithfully
showed up at the monthly meetings to report his latest adventure.
(07:15):
It was December nine thirteen that Decane became an American citizen.
Soon after that, he and his wife Alice left for
a tour of South America. Fritz allegedly was following an
expedition of Roosevelt's and making a film about it. Along
the way, they took a massive iron trunk with them
that took two men to move, which was ostensibly to
(07:37):
carry the movie reels and equipment. While the duchess were traveling,
World War One began with the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand because Britain was on the Allied side, Fritz automatically
wanted to align himself with the Central Powers. He and
Alice were in Brazil at this point, and Fritz promptly
sent her home to New York, claiming that he was
(07:58):
planning more rigorous trips into tamed wilderness that she would
not enjoy. But what he actually did was go straight
to the German consulate in Brazil and tell them that
he wanted to help fight Britain and the Allies. So
Fritz Ducane became a contractor saboteur for Germany. We're gonna
get to Fritz's new career in just a moment, but
(08:18):
first we will take a quick sponsor break. This new
job of Fritz's paid an annual salary of four thousand marks,
plus a daily expense allowance of ten marks. It wasn't
a ton of money, but for every completed mission there
was also a bonus. Fritz took to this system with enthusiasm,
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and he adopted two regular aliases that he used during
this time, Frederick Frederick's and George Fordham. Frederick's was an actor,
he also was other things along the way. Fordham was
a botanist and Duquesne would use either of them, or
even sometimes his own identity or others he and died
on the fly as suited his purposes. And his purposes
(09:03):
were simple, at least in their directive, sabotage boats that
were headed to enemy countries while they were still in port.
He claimed that in this work he set more than
a hundred on fire and sunk more than twenty. He
would use disguises to kind of trawl around and port
eavesdropping on sailors to get information, and he would sometimes
(09:24):
use them more directly. For example, his botanist character often
shipped plants samples aboard boats that mysteriously had explosions aboard.
He was not entirely undetected in this Authorities started to
notice him, and he had to become more and more careful.
On February eleventh, nineteen sixteen, Fritz's alter ego, George Fordham,
(09:45):
signed a shipping document declaring that he was returning a
case filled with motion picture film and negatives to the
United States, and said that the case had left the
US in nineteen thirteen, which was the year that he
and Alice left for this trip. He shipped the case
aboard the steamer Tennyson, which was headed to Trinidad and
then New York and then Liverpool. On February twenty one,
(10:07):
the Tennyson had an explosion in the hold and three
of its crew were killed, although the captain was able
to beach the damaged boat. An investigation ensued and an
arrest soon followed. The man taken into custody, who was
named Bower, confessed to his part in the crime and
gave up Duchesne in the process, including naming several of
(10:27):
Duchesne's aliases. Things quickly heated up for Ducane. He was
charged by the British government with murder on the high seas,
sinking and burning British ships, conspiracy, falsification of documents, and
sabotaging military stores. When British authorities had realized that the
man working for Germany to do so much damage was
(10:48):
the same one who had been a British military officer,
it was both infuriating and embarrassing, so they intended to
pursue him and bring him to justice. Duquesne on the
run and also hunting for new business ventures to keep
money flowing in the only thing he felt he could
in such circumstances, which was that he faked his own death.
(11:08):
On April nineteen sixteen, the announcement of Duchane's death hit
the US papers. The story was that he had been
killed in Bolivia by quote, hostile Indians. The account of
Duchesne's demise was cabled from South America, and the obituary
write up that followed with information quote from a man
who knew Duquesne intimately. Undoubtedly Duchesne himself is full of
(11:32):
the same sorts of over the top adventure stories that
have continually casually combined fiction and reality in Fritz's life story.
That initial story only offered some confused concern over the
fate of Alice Duquesne. Had she also perished? The New
York Times did not know, but they soon followed up
with a second story that yes, she was alive and
(11:55):
back in New York and had received a letter from
Fritz several weeks before he was a currently killed for
twelve days, Ducane's fate was believed to have been sealed
in Bolivia. But then on May eighth, another story hit
the US papers, this one written by Frederick Fredericks Fritz Duquesne.
The report exclaimed was alive. He had been found in
(12:18):
rough shape, left for dead after the attack, but he
was receiving aid and was expected to recover. It seems
that while Duchane initially thought death would shake Britain's pursuit
of him, he soon realized that he didn't have anywhere
to go. He only had a US passport, So he
revived himself and he headed back to New York in
the hopes that the US government wouldn't extradite him if
(12:40):
he was found out, or probably more in the hopes
that no one would realize he had gotten back. Ducaine
arrived in New York not long after this, but for
a man on the run, he was not idle at all.
While in South America, he had gotten involved in filmmaking
projects with a school system there to try to make money.
But to make the films he needed to get it
(13:00):
back to the US anyway to buy film stock, So
when he got to New York he did that, paying
cash for the film twenty four thousand dollars worth. He
then put it in a box labeled statuary, stored it
at a warehouse in Brooklyn, and took out a thirty
three thousand dollar insurance policy on it with the Stuyvesant
Insurance Company under the name Frederick Fredericks. He loved that name. Uh. Mysteriously,
(13:26):
the warehouse had a fire and the have box mark
statutory was destroyed. It's unclear exactly what Fritz was telling
Alice once they reunited about where he had been and
what had been going on, but he did convince her
to pursue the insurance policy for the warehouse box, as
well as another policy that he had taken out on
(13:47):
the alleged film in that mysterious iron case that he
had shipped aboard the tennis in and then after convincing
her to file these claims, Fritz vanished during the time
that he was unaccounted for or the h MS Hampshire
was sunk by a German sub Fritz Duquese, who had
sworn vengeance on the military commander Kitchener during the Second
(14:09):
Boer War, claimed that he had orchestrated this sub attack
and that he was responsible for the assassination of Kitchener,
and he also claimed that this was an attack ordered
by an organization called the Bore Revolutionary Committee. That entity
did not exist. Duquesne next turned up in Washington, d C.
In July of nineteen sixteen, and started to reach out
(14:31):
to his old contacts, including his once collaborator in the
Hippo Plan, Robert Broussard, who at this point was a senator.
Broussard seemed oblivious to the fact that Fritz was on
the run, and at the Adventurer's request, tried to get
him a government job, but that was to no avail,
so it was back to New York for Duquesne. He
didn't let anybody know he was in town, though. He
(14:52):
lived in an apartment that he shared with another man,
rather than going back home to Alice, which was something
he had done just before disappearing a few months earlier. Yeah,
he had gotten a separate place from her. We did.
It's unclear why. If he was trying to protect her,
or if he just wanted out of the marriage and
didn't want to mess with it. We don't know. He
didn't need money, so he reinvented himself again, and this
(15:14):
time as an Australian war hero named Claude Stoughton of
the West Australian Light Horse Unit. This was all entirely fictitious.
There was no such unit or person. He even invented
a uniform for him. But in this guise he became
a salesman, a salesman of patriotism, of his fake backstory
(15:35):
which was kind of a pastiche of his own experiences
and some others he made up, and a lot of embellishment,
and mostly he became a salesman of library bonds for
the Allies. Claude Stoughton was well paid for speaking engagements
and he was put up in nice hotels, But soon
people started to notice that in social settings Claude, when
(15:57):
he spoke casually, seemed to have alliances toward the Germans
rather than the Allies. At the same time, the investigation
into the insurance claims that Alice Ducaine had filed had
given the insurance company and the police enough information that
they realized to Ducane really was, and that he was
a wanted man, not just for his insurance crimes, but
(16:19):
for his crimes against Britain. Ducaine was arrested in late
nineteen seventeen when he was returning to his apartment from
a Claude stounton tour. His belongings had already been searched
and had turned up just a wealth of evidence. Yeah,
there was so much damning paperwork, including communications about Germany
(16:39):
and doing what was best for Germany and also things
around these um these various insurance issues. It was a
pretty uh exciting find for the authorities. But after his arrest,
Duchane was then held and charged for two different reasons.
One the charges of British government particular really the murder
(17:00):
of those three men in the bombing attack on the
steamer Tennyson murder at sea automatically carried a death sentence
if you were found guilty. In the US was launching
a federal inquiry into the matter to make sure that
this was the right person and everything lined up, and
to the New York District Attorney was examining the allegations
that he had committed insurance fraud. We will try to
(17:21):
untangle Ducane's legal situation after we take a quick break
for word from sponsors. A letter was sent to the
British government's legal representation in the US, that was the
Kudair Brothers, assuring them that the British charges against Ducane
(17:43):
were being considered carefully as the investigation was conducted. That
letter read, in part quote, in the event that the
United States Commissioner, after a hearing directs that the defendant
beheld on the charges and be extradited. This Office, on
receipt of official notice from the proper Department, will waive
all objections to the proposed extradition and exchange for this,
(18:04):
the British government agreed to send Ducaine back to the
US to face charges in the event he wasn't convicted
in Britain or if his sentence was less than life imprisonment.
As these investigations went on, it was eventually determined by
the US government that nothing they could find on Ducaene's
illegal activities in the US would be anywhere near as
(18:25):
serious as the charges that Great Britain had made, so
the decision was made that he would be moved out
of US custody and given to British authorities to face
trial for the explosion of the steamship Tennis In After
Decaine learned that he was to be turned over to
the British government, he developed a medical condition. He was
suddenly paralyzed. This was a hundred percent fake, but initially
(18:48):
he was moved from his prison cell to Bellevue Hospital
for observation and treatment, and he was committed enough to
this whole ruge that he convinced medical staff that he
had indeed fallen into a state of paralysis. Anytime he
needed to be moved from his bed, he depended on
the orderlies and the nurses to do it for him. Then,
on Ma Fritz Duchane escaped from Bellevue Hospital. The bars
(19:15):
of his window in the hospital's prison ward had been
sawed through. Any saws used for that job had to
have come from an outside source, because Fritz had been
searched thoroughly when he was transferred from his prison cell
to his hospital bed. Even the coverage in the New
York Times sounds like the reporter who wrote it was
kind of impressed by this whole thing. Quote. While attendants
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and the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital were acting in
the belief that Captain Fritz Jobert Duquesne, the adventurer and romancer,
was a hopeless paralytic patient, he saw it through the
bars of his cell early yesterday morning and escaped by
scaling two fences about seven feet high. The article goes
on to mention him first dropping from the window to
(19:59):
the ledge of an ice house and then to the
ground farther below, saying, quote, even this display of agility,
amazing for a paralytic, did not give him his liberty,
and he was forced to climb a brick wall about
six feet high and an iron fence with menacing spikes
about eight feet high. All this spectacular leaping and climbing
(20:19):
to escape prison did not attract the attention of any
of the guards or attendance of the prison ward, and
the absence of the quote paralytic patient was not noticed
until the attendants made their usual rounds of the ward
at four thirty a m. To complete his ruse, Ducane
had arranged pillows and comforters roughly into the shape of
(20:40):
a person curled into a ball in his bed, and
pulled his blanket over them. So again, it's so funny.
I feel like he set so many of the tropes
we see in film and television. The grounds of the
hospital were searched once it was realized that he was gone,
and they came up empty, and police developed a theory
that the escapee had a rain for an accomplice to
(21:01):
meet him with a car and a change of clothes
on nearby First Avenue, because it had been believed up
to that point that Duchesne was truly paralyzed. He had
not been considered dangerous or a flight risk, so the
few visitors that he had were not documented on any
kind of list. Ducane wrote a letter to one of
his friends, allegedly from Mexico. The letter stated that Fritz
(21:24):
had the help of friends in his escape and that
they provided him with a car and had then gotten
him onto a plane with an expert pilot who took
him to Mexico. The friend Ducane wrote to brought this
letter to the police and it was dismissed as a hoax.
They're thinking was that he sent the letter hoping that
his friend would take it to the authorities in the
(21:45):
hopes that the Mexico story would take them off of
his real trail. But by the end of the summer,
all of the other trails had gone cold, and police
did start to believe that he had indeed left the
US and that he was, in all likelihood exactly where
he said he was, which was Mexico. You remember, he
traveled in South America and knew a lot of people
(22:05):
in Middle and South America that they thought he could
have gone to for safe harbor. There are also plenty
of people that believe that he was just kind of
laying low and kicking around the US. Uh. He definitely
was in Boston for a while, at least until he
moved back to New York. They weren't sure of his whereabouts,
but this time he arrived in the city as a
(22:27):
new man, Frank to Trafford Craven Alice. His wife had
left him when his ruse had caved in and he
had been arrested, So this start as Craven was kind
of a fresh reinvention of himself with no ties. Before
this returned to New York, Fritz slash Frank had spent
some time, as Holly said, in Boston getting into the
(22:48):
movie industry by working with a financier named Joseph P. Kennedy,
who had purchased the film booking offices of America. Kennedy
hired Fritz for pr work that required Ducane to move
back to Manhattan. Marks a strangely conventional time in Ducane's life.
He seemed to actually just be working a job and
living a quiet life for a few years. He moved
(23:11):
on to another job at Quickly Publishing, which had him
working writing and editing advertising copy for vaudeville acts. Although
Fritz was living well but under the radar. His past
caught up with him in nineteen thirty two and he
was arrested again. This time, Fritz kept up his Frank
de Trafford Craven persona, insisting over and over that the
(23:32):
police had the wrong man. And just in case you're curious,
that Joseph P. Kennedy is in fact the father of
John F. Kennedy. Uh defending Ducane once he was arrested
in nineteen thirty two, although he continued to go by
Craven through this whole legal morass was well known civil
liberties lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes. Hayes would later write of
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Duquesne and maybe brace for this one, because some of
it's not the best attitude, uh quote. We all admired
the man. Even the district attorney and judge were sympathetic.
It was before Hitler's time, and no one hated the Germans.
After all, if there had been a murder, it was
homicide in a war of many years ago, and homicide
in war is heroic. Hastok. The approach that, first of all,
(24:16):
if the British government wanted to have Ducane extradited, they
would have to prove it was actually him and not
this Frank Craven. Secondly, he would have to have been
on British soil when he committed the crime for this
extradition to stand. The British government did not really have
any interest in pursuing events from the war at this point.
The thinking was that it could just dredge up matters
(24:39):
between countries that had since been settled, and that there
was just no need for that. So whether we were
talking about Frank de Trafford Craven or Fritz Ducane, Brittain
was just done with the matter, but New York still
had some issues. However, it was determined that since Duchane
was being held as a British prisoner awaiting transfer from
(24:59):
Belle View at the time of his escape, apparently at
that point he had been transferred to uh Britain, at
least on paper. Since Britain had dropped the matter, there
really was not any issue and so the whole thing
was dismissed. This was very frustrating to some of the
police and detectives that had worked on this case, but
the judge was kind of like man if Fritz Ducane
(25:22):
had just gone back to his life working in entertainment advertising.
He probably could have had a nice last stretch of years,
but Ducayne, at this point was in his mid fifties.
He still had a burning hatred for Britain. He had
given interviews in the press where he had explicitly said so,
and in ninety four Fritz was recruited by Royal Scott Golden,
(25:45):
who was the head of the Order of seventy six
that was a New York organization that was sympathetic to
the Third Reich and believed that Jews were the enemy
in America. Golden needed a spy and Deuquaete needed a job,
so they struck up a deal. But when a reporter
broke the story that Fritz Duchane was likely working for
this pro Nazi group, it was actually Ducane's mistress, who
(26:08):
was Jewish and learned about all of this news through
the paper like everyone else, who reached out to that
reporter to help him get more info. She actually fed
him information for a couple of years, but Ducaine's association
with this group became pretty unclear and fuzzy pretty rapidly.
Within a few months, Duchane was working instead for the
Works Progress Administration, and then he opened his own business,
(26:31):
air terminals company, which was allegedly dealing in r KAO stock.
It may have been a front or just a way
for him to have meetings somewhere. But there's this messy,
confusing assortment of details during these years that suggests whether
he was working for the Nazi group or not, it
was kind of an unfocused time in his life, or
(26:52):
he was just giving everyone the slip in every way possible.
But then in December of seven, Fritz Ducane once again
became a spy for Germany, this time working for the
Nazis on US soil. He had been recruited by Colonel
Nicholas Adolphe Fritz Ritter, who was organizing a U. S
spy ring as part of Hitler's military intelligence group, the
(27:13):
ab There Ritter put Fritz in the key position in
this ring, and Fritz, seeing as one more way to
continue his lifetime vow of revenge against Britain, took the job.
Ritter recruited almost three dozen other members to be part
of this ring, one of whom was named William Siebold.
You'll also see him listed as Wilhelm Siebold because he
(27:35):
was a naturalized US citizen born in Germany, and he
had been recruited when he was back home visiting his
mother in nineteen thirty nine. When he returned to the
US in nineteen forty, it was under his new identity
Harry Sawyer. He had spycraft training under his belt at
this point, and he was instructed to make contact with
Fritz Dukane. Sebold did not want to be a spy,
(27:56):
though he had been told by his Nazi recruiters that
his family would be hurt and that they would reveal
secrets about him to the U. S. Government if he
didn't cooperate. He was fearful of losing his US citizenship
and his life in New York, so Sebold had agreed
to this, But while he was still in Germany, he
had made a surreptitious trip to the US Embassy in Cologne,
(28:18):
disclosed what he was being forced to do, and told
the Consul general that he was a loyal U. S. Citizen.
So the FBI was waiting for Sebold when he arrived
back in New York kept an eye on his movements
as he went through the motions of fulfilling his mission
for Germany. It's basically being a double agent at this
point yep, And it was through Sebold that the FBI
(28:40):
identified Fritz Duquesne. Duquesne was supplying Germany with information anything
to do with British ships that he could find, information
that he gathered while posing as a student, writing letters
of curiosity to industrial companies that were working on war material,
and even material that he said he got by breaking
into a du Pont plant regarding bomb designs. Duchese was
(29:03):
a wealth of information, not only on details about what
the US and Britain were doing, but also in detailing
methods of sabotage that could be employed by Germany to
weaken the military power of the Allies. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was briefed on Ducane's involvement with the spy ring.
Resources were allocated to have Ducane followed. Although he was
(29:25):
pretty excellent at shaking a tail, even though he wasn't
the young man he once was, he was at his
early sixties by this point. He often shaved a few
years off when people asked him his age, though. But
most damning was that while Duchese was feeding this information
to see Bold, he was being recorded and this was
all happening. Keep in mind before the US had officially
(29:46):
entered the war, so this was a very eye opening
look at Germany's spy efforts before becoming part of the conflict.
They were spying on the US way before they were
officially declared part of this conflict. For who was going
by the nickname the Duke at this point even unknowingly
befriended one of the FBI agents who was surveilling him
(30:07):
because he was very outgoing and friendly and the two
had had this not exactly chance meeting that had been
orchestrated by the agent. But like everyone else, this FBI man,
special agent Raymond new Kirk, found Fritz incredibly charming, and
even though he was completely dedicated to his job, he
admitted that he couldn't help developing a fondness for him. Finally,
(30:29):
on June one, the FBI had enough information on the
spy ring to start making arrests. They had slow played
their surveillance to make sure nobody got suspicious and to
make sure they could collect enough evidence to have an
air tight case. When new Kirk arrived with friends and
then told Kane he was under arrest. Once they were
all inside Fritz's apartment, the spy did not say a word.
(30:52):
His living girlfriend, Evelyn Lewis, was also arrested, along with
thirty one other members of the ring. By the time
I'm the guilty Please and the trials for those who
pleaded innocent were over, Duquesne Inspiring had wrapped up a
combined total of more than three hundred years in prison sentences.
Duquesne was sentenced to eighteen years with a two thousand
(31:14):
dollar fine for violating the Registration Act of Night. His
testimony during the trial, in which he told his entire
life story, at least his version of it, completely enthralled
the courtroom. He said that he would never do anything
to hurt the United States, but that he would do
anything to hurt Britain. But Fritz had finally landed himself
(31:36):
in a spot that he could not escape from, as
the evidence was simply too clear in proving his treachery.
Despite his advancing years and some health issues, Fritz was
classified as a maximum custody prisoner at Leavenworth. Early into
his incarceration, Fritz started exhibiting a number of ailments, including
rapidly advancing senility, But due to this history of faking
(31:59):
illness while in custody, there was some doubt about how
serious these ailments were. Additionally, contraband items, including razor blades,
were found in his possession pretty often. In Nive he
was moved to a medical facility for federal prisoners in
Missouri as the forties drew to a close. It seemed
as though his doctors were willing to work on his
(32:20):
behalf for an early release due to his deteriorating mental health,
although his daily report write ups by staff no kind
of an uptick in his mental and physical health. Once
things started to go his way in this regard, yeah,
once he knew that doctors were like, we're working to
get you a shorter sentence, which ultimately did happen, he
was like, oh great, uh, suddenly a little more tuned
(32:45):
in to his mental acuity and a little bit better
physical energy. So, while he was still incarcerated, Fritz actually
tried to sue twentieth century Fox. This was over the
movie The House on Fort Street featured a character inspired
by it's Ducane. Fritz claimed that his spy ring had
made this movie successful and that the studio was using
(33:07):
their wealth to keep him incarcerated. This was like his
other hobby letters, writing about how poorly He was treated
right in line with all of that, but it did
not end in Duquesne's favor. Ducaine was released from prison
in the autumn of nineteen fifty nine, long after most
of his other co conspirators in the spy ring had
been paroled. He was destitute. He tried to sue the
(33:29):
FBI for loss of valuable property, including diamonds that he
claimed or taken when he was arrested. He was awarded
the four hundred dollars they had taken from his wallet,
but his more exorbitant claims were dismissed. The Department of
Welfare arranged for him to move into the London Arms
and Nursing Home. On December twenty one, nineteen fifty five,
(33:50):
which was Fritz Duchane's seventy eighth birthday, he gave one
last talk at the Adventurers Club. Having him there at
all after his spy conviction caused some free among the members,
but ultimately the evening went without incident, and after that
Fritz decided that he could not live in the nursing
Home anymore, and he got his own apartment. That was
(34:10):
short lived. However, he fell and he broke his hip
and he was admitted to the city hospital on what
was then called Welfare Island that is now Roosevelt Island.
His recovery was going well, but then he had a
fatal stroke. On He wanted to close out with a
comment about Fritz Duquesne, written by Frederick Burnham, who had
(34:30):
orders to kill Duquesne during the Anglo Boer War and
who worked with him on that Hippo plan quote. Much
has been written about Duquesne, most of it rubbish, Yet
his real accomplishments were so terrible and amazing that they
make the Yellow Journal thrillers about him seem as mild
as bedtime stories. Oh Fritz, Uh, he's an interesting character
(34:57):
because he did some really reprehensible things, But you see
why people found him so likable. It's an interesting duality.
Those are the people that I always wonder what's actually
going on in their heads. Yeah. Yeah, we've had some fraudsters,
Like if you have a spectrum of fraudsters, from the
ones who were mostly harmless and kind of uh fascinating
(35:17):
to watch too, like the ones that were really harmful
but also kind of entertaining. Like he's much on the
more of the harmful end of the spectrum. I think yes, yes,
Fritz du Kane. UM, I have another listener mail. This
one is also about emergency medicine, which part one was
as well. This is from our listener Regina, who writes, Hello, First,
(35:38):
let me tell you how much I enjoy your podcast.
I have been a fan for years and look forward
to every new episode eagerly. I have one small extra
information about the podcast. In emergency Medicine that I think
you might find interesting. You talked about resuscitation. The mannequin
used for training mouth to mouth here in Germany and
I think also in other countries, has a washable mask.
This mask is modeled from the death mask of an
(36:00):
unknown young woman found in Paris in the eighteen eighties.
This mask was a very popular decoration because she looks
so peaceful, and for this reason it was also chosen
for the training mannequin. I thought you might enjoy this detail.
Keep up the good work. UM, thank you, Regina. I
have read that. I'm sure a number of people have
before as well. UM. I didn't include it because it
(36:20):
was kind of one of those things that is often reported.
I don't know about the veracity of it one way
or another, so it's an interesting tale. Allegedly, the designer
saw it in a shop window while he was walking
around in Paris at one point and just thought she
was incredibly pretty and very soothing to look at. So
that's the scoop on Ricessa Annie or uh Recessa, and
(36:43):
I think is what she's called in other countries. I'm
grateful she exists because lots of us have learned to
do CPR thanks to that. Whether she had a beautiful
mask on or not. Um If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
everywhere on social media as Missed in History, and we
encourage you to subscribe to the show. You can do
(37:05):
that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts,
or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. Okay, this
is a part two of our two parter on Fritz Duchane,
(00:21):
and we are going to pick up right where we
left off in the story of the life of Fritz Duchane,
adventurer and spy. So if you did not listen to
the first part, you really should, or this is probably
gonna make no sense whatsoever. So when we left off,
Fritz had made his way after an escape from Bermuda
to Paterson, New Jersey. He had done this through a
(00:43):
network of Boors sympathizers. After a few weeks in Patterson,
he got word that the American Transpall League in New
York would be able to help him. He got set
up in the city and worked first as a subway conductor,
which he really hated, and then as a subscription collector
for the New York Hair World. Fritz wasn't really content
in that role either, but he was able to parlay
(01:05):
it into work as a reporter, and that launched a
nice little career for him. He started writing about some
of his adventures back in Africa, and these articles in
the Herald were so popular that other papers started to
become interested in him. So for the five years from
nineteen o four to nineteen o nine, Duquesne was moving
from paper to paper as one after another made him
(01:27):
more lucrative offers, and this reputation and income also offered
Duchese the best payment of all, the opportunity to craft
an identity for himself entirely to his own liking. He
wrote several novels and plays and even started lecturing in
his own chameleon way. Ducaine had made himself into a
perfect New York gentleman with enough celebrity to stay employed.
(01:51):
Fritz wrote about all kinds of globe trotting travel and
embedded reporting that he was doing, but most of these
claims are unsubstantiated, although he did seem to do quite
a bit of traveling during this time. Still, at the time,
readers believed that he was rubbing elbows with important people
and that he was an expert on big game hunting
(02:12):
in Africa. Both of those were pretty true because of
his upbringing, and it was that writing that piqued the
interest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Eventually, Fritz as well as
the number of other experts on the subject of safari hunting,
were invited to the White House, and this was precipitated
in part because of as Roosevelt's interest in big game
(02:35):
hunting and his plans for an African trip once he
left office were made public, Ducaine started writing a series
of articles titled Hunting ahead of Roosevelt in East Africa.
Ducaine's visit to Washington, d C. To visit the President
was sensational enough that a cartoon about it ran in
the Washington Star. The art by Clifford K. Berryman, which
(02:56):
is titled Seeking Pointers, features an excited game caricature of
the President showing Ducane, who is clearly identified by his
name scrawled across the band of a cap that's on
the floor, all of the animals that he's interested in,
and he is using a pointer. Of course, there was
no boasting needed after this. Ducane was associated with the
(03:17):
President as someone who Roosevelt sought out for advice, and
that made him sought out by more and more people.
And he saw how lucrative this position was, and he
started a lecture tour about Roosevelt's travels while the President
was in Africa, titled East Africa The Wonderland of Roosevelt's Hunt.
Fret's knew that tension sold papers. He started writing articles,
(03:41):
many of which were printed all over the country through syndication,
about how doubtful he was that Roosevelt could handle East
Africa's challenges. He would boast of his own level of
comfort with the various perils like animals and tropical diseases,
just shooting them off as so common to him that
they seemed mundy dane, But then he would mention that
(04:02):
they were potentially deadly to a tourist hunter like the President.
He also dropped in comments about just how poor Roosevelt's
health was to get readers wondering if the next article
would be reporting Teddy Roosevelt's death. And it was because
of all of these articles and his lectures that Louisiana
Representative Robert F. Broussard got in touch with Duquesne about
(04:23):
Hippo's just how I discovered Duquesne when I was working on, uh,
those two episodes. Obviously this is all covered in those episodes,
So we're gonna give you just the broad Strokes. Here,
Brussard was trying to solve the problem of a US
meat shortage by introducing a bill that would fund the
import of hippos to the United States. Those hippos, in theory,
(04:44):
could live off of the hyacinth that was a problem
because it was overgrowing much of the South, and then
they could be slaughtered for their meat. This may seem
like it solves two problems, but is in fact a
terrible idea that's did not work uh all the details
in those other episodes, Decane testified before a Senate committee
that he was an African animal himself and that hippo's
(05:06):
were easy to raise and delicious. He also had a
list of other species that they might want to think
about importing as livestock, and to support this plan to
Kane started writing articles explaining what a good idea it was. Again,
it was not a good idea, and thankfully, for a
variety of reasons, this whole hippo plan fell apart. Something
(05:28):
else had happened once Ducane got to the US. Aside
from this launch of a strange career in journalism. During
that brief day we mentioned when he was in New Jersey,
Alice Wortley, the young American woman that he had met
while he was a prisoner in Bermuda, found him, presumably
through the system of Boer sympathizers that he had been
(05:48):
in contact with and that she would have known about
because she was living on Bermuda at the time, and
the two of them started a courtship and then they
were married in the summer of nineteen Even after the
less than flattering articles he had written about Roosevelt, Ducaine
campaigned for him in nineteen twelve, doubts about his physical
fitness aside, it seemed that Fritz Ducaine respected Roosevelt so
(06:10):
much that he wrote a lengthy brochure about why Roosevelt
should be elected president once again. The ending statement of
his brochure read quote, your vote will decide whether the
people shall rule or the corrupt corporations. The fight will
be between Woodrow Wilson, the writer of history, and Theodore Roosevelt,
who makes it. Undoubtedly, Ducaine was also hoping for a
(06:32):
little favor to fall his way if Roosevelt won the election,
but he never found out because Roosevelt lost to Wilson,
and while that defeat may have cast a shadow over
nineteen twelve. Fritz was part of another project that year
that had greater success, and that was the founding of
the Adventurers Club of New York. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman was
(06:52):
the editor of Adventure Magazine and one of the club's
co founders, and he was a fan of Duquesne, having
been publishing his writing for some time. There is a
great quote in a Fritz Duchane biography called Counterfeit Hero
that I read about Fritz's involvement in the club that reads,
whenever in New York or not in prison, he faithfully
showed up at the monthly meetings to report his latest adventure.
(07:15):
It was December nine thirteen that Decane became an American citizen.
Soon after that, he and his wife Alice left for
a tour of South America. Fritz allegedly was following an
expedition of Roosevelt's and making a film about it. Along
the way, they took a massive iron trunk with them
that took two men to move, which was ostensibly to
(07:37):
carry the movie reels and equipment. While the duchess were traveling,
World War One began with the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand because Britain was on the Allied side, Fritz automatically
wanted to align himself with the Central Powers. He and
Alice were in Brazil at this point, and Fritz promptly
sent her home to New York, claiming that he was
(07:58):
planning more rigorous trips into tamed wilderness that she would
not enjoy. But what he actually did was go straight
to the German consulate in Brazil and tell them that
he wanted to help fight Britain and the Allies. So
Fritz Ducane became a contractor saboteur for Germany. We're gonna
get to Fritz's new career in just a moment, but
(08:18):
first we will take a quick sponsor break. This new
job of Fritz's paid an annual salary of four thousand marks,
plus a daily expense allowance of ten marks. It wasn't
a ton of money, but for every completed mission there
was also a bonus. Fritz took to this system with enthusiasm,
(08:42):
and he adopted two regular aliases that he used during
this time, Frederick Frederick's and George Fordham. Frederick's was an actor,
he also was other things along the way. Fordham was
a botanist and Duquesne would use either of them, or
even sometimes his own identity or others he and died
on the fly as suited his purposes. And his purposes
(09:03):
were simple, at least in their directive, sabotage boats that
were headed to enemy countries while they were still in port.
He claimed that in this work he set more than
a hundred on fire and sunk more than twenty. He
would use disguises to kind of trawl around and port
eavesdropping on sailors to get information, and he would sometimes
(09:24):
use them more directly. For example, his botanist character often
shipped plants samples aboard boats that mysteriously had explosions aboard.
He was not entirely undetected in this Authorities started to
notice him, and he had to become more and more careful.
On February eleventh, nineteen sixteen, Fritz's alter ego, George Fordham,
(09:45):
signed a shipping document declaring that he was returning a
case filled with motion picture film and negatives to the
United States, and said that the case had left the
US in nineteen thirteen, which was the year that he
and Alice left for this trip. He shipped the case
aboard the steamer Tennyson, which was headed to Trinidad and
then New York and then Liverpool. On February twenty one,
(10:07):
the Tennyson had an explosion in the hold and three
of its crew were killed, although the captain was able
to beach the damaged boat. An investigation ensued and an
arrest soon followed. The man taken into custody, who was
named Bower, confessed to his part in the crime and
gave up Duchesne in the process, including naming several of
(10:27):
Duchesne's aliases. Things quickly heated up for Ducane. He was
charged by the British government with murder on the high seas,
sinking and burning British ships, conspiracy, falsification of documents, and
sabotaging military stores. When British authorities had realized that the
man working for Germany to do so much damage was
(10:48):
the same one who had been a British military officer,
it was both infuriating and embarrassing, so they intended to
pursue him and bring him to justice. Duquesne on the
run and also hunting for new business ventures to keep
money flowing in the only thing he felt he could
in such circumstances, which was that he faked his own death.
(11:08):
On April nineteen sixteen, the announcement of Duchane's death hit
the US papers. The story was that he had been
killed in Bolivia by quote, hostile Indians. The account of
Duchesne's demise was cabled from South America, and the obituary
write up that followed with information quote from a man
who knew Duquesne intimately. Undoubtedly Duchesne himself is full of
(11:32):
the same sorts of over the top adventure stories that
have continually casually combined fiction and reality in Fritz's life story.
That initial story only offered some confused concern over the
fate of Alice Duquesne. Had she also perished? The New
York Times did not know, but they soon followed up
with a second story that yes, she was alive and
(11:55):
back in New York and had received a letter from
Fritz several weeks before he was a currently killed for
twelve days, Ducane's fate was believed to have been sealed
in Bolivia. But then on May eighth, another story hit
the US papers, this one written by Frederick Fredericks Fritz Duquesne.
The report exclaimed was alive. He had been found in
(12:18):
rough shape, left for dead after the attack, but he
was receiving aid and was expected to recover. It seems
that while Duchane initially thought death would shake Britain's pursuit
of him, he soon realized that he didn't have anywhere
to go. He only had a US passport, So he
revived himself and he headed back to New York in
the hopes that the US government wouldn't extradite him if
(12:40):
he was found out, or probably more in the hopes
that no one would realize he had gotten back. Ducaine
arrived in New York not long after this, but for
a man on the run, he was not idle at all.
While in South America, he had gotten involved in filmmaking
projects with a school system there to try to make money.
But to make the films he needed to get it
(13:00):
back to the US anyway to buy film stock, So
when he got to New York he did that, paying
cash for the film twenty four thousand dollars worth. He
then put it in a box labeled statuary, stored it
at a warehouse in Brooklyn, and took out a thirty
three thousand dollar insurance policy on it with the Stuyvesant
Insurance Company under the name Frederick Fredericks. He loved that name. Uh. Mysteriously,
(13:26):
the warehouse had a fire and the have box mark
statutory was destroyed. It's unclear exactly what Fritz was telling
Alice once they reunited about where he had been and
what had been going on, but he did convince her
to pursue the insurance policy for the warehouse box, as
well as another policy that he had taken out on
(13:47):
the alleged film in that mysterious iron case that he
had shipped aboard the tennis in and then after convincing
her to file these claims, Fritz vanished during the time
that he was unaccounted for or the h MS Hampshire
was sunk by a German sub Fritz Duquese, who had
sworn vengeance on the military commander Kitchener during the Second
(14:09):
Boer War, claimed that he had orchestrated this sub attack
and that he was responsible for the assassination of Kitchener,
and he also claimed that this was an attack ordered
by an organization called the Bore Revolutionary Committee. That entity
did not exist. Duquesne next turned up in Washington, d C.
In July of nineteen sixteen, and started to reach out
(14:31):
to his old contacts, including his once collaborator in the
Hippo Plan, Robert Broussard, who at this point was a senator.
Broussard seemed oblivious to the fact that Fritz was on
the run, and at the Adventurer's request, tried to get
him a government job, but that was to no avail,
so it was back to New York for Duquesne. He
didn't let anybody know he was in town, though. He
(14:52):
lived in an apartment that he shared with another man,
rather than going back home to Alice, which was something
he had done just before disappearing a few months earlier. Yeah,
he had gotten a separate place from her. We did.
It's unclear why. If he was trying to protect her,
or if he just wanted out of the marriage and
didn't want to mess with it. We don't know. He
didn't need money, so he reinvented himself again, and this
(15:14):
time as an Australian war hero named Claude Stoughton of
the West Australian Light Horse Unit. This was all entirely fictitious.
There was no such unit or person. He even invented
a uniform for him. But in this guise he became
a salesman, a salesman of patriotism, of his fake backstory
(15:35):
which was kind of a pastiche of his own experiences
and some others he made up, and a lot of embellishment,
and mostly he became a salesman of library bonds for
the Allies. Claude Stoughton was well paid for speaking engagements
and he was put up in nice hotels, But soon
people started to notice that in social settings Claude, when
(15:57):
he spoke casually, seemed to have alliances toward the Germans
rather than the Allies. At the same time, the investigation
into the insurance claims that Alice Ducaine had filed had
given the insurance company and the police enough information that
they realized to Ducane really was, and that he was
a wanted man, not just for his insurance crimes, but
(16:19):
for his crimes against Britain. Ducaine was arrested in late
nineteen seventeen when he was returning to his apartment from
a Claude stounton tour. His belongings had already been searched
and had turned up just a wealth of evidence. Yeah,
there was so much damning paperwork, including communications about Germany
(16:39):
and doing what was best for Germany and also things
around these um these various insurance issues. It was a
pretty uh exciting find for the authorities. But after his arrest,
Duchane was then held and charged for two different reasons.
One the charges of British government particular really the murder
(17:00):
of those three men in the bombing attack on the
steamer Tennyson murder at sea automatically carried a death sentence
if you were found guilty. In the US was launching
a federal inquiry into the matter to make sure that
this was the right person and everything lined up, and
to the New York District Attorney was examining the allegations
that he had committed insurance fraud. We will try to
(17:21):
untangle Ducane's legal situation after we take a quick break
for word from sponsors. A letter was sent to the
British government's legal representation in the US, that was the
Kudair Brothers, assuring them that the British charges against Ducane
(17:43):
were being considered carefully as the investigation was conducted. That
letter read, in part quote, in the event that the
United States Commissioner, after a hearing directs that the defendant
beheld on the charges and be extradited. This Office, on
receipt of official notice from the proper Department, will waive
all objections to the proposed extradition and exchange for this,
(18:04):
the British government agreed to send Ducaine back to the
US to face charges in the event he wasn't convicted
in Britain or if his sentence was less than life imprisonment.
As these investigations went on, it was eventually determined by
the US government that nothing they could find on Ducaene's
illegal activities in the US would be anywhere near as
(18:25):
serious as the charges that Great Britain had made, so
the decision was made that he would be moved out
of US custody and given to British authorities to face
trial for the explosion of the steamship Tennis In After
Decaine learned that he was to be turned over to
the British government, he developed a medical condition. He was
suddenly paralyzed. This was a hundred percent fake, but initially
(18:48):
he was moved from his prison cell to Bellevue Hospital
for observation and treatment, and he was committed enough to
this whole ruge that he convinced medical staff that he
had indeed fallen into a state of paralysis. Anytime he
needed to be moved from his bed, he depended on
the orderlies and the nurses to do it for him. Then,
on Ma Fritz Duchane escaped from Bellevue Hospital. The bars
(19:15):
of his window in the hospital's prison ward had been
sawed through. Any saws used for that job had to
have come from an outside source, because Fritz had been
searched thoroughly when he was transferred from his prison cell
to his hospital bed. Even the coverage in the New
York Times sounds like the reporter who wrote it was
kind of impressed by this whole thing. Quote. While attendants
(19:37):
and the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital were acting in
the belief that Captain Fritz Jobert Duquesne, the adventurer and romancer,
was a hopeless paralytic patient, he saw it through the
bars of his cell early yesterday morning and escaped by
scaling two fences about seven feet high. The article goes
on to mention him first dropping from the window to
(19:59):
the ledge of an ice house and then to the
ground farther below, saying, quote, even this display of agility,
amazing for a paralytic, did not give him his liberty,
and he was forced to climb a brick wall about
six feet high and an iron fence with menacing spikes
about eight feet high. All this spectacular leaping and climbing
(20:19):
to escape prison did not attract the attention of any
of the guards or attendance of the prison ward, and
the absence of the quote paralytic patient was not noticed
until the attendants made their usual rounds of the ward
at four thirty a m. To complete his ruse, Ducane
had arranged pillows and comforters roughly into the shape of
(20:40):
a person curled into a ball in his bed, and
pulled his blanket over them. So again, it's so funny.
I feel like he set so many of the tropes
we see in film and television. The grounds of the
hospital were searched once it was realized that he was gone,
and they came up empty, and police developed a theory
that the escapee had a rain for an accomplice to
(21:01):
meet him with a car and a change of clothes
on nearby First Avenue, because it had been believed up
to that point that Duchesne was truly paralyzed. He had
not been considered dangerous or a flight risk, so the
few visitors that he had were not documented on any
kind of list. Ducane wrote a letter to one of
his friends, allegedly from Mexico. The letter stated that Fritz
(21:24):
had the help of friends in his escape and that
they provided him with a car and had then gotten
him onto a plane with an expert pilot who took
him to Mexico. The friend Ducane wrote to brought this
letter to the police and it was dismissed as a hoax.
They're thinking was that he sent the letter hoping that
his friend would take it to the authorities in the
(21:45):
hopes that the Mexico story would take them off of
his real trail. But by the end of the summer,
all of the other trails had gone cold, and police
did start to believe that he had indeed left the
US and that he was, in all likelihood exactly where
he said he was, which was Mexico. You remember, he
traveled in South America and knew a lot of people
(22:05):
in Middle and South America that they thought he could
have gone to for safe harbor. There are also plenty
of people that believe that he was just kind of
laying low and kicking around the US. Uh. He definitely
was in Boston for a while, at least until he
moved back to New York. They weren't sure of his whereabouts,
but this time he arrived in the city as a
(22:27):
new man, Frank to Trafford Craven Alice. His wife had
left him when his ruse had caved in and he
had been arrested, So this start as Craven was kind
of a fresh reinvention of himself with no ties. Before
this returned to New York, Fritz slash Frank had spent
some time, as Holly said, in Boston getting into the
(22:48):
movie industry by working with a financier named Joseph P. Kennedy,
who had purchased the film booking offices of America. Kennedy
hired Fritz for pr work that required Ducane to move
back to Manhattan. Marks a strangely conventional time in Ducane's life.
He seemed to actually just be working a job and
living a quiet life for a few years. He moved
(23:11):
on to another job at Quickly Publishing, which had him
working writing and editing advertising copy for vaudeville acts. Although
Fritz was living well but under the radar. His past
caught up with him in nineteen thirty two and he
was arrested again. This time, Fritz kept up his Frank
de Trafford Craven persona, insisting over and over that the
(23:32):
police had the wrong man. And just in case you're curious,
that Joseph P. Kennedy is in fact the father of
John F. Kennedy. Uh defending Ducane once he was arrested
in nineteen thirty two, although he continued to go by
Craven through this whole legal morass was well known civil
liberties lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes. Hayes would later write of
(23:53):
Duquesne and maybe brace for this one, because some of
it's not the best attitude, uh quote. We all admired
the man. Even the district attorney and judge were sympathetic.
It was before Hitler's time, and no one hated the Germans.
After all, if there had been a murder, it was
homicide in a war of many years ago, and homicide
in war is heroic. Hastok. The approach that, first of all,
(24:16):
if the British government wanted to have Ducane extradited, they
would have to prove it was actually him and not
this Frank Craven. Secondly, he would have to have been
on British soil when he committed the crime for this
extradition to stand. The British government did not really have
any interest in pursuing events from the war at this point.
The thinking was that it could just dredge up matters
(24:39):
between countries that had since been settled, and that there
was just no need for that. So whether we were
talking about Frank de Trafford Craven or Fritz Ducane, Brittain
was just done with the matter, but New York still
had some issues. However, it was determined that since Duchane
was being held as a British prisoner awaiting transfer from
(24:59):
Belle View at the time of his escape, apparently at
that point he had been transferred to uh Britain, at
least on paper. Since Britain had dropped the matter, there
really was not any issue and so the whole thing
was dismissed. This was very frustrating to some of the
police and detectives that had worked on this case, but
the judge was kind of like man if Fritz Ducane
(25:22):
had just gone back to his life working in entertainment advertising.
He probably could have had a nice last stretch of years,
but Ducayne, at this point was in his mid fifties.
He still had a burning hatred for Britain. He had
given interviews in the press where he had explicitly said so,
and in ninety four Fritz was recruited by Royal Scott Golden,
(25:45):
who was the head of the Order of seventy six
that was a New York organization that was sympathetic to
the Third Reich and believed that Jews were the enemy
in America. Golden needed a spy and Deuquaete needed a job,
so they struck up a deal. But when a reporter
broke the story that Fritz Duchane was likely working for
this pro Nazi group, it was actually Ducane's mistress, who
(26:08):
was Jewish and learned about all of this news through
the paper like everyone else, who reached out to that
reporter to help him get more info. She actually fed
him information for a couple of years, but Ducaine's association
with this group became pretty unclear and fuzzy pretty rapidly.
Within a few months, Duchane was working instead for the
Works Progress Administration, and then he opened his own business,
(26:31):
air terminals company, which was allegedly dealing in r KAO stock.
It may have been a front or just a way
for him to have meetings somewhere. But there's this messy,
confusing assortment of details during these years that suggests whether
he was working for the Nazi group or not, it
was kind of an unfocused time in his life, or
(26:52):
he was just giving everyone the slip in every way possible.
But then in December of seven, Fritz Ducane once again
became a spy for Germany, this time working for the
Nazis on US soil. He had been recruited by Colonel
Nicholas Adolphe Fritz Ritter, who was organizing a U. S
spy ring as part of Hitler's military intelligence group, the
(27:13):
ab There Ritter put Fritz in the key position in
this ring, and Fritz, seeing as one more way to
continue his lifetime vow of revenge against Britain, took the job.
Ritter recruited almost three dozen other members to be part
of this ring, one of whom was named William Siebold.
You'll also see him listed as Wilhelm Siebold because he
(27:35):
was a naturalized US citizen born in Germany, and he
had been recruited when he was back home visiting his
mother in nineteen thirty nine. When he returned to the
US in nineteen forty, it was under his new identity
Harry Sawyer. He had spycraft training under his belt at
this point, and he was instructed to make contact with
Fritz Dukane. Sebold did not want to be a spy,
(27:56):
though he had been told by his Nazi recruiters that
his family would be hurt and that they would reveal
secrets about him to the U. S. Government if he
didn't cooperate. He was fearful of losing his US citizenship
and his life in New York, so Sebold had agreed
to this, But while he was still in Germany, he
had made a surreptitious trip to the US Embassy in Cologne,
(28:18):
disclosed what he was being forced to do, and told
the Consul general that he was a loyal U. S. Citizen.
So the FBI was waiting for Sebold when he arrived
back in New York kept an eye on his movements
as he went through the motions of fulfilling his mission
for Germany. It's basically being a double agent at this
point yep, And it was through Sebold that the FBI
(28:40):
identified Fritz Duquesne. Duquesne was supplying Germany with information anything
to do with British ships that he could find, information
that he gathered while posing as a student, writing letters
of curiosity to industrial companies that were working on war material,
and even material that he said he got by breaking
into a du Pont plant regarding bomb designs. Duchese was
(29:03):
a wealth of information, not only on details about what
the US and Britain were doing, but also in detailing
methods of sabotage that could be employed by Germany to
weaken the military power of the Allies. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was briefed on Ducane's involvement with the spy ring.
Resources were allocated to have Ducane followed. Although he was
(29:25):
pretty excellent at shaking a tail, even though he wasn't
the young man he once was, he was at his
early sixties by this point. He often shaved a few
years off when people asked him his age, though. But
most damning was that while Duchese was feeding this information
to see Bold, he was being recorded and this was
all happening. Keep in mind before the US had officially
(29:46):
entered the war, so this was a very eye opening
look at Germany's spy efforts before becoming part of the conflict.
They were spying on the US way before they were
officially declared part of this conflict. For who was going
by the nickname the Duke at this point even unknowingly
befriended one of the FBI agents who was surveilling him
(30:07):
because he was very outgoing and friendly and the two
had had this not exactly chance meeting that had been
orchestrated by the agent. But like everyone else, this FBI man,
special agent Raymond new Kirk, found Fritz incredibly charming, and
even though he was completely dedicated to his job, he
admitted that he couldn't help developing a fondness for him. Finally,
(30:29):
on June one, the FBI had enough information on the
spy ring to start making arrests. They had slow played
their surveillance to make sure nobody got suspicious and to
make sure they could collect enough evidence to have an
air tight case. When new Kirk arrived with friends and
then told Kane he was under arrest. Once they were
all inside Fritz's apartment, the spy did not say a word.
(30:52):
His living girlfriend, Evelyn Lewis, was also arrested, along with
thirty one other members of the ring. By the time
I'm the guilty Please and the trials for those who
pleaded innocent were over, Duquesne Inspiring had wrapped up a
combined total of more than three hundred years in prison sentences.
Duquesne was sentenced to eighteen years with a two thousand
(31:14):
dollar fine for violating the Registration Act of Night. His
testimony during the trial, in which he told his entire
life story, at least his version of it, completely enthralled
the courtroom. He said that he would never do anything
to hurt the United States, but that he would do
anything to hurt Britain. But Fritz had finally landed himself
(31:36):
in a spot that he could not escape from, as
the evidence was simply too clear in proving his treachery.
Despite his advancing years and some health issues, Fritz was
classified as a maximum custody prisoner at Leavenworth. Early into
his incarceration, Fritz started exhibiting a number of ailments, including
rapidly advancing senility, But due to this history of faking
(31:59):
illness while in custody, there was some doubt about how
serious these ailments were. Additionally, contraband items, including razor blades,
were found in his possession pretty often. In Nive he
was moved to a medical facility for federal prisoners in
Missouri as the forties drew to a close. It seemed
as though his doctors were willing to work on his
(32:20):
behalf for an early release due to his deteriorating mental health,
although his daily report write ups by staff no kind
of an uptick in his mental and physical health. Once
things started to go his way in this regard, yeah,
once he knew that doctors were like, we're working to
get you a shorter sentence, which ultimately did happen, he
was like, oh great, uh, suddenly a little more tuned
(32:45):
in to his mental acuity and a little bit better
physical energy. So, while he was still incarcerated, Fritz actually
tried to sue twentieth century Fox. This was over the
movie The House on Fort Street featured a character inspired
by it's Ducane. Fritz claimed that his spy ring had
made this movie successful and that the studio was using
(33:07):
their wealth to keep him incarcerated. This was like his
other hobby letters, writing about how poorly He was treated
right in line with all of that, but it did
not end in Duquesne's favor. Ducaine was released from prison
in the autumn of nineteen fifty nine, long after most
of his other co conspirators in the spy ring had
been paroled. He was destitute. He tried to sue the
(33:29):
FBI for loss of valuable property, including diamonds that he
claimed or taken when he was arrested. He was awarded
the four hundred dollars they had taken from his wallet,
but his more exorbitant claims were dismissed. The Department of
Welfare arranged for him to move into the London Arms
and Nursing Home. On December twenty one, nineteen fifty five,
(33:50):
which was Fritz Duchane's seventy eighth birthday, he gave one
last talk at the Adventurers Club. Having him there at
all after his spy conviction caused some free among the members,
but ultimately the evening went without incident, and after that
Fritz decided that he could not live in the nursing
Home anymore, and he got his own apartment. That was
(34:10):
short lived. However, he fell and he broke his hip
and he was admitted to the city hospital on what
was then called Welfare Island that is now Roosevelt Island.
His recovery was going well, but then he had a
fatal stroke. On He wanted to close out with a
comment about Fritz Duquesne, written by Frederick Burnham, who had
(34:30):
orders to kill Duquesne during the Anglo Boer War and
who worked with him on that Hippo plan quote. Much
has been written about Duquesne, most of it rubbish, Yet
his real accomplishments were so terrible and amazing that they
make the Yellow Journal thrillers about him seem as mild
as bedtime stories. Oh Fritz, Uh, he's an interesting character
(34:57):
because he did some really reprehensible things, But you see
why people found him so likable. It's an interesting duality.
Those are the people that I always wonder what's actually
going on in their heads. Yeah. Yeah, we've had some fraudsters,
Like if you have a spectrum of fraudsters, from the
ones who were mostly harmless and kind of uh fascinating
(35:17):
to watch too, like the ones that were really harmful
but also kind of entertaining. Like he's much on the
more of the harmful end of the spectrum. I think yes, yes,
Fritz du Kane. UM, I have another listener mail. This
one is also about emergency medicine, which part one was
as well. This is from our listener Regina, who writes, Hello, First,
(35:38):
let me tell you how much I enjoy your podcast.
I have been a fan for years and look forward
to every new episode eagerly. I have one small extra
information about the podcast. In emergency Medicine that I think
you might find interesting. You talked about resuscitation. The mannequin
used for training mouth to mouth here in Germany and
I think also in other countries, has a washable mask.
This mask is modeled from the death mask of an
(36:00):
unknown young woman found in Paris in the eighteen eighties.
This mask was a very popular decoration because she looks
so peaceful, and for this reason it was also chosen
for the training mannequin. I thought you might enjoy this detail.
Keep up the good work. UM, thank you, Regina. I
have read that. I'm sure a number of people have
before as well. UM. I didn't include it because it
(36:20):
was kind of one of those things that is often reported.
I don't know about the veracity of it one way
or another, so it's an interesting tale. Allegedly, the designer
saw it in a shop window while he was walking
around in Paris at one point and just thought she
was incredibly pretty and very soothing to look at. So
that's the scoop on Ricessa Annie or uh Recessa, and
(36:43):
I think is what she's called in other countries. I'm
grateful she exists because lots of us have learned to
do CPR thanks to that. Whether she had a beautiful
mask on or not. Um If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
everywhere on social media as Missed in History, and we
encourage you to subscribe to the show. You can do
(37:05):
that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts,
or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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