Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America
The most shocking conclusion to come from the autopsies of the mother and daughter found brutally murdered in Texas in 1938, after their car trip alone was mysteriously interrupted, was that they had been missing for four days but dead for only two. Someone had not just murdered Hazel Frome and her 23-year-old daughter, Nancy, but tortured them first. But who? Richmond, delving deeply into an extremely cold case, has found evidence that Nazi agents, believing these women held information about Atlas Powder Company, a San Francisco explosives manufacturing firm, targeted and stopped the women, interrogated them brutally, and then left their bodies in the desert. Richmond uses recently declassified FBI files to, if not solve the case, point a finger at an international Nazi spy ring operating in the U.S. and the fact that the Roosevelt administration was aware that American industry was being spied upon. This is a detailed portrait of two independent women’s demise, a dogged but thwarted investigation, and the prewar infiltration of U.S. industry by a ring of German spies. --Eloise Kinney