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

[32]

32 Despite Chris Fox’s close association with individual FBI agents, and the occasional work he had done with the bureau on other cases, he was completelyunawareofalarge -scaleinvestigationcenteredonpossiblesubversive activities in the West Coast construction industry. Coincidentally, that investigation also involved the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, although it had nothing to do with the Frome women’s stay there on the first night of their trip. Sincemid-1937,thebureauhadbeeninterestedinNaziactivitiesemanating from the German consulates at San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the process of surveilling foreign agents hiding behind diplomatic cover, the G-men had come across a number of American citizens whose association with the Nazis brought them under scrutiny. The initial target of the FBI’s surveillance had been a debonair ex-actor posingasapurveyoroffinewinestotheelitesofHollywood.WernerPlack was actually an agent on the staff of the German consul general George Gyssling, in the Los Angeles diplomatic offices. Both men were on the FBI’s watch list of prime suspects in a West Coast Nazi espionage ring.190 While most suspected Nazi subversives kept a low profile, Plack sought the limelight. He was a fixture on the Hollywood nightclub scene and was datingthemoviestarletPeggyJoyce.Thebrazenspymadenoefforttohide his loyalty to Hitler. In an incident at a club in Beverly Hills, Plack gave the stiff-arm Nazi salute and shouted, “Heil Hitler!” A screenwriter named Sy BartletttookoffenseandpunchedouttheGermanagent,breakinghisnose. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons frequently included the flamboyant doings of the German wine purveyor in her columns. “Peggy Joyce and Werner Plack, at a night spot, continuing as Hollywood’s most consistent twosome,” she wrote in a February 27, 1938, column. That tidbit was followed by, “Errol Flynn smuggled his favorite dog, Arno, on the set, and the canine did him dirt and spoiled a scene by barking.”191 The famed Hollywood nightclubs the Trocadero, Brown Derby, and 186 fetch the devil Coconut Grove were the scenes of wild celebration, far removed from the oppressive economic malaise gripping the rest of the country. Nazi spies, sympathizers, and isolationists mingled with movie stars and moguls, corporate titans, and wannabes, with little regard for conditions at home or gathering war clouds abroad. The FBI didn’t care how hard Plack partied. But they did care who he partied with. The ribald lifestyle of the Nazi playboy led the FBI to American associates and friends, who soon became subjects of interest in the surveillance file the bureau was building for Washington. They included construction executives and army engineers responsible for most of the government projects—both military and civilian—on the West Coast and in the Pacific. A top executive in the group drew special attention. He was the influential construction contractor Wilhelm Rohl. One particular incident in the summer of 1938 merited the attention of FBI agents monitoring Plack’s activities. At a night spot called the Swing Club, the Nazi agent, in the company of the construction executive, made a grand entrance that stopped the music. An informant offered the following account: “They ran a little floor show at The Swing Club, and the floor show was going on when, all of the sudden, the orchestra leader stopped the music. He stopped the music and he stopped the floor show. The music changed and all the girls in the floor show,includingtheband,startedtosing,‘HerecomesBill,herecomesBill, here comes Bill Rohl now.’ With him were Werner Plack and one other man I never remember having seen before.” The close associationbetweenthetwoGermans,Plackand Rohl,generatedinterestatthebureauafteranynumberofsuchsightingswerereported . Finally, FBI agents were able to enlist the help of a housekeeper in the Rohl home, who provided information that Plack also visited there.192 Rohl was the founding owner of a heavy-construction company that borehisname.DuringtheDepressionyears,heperformedworkondozens of government-funded waterfront and highway projects throughout the western United States and Pacific region. He became a multimillionaire on government building contracts that were aimed at providing jobs to alleviate the suffering of massive unemployment, while creating a new infrastructure for the nation. In building the highways, dams, breakwaters, channels, and waterfronts spies on the border 187 of the West Coast from the late 1920s forward, Rohl and his construction partners were among the largest users of explosives manufactured and sold by the Atlas Powder Company. During that time, Atlas Powder’s profit center for the sales of high explosives gradually shifted from mining operations to heavy construction. Because of the changing economy, Rohl and his associates, and Frome and his salesmen, were drawn into countless...