caption death_date death_place birth_place name birth_date known_for article_title birth_name occupation
madame maria de victorica august 12 , 1920 new york - united states posen - poland madame maria de victorica 1878 espionage maria de victorica
 maria von kretschamn german spy
maria de victorica

madame maria de victorica , or baroness maria von kretschamn , -lrb- 1878 , posen , poland - 1920 , new york , united states -rrb- was the daughter of a prussian cavalry officer , baron hans von kretschman , and countess jenny von gustedt , a diplomat .
she was also the granddaughter of the illegitimate child of jenny von pappenheim and jérome bonaparte .
known for her espionage activities during world war i .
she also used the alias marie de vussière .
she was said to dominate many european languages with fluency and had many university degrees .
she came to south america when she was 25 years old , to visit some relatives living in the continent .
once she was here , apparently she married with the first of her three husbands , although his identity is n't clear .
some source states that she married an argentinean man that died shortly after marriage , but some other sources state that her last husband was , indeed , an argentinean man called manuel gustave de victorica , arrested in pontalier , france , on 10 january 1917 and charged of espionage .
this latest version seems to be the most accurate .
she was accused of being involved in plot actions , mostly to organize disturbs amongst the irish community living in the united states , and to import high explosives into the u.s. by means of hollow figurines of saints and the virgin mary .
she was a noble , fashionable and rich woman , and that was part of her strategy to move inside the united states .
even her most fashionable clothes served as a masquerade to hide her espionage actions , for example the usage of silk mufflers to hide invisible ink in which to write secret messages to other german spies .
she was under the direction of herman wessels , but herbert yardley stated that her intelligence was superior to her masculine boss .
in his memoirs about his service at mi-8 , called `` the american black chamber '' , yardley devoted an entire chapter to describe the plot of mme. victorica , and wrote about her that however , the digitized copy belonging to the `` rufus a. long digital archive of cryptology '' has notations made by other specialists in cryptanalisis , like william f. friedman , or charles j. mendelsohn .
there are several notations made in this particular chapter , most of them belonging to a. j. m. grail , in charge of secret ink section , captain , mid , washington , during world war .
in those notations , made by grail , it 's stated that `` victorica was quite harmless .
she accomplished nothing .
she arrived here 22 , jan , 1917 and was arrested 21 april 1918 . ''
, that `` the plot '' -lrb- of introducing explosives into holy figures -rrb- '' was suggested `` to '' victorica not `` by '' her '' , that she was n't from a noble origin , but rather a junker , and finally that `` i believe victorica gave our people in n.y.c. much information -lrb- ... -rrb- , she did not give much accurate information , perhaps out of ignorance . ''
charles j. mendelsohn , in charge of german diplomatic code solving section , mid , washington , also added at the end of the chapter that `` it is my impression that victorica was captured by the dept. of justice , plus `` that the cipher stuff came as a consequence of the capture , not '' the capture as a consequence of the cipher stuff .
v. weiskopf could throw light on this . ''
on 27 april 1918 she was arrested , supposedly after mi-8 secret-ink subsection found a correspondence that detailed a plan to destroy docks , war industries , and mercury mines .
she disclosed some information about the rest of the conspirators , but she also lied a lot during the examination .
since she was by the time of her arrest a heavy user of morphine , the u.s. officers threatened her to suspend her doses of morphine , and finally told the truth .
she died in 1920 .
