It began with a suspicious death on April 16, 1906.
The dead woman was Leona Krembs Muenter, wife of Harvard lecturer, Erich Muenter. Muenter, who received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1899 was described as a tall, thin, and somewhat excitable man who spoke with a noticeable German accent though he insisted he had been born in the United States (other records indicate he was born in Germany in 1871). He and Leona Muenter already had one child together and her medical problems apparently began following the birth of her second child on April 6, just ten days before her death. While Muenter insisted that Leona's frail condition was due to her not recovering from childbirth, the two women he had called in on the case were alarmed by what they saw on examining her.
While the women were not medical doctors (they preferred to advertise themselves as “faith cure” healers), they were hardly ignorant either. Realizing that their patient was seriously ill, they called in more conventional medical doctors who prescribed a strict treatment regimen. When Mrs. Muenter failed to improve, the doctors withdrew from the case believing that the faith healers were sabotaging the treatment. Though likely right about the sabotage, they were completely wrong about who was responsible.
All of which became apparent enough after Leona Muenter’s death when her husband abruptly packed up his two children and fled to Chicago. His reason for fleeing became obvious enough when an autopsy determined that she had died of arsenic poisoning. Apparently her husband had been systematically poisoning her for some time though no suspicions were raised until after her death. By that time, Erich Muenter had disappeared completely and even his family members in Chicago had no idea of his whereabouts.
From what would be pieced together later, Muenter had fled to Mexico where he would live for a few years while working as a cook and an accountant (other accounts suggest that he had been living in Texas instead). Although he seemed safe from arrest, this was apparently not enough for him and he managed to re-enter the United States and enrol as a student at Polytechnic Institute in Fort Worth, Texas under his new name of Frank Holt. That he managed to do all this without a passport and without raising any suspicions seems like an amazing testimonial to the lax borders of that era. There was definitely no question that Holt was brilliant and he completed four years of undergraduate work in record time. Quickly rising to the rank of professor in the languages department, Muenter/Holt moved on to teach German at Oklahoma State University and then on to several other prominent colleges. By 1912, he was back in the Ivy League lecturing at Cornell.
As for what became of his two children, I have no idea since they seemed to vanish from the historical record. The most charitable assumption was that he left them with family members in Chicago though there is no actual record of this. What is recorded was that “Frank Holt” somehow managed to acquire a new wife along the way. This new wife, Leone Sensabaugh, was the daughter of a prominent Dallas minister and they had apparently met while he was still in Fort Worth. That she came from a good family likely contributed to Frank Holt’s general air of respectability and helped advance his academic career.
Though he would claim to be a professor at Cornell, he never received tenure and likely never moved past the rank of lecturer. Still, the professional community was small enough for at least one former colleague to suspect that Frank Holt was really Erich Muenter and inform the head of the department. Aside from denying him tenure, the university apparently saw no need to take any further action.
Everything changed with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. While the United States would not enter the war until 1917, there was still considerable anti-German feeling which made “Frank Holt” even more of an outsider than before. Though insisting he was born in the United States, Holt still spoke with a distinct German accent which aroused suspicion despite his being careful to hide his pro-German beliefs. Many prominent Americans were already pushing for U.S. entry into the war, including financier J.P. Morgan who had lent millions to the Russians and the British to promote the war effort. For all that he insisted he was a pacifist, Holt was outraged and wrote numerous letters to newspapers denouncing Morgan's use of his wealth to promote the war against Germany.
Whether due to pressure from Cornell or simply to move closer to his wife’s family in Texas, Holt accepted a position at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. At the same time, the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania by a German warship on May 7, 1915 made American involvement in the war all but inevitable. Or so Frank Holt assumed. While his wife was getting settled in their new home in Texas, he rented a bungalow in New York City under the name of “Patton”. After buying as much dynamite as he possibly could (it was a much simpler time), Holt used the bungalow to put together his own quiet campaign against the U.S. government. Building the first of what would be several bombs, he traveled to Washington, D.C. on June 2 and managed to plant the bomb in the reception room of the Senate Capitol building (he couldn’t plant the bomb in the Senate chamber itself as he had originally intended).
The bomb went off at 11:23 PM EST that same day. Though there were no fatalities, the Senate reception room was destroyed and the blast even caused some damage to the Vice President’s office. Police later discovered that the bomb had been rigged to explode using the ingenious method of having acid burn through a cork (low-tech, but effective). Holt heard the explosion while at the train station where he was boarding a train back to New York City. In a letter he wrote to D.C. newspapers (which he signed “R. Pearce”), Holt took credit for the explosion which he intended as a statement about the supplying of arms to the war effort in Europe. “I, too, have had to use explosives (for the last time I trust). It is the export kind, and ought to make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war and blood money.” The letter ended by saying that the explosion “is the exclamation point to my appeal for peace.”
But the bomb was only the beginning for Holt.
After arriving back in New York City, Frank Holt took more dynamite and two handguns to Glen Cove, New York and the estate of J. P. Morgan Jr. He had already scouted out the location, or as well as a casual visitor could possibly manage. On June 3 at 9:30 AM, Holt knocked on the front door of the Morgan estate and introduced himself to the butler as Thomas P. Lester. After presenting his business card, he asked to see Mr. Morgan. When the butler, Stanley Physick, refused, Holt pulled the two pistols out of his pocket and forced his way inside.
Showing considerable courage and quick-thinking, Physick misdirected Holt to the library on the other side of the house from where Morgan and his family were actually at breakfast with the British ambassador. Taking Physick with him, Holt began searching the house after realizing the library was empty. Before reaching the room where the Morgans were eating, Physick managed to shout out a warning and the family attempted to take cover.
Holt was hardly deterred and began chasing the financier and his family. To protect his family, J.P. Morgan rushed Holt directly but not in time to keep him from firing four shots. One of those bullets hit Morgan in the leg and another one lodged in his abdomen. Still, Morgan was able to wrestle Holt to the ground and Physick hit Holt in the head with a lump of coal. After taking away his guns and tying him up for the police, another servant noticed the dynamite sticking out of Holt’s pocket. The dynamite was immediately placed in a pail of water
Police arrived quickly and took Holt into custody. He identified himself as a Cornell professor and gave a voluntary confession which was immediately published in the newspapers. While insisting that he had been in New York for weeks, the dynamite in his possession and the similarity between his confession and the “R. Pearce” letters were enough to link him to the Senate bombing. As for J.P. Morgan Jr, his injuries weren’t life threatening and churches across New York gave masses praising his escape.
All of which led to a major free-for-all with Holt being interviewed by city, state, and federal police officers and psychiatrists trying to determine his mental state. He kept changing his story about what he had been planning with J. P. Morgan, whether to kill him or to take his family hostage to force him to stop financing the war effort. Police quickly learned that Holt was really Erich Muenter though they had bigger worries by then. In a letter that Holt had previously written to his wife in Dallas, he claimed that he had placed bombs on different ships heading for Europe, all set to blow up on July 7.
Considering the large amount of dynamite Holt had purchased, most of which could not be accounted for, police had no choice but to take his threats seriously. Though there was an explosion and fire aboard the ship Minnehaha on July 9, police were unable to link it directly to Holt since other German sympathizers were also targeting ships. As it was, the fact that the Minnehaha had been carrying high explosives which (mercifully) failed to detonate was enough to add to the paranoia. Police also raised the inevitable question of whether Holt was acting alone or part of a larger gang but their chief source of information would soon become unavailable.
On July 6, Holt/Muenter managed to slip out of his cell. This happened despite the fact that he had been on suicide watch after previously attempting to slash his wrists with a broken pencil along with trying to starve himself to death. Once he evaded his guard, Holt managed to climb onto a railing on the second story of the jail and dived head-first onto the concrete floor below. He was killed instantly and an autopsy later determined that he had died of a compound fracture and a cerebral hemorrhage.
With their main suspect gone, police had no option but to send out a general alert due to the possibility that Holt had planted other bombs. While they managed to trace most of the explosives, there were no more explosions although fifty sticks of dynamite were never found. Another bombing plot involving a German spy ring would later be broken up in 1916 but there was no link to Frank Holt who had apparently been working alone. Police later turned up evidence of several small explosions that occurred in Central Park near the bungalow he had rented and concluded that he had used up much of the missing dynamite in experimental blasts to test out his bombs.
Beyond establishing that Frank Holt was definitely Erich Muenter there was little enough left to do in the case. A telegram sent by his lawyer to his Holt’s father-in-law in Texas likely said it all: “Holt a suicide in jail here. Obviously demented. Do you wish body shipped to Texas?” The “obviously demented” theory was the only explanation anyone would ever make about the bizarre academic who had tried to halt American involvement in World War I before it even started. His actual impact on U.S. society seems minimal and the world would soon be too embroiled in World War I and its aftermath to spare much thought to a deranged professor.
Even today, about the only conclusion anyone can make about Professor Erich Muenter is that he is much an enigma in death as he was in life.
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