Compare to 2016 UCLA shooter who also killed his wife on his mission of terror, and Adam Lanza and South Carolina homeschool shooter who killed their mother or father before their mass terror mission.
a crazy German professor managed to bomb the Capitol, attack one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, and plant a bomb onboard a ship carrying American munitions to a foreign war zone within the span of a few days. The only reason he failed was because he wasn't a particularly skilled terrorist, and Craigslist and YouTube hadn't been invented yet to help him anonymously recruit like-minded sociopaths to his cause.
*Reference
World War I Intrigue: German Spies in New York!
BY MICHAEL S. NEIBERG
2/27/2013
http://www.historynet.com/world-war-i-intrigue-german-spies-in-new-york.htm While several of the key players in Germany’s wartime sabotage efforts in North America went on to further notoriety, none, perhaps, had a more sinister role in history than Franz von Papen. He became chancellor of Germany in 1932 and was among the men chiefly responsible for persuading President Paul von Hindenburg to name Adolf Hitler chancellor in 1933; Papen then served briefly as Hitler’s vice chancellor.
*Harvard Crimson 1942
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1942/2/14/muenter-once-german-teacher-here-killed/
Aside from the short-lived flurry attending the quiet arrest of Karl Lange, Harvard so far in this war has produced no excitement like that caused by former German instructor Eric Muenter, who tried to stop World War 1 single-handed. The sensational career of this misguided patriot included poisoning his wife, shooting J.P. Morgan, trying to blow up the Capitol, and plotting to destroy giant munitions transports at sea.
Muenten, in 1906, was living the quiet life of a German instructor here. In best murder fiction tradition, he was harmless on the surface. He affected a scholarly stoop and a Van Dyke, and wore dingy, patched suits.
Poisoned His Wife
But this timid soul slowly killed his wife with arsenic, for reasons unknown, and skipped town when the police started to investigate the death. With his beard shaved, he looked very much like Goebbels, and very little like Muenter. He settled in Texas, took a college degree and the name "Frank Holt" and worked his way up the academic ladder till he was a professor of German at Cornell.
Then the war in Europe came, Muenter hated the slaughter, and developed a fixation that it would all end if our munitions manufacturers, like J.P. Morgan, would stop exporting to all Allies. Letters and arguments did not good, so Muenter decided on July 3, 1915 that action was necessary.
Sets Bomb In Senate
Buying a large amount of high explosives, he fashioned on ingenious time bomb whose action depended on acid eating through a cork, and took a train to Washington. His story was that he wanted only to wake the American people up to the damage which explosives like these were doing abroad. At any rate, after wandering unmolested through the empty Senate chambers with the
bomb in his arms, he set it down in the reception room where it would hurt no body. Then he went outside, waited for the explosion, and hopped a train out of town as soon as he heard the blast.
The explosion ripped the room apart and blew a watchman off his seat in a far end of the building. The story rated a tiny box on the front page of the New York Times, which attributed it vaguely to "gasses".
Meanwhile, Muenter was on his way to Glen Cove, L.I. where Morgan lived. His plan was to hold Mrs. Morgan and her children captive till Morgan agreed to stop shipping munitions abroad. He forced his way in, but J.P. rushed at him, and Muenter shot him down. Servants subdued Muenter.
Morgan Recovered
The first three pages of the next morning's Times were given over to the sensational bombing and shooting story. Morgan's wounds were not serious and he soon recovered, while all New York churches sent up prayers for him.
But while Muenter was Captured, he was not through. The whole nation was on edge when police uncovered his plot, to blow up several munitions ships then at sea. But while no bombs were found on these vessels, the "Minnehaha" caught fire on the day designated by "Holt" and had to race madly for the nearest port to keep its cargo of cordite and high explosives from going sky-high.
Holt is Muenter
Back in the United States, meanwhile, colleagues had identified "Holt" as Muenter, the former Harvard professor. The newspapers had a field day with Morgan, the Capital, Harvard and Murder all in one story.
Muenter, exposed, tried to kill himself by cutting an artery with a metal strip ripped from an eraser cap. When this failed, he climbed a latticework of prison bars and dived head first to the concrete floor, dashing his skull to pieces
*Sources
Eric Muenter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric Muenter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric Muenter (1871–1915), also known as Erich Münter, Erich Muenter, Erich Holt or Frank Holt, was a German-American would-be assassin.
Biography[edit]
While teaching German at Harvard University in 1906 he poisoned his pregnant wife.[1][2][3] He fled before this was discovered, and spent the next decade in various places in the United States under assumed identities.[4][5]
He was a committed German nationalist and opposed the US policy of selling arms to Great Britain and France, Germany's enemies in World War I.[6]
On July 2, 1915, Muenter hid a package containing three sticks of dynamite with a timing mechanism set for nearly midnight under a telephone switchboard in the Senate reception room in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. His original target had been the Senate chamber, which he found locked. The bomb exploded at approximately 11:40 PM resulting in no casualties. Muenter wrote a letter to The Washington Star under a pseudonym, explaining his actions, which was published after the bombing. He said that he hoped the explosion would "make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war. This explosion is an exclamation point in my appeal for peace."[7]
After setting off the bomb in the Capitol, he fled to New York City, where he hid a time bomb on SS Minnehaha, a ship loaded with munitions bound for Britain.[8] He then made his way to the home of financier J. P. Morgan, Jr. in Glen Cove, New York. Morgan had arranged for Britain to borrow large amounts in the US to finance its war effort against Germany, which angered Muenter. Muenter shot Morgan twice in the groin, but failed to kill him and was captured. (Morgan's butler subdued Muenter with a lump of coal.)[9]
He was charged with both crimes and soon after committed suicide in jail.[4][5][6] On July 7, just two days after his jail cell suicide, the bomb he had planted on Minnehaha exploded. It had been placed far away from the munitions, and the resulting fire only caused minor damage.[8]
References[edit]
- ^ The New York Times Index. New York Times Company. 1915. pp. 285–.
- Jump up^ "Muenter, Once German Teacher Here, Killed Wife, Shot Morgan, Sabotaged in World War 1". The Harvard Crimson. February 14, 1942. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
- Jump up^ "Says Muenter Is Not Guity". Los Angeles Herald. Associated Press. May 1, 1906. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
- ^ Jump up to:a b "Chas. Apted Dies; 'Cop' at Harvard". New York Times. June 6, 1941. p. 21.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Russell, Daniel E. "The Day Morgan Was Shot" (PDF). Glen Cove Heritage.[better source needed]
- ^ Jump up to:a b "Man Who Shot J. P. Morgan Twice Admits Setting Bomb At National Capital". Hartford Courant. July 4, 1915. Retrieved 2009-10-30. Former German Instructor At Cornell Talks Freely After Third Degree Is Used, and Says He Wanted To Stop Shipment of Munitions To Europe. Is Suspected of Other, Similar Crimes. Describes Construction of Rare Type of 'Infernal Machine'. Financier Reported in Excellent Condition. Has Two Bullet Wounds In His Hip.
- Jump up^ "Bomb Rocks Capitol". United States Senate. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Kinghorn, Jonathan. "S.S. Minnehaha". The Atlantic Transport Line. Retrieved 14 June 2014.
- Jump up^ "Intruder Has Dynamite – Forces His Way Into Banker's House at East Island, L. I. – Mrs. Morgan Risks Life – Leafs in Front of Husband, Who Thrusts Her Aside and Knocks Holt Down. – Wife Seizes His Revolver – As Financier Struggles on Flood She Aids Him Until the Servants Arrive. – British Ambassador Near – Sir Cecil Spring Rice a Guest at Breakfast Party Which the Shooting Interrupts.". The New York Times. July 4, 1915.
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eric Muenter. |
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Erich "Frank Holt" Muenter (1871 - 1915) - Find A Grave Memorial
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Library of CongressErich Muenter (Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, Library of Congress).
The Erich Muenter Saga (Part 1 of 2) - Providentia
drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2013/04/the-erich-muenter-saga-part-1-of-2.html
Apr 21, 2013 - It began with a suspicious death on April 16, 1906. The dead woman was Leona Krembs Muenter, wife of Harvard lecturer, Erich Muenter.
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#4. A Harvard Professor Became a Real-Life Supervillain
Eric Muenter was a mild-mannered Harvard professor with the secret hobby of slowly poisoning his wife with arsenic, which was apparently in vogue at the time. Once she finally died, Muenter went on the run, changing his name to Frank Holt and getting a job as a German professor at Cornell, where he worked until WWI broke out. In the beginning of the war, America was happily arming the British and French, which infuriated both Muenter's proud German ancestry as well as the swarm of barking cockroaches burrowing through his mind. So, he decided to initiate a massive one-man terror spree to force America to cut all supplies to the Allies, and thus single-handedly end a world war in favor of Germany because there was simply too much crazy inside of Muenter for him to keep it all to himself.
Muenter's rampage began when he sneaked into the U.S. Capitol building on the Fourth of July weekend in 1915, with a pile of dynamite, and rigged a big bomb in a conference room next to the senate chamber. He then retreated to a train station, where he watched part of the U.S. Capitol building explode just before midnight. To his chagrin, the building was empty, and the only casualty was the dignity of a single guard, who was knocked off his chair by the blast.
Ghosts of DC/Library of CongressAnd when someone wakes Nightwatchman Wiggins, you bet your ass that heads are going to roll.
Muenter then traveled to New York, planning to take the family of pro-British financier J.P. Morgan, Jr. into hostage. Wielding duel pistols, Muenter broke into Morgan's house and wounded the famous robber baron, but was also beaten into submission by Morgan's servants and taken to jail.
Find-a-Grave"Thank you for saving my life, Jeeves. Please polish the blood off that tea tray before you turn in."
"Very good, sir."
This is where you might expect Muenter's story to end, and, normally, you would be correct if it weren't for the fact that Muenter was apparently the goddamned Joker. While in custody, he revealed that he had planted incendiary bombs with multiday timers in the cargo holds of several munition ships in the New York Harbor, so they would explode while at sea and take all of their Germany-destroying artillery to the bottom of the ocean. Muenter wasn't bluffing, either -- a bomb of his soon went off onboard the SS Minnehaha, exactly when he said the ship would explode.
However, Muenter was more of an ideas man than a skilled agent of chaos and had mistakenly planted the bomb in the "general cargo" area, rather than among the piles of combustible munitions. Even so, the crew had to battle a huge, inextinguishable fire for two full days as the ship frantically raced to the nearest port.
via Titanic Inquiry"I told you we shouldn't have taken those shipments of dry kindling and lamp oil!"
So, to recap, a crazy German professor managed to bomb the Capitol, attack one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country, and plant a bomb onboard a ship carrying American munitions to a foreign war zone within the span of a few days. The only reason he failed was because he wasn't a particularly skilled terrorist, and Craigslist and YouTube hadn't been invented yet to help him anonymously recruit like-minded sociopaths to his cause.
Justice: The nutty professor - NY Daily News
www.nydailynews.com/.../justice-nutty-professor-article-1.37775...
New York Daily NewsJun 21, 2009 - Although his academic discipline was the German language, Harvard lecturer Erich Muenter had a keen interest in insanity.
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