By Rit Carter

Part I

“Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

I

The Introduction

May 29, 1918

Readers who opened the Hartford Courant on Wednesday, May 29, 1918, were eager for updates from the war front.  And for just three cents, they would not be disappointed. 

The morning edition greeted them with an entire front page dedicated to stories about the conflict with Germany.  The headlines were as follows:

• Germans Push Ahead 8 Miles, Cross Vesle River, and Take 15,000 Prisoners
• British and British French Oppose Great Odds
• Yanks Take Cantigney; and Capture 200 Huns
• 68 Victims of Raid at Cologne Buried Together

And then below the fold, near the bottom right corner, innocuously enough surrounded by a wall of war updates and easy to miss, was the following headline:

Bristol Pastor Arrested For Talking Against U.S.

Rev. Theodore Beussel (also spelled Buessel), 36, an immigrant pastor at the German Lutheran Church on Judd St., was arrested the prior evening by the United States District Attorney’s Office agents for Sedition.

Sedition in Bristol?  Yes. 

Indicted on nine counts from attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, and mutiny to interfere with the military’s operation and success, among others, he was held on a $15,000 bond and pleaded not guilty.

According to his arrest warrant, Beussel made derogatory comments during private conversations about the country’s involvement in the Great War. The statements he made were with what he thought were friends; however, they were, in fact, spies or, more to the point, unpaid volunteer vigilantes and a temptress working on behalf of the U.S. government.

What did Rev. Beussel say privately and to who that would incite others and or subvert the United States? 

What follows is Part 1 in a two-part series, so get some coffee; this will take a while.

How Did I Get Here?

In early April of 2020, as the pandemic began to unfold, I became aware of the events surrounding Theodore Beussel.

To understand the Beussel case and circumstances on which he found himself, I immersed myself into the floorboards of 1918 Bristol and walked his neighborhood many times, including almost to the day and hour that he was arrested, only to be unprepared for the deluge of rain that soaked my clothes, notebook, and camera. And I went to Hartford and retraced his steps, where many of the damaging parts of the story took place. 

It was not long before I was headed down the usual research rabbit holes because I kept finding loosely related components.

One such hole was discovering that in 1914 Rev. Beussel officiated Michael Krampitz’s funeral, the grandfather to my friend and TBE collaborator Jack Kramptiz. Jack was slightly amused when I asked if he remembered it and attended. 

Another was one late afternoon, I was at the Connecticut State Library discussing the incorporation documents of the Ku Klux Klan in Connecticut. Yes, the KKK. And, yes, there are loose threads between the Beussel case and the Klan that needed pulling. The Klan angle led me into examining details of a cross burning in Bristol nearly 100 years ago (subject of a future story).

Then there was the night I found the name of a Bristol resident involved with the American Protective League (APL), a national vigilante organization created to find traitors for the United States government. 

Unfortunately, no one around me understood the find’s significance because they were not on the ground floor of the story. Based on the confused faces, I undoubtedly sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown and probably looked like I was wearing a tinfoil hat.

Despite their lack of enthusiasm, I worked through the night and located all of Bristol’s APL members.

While researching the APL, I came across one of their badges in an online auction. I was determined to purchase it for this story but I had a budget, so I monitored the auction from the weeds.  In the final days, the price swelled beyond what I allocated.

One evening, as my wife Laura and I sat out on our front walkway admiring the late afternoon sky, I expressed my frustration with the situation using multiple expletives. This caught her off guard because this is not my modus operandi; it’s hers.

Several days later, a package arrived in my name, and Laura explained it was headphones because I am always complaining about my hearing. Opening the box, I was surprised to find no headphones but instead the APL badge I sought. It turns out I had essentially been bidding against myself as she was the winning bidder.

Bristol of 2022 vs. Bristol of 1918 is worlds apart in many respects. In 1918, the mayor’s salary was $1,200; the City Council held 27 meetings, and there were 55 building permits issued, 22 sewer connections, 154 marriage certificates, 637 birth certificates, 382 death certificates, and eight dynamite licenses issued. Meanwhile, the police department made 820 arrests, including 160 for intoxication, 61 for theft, and two for spitting.

There were 897 passenger cars, 181 commercial cars, 44 motorcycles, and 22 motorcycles with sidecars registered in Bristol. And with horses and carriages competing for space on the road, there were two livery stables and three horse dealers.

But some parallels exist, which are eerie and probably foretelling. For me, the story is Kafkaesque.

I kept an open mind during my investigation, but I continued asking: Why did they destroy a man based on his musings in private conversations with no more than four people? That question was answered late in my research when I became aware of several documents. Throughout, I swayed back and forth between sides but never favored one over the other until the end. 

None of that matters. It’s now up to you.

II

Who Was Theodore Beussel?

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Theodore Richard Albert Beussel was born on July 15, 1882, in Hanover, Germany, which is 178 miles west of Berlin. He was the son of Joachin Frederick William Beussel and Catherine Magdaline Dorothy Beussel. 

Following his primary schooling and being unable to serve in the military for “weak nerves,” he became a bible carrier. In 1906, he entered the seminary at the University of Leipzig and briefly took courses at The University of Kiev. The following year, having visited the United States in 1903, Beussel took a theology course to preach in the U.S. Two years later, having received his pastorate degree, he arrived at Bristol’s German Lutheran Zion Church. 

The church, built in 1903 on land donated by William E. Sessions, still exists today and is located at the foot of Judd St. The congregation was primarily Germans and Russians. Beussel proved popular because the community grew from 100 parishioners to almost 300 during his tenure. (I contacted the church about this story seeking records and artifacts, and they declined to be involved.)

He left in 1910 to become a missionary and went to India for upward of a year. But due to his difficulties with the climate, he returned and resumed his duties on Judd St.

Beussel involved himself in Bristol with a growing congregation and became a naturalized citizen on Oct. 6, 1916. 

1917 brought homeownership. He purchased a home on the corner of Queen and Goodwin streets. It was known as the Goodwin House, and he accepted rents while boarding at 157 Queen St. (This property is now a Bristol Hospital parking lot.)

Dedicated to having the church more involved with the community, in the fall of 1917, Beussel arranged for it to celebrate its 15^th anniversary.

Routinely he was a guest lecturer in Naugatuck, New Haven, and New York City. Due to his popularity and success in Bristol, the German Lutheran Church in Naugatuck, which was twice the size of Bristol’s, asked him to become their pastor. Rev. Beussel declined. 

He liked reading, a casual drink, talking, and it would seem female companionship in his idle time. These simple interests would be his undoing. 

III

What Happened?

“Next time I come here,” he said to himself, “I must either bring sweets with me to make them like me or a stick to hit them with.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Congress passed two sweeping pieces of legislation: the Espionage Act of 1917, which limited dissent and allowed the government, under a broad definition, to prosecute any person impeding the war effort, and the Sedition Act on May 16, 1918, criminalizing disloyal language against the United States government or military. The Sedition Act made it possible to arrest someone for speaking critically of the government in any situation, public or private. 

As tensions grew with Germany and at home cracks in the pastor’s world began to materialize.

There was a sudden and mysterious trip to Germany in 1914 for two months. Later, he would return, but that trip suddenly became suspicious once the U.S. entered the war. His steamer, bound for the U.S., was the last to cross the Atlantic after Germany declared war with Russia.

Shortly upon his return to Bristol, there were rumors that he was in the woods taking military-style target practice. 

And that home he purchased had many wondering, including James Cray, the former mayor and, at the time, the secretary of the chamber of commerce, how does a pastor making a modest salary buy a house? 

Then, according to several eyewitnesses, at patriotic rallies, Beussel was sneering.

Another matter at hand, Beussel, talked a lot. He was not shy with his opinions regarding Germany and whether the United States should enter the war. 

In a letter to the Hartford Courant dated March 8, 1917, titled “The President’s Prayer,” Beussel opined, “We should be the ally of England (which will lose Ireland sooner or later), the ‘would be destroyer’ of nations.  The blood of the pride of our nation would be shed for Wall Street. The greatest vampire-cuttle fish that ever lived.” Later in the letter, he infers President Woodrow Wilson lost his head and was afraid.

Even his first attorney, Epaphroditus Peck, who briefly represented him after the arrest, said Beussel “engaged in fool talk.”  

With this swirling in the air, many outside his congregation viewed the reverend in a suspicious light. Thus, the whispers about his loyalty began.

When Beussel came to the attention of authority’s was uncertain, but the spring of 1917 events accelerated. One night, I stumbled into several long-forgotten documents, and nestled among them was a memo showing he had been under some type of surveillance since at least March of 1917. Dated March 29, from federal agent Charles J. Scully, the message stated that his informant heard Beussel was “very loud in his criticism of the government” and instructed his congregation to stick with the Fatherland. The memo concluded with this stunning sentence, “In the event of war, it is very likely, according to my informant, that a hanging will take place near the German Lutheran Church.”

Hyperbole? Maybe, but it was not without precedent in Bristol. During the American Revolution, a loyalist named Joel Tuttle was taken to Federal Hill (less than a half-mile from Beussel’s church) and hung from an oak tree. Tuttle was left to die until someone from his church found the “Chippens Hill Tory” and cut him down.

Bristol of 1918 was on edge, but it wasn’t alone. Across the country, the threat of mob violence saw itself increasing, with actual vigilante justice taking place too and, in some instances, unchecked.

In Collinsville, IL, German immigrant Robert Prager, charged with making disloyal utterances, was taken from his home and stripped, beaten, humiliated, and hanged in front of a mob estimated between 100 and 200 people. Regardless of damaging statements by the perpetrators, it took the jury all of thirty minutes to acquit the 12 men put on trial for his murder.

Finnish immigrant, Olli Kinkkonen, dragged from a Duluth, Minn., boarding home in the middle of the night because he did not obtain his naturalization papers, was found tarred and feathered. His last earthly moments were spent hanging from a tree.

In a report published in March of 1919, the National Civil Liberties Bureau chronicled wartime prosecutions and mob violence. The report identified 22 cases where mobs forced suspected dissenters to kiss the American flag. One such incident took place in New Haven.

Following a series of pro-German acts made by a 27-year-old lawyer named Maximillian von Hoegen, a horde estimated between 20-50 people surrounded von Hoegen’s home at 364 Mansfield St. He was removed and marched to a corner lot to conduct a “Ceremony of Loyalty.” Forced to kiss the flag and sing the Star-Spangled Banner, he was beaten and left in the street. No arrests were made, nor was an investigation conducted by New Haven Police.

A Ceremony of Loyalty did not take place in Bristol.

IV

The American Protective League

“Don’t be too hasty, don’t take somebody else’s opinion without testing it.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

When the United States entered the war, there was no national security intelligence office. Defense of the homefront, in essence, was woefully unprotected from enemies foreign and domestic.

The Bureau of Investigation Secret Service employed around 300 agents and few field offices.

Connecticut State Police had 15 officers.

And the Bristol Police Department had three officers, eight patrolmen, and 13 supernumeraries.

The lack of intelligence led to the Black Tom Railyard explosion in July of 1916, wherein German agents blew up the railyard on what is now part of Liberty State Park in Jersey City. The blast shattered windows in lower Manhattan and New Jersey, while shrapnel hit the Statue of Liberty, which is why the torch is not accessible to visitors.

Upon war being declared, a campaign of German sabotage began. A chemical plant in New Jersey (DuPont) went up, a Navy Yard in California exploded, and ships at sea fell victim to cigar-shaped bombs. 

In Connecticut, the concern for Germans spies and saboteurs was no less than anywhere else. With rumors of saboteurs and spies smuggling copper and brass down the Connecticut River in small boats to be unloaded in Long Island Sound and shipped to Germany, authorities created a River Patrol to stop any smuggling and protect the bridges from sabotage.  The patrols were outfitted with Colt 38 revolvers, Springfield rifles, and Winchester shotguns. At the same time, the bridges were mounted with searchlights.

Even Bristol had to worry about German plots. In 1917, the Bell City saw a series of suspicious anthrax poisonings to livestock. Twenty jersey cows succumbed to the bacteria on the Forestville farm of W.G. Atkins, who was also a department manager at New Departure. James M. Whittlesey, Commissioner of Domestic Animals, felt that due to the randomness of the act and suspicious circumstances, “there may have been German influence at work in the matter.”

State officials believed the cattle were injected with the disease or the hay contained Anthrax. Even though there is no connection between the two, it is worth noting that Germany developed a biotoxin laboratory in the basement of a two-story brick cottage in Chevy Chase, Md., less than 10 miles from the White House.

Unprepared for war and with reports of German spies, sabotage, and suspicion of immigrants at an all-time high (the Department of Justice received 1,500 sedition complaints a day), the United States government enlisted the services of a volunteer spy network called the American Protective League or APL. And who could blame them?

Chicago advertising executive Albert Briggs created the APL in March of 1917. The volunteer organization swelled to over 250,000 members within a year. Working under the radar, they were generally bankers, executives, and others from the professional class fanned out all over the country looking for traitors and German spies. 

The APL was approved and operating at the behest of the Department of Justice. APL members had titles such as chief, captain, lieutenant, operative, and inspector; they wore badges engraved with Secret Service and even swore an oath. The amateur sleuths had an Operations Manual and published a monthly newsletter called The Spy Glass.

APL newsletter Spy Glass

Its creation became the unleashing of a mob on a crusade under the guise of law enforcement because suspicion and irrationality reigned the streets.

They spied on anyone they deemed suspicious. In many instances, they violated their subjects’ civil liberties because they read their mail, reviewed their bank records, tapped telegraph and telephone lines, and placed them under a web of surveillance (there is no evidence suggesting the Bristol branch of the APL implemented these tactics). Under these conditions, anyone’s seditious remarks could be overheard by an agent in the field and they could be picked up, and punished.

One key to their success was their secrecy, resulting from their vowed silence about their spying operations and a complicit, albeit muted media. The Justice Department sought and received from the press anonymity about the APL. The earliest reference I could locate for the APL in The Hartford Courant was July of 1918, during the Beussel’s trial. The Record-Journal of Meriden was the first Connecticut newspaper to reference the APL with a blurb on Aug. 21, 1917, announcing they were aiding with the roundup of draft delinquents. 

The APL had loose associations with the Ku Klux Klan in parts of the country. A connection between the two in Bristol was explored as part of this story, and at the time of this writing, only one member of Bristol’s APL could be identified with the Klan. Still, because there is only evidence to support he attended a single meeting, he is nameless for this story.

APL branches operated like a military chain of command, with investigations coming from headquarters in Washington to the field offices. 

The league consisted of two divisions in cities: eyes and ears and the investigators.

The eyes and ears gathered intelligence on anything they saw and heard and forwarded what they deemed suspicious to the “chief,” who decided if it warranted an investigator.

As for their internal workings, they held meetings, paid dues, and accepted donations from individuals and the business community. 

The APL also participated in what became known as Slacker Raids. Young men suspected of being draft evaders came to be known as slackers. With assistance from the APL, the government carried out a series of roundups directed primarily at immigrants.

Bristol had one such slacker raid in August of 1918. The APL, the State Guard, and local police drove around town and rounded up 500 men from factories, cafes, saloons, theatres, and pool halls using three cars.

The young men grabbed in the raid included a British army vet at a boarding house used by factory workers. He did not have a draft card but produced discharge papers from the British army and papers documenting that he was wounded in combat. Another named John Warcuincas, here on vacation from Paterson, N.J., was picked up in the net. Of the 400 questioned, 12 were brought to Hartford and locked up, including Mr. Warcuincas. In an odd twist, Robert E. Lee, the clerk of the local draft board, could not produce his draft registration card but was not detained.  

In Bristol, the APL originated from the get-go. Files show the Bristol chapter registered as of May 3, 1917, with S.W. Nicholas, the Bristol Chamber of Commerce Secretary as Chief (S.W. Nichols must be a typo because David W. Nichols was Secretary of the Chamber from 1915-1917).

The only acknowledged member of the APL was Clarence A. Woodroof, whose identity is only known because he testified at Beussel’s trial. 

Woodruff was born in August of 1886 in Meriden, Conn., and served in U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps as a lieutenant for four years. After the service, he enrolled in the Connecticut Home Guard, making it to the rank of major. Married in 1910, he lived in Waterbury and New Haven before taking up residence in Bristol.

During the Beussel affair, he was a foreman at New Departure. Along with his wife, daughter, and another child on the way, he lived at 6 Bradley St., a half-mile from Beussel. During the trial, Beussel’s attorney Joseph P. Tuttle referred to him as a “flippant young chief.”

He became chief in early April of 1918, and as chief of Bristol’s APL, he had total control of the branch and was responsible for their investigations. His job was to work with local authorities to make them aware of their presence and access any local investigatory assets.

Woodruff was the ideal person for chief.  In September of 1917, he was promoted to major in the Connecticut Home Guard. A regular part of his duties included running field maneuvers, inspecting troops, and examining new officers.

Who made up Bristol’s branch of the American Protective League has long been a mystery. To put Beussel away, I knew there had to be additional APL members in Bristol, but how to find them?

I started with the FBI. APL records were turned over from the FBI to the National Archives in the 1950s. Unfortunately, archivists only selected the files from New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, and California to represent their activities; everything was mainly destroyed. Consequently, I contacted the Connecticut State Library, the Connecticut Historical Society, The University of Connecticut Law School, Yale Law School, the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, the Bristol Historical Society, and no one possessed APL materials. I also sought papers from critical participants in this story and came away empty-handed.

As a result, with few alternatives, I turned to Ancestry.com, not expecting much. After months of searching, to my surprise, they had the APL registration records, and they revealed 21 Bristol APL members and 188 members in Connecticut. 

The names of those who comprised Bristol’s APL branch are published for the first time and are as follows:

• Arms, Harold J                                                  
• Barnes, Fuller T (appears as Tuller in APL records)
• Bresnahan, George Edward
• Brown, Joseph D
• Case, Erwin B    
• Ferris WM
• Geruldsen, Hjalmar
• Greene, John G                
• Marone, Herbert 
• McCarthy, W Scott
• Morgan, Charles                                              
• Morshead, F.    
• Riley, Charles R                 
• Sessions, Joseph B          
• Stern, Rudolph                 
• Stockton, Elmer E
• Tibbitts, Frank B               
• Treadway, Charles          
• Treadway, Morton C      
• Wade, John                                       
• Wightman, Stoddard Ellsworth                  
• Woodruff, Clarence  

 

Additional APL files, mainly correspondence concerning Beussel, were discovered in military files under German espionage. 

The tone and tenor of Bristol in 1918 were tense because the war was in the air. It was in the newspaper; the talk at the saloon; it was the missing chair at the dinner table. Over 1,300 Bristol men served in World War I, with an estimated 30 commissioned officers; this does not include nurses or doctors and others serving in supporting causes. And with nine Bristol soldiers from Company D of the 102d Infantry killed in France, two dead from disease and 13 missing, and 16 wounded at the same time the Beussel case was being prosecuted, Bristol residents were not in a tolerant mood for non-patriotic talk.

Beussel was not the only one accused of sedition in Bristol. Theodore L. Thomas, in the second-hand furniture business, was charged for seditious utterance because he called the Liberty Bond program (war bond sold to support the Allied cause) into question.

Another was Anani Nazareznik. He was taken into custody for distributing seditious pamphlets in Russian to encourage mutiny in the armed forces.

One year before the Beussel case came to the public’s attention, Leopold Cobianchi, a New Haven resident and student visiting his brother in Bristol, was charged with being a spy. Giant headlines splashed across the Hartford Courant for consecutive days advising readers of his arrest and charges. A fortnight later, the U.S. Attorney dropped the matter, writing, “it has been found that the defendant is innocent of any wrongdoing, and consequently should be released.” The story was buried on page 5 and limited to two paragraphs. 

And it wasn’t just Bristol. The day Beussel was indicted, 10 other cases were on the docket in Hartford wherein espionage charges were brought forth. 

V

The Plan for 157 Queen

“But I’m not guilty,” said K. “There’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true,” said the priest, “but that is how the guilty speak.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Imbued with a sense of duty, Woodruff developed a strategy that played to Beussel’s weaknesses: liquor and women.

As the chief of Bristol’s APL, Woodruff was familiar with Beussel and the rumors of disloyalty by community members. 

His first move was to determine who was living with the clergyman at 157 Queen St., a multi-level boarding house.

Originally from Seasport, Maine, William Sterling Kerr and his wife Marie C. Kerr lived across the hall from Beussel at 157 Queen. William Kerr moved to Bristol in the middle of January of 1918 and took up employment at New Departure drilling cones. Marie followed, and the Kerr’s began living there on Feb. 2. 

Having learned of the Kerr’s living arrangements and their shared fervor of the time, Woodruff’s belief to investigate Beussel strengthened after speaking with them. During this time, the Kerr’s monitored Beussel while Woodruff developed another aspect to his plan.

Beussel had several female admirers, including Albertina Potz, a parishioner. She, according to Beussel, visited him in his home at least twice a day and proposed marriage on many occasions, which he turned down. Although not reported at the time, Ms. Potz was one source of the money that allowed him to purchase his house. Knowing the pastor’s affinity for women and with the Kerr’s securely in place gathering Intel and a net of APL members living nearby eyeing his comings and goings, Woodruff needed one more asset to marshal his plan. He found it, a secret weapon, if you will, in Massachusetts.

VI

The Secret Weapon

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

The secret weapon in this drama was Leonore C. Murphy, a nurse from Boston who joined the APL in April. Murphy was born in Haverhill, Mass., and became a Boston resident seven years previous. According to the 1917 Boston City Directory, she lived at an apartment house at 40 Queensberry, which is a stone’s throw from Fenway Park.

Woodruff arranged with Murphy to come to Bristol and find out if, in her words, “Beussel was all that he should be.” This was her first case for the APL. (Her name does not appear in the APL records for Massachusetts, but newspaper accounts and court testimony identify her as a member of the APL.)

Miss Murphy’s title with the APL was “operator.” As an operator, she could access bank records, real estate transactions, and medical and legal records. Her primary job, along with some assistance from Mrs. Kerr, was to solicit “seditious utterances” from Beussel and report to Woodruff every day, which she did. Murphy made $30 a week, plus expenses raised via donations. Neither Mrs. Kerr nor her husband received compensation or were APL members. 

Along with Mrs. Kerr, Woodruff met Murphy outside the Hartford train station on May 13, where she was provided an overview of her assignment and cover story.

Murphy’s cover was that she was from Portland, Maine, living with her aunt and, while in Bristol, was boarding with the Kerr’s but rooming with Julia E. Gillard (also spelled Jillard), who owned 157 Queen St.

Due to her striking appearance (she was referred to as a siren in court), Murphy was instructed to lavish Beussel with attention and play to his ego. 

Arriving in Bristol, she met the pastor for the first time on May 14 in the Kerr’s apartment. Over the next two weeks, Beussel and Murphy saw each other every day but for Sundays. Beussel, by his admission, was quickly smitten with Leonore C. Murphy.

On the 15^th, there was a trip to Harford, followed the following morning with a walk and breakfast. The next day saw them bowling in New Britain.

Was Beussel suspicious of all the attention thrown his way by this stranger? Did it ever occur to him that something was afoul? He later testified that he was wary of Murphy’s intentions and suspected her a spy, but the visits and trips did not end, and neither did his talking about the war. The clergyman even went so far as to give her his prayer book.

They went to New Haven to visit Yale University and the Taft Hotel in subsequent days, followed by another trip to Hartford. Then there were the parties in the Kerr’s apartment where they played cards and drank while listening to scratchy records on his Victrola.

What could be seditious about any of this? Well, several factors would decide Theodore Beussel’s fate, but the excursion to Hartford on the 23rd and a small party on the 27th were his undoings.

Murphy was a significant key to the case. Her appealing looks were raised throughout the trial, and she swatted away those criticisms and questions concerning her motivations easily. She also batted away an insinuation that she was part of Sin Fein. Her court testimony shows her to be a cool, confident woman and not easily rattled, which might be explained in the morsels of information uncovered about her.

I spent many months searching for anything about Murphy but with no success. Finally, a couple of documents came to light after changing the focus of my search.

According to probate documents, her mother died when she was a teenager, so Leonora and her two older brothers and sister, helped raise her younger brother and sister. Around 20, she left home for Boston, presumably to enter nursing school. It is unknown how she got on Woodruff’s radar to come to Bristol and join the APL, but my presumption is they knew one another. A connection could not be found, though.

Despite discovering some background information about Miss Murphy, identifying members of the APL, uncovering never before seen memos, and finding who financially aided Besussel in buying his house, I felt that I had not done enough. COVID contributed to the problem because I did not have access to the entire court transcript (I was working with the Appellate filing), the prison records, or the pardon files unless I visited the National Archives in Maryland. However, I felt there was more, but it was only a hunch. There was still the arrest, trial, and aftermath to cover.

So one summer afternoon, while laying on our living room floor with my research spread out, and mindlessly staring up at the ceiling fan like Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) in Apocalypse Now, but without the booze, narration, napalm strikes, and the sounds of chopper blades and The Doors playing in the background, I thought, have I overlooked something? If so, where could it be, and what would it be? Then it hit me. It was so evident that I was embarrassed that I initially dismissed it. Unfortunately, it would probably take months to sort through, but that was not the problem. The problem I asked myself was, “Am I getting into the conspiracy game?”

Tomorrow, Part II, includes the arrest, jury selection, trial, and the aftermath.