Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America

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31 Weston G. Frome was as secretive about the projects and products of his company as he was evasive about his job title and description, and to an inquisitive cop like Chris Fox, that was like waving a red cape in front of an angry bull. Thesheriffwasapracticalman,notgiventoparanoia,buthewasbaffled by the hush-hush behavior of the husband and father of the victims. Never in his experience had he seen a surviving family member so uncooperative in a murder investigation. Fox intended to find out why the executive deliberately avoided interviews anddodged questions about thefamily’spersonalaffairs andhisown business dealings. The Texas lawman had learned, while in the Bay Area, that Frome was not simply involved in sales for Atlas but wore many other hats, both at the regional and corporate level. Frome’s title was assistant general manager for explosives for the national corporation, as well as western regional sales manager. Fox learned that Frome also held the title of plant manager for a secretive explosives manufacturing installation at nearby Giant, California.186 That plant, with an annual manufacturing capacity of nearly two million kegs of blasting powder and 108 million pounds of dynamite, was the direct supplier of explosives for Atlas’s vast western region. Frome was, in actuality, the top executive officer for the huge Atlas Powder Company for the entire western United States. That region also encompassed Latin America and U.S. installations on islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean. His frequent absences on business may have lent an air of suspicion to his activities, but the nature of his work did require a high level of secrecy. Many of the company’s contracts called for providing massive amounts of explosives for government construction projects run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In order to make technical decisions on the amount of explosivesrequired,Fromeandhissubordinateswereprivytoconstruction 182 fetch the devil blueprints. Some of these projects were military installations located in the Hawaiian Islands and at far-flung bases across the Pacific, all the way to the Philippines. Atlas dynamite made in California and sold by Frome was used in the construction of dozens of fortifications, airfields, and naval facilities. Details of these military projects were secret. The U.S. Navy Pacific headquarters at Pearl Harbor was among them. Weston Frome haddevotedpartof1937tosettingupthewhollyowned subsidiary Atlas de Mexico, S.A., headquartered in Mexico City.187 On the Mexico projects, he worked closely with Harold White, the district manager who had helped Hazel and Nancy when they arrived in El Paso with car trouble. Frome personally spent a considerable amount of his time in Los Angeles . Some of Atlas’s biggest contracts were with construction firms rebuilding the harbors and ports there, as well as other water-purification works, dams, and canals to serve that sprawling metropolis. These projects, particularly the harbor installations and adjacent naval base in the Los Angelesbasin ,couldbeconsideredvulnerabletosabotageifthecountryfaced a hostile foreign adversary. Even then, the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere surrounding Pop Frome seemed excessive, since Atlas Powder Company was just a supplier and not a prime contractor. In 1937, the year before the murders, Frome and his top salesmen were acquiring major new contracts to provide the explosives for one of the largest federally funded waterworks developments in the history of the United States—the Central Valley Project. This Depression-era public works project, run by the Bureau of Reclamation, called for the construction of several great dams on a number of rivers in the western United States, which would ultimately bring water to California growers and the cities of Southern California.188 WhenSheriffFoxwasinCaliforniaconductinghisinvestigation,Frome and his team were busy filling orders for construction explosives for two of these dams, the Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River and the Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River. They were working with a longtime business associate named Hans Wilhelm Rohl, who was one of the largest heavy-construction contractors on the West Coast. Rohl, not so coinci- spies on the border 183 dentally, also kept a suite of rooms at the Biltmore Hotel, even though he had a permanent residence in Los Angeles. The business relationship between Rohl and Atlas was mutually beneficial and highly lucrative for both concerns. Rohl’s government contracts could not have been easily completed without ready access to a large, customized source of explosives; and Atlas could not have remained as profitable during the Depression without these huge orders. The amount of...