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    Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America
    Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America
    Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America
    Ebook528 pages9 hours

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

    By Clint Richmond

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In 1938, Hazel Frome, the wife of a powerful executive at Atlas Powder Company, a San Francisco explosives manufacturer, set out on a cross-country motor trip with her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Nancy. When their car broke down in El Paso, Texas, they made the most of being stranded by staying at a posh hotel and crossing the border to Juarez for shopping, dining, and drinking. A week later, their near-nude bodies were found in the Chihuahuan Desert. Though they had been seen on occasion with two mystery men, there were no clues as to why they had apparently been abducted, tortured for days, and shot execution style. El Paso sheriff Chris Fox, a lawman right out of central casting, engaged in a turf war with the Texas Rangers and local officials that hampered the investigation. But the victims’ detours had placed them in the path of a Nazi spy ring operating from the West Coast to Latin America through a deep-cover portal at El Paso. The sleeper cell was run by spymasters at the German consulate in San Francisco. In 1938, only the inner circle of the Roosevelt White House and a few FBI agents were aware of the extent to which German agents had infiltrated American industry. Fetch the Devil is the first narrative account of this still officially unsolved case. Based on long forgotten archives and recently declassified FBI files, Richmond paints a convincing portrait of a sheriff’s dogged investigation into a baffling murder, the international spy ring that orchestrated it, and America on the brink of another world war.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherForeEdge
    Release dateJun 3, 2014
    ISBN9781611685619
    Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America
    Author

    Clint Richmond

    This account of the murder of Penny Scaggs and the trial of her husband, Roger, is the ninth published nonfiction book written by Clint Richmond. His 1995 Selena!, the tragic story of the murder of the young Tejano music star, was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His 2005 collaboration, Red Star Rogue, was also a New York Times bestseller. Richmond, a former Dallas Times Herald news reporter, covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the trial of Jack Ruby for the murder of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He was assigned to federal and state courts and law enforcement beats in Dallas for a number of years. Later, as a freelance journalist, he covered the Rocky Mountain and West Coast regions for such publications as People magazine and has been a contributing writer to Time, Newsweek, and numerous other periodicals. The author lives with his wife, also a freelance writer, in Austin, Texas.

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    Reviews for Fetch the Devil

    4/5

    23 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What most impressed me about this book is how well the author made the time period come alive. This book explores the still unsolved murders of two American women traveling alone through Southwest America, and how it is highly possible that their murders were not connected to drug cartels or highway robbery, as many originally believed, but instead to Nazi espionage right in America. The author really weaves in little known (at least to me) history of espionage in America leading up to World War II, and proposes a highly believable solution to the murders.
    • 3/5
      FETCH THE DEVIL deserves points for its studious research, a lot of it never before made public. This book reveals some of the extensive Nazi spy networks in America before World War II.That must be the reason so many other reviews of this book rant and rave about how good it is. I, however, look for more than that. I want to enjoy what I read, not just find it interesting.A page turner this is not. It reads like a report, even the descriptions of the mother and daughter and their mysterious murders.Also, this reports more on the network of Nazis and their discovery and apprehension or escape than it does on the unsolved murder case and its investigation. That may disappoint you if you, like I did, expect a true crime story.
    • 5/5
      This book is very intriguing and interesting. I highly recommend it to fans of true crime, Texas history, Southwest U.S. history.
    • 5/5
      This is the true story of the 1938 murders of a mother and daughter on a road-trip across the country. Their abandoned car was found in the Texas desert, and, after a search, their tortured and murdered bodies were also discovered. I greatly enjoyed this narrative nonfiction book. The writing was snappy and smooth and kept me interested throughout. My only complaint is that, though I knew which direction the author was going (Nazi espionage), I wish a little more of that was revealed earlier in the book. But all-in-all, a top-notch book if you're looking for some good history and a little creepiness for an evening's reading.
    • 5/5
      In short: It reminds me of my favorite non-fiction author, Erik Larson and that is mighty high praise coming from me.
    • 5/5
      In a word: mesmerizing. Once I picked this up King Kong himself could have walked through my front door and I wouldn't have noticed. It is that compelling."Fetch the Devil" is the true story of two women, a mother and daughter, who set out on a road trip only to disappear. Eventually they are found murdered, tortured, with seemingly nothing to explain their deaths. Richmond's research is superb, and he provides rich details (the name of last film the women saw, for example)that will leave readers convinced they are right there, living each moment rather than merely reading it. You can almost smell the perfume the women bought on one of their trips to Mexico, see their fear when a mysterious letter arrives at the hotel where they are staying, feel the dust in the air as they head off through the desert in their new car. This was a cruel death, but the case was full of so many curiosities it's no wonder everyone was obsessed with it. I did not buy the author's solution to the crime, and I found the last few chapters (which cover territory following the investigation into the women's deaths) a bit tedious.Still, Richmond's retelling of the crime is brilliant. "Fetch the Devil" is true crime writing at its finest.
    • 4/5
      In 1938, Hazel and Nancy Frome, wife and daughter of a wealthy executive in an explosives company connected with DuPont, left Berkeley California for a coast-to-coast trip to South Carolina. For reasons not well understood, they decided to take a southern route along the US-Mexico border, most likely to dip into Mexico for shopping - which they had done in the past. After problems with their car, they were forced to spend a few days in El Paso, Texas, while waiting for repairs, and once the car was ready, strangely left El Paso in a rush, then were found brutally murdered a few hundred miles away after a few days. The investigation was a confused mess - the local sheriff was not able to handle a crime of this magnitude, the Texas Rangers meddled in everything without actually helping - and the murders became a media sensation. The El Paso sheriff, a rather modern investigator, was convinced that the solution to the crime lay in their Bay area origin, and likely with the husband/father they left behind. You see, during this time, spies from Nazi Germany were highly active trying to organize resident German Americans, snoop out military resources, and steal secrets from industry. And Frome was deep in the manufacture of high explosives used by the US military in infrastructure construction and munitions. But because of the "too many cooks" investigating the crime, and ultimately because of the US entry into the war, the crime was never solved. Clint Richmond has done a very good job of laying out the crime and the evidence uncovered, profiling the people involved, and offering his well-supported theory of what really happened to Hazel and Nancy in the West Texas desert. It's narrative nonfiction of the kind I like best, with a fascinating story of pre-WWII espionage that I knew very little about beforehand. Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed every detail in this book and there is plenty ! The true story of a mother and adult daughter murdered in 1938 along the Texas, Mexico border.. Instead of drug dealers , a thrill killer or a robbery (these are very rich women) it possibly involves Nazi espionage! As I stated ,lots of detail but somehow it does not become confusing.. easy to follow.

    Book preview

    Fetch the Devil - Clint Richmond

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