Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America

by Blum, Howard

  THIS MUST BE MY TENTH time, Robert Boardman, chief of detectives in Washington, D.C., wearily told himself as he once again picked up the letter signed by “R. Pearce” and forced himself to reread it. The bewildering statement had been delivered earlier that day to newspapers throughout the city, and so far it was the only clue he had in the Capitol bombing.

  His boss, police chief Raymond Pullman, had left the night before to go to some sort of field day the New York cops were holding, but Pullman had already called twice—at long-distance rates!—to let him know that the whole department was counting on him to solve the bombing. The implication was clear: if Captain Boardman didn’t make some tangible progress soon, a new chief of detectives would be found who could. But all Boardman could think to do was to reread the damn letter.

  When he finished his twelfth run-through without discovering even a hint of a clue, Boardman had had enough. He decided he needed a break; perhaps a short rest would cause something to come bubbling up into his thoughts. Absently, he glanced at what had been left on his desk while he was preoccupied with the Pearce letter. Seeing the statement that had come in over the AP wire from the man accused of attempting to assassinate J. P. Morgan, and with nothing better to do, he started to read.

  “If Germany should be able to buy munitions here,” Holt had written, “we would, of course, positively refuse to sell her.”

  Quickly, Boardman reached for the Pearce letter. And there it was, just as he remembered it: “We would, of course, not sell to Germans if they could buy here, and since so far we only sold to the Allies, neither side should object if we stopped.”

  The two statements had to be written by the same man!

  Elated, convinced not only that his job was now safe but that he could be in for a promotion, he telegraphed Chief Pullman in New York: “Ascertain from F. Holt, in custody at Glen Cove, N.Y., for shooting J. P. Morgan, his whereabouts Thursday and Friday, as he may have placed the bomb in the Capitol here Friday night.”

  THE INVESTIGATION MOVED FORWARD. TOM had telephoned his men the serial numbers of the revolvers, and detectives were on their way to New Jersey to question the store clerks. At the same time, another team was trying to find out the sales history of the recovered sticks of dynamite marked “Keystone National Powder Company. 60 per cent. Emporium, Pa.”

  And now Woods had just called to tell Tom that the Washington police suspected Holt could have been involved with yesterday’s attack on the Capitol.

  Tom needed to formulate his next move. He walked by Holt’s cell and stared at the prisoner lying on his bunk. “The man was getting tired: he had had a hard day, had been considerably battered, had been interviewed, photographed, harried with questions, his ankles and wrists ached, his head throbbed, and his mind, which though alert and active, was none too stable, and showing signs of exhaustion.” Tom decided the moment had come for “a formal examination.”

  Erich Muenter being arraigned in court in Glen Cove, Long Island, where he was charged with the shooting of J. P. Morgan Jr.

  (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  The session convened at once, and this time it was in McCahill’s office, where his assistant, two deputy sheriffs, two patrolmen, a detective from nearby Mineola, and a stenographer joined Tom. But it was still Tom’s show. He asked the questions, and a smirking Holt continued to hold him at bay.

  Question. Where were you born?

  Answer. Somehow my brain is in such a shape that I can’t remember—Wisconsin, I know. I don’t know what it is that affected me—something inside of me—maybe it is the shock I got from that.

  Q. You speak with a German accent. Were you born in Germany, or in any of the European countries—tell me the truth.

  A. Now listen. That has been said before—that I speak with a foreign accent. That is because I speak several languages. I speak French, German, Spanish, and all that. That is the cause of that, you see?

  Q. We will eliminate the trouble of asking you questions if you will tell us the town or city in which you were born.

  A. Yes. Now I’m trying to think. (A pause.) I will have to disappoint you.

  The thrusts and parries continued while Tom, with masterly control, inch by precious inch, subtly turned the questioning in a new direction. He needed to follow up on the lead that had come from the Washington detective. Could Holt have placed the bomb in the Capitol? Or was he just one of the plotters, part of that conspiracy too? Tom desperately wanted answers. But he knew if he blurted out his questions, Holt, disdainful, deliberately vague, an infuriating smirk on his face, would hold him off. Instead, Tom had to lead Holt slowly along to this destination. The prey could not realize he had stepped into a trap until it had sprung shut.

  Q. How many times have you been in Philadelphia?

  A. No time.

  Q. You came to New York from Ithaca?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Do you mean to truthfully answer my question by saying that you have not been to Philadelphia at any time since you left Ithaca?

  A. At no time.

  Q. You have a clipping of a Philadelphia newspaper in your possession. Where did you get that?

  A. I think I got that out of a Philadelphia paper of course, that I found lying around.

  Q. Were you not in Philadelphia when you purchased that paper?

  A. I did not purchase that. I saw that lying around somewhere, probably in the Mills Hotel.

  This was the moment, Tom decided. A leap had to be taken, and now was the time. There was no pause, no alteration in his voice, nothing to signal that this wasn’t the most casual of questions.

  Q. Where did you sleep last night?

  As soon as the question was asked, Holt realized he had been led into a corner. Desperate, he tried to create a distraction, his tone haughty and superior.

  A. Now, I will tell you. A reporter from the Associated Press asked me about this Washington business, and he was trying to connect me with that. I suppose that is what you are trying to do.

  It was Tom’s turn to be indignant; and he let his genuine anger goad him on.

  Q. I am not trying to connect you with anything. I want truthful answers. I am very frank and honest with you. I will fairly investigate every answer that you make.

  Tom sensed that Holt was drained. The walls he had erected were tumbling down, and even the madness offered no more sanctuary. The prisoner let out a long, thin sigh, and surrendered.

  A. I think it is just as well to say that I wrote that R. Pearce letter.

  I was in Washington yesterday and came back on the train. I think it is just as well to say it.

  Tom’s demeanor betrayed no sense of triumph. He continued in his deliberate, thoughtful way to press for details about the Washington attack. But McCahill listened to only a few more of Holt’s valiant attempts to pass off what he’d revealed as really nothing extraordinary at all before he rushed out of the room to send a telegram to Captain Boardman in Washington:

  Frank Holt placed dynamite in Capitol building at 4 p.m. yesterday. Left Washington on midnight train for New York. Will wire particulars later.

  AT HALF PAST SEVEN THAT night, Holt was moved to the county jail in Mineola. Tom had insisted. It was just a precaution, he told McCahill. And only later did the constable realize he had never asked the broad-shouldered New York police captain who he feared might come looking for the prisoner. Only later did he realize Tom had suspected a larger plot.

  Front page of the New York Tribune on Sunday, July 4, 1915, after Holt’s attempted assassination of J. P. Morgan Jr.

  (Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress [http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-07-04/ed-1/seq-1/])

  Chapter 48

  In the course of a long and busy career, a veteran detective would handle so many investigations that once a case was solved, it’d be shoved into a file and quickly forgotten. But for most officers, unsolved cases could not be so easily dismissed. These mysteries would linger, chu
rning away restlessly below the surface and rising up at odd, unexpected moments. And as Holt settled into his first night in the Mineola jail, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, police detective, Patrick Hurley, found himself suddenly thinking about a nine-year-old case.

  He had been reading the description in the evening paper of the man accused of trying to assassinate J. P. Morgan when a single phrase unlocked his memory as if it were a key. The assailant was described as having “a shambling walk.” These were the exact words he had used back in 1906 when he’d sent out the description of Erich Muenter, a Harvard instructor who had fled after poisoning his wife.

  But even as Captain Hurley relived the anger and frustration he had felt at the time over Muenter’s getting away with murder, he chided himself for jumping to conclusions. There must be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of people who had loose-jointed, shambling gaits; tuberculosis of the bones, the detective had discovered back when he was actively trying to track down the fugitive professor, was not an exceedingly rare condition. Still, he had a hunch.

  He reread the newspaper description of Frank Holt, and he might as well have been holding up a mirror to the image in his mind. Every detail corresponded to his memory of Muenter: five feet ten inches tall; dark hair; long, thin face; high forehead. And a shambling walk.

  That night he dispatched an express telegram to Chief Constable McCahill in Glen Cove. “Reason to believe,” he wired, “Frank Holt is fugitive Erich Muenter wanted by Cambridge Police for murder.” He advised that he would send a photograph of Muenter in the morning.

  IN TOM’S WORLD, INDEPENDENCE DAY came, but it was not the holiday Sunday he’d been anticipating. He was up early, and soon on his way back to Mineola to interview Holt again. He had spent a fitful night assembling an inventory of his concerns, and on the ride out to the Long Island jail he found himself replaying them in his mind.

  Yesterday, Holt had given him an account of how he’d made the bomb used in the Capitol blast. He’d taped together three sticks of dynamite, hollowed out a depression at the end of one of the sticks into which he’d fitted matches, and then placed a corked vial filled with sulfuric acid above the matches. When the acid ate through the cork, drops fell onto the match heads and caused a flame, which ignited the dynamite. It would have been an impressive device, Tom realized even while he was listening to the prisoner’s earnest recitation, except for one thing: it would never have worked. During his years with the bomb squad, Tom had picked up a good deal of hands-on knowledge about the manufacture of bombs, and he had no doubt that everything Holt had told him was a lie. Sulfuric acid would take weeks to eat through a cork, and even then the drops of acid would not cause matches to burn. Holt, Tom was convinced, didn’t know the first thing about making an explosive device.

  But if Holt hadn’t made the bomb, then who had? Were the bomb makers the same individuals who had given him the dynamite—and the money to fund his travels? And was there additional dynamite hidden away somewhere? They had recovered three sticks from his jacket and suitcase, and Holt said three sticks had been detonated at the Capitol, but Tom had “a feeling that Holt had bought more explosives.”

  In fact, little of what Holt had said made any sense—unless he was trying to cover up the fact that he had not been alone. Tom had tried to pursue that possibility yesterday, but Holt had been dismissive. “I think that can be easily figured out that I could not have anybody else with me,” he had snapped at Tom in his now familiar superior voice. But after the long, restless night’s calculations, Tom still found himself returning to the same provocative conclusion: “I felt confident that he had accomplices.”

  As soon as Tom arrived at the jail, he was handed a message to call Sergeant Barnitz. The Jersey City gun shop clerks, the sergeant reported, had found the sales slips. Holt had given his name as “Henderson” and his address as Syosset, Long Island.

  Armed with this new information, Tom was escorted into a room where Holt was already seated. The prisoner seemed to have aged a decade or two overnight. He had not shaved, and his jailers had taken his suit as evidence, replacing it with a blue one that could easily have fitted a man twice his size. The sleeves stretched past his fingers, and the jacket swam about his thin, childlike chest. Tom saw his advantage, and swiftly attacked.

  Why had he given this particular fictitious name and address? Tom demanded. He hoped Holt would be impressed that they had uncovered this intelligence after only hours on the case. Perhaps he would appreciate the resources aligned against him, and begin to cooperate.

  Holt merely shrugged. The name Henderson had simply “popped into my head.” As for the address, he had happened to see Syosset on a railroad timetable and the location had stuck in his mind. It was all—he sighed—of no consequence.

  Tom returned to the dynamite. Where had he gotten it? How much did he have? Where was the rest of his cache?

  In the course of Holt’s own long night, Tom later suspected, the prisoner had worked out what he would say when these questions would inevitably be raised. Tom had kept tapping at them during the first day’s session, and Holt had to realize he would not give up until he received answers. So Holt had devised a strategy to keep Tom off balance.

  He announced that he would answer those questions on July 7.

  Why July 7? Tom asked. What happens in three days?

  But Holt would not yield. “Everything will be revealed on July 7,” he repeated with a small, tight smile.

  Tom had no doubt that Holt was enjoying the power his riddle had given him. He was a prisoner, handcuffed, beaten, humiliated, but now he had turned the tables on his interrogator: Frank Holt was once again in control.

  Tom, exhausted, despairing, found himself silently conceding that Holt suddenly had an advantage. Either July 7 was more madness, a meaningless date provocatively tossed out to tantalize the authorities, or it was something more sinister. But what? Was it the date when his accomplices—German agents? antiwar activists?—would have completed their escape from America, and their existence could be revealed? Or was it the date of another round of attacks? Another assassination? Another bombing?

  Either way, it was a mystery that Tom had to solve. He told the jailer to take the prisoner back to his cell. He needed time to think.

  What would happen on July 7? He kept turning the question over and over, but he was unable to latch onto a persuasive answer. He called Barnitz, then Woods, but neither had a solution. So Tom decided to go for a drive. Perhaps, he hoped, escaping from the dismal jailhouse with its tight, airless spaces would free his mind. He drove for hours around the Long Island countryside. He had dozens of theories, and yet not a single one in which he had any faith.

  When he returned to the jail, he discovered that the already complicated case had in his absence taken off in a whole new and completely unexpected direction. McCahill, following up on the telegram from Cambridge, had brought the Nassau County district attorney to the jail. The DA, in a stroke of luck, had studied German at Harvard with Muenter, and after a long look he decided that the prisoner was indeed his old college acquaintance. While in Chicago, the police had shown a news photograph of Holt to the two spinster sisters of the fugitive professor, and they offered an unqualified identification: he was the brother who had vanished. “The news will kill our mother,” they worried.

  It was a case, Tom was beginning to understand, in which the peeling away of one secret served only to reveal a new one. “This Pearce-Lester-Holt-Henderson-Muenter was becoming more interesting every minute,” he decided with a new appreciation of the deceptively frail and downtrodden prisoner. “Wife-poisoner, dynamiter, gunman—what next?”

  AS THE NEW WEEK UNFOLDED, Tom and his men scurried about, trying to discover what would be next. They needed to know what was going to happen before they were caught once again by surprise.

  Tom went to Syosset to interview the freight agent. The conversation led him to the bungalow in Central Park. While there, he spoke with the boy who h
ad pushed a wheelbarrow carrying a heavy trunk to the train for Holt. The stationmaster went through his records and found that the trunk had been shipped on to New York. He had a shipping number, but there was no record of where the trunk had been delivered.

  Then all at once the mystery of the missing trunk took on a new urgency. The Aetna Powder Company reported that its books showed a C. Henderson as having ordered two hundred sticks of 60 percent dynamite, plus another separate order for two hundred sticks of 40 percent dynamite. A total of four hundred sticks had been sold to Holt. Tom felt the explosives could be in the trunk. But he no idea where the trunk was. And July 7 was Wednesday—two days away.

  Desperate, he played the only card he had: he went to see Holt. But when he repeated his questions about the dynamite, Holt remained obstinate. “I will tell you Wednesday,” he said infuriatingly.

  Tom’s patience had worn thin. He had tried everything with Holt, and it had all been futile. The prisoner gave only what he was prepared to give. Holt was playing Tom, and the realization of his own helplessness stung his pride.

  “Look here,” Tom at last exploded. “That dynamite is in the trunk. It’s liable to go off any minute and kill a lot of people. You better tell me quick where you left that trunk.”

  And just like that, Holt agreed. “All right,” he decided. The trunk, he said, had been sent to a warehouse near Fortieth Street and Seventh Avenue.

  Sirens blaring, Tom and his men drove like madmen to the warehouse. The only person on duty in the evening was a watchman, and he had no knowledge of how items were stored. With an indifferent shrug, he told Tom that they were just going to have to search until they found a trunk with a number matching the one on the shipping invoice.