Article about Erich Gimpel and William Curtis Colepaugh, two German spies who we

Source

Down East

Date

11-1-1995

Pages

68-70, 72-73

Abstract

Article about Erich Gimpel and William Curtis Colepaugh, two German spies who were landed by a German submarine at Hancock Point, near Bar Harbor, on the night of November 29, 1944. The pair aroused the suspicions of two locals, 17-year-old Harvard Merrill Hodgkins and Mary Forni, the wife of the local tax collector, who separately saw Gimpel and Colepaugh as they were walking in a snow storm along the West Side Road on Hancock Point. After some delay, Hodgkins and Forni reported their concerns to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Bangor. In the meantime, Gimpel and Colepaugh had made their way to New York City, where both were soon taken into custody. The spies were brought to trial by a military commission in February, 1945, and sentenced to death by hanging. When the war ended, President Truman commuted both sentences to confinement at hard labor for life. In the end, Colepaugh, an American, served seventeen years before being granted parole, and Erich Gimple, a German national, was held for ten years before being released and deported to Germany.

Subjects

Spies, Colepaugh, William Curtis, Gimpel, Erich

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