Erich Muenter immigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of eighteen. After receiving his PhD in German at Harvard University, he was hired to teach there; however, his real passions were the study of the criminal mind and his allegiance to the German fatherland. In 1906, Muenter acted on his captivation with the idea of “the perfect crime,” and slowly poisoned his pregnant wife to death with arsenic. When an autopsy performed on her body against Muenter’s wishes identified the cause of her death, Muenter fled to Mexico, where he reinvented himself as “Frank Holt” and adopted a lisp to cover up the remnants of his German accent.
Returning to America in 1913, Muenter, using the alias “Holt,” travelled to New York City where he volunteered his services to the Abteilung IIIb, Germany’s military intelligence service, offering to commit acts of sabotage. While historians are divided on whether the Abteilung IIIb accepted Muenter’s offer, what he was about to do would have pleased his masters to no end.
On July 2, 1915, Muenter entered the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and placed explosives in the Senate reception room. Shortly before midnight they detonated, destroying the reception room, shattering windows and doors, and damaging the Senate chamber.
Munitions Financier Targeted
Muenter then returned to New York City where, armed with two pistols and a few sticks of dynamite, he proceeded to the Long Island estate of J.P. Morgan, Jr., an American financier who had made millions of dollars from war loans to the Allies and served as Great Britain’s and France’s U.S. purchasing agent for military supplies and weapons. When Morgan answered the door, Muenter shot him twice, wounding him only superficially, before being subdued by Morgan’s servants and arrested. While in custody, the would-be assassin was interrogated by Captain Thomas Tunney, head of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Bomb Squad, and he was linked to the U.S. Capitol bombing.
On July 6, 1915, Erich Muenter’s (aka Frank Holt’s) bizarre adventure as a German saboteur would end, when his mutilated body with its crushed skull was discovered on the stone flagging 20 feet below his jail cell, from where he had jumped to his death. On July 7, an explosion rocked the SS Minnehaha, a steamship in New York Harbor that was loaded with munitions for Allied forces in France. Captain Tunney, after five months of investigation, connected Muenter to the SS Minnehaha blast.
On July 6, 1915, Erich Muenter’s (aka Frank Holt’s) bizarre adventure as a German saboteur would end, when his mutilated body with its crushed skull was discovered on the stone flagging 20 feet below his jail cell, from where he had jumped to his death. On July 7, and explosion rocked the SS Minnehaha, a steamship in New York Harbor that was loaded with munitions for Allied forces in France. Captain Tunney, after five months of investigation, connected Muenter to the SS Minnehaha blast.