The Holstein Diamonds

By A. L. Provost

Everyone has heard the old adage twos a couple, threes a crowd. But four greedy German soldiers in 1942, all after the same elusive fortune in diamonds?
Honor among thieves? Who mentioned anything about honor? Would there even be a last man standing after the smoke cleared and the international intrigue ended?
And just why did these murderers flee all the way from Germany to Lenoir County, North Carolina? Just another baffling mystery waiting to be sorted out by longtime Lenoir County District Attorney Newt Wildman and his intrepid investigators. Welcome to another gripping Coastal Plains Mystery, the tenth in the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483690537

A. L. Provost

The author, an attorney and optometrist, resides outside Atlanta with his wife Evelyn, an attorney, their four talented children having gone on to careers in Optometry, real estate and teaching. In May 1961 the author received an undergraduate degree in Physics-Mathematics from Berry College, and in July of that year enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served two tours of duty in South Korea, the last with U. S. Army Intelligence as a Korean linguist and prisoner interrogator. In 1972 Dr. Provost was awarded the degree of Doctor of Optometry from the University of Houston, and in 1980 earned a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Dr. Provost is the author of the best-selling memoir, Reflections in an Orphan’s Eye, The Puppeteer, a mystery novel of the wartime South, and thirteen other mystery novels.

Book preview

Prologue

The April 2007 issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review, a journal published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, reported that only one-fifth of the property stolen from Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators has ever been returned, leaving at least $115 billion in assets still missing. This property includes stolen real estate, investments, businesses and household items, a category that includes jewelry and diamonds. The Nazis maintained records of many of these confiscated household items, as shown by the following.

The following excerpt is from The Holocaust, by Martin Gilbert, p. 581:

The killing and deportation of Jews had continued to enrich the German Reich. On May 13 Hans Frank sent Himmler a list of the utilization of Jewish concealed and stolen goods in the General Government. Up to April 30, Frank reported, 94,000 watches and 14,000 propelling pencils had been delivered to Germany. Men’s watches were being distributed to the combat troops, to the submarine service, and concentration camp guards. The 5,000 watches of most expensive Swiss make, those in gold or platinum cases, or partly fitted with precious stones, were either to go to the Reichsbank for melting down, or were to be retained ‘for special use.’

But what happened to all the diamonds?

Chapter 1

Traffic Jam on Queen Street

The thing that piqued the curiosity of the brilliant homicide detective and eventually led to the unraveling of an enigmatic wartime mystery was the bright red 1939 Buick coupe that drove up and occupied a slant parking space in front of the landmark Standard Drug Store at 7:15 a.m. on a chilly day in early September 1943.

This intriguing tale of greed, murder, deception and revenge did not begin in the small Southern tobacco town of Kinston, North Carolina down the road aways from Raleigh.

But it would end there. For certain.

It is beyond the comprehension of lawman why criminals on the lam for some unknown reason persist in engaging in conduct that draws attention to themselves rather than take the prudent approach.

The Lenoir County district attorney for the nearly quarter century leading up to the events described herein was the legendary Newt Wildman. His assistant D. A. was Bill Harrington who along with his friend, chief homicide investigator Van Edmonds, had been with Wildman during this entire time.

Keeping the citizens of Lenoir County safe.

Rounding out this crack investigative team was Jake Gittis, who at some point during the past half-decade had segued from being Kinston police chief Dick Gillikin’s top homicide detective to more or less the permanent on-loan investigator to the D.A. It just sorta happened and nobody complained.

Again, keeping the citizens of Lenoir County safe.

The historic Lenoir County courthouse had been rebuilt in the mid-thirties. The three-story structure stood like a proud sentinel on the southeast corner of Queen Street, Kinston’s north-south main street, and east-west King Street.

The district attorney’s offices occupied a goodly portion of the second floor. During the week a meeting was usually held in the second-floor conference room beginning at 8:00 a.m. By 9:30 the meeting ended and whoever was not on assignment strolled the two blocks south along the wide sidewalk for coffee or breakfast.

The Standard Drug Store stood on the southeast corner of Queen Street and East Caswell Street. The glass front of the two-story rectangular red brick structure faced Queen Street, with its long side fronting East Caswell Street.

From front to back the drug store was divided roughly into three equal parts. The front third contained a bustling fountain section as it was called in 1943, where the soda jerk named Bobby Lokey prepared sandwiches and even cooked a light breakfast up until 11:00 a.m. You know, scrambled eggs, toast and such.

The center third of the drug store contained along the long east-west wall probably the largest collection of magazines, newspapers and funny books in Lenoir County. Those customers perusing these reading materials or slurping fountain drinks in paper cups of crushed ice sat at one of the half-dozen or so cast iron wire ice cream tables so prevalent throughout America in that era.

The rear third of the drug store held the pharmacy, where a door connected the rear of the drug store with the sidewalk fronting East Caswell Street.

Thus we have, as the storytellers are wont to say, set the stage.

Anyway on this cool September 1943 morning Newt Wildman concluded a special early briefing at 7:00 a.m. Jake Gittis departed on assignment for the D.A. and Wildman and Harrington began coordinating a special operation set to commence later in the day.

And this is the reason Van Edmonds was seated alone in one of the three booths along the right-hand wall of the fountain section of the drug store at 7:15 a.m.

Van was seated facing Queen Street through the large glass picture window, enjoying his second mug of steaming Maxwell House while studying the early morning sidewalk traffic.

The detective was on a stakeout. And he was good at it. Better than any other cop he knew. At most anything.

Suddenly the homicide detective glanced up to see a bright red 1939 Buick coupe pull into one of the slant parking spaces in front of the drug store. He took careful note of the car and driver.

The driver emerged from the bright red Buick and walked into the drug store. Just as he took a seat on one of the red-covered swivel stools at the lunch counter just to the left, Edmonds looked past the man to observe a black four-door Chevrolet pull into one of the slant parking spaces on the other side of Queen Street. However this driver remained seated in his car.

Then Edmonds observed a third car, a four-door black 1938 Ford, drive south down Queen Street and park on the opposite side of the street a few parking spaces from the black Chevrolet.

The detective sensed he was onto something. Within a minute three cars had almost met in front of the drug store. Why did the driver of the Chevrolet arrive riding the bumper of the bright red Buick, park across the street yet remain inside the car?

Suddenly the driver’s-side door of the last of the three cars to arrive, that is the 1938 Ford, opened and a tall woman got out, closed the door and walked across Queen Street in the direction of the drug store.

As she passed by the red Buick she hesitated just long enough to get a good look at the interior of the car.

And just long enough for the astute detective to know from experience that hers was not simply an admiring glance at a beautiful red car. No this was an inquiring glance, one seeking information not on the car itself but on the driver of the red car.

The gorgeous brunette who entered the drug store was about five-foot-eight and filled out in all the right places. In two words she was simply beautiful, and seemed to ooze sex out of every pore in her pinup body.

Something about the way she had paused to look inside the red car caused Edmonds to suspect that the woman was indeed surreptitiously following, or tailing, or even stalking one or both drivers of the cars parked on the street in front of the drug store.

Therefore as the beautiful woman passed within four feet of Van’s booth on her way to the rear pharmacy section, he averted his gaze so as to appear to be studying the funnies section of the Kinston Daily Free Press opened on the table before him.

In one corner of the pharmacy section was a wide shelf on which sat a heavy black Bakelite telephone that folks in that era called a community telephone because use of the phone to place local calls was free of charge.

As the woman lifted the receiver and dialed a number Edmonds strained to hear her part of the conversation. And he heard quite clearly every word she said.

But this was as far as it went. Edmonds heard clearly every word that passed between those full red lips.

However of what use is hearing without comprehending? The only words the detective understood clearly were Allo and Auf wiederseyen, that if he were pressed to spell the latter wording would come very close to Offveeder-zain.

But as to the German gibberish jammed in between Allo as a greeting and the other confusing words, the stymied detective possessed neither a clue nor the slightest idea of how to go about looking for same. His high school German wasn’t helping a lot.

The woman’s conversation lasted for about five minutes at the outside, interspersed freely with a mixture of several foreign words familiar to residents of Lenoir County during the previous eighteen months or so, the German words nein meaning of course no and ja, meaning yes but pronounced ya. Why can’t these foreigners just say yes and no like we Americans thought the (sometimes) perceptive detective.

It appeared to Edmonds that the woman was reporting to someone what she had just witnessed and was receiving instructions as to what she should do next.

As her repetitions of nein outnumbered ja (pronounced ya) by more than two-to-one, this meant that although the woman could report what she had just observed on Queen Street in front of the Standard Drug Store, she had learned little more than that.

In addition there was a liberal smattering of the words rot and auto, that Edmonds knew meant red and car. A logical deduction considering the circumstances.

Other than that the woman’s tone was normal. She could have been giving a fourth-grader’s book report for that matter.

It was not solely the German language that so aroused the interest of the homicide detective. As of the fall of 1943 German prisoners of war were being housed in three so-called Main Detention Camps and fifteen Secondary Detention Camps in North Carolina, part of the vast archipelago of more than 900 P.O.W. camps spread across America.

In August 1942 a Secondary Detention Camp, that housed 325 German soldiers captured during the fighting in North Africa in 1942, was constructed on a 150-acre tract of wooded land in the northern part of Lenoir County.

The Lenoir County P.O.W. Camp had been constructed to alleviate overcrowding in the large Fayetteville Main Detention Camp that had reached an overflow camp population of 3,300 prisoners.

Few of the 325 P.O.W.s in the Lenoir County camp were hardened troops who had been involved in major fighting. The majority had served as rear echelon support personnel dealing in munitions and food supply and vehicle maintenance.

These 325 prisoners actually enjoyed relative freedom. They were well-fed three meals each day, whereas even most Americans suffered food rationing.

In addition the prisoners could freely correspond by mail with their families in Germany. And although their names were not broadcast to the public, these identities were no great secret.

Escape certainly was not a problem. Home was 8,000 miles away across the wide Atlantic; where would an escapee flee to anyway? There simply was no percentage in escaping from hot food and a warm bed.

Because escape attempts were rare, the German prisoners enjoyed freedom to travel into Kinston in small supervised groups for purposes of taking in a Wednesday afternoon B-western matinee at the Paramount Theatre on Queen Street, then enjoy slurping sodas and crushed ice while perusing the large array of funny books along the north wall of the Standard Drug Store.

And this is the reason the German language being spoken inside the drug store was not in itself notable to the perceptive homicide investigator.

That is, as long as the German language was being spoken by a group of prisoners of war enjoying a day trip on a weekday afternoon.

On the other hand unless the woman were attempting to contact one of the prisoners assigned to the Lenoir County P.O.W. Camp—conduct that was strictly verboten for obvious reasons—she was free to move about the county unimpeded as would be any person.

However Van Edmonds was not about to let it go. The German woman definitely was following the men who drove up in separate automobiles and parked in front of the drug store. Van asked Bobby Lokey for another mug of Maxwell House, then donned his metaphorical thinking cap.

In similar situations information was the name of the game. Edmonds needed to know the identities of the woman and the men driving the other two automobiles.

At this point in the story questions abounded. And not enough answers to match.

So perhaps we have gotten a little ahead of ourselves in this tale of wartime greed, murder, revenge and deliverance.

What was the reason for the brilliant detective’s presence inside the Standard Drug Store so early in the morning?

Who was the owner of the bright red Buick coupe who had driven up like he owned the town and parked directly in front of the popular drug store. Surely he did not seem threatened by anyone.

Who was the driver of the four-door black 1938 Chevrolet who appeared to have practically shadowed the bright red Buick south down Queen Street, parked directly across the street from the drug store and remained inside his car as the driver of the red car emerged and walked inside the drug store to order breakfast at the counter, in full view of God and everyone.

An observer might well conclude that the driver of the black Chevrolet was indeed tailing the driver of the red car and did not want his identity known to anyone.

Who was the gorgeous brunette who placed the call on the pharmacy telephone, spoke in a businesslike tone in German for a few minutes then calmly walked toward the front door of the drug store, past Van Edmonds seated in a booth to her right and the driver of the red Buick to her left, exited the drug store, then walked across the street, climbed into her black Ford and drove away north up Queen Street?

So just what did the brilliant detective have in his bushel basket of forensic clues at this point in his surveillance?

First he knew that the woman, and the man in the red Buick, were German nationals. The woman spoke only German over the telephone and the man sitting on a swivel stool at the counter who ordered breakfast from Bobby Lokey spoke halting English with a thick German accent.

And Edmonds would bet his proverbial bottom dollar that if he walked by the black Chevrolet parked across the street from the drug store and said to the driver, Guten Morgen, he would receive a similar greeting.

Detective Edmonds sensed there was foreign intrigue in play in Lenoir County and that this trouble originated not down the road aways but eight thousand miles away in the land of weiner schnitzel und sauerkraut.

Furthermore he believed somehow this mystery involved a German soldier being held in the prisoner of war camp in northern Lenoir County.

Just a hunch.

Indeed this tale of wartime intrigue does involve these four principals.

The homicide detective.

The driver of the bright red Buick coupe.

The driver of the four-door black Chevrolet.

And the beautiful brunette.

And true, the story does begin at an earlier time.

And in a faraway land.

Just what was the set of circumstances that brought these four persons together in a small Southern American town in 1943?

Chapter 2

A Prisoner of War in America

Dieter Gross and Willi Sterner were born in Stuttgart, Germany in the southwestern part of the country, in March 1920.

Willi Sterner was an only child. Dieter Gross had an older brother named Horst, who was born in 1916.

The two families lived on Konigstrasse, and early-on the boys developed a close friendship. During the economically-troubled years following Germany’s ignominious defeat in the Great War, Horst became Willi and Dieter’s protector.

It is difficult to say which of the youngsters exerted more influence over the other. However by the beginning of their preteens their antisocial tendencies had surfaced. Trouble seemed to seek them out.

Taking advantage of the older Horst Gross’ vow to protect his brother (and by extension his brother’s best friend Willi Sterner) the boys became neighborhood bullies, eventually adding extortion, burglary and petty theft to their repertoire of crimes.

At age sixteen Dieter Gross and Willi Sterner robbed a jewelry store at gunpoint, injuring the owner’s wife in a scuffle occasioned by the woman’s refusal to part with her gold necklace following Dieter’s demand for the jewelry.

At the boys’ trial in the People’s Court the magistrate sentenced each of them to a year in jail. They now had criminal records that would follow them throughout their lives.

The boys vowed revenge against the jeweler and his wife.

In 1939 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler spent ten billion Reichsmarks to rearm Germany and create a 500,000-man army in preparation for war against England, Europe and Russia.

One of those half-million men conscripted into the Germany army in 1939 was Horst Gross. After undergoing basic infantry training the twenty-three-year-old was assigned as a crewman in a Nebelwerfer unit destined for duty as part of Field Marshal Irwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps bound for Tunisia, a country in northern Africa.

The Nebelwerfer was a 6-barreled mortar that fired simultaneously a half-dozen 75-pound high explosive rounds. It was one of the deadliest German army field weapons most feared by the Americans and the British throughout the desert campaign.

Kasserine Village was situated in the center of the Kasserine Pass in northern Tunisia. The village enjoyed almost impregnable natural defenses. The German army ably defended the Pass but the determined Americans simply refused to let up on their frontal assault. Control of this north-south corridor was essential to winning the North Africa campaign.

On February 20, 1943 Field Marshal Rommel drove to Kasserine village, where he encountered a battered, demoralized German 10th Tank Division.

Field Marshal Albert Kasselring then moved his 21st Panzer Tank Division northward up Highway 71 to support the depleted 10th.

On March 23, 1943 the two Panzer tank divisions engaged the U.S. Army’s 34th Infantry Division. The pivotal battle ended in the Americans’ favor on May 20, 1943.

On March 9, 1943 Field Marshal Irwin Rommel, his army in shambles, was ordered by Adolf Hitler to return to Berlin for reassignment.

On March 16-18, 1943 the German army’s 90th Light Division encountered the American 34th Infantry Division in the famous Battle of Mareth in Tunisia, effectively signaling the end of the German army’s involvement in the North Africa campaign.

As of May 12, 1943 the Americans and the British had captured more than 200,000 German prisoners of war. These men were being held in Moroccan prison camps awaiting shipment to their new homes in America.

One of these defeated and demoralized German soldiers was Sergeant Horst Gross. He and the other six members of his Nebelwefer heavy mortar squad had been surprised by a platoon of American infantrymen during a daring nighttime raid in the Kasserine Pass on February 19, 1943. The seven German soldiers had surrendered without a shot being fired.

On the early morning of March 17, 1943 Sergeant Gross boarded an American army troop ship along with 1,800 other German soldiers in the harbor at Rabat, Morocco.

Thirty days later the crowded prisoner of war ship docked at the harbor in Philadelphia. The following morning a long train filled with more than three hundred German soldiers departed the train station heading south.

As the overloaded train lumbered along over vast stretches of rich farm land and through cities and towns it suddenly came to Sergeant Horst Gross that from the night of his capture to that day no American soldier had beaten him, threatened him or even spoken to him in a harsh voice.

Some of the prisoners departed the train along the way south. On the morning of April 23, 1943 the train pulled into the station located in a quiet residential section of tree-lined streets. The street sign at the corner of the nearest street read E. Caswell Street. The sign printed above the door of the train station announced in large white letters on a dark green background, KINSTON, N.C.

Attrition along the 500-mile train ride had resulted in a total of 123 German enlisted men who left the train and boarded five of what the American soldiers guarding the German prisoners called deuce-and-a-half vehicles, large two-and-a-half ton trucks suitable for transporting troops and pulling heavy artillery pieces.

Once loaded aboard, the seven-vehicle convoy of five large trucks sandwiched between two U.S. Army jeeps, each carrying four armed military policemen, departed the train station heading west on East Caswell Street.

Four city blocks later the convoy turned right heading north up Queen Street, that also bore a sign reading U. S. 258.

Eight city blocks up Queen Street the convoy turned left onto U.S. 70 heading west.

The German prisoners were still wearing the army uniforms they wore the night Horst was captured. Thus it was easy for the people on the street to know that these men riding in the back of the large open-air troop transports were enemy soldiers.

Yet few pedestrians along the way even looked at the prisoners and occasionally one would smile and wave. Horst returned both.

After driving for about ten miles through what the locals called scrub pines, short pine trees with small cones and drooping branches, suddenly the convoy came upon a vast stretch of cleared land of 150 acres. A closed gate across the road was manned by a single U.S. army private armed with a carbine rifle. The wooden sign off to the side of the gate announced their new home, the LENOIR COUNTY PRISONER OF WAR CAMP.

The prisoners were ordered to climb down from the vehicles and fall into formation in front of the mess hall. As they stood at attention they could smell the aroma of fried bacon wafting from inside the building. An American army officer exited the mess hall and stood before the men.

You all can relax now, and anyone of you who speaks English can translate what I’m saying, he began.

I am Captain Mark Rollins of the United States Army. You are presently in a prisoner of war camp in the state of North Carolina. We will talk more later and I will explain how life in your new home works, began the captain.

Right now we are going to eat breakfast. The sergeant here will show you where the latrine and showers are located. After you have had breakfast and gotten cleaned up, our first order of business will be for each of you to write a letter to your family, telling them you are alive and safe and living in Lenoir County, North Carolina.

And then a strange thing happened, a gesture that for the next three years would be repeated in literally hundreds of such prisoner of war camps scattered like an archipelago across America.

The 123 prisoners applauded, loud and long. The American army officer would have no reason to lie to these hapless prisoners. They took him at his word that they were in a place of safety and that they would not be mistreated.

The greatest fear of prisoners of war is that their family members will not know they have been captured and will assume they have been killed.

Although not foremost in the mind of the German prisoners there was an added bonus that went along with the letter-writing to family back in Germany.

During World War II nearly 400,000 German prisoners were housed in nearly 900 prisoner of war camps scattered throughout America. In North Carolina there were three Main Detention Camps and sixteen Secondary Detention Camps.

During the war nearly 90,000 American soldiers were captured by the German army. The majority of these prisoners of war were housed in prison camps throughout Germany called stalags.

In point of fact during the early 1943 fighting in North Africa one of the first questions German officers asked of captured American soldiers was whether or not German soldiers captured by the American army were being shipped to Canada and the United States.

Therefore it behooved the American authorities to treat the German prisoners of war humanely and to encourage the prisoners to write to family members back in Germany, letters in which these grateful prisoners would inform family members of their good treatment, trusting that the German government would reciprocate in kind. And for the most part this system of tit-for-tat worked quite well.

Therefore the American authorities encouraged German prisoners of war to correspond early and often to family members back in Germany.

In addition within a reasonably short period of time following the arrival of German prisoners at a camp in America, the U.S. government notified the German government of the location of the prison camp where the German soldier was being incarcerated.

The German army however did not splash across the front page of the Berlin Times the names of the German soldiers being held in American prisoner of war camps. To admit that German soldiers were surrendering in droves would do nothing positive for the image of Hitler’s vaunted Thousand Year Reich.

In addition if German soldiers fighting the American army became aware of the pampered life being led by German prisoners of war in America, the desertion and surrender rates of German soldiers likely would increase exponentially. One of the first detailed letters that left the Lenoir County Prisoner of War Camp in the mail bag bound for German families across the wide Atlantic was penned by Sergeant Horst Gross and was addressed to the Gross family on Konigstrasse in Stuttgart, Germany.

Chapter 3

Escaping the Horrors of Barbarossa

In the letter Horst told of his arrival at a camp in a place called Lenoir County in the state of North Carolina. He informed his parents he was being treated well and that they could write to him as often as they wished.

Following Dieter Gross and Willi Sterner’s year in jail for the armed robbery of the Stuttgart jewelry store and the assault on the jeweler’s wife, the embittered and vengeful eighteen year olds resumed their criminal ways. Dieter’s parents hoped that if Dieter were drafted into the German army it would take him out of the criminal influence of Willi Sterner.

The problem with this thinking however was that contrary to the parents’ hopes it was their son Dieter who exerted control over his best friend Willi Sterner and not the other way around.

Fearing that their