SUMMER READING: The unsolved mother-daughter double murder, Nazis in Calif and Texas, 1938. Can You solve the case?
By. R. J. Preece
Sample front page national media coverage across America regarding the Frome murders case.
Armed Forces Press readers will be familiar with my ongoing call for the declassification of entire sets of Nazi-era files regarding the San Francisco District of US Naval Intelligence. WHICH powerful elite(s), presumably from the Bay Area, have kept these files classified and WHY, with a Dem-stranglehold on politics for decades?
It’s not like any of us can trust their superior Woke “leadership” and numerous shortcomings.
One case that might be solved after the eventual declassification concerns a double murder of a mother and daughter. They lived in the Bay Area as did the rabid Nazi German Consul to San Francisco Manfred von Killinger (1937-38). He wasn’t such a nice guy, a reputed assassin, and he later became known as the “Butcher of Bucharest”. With the advance of Russian troops, he killed his staff and then himself.
You can imagine his diplomatic manner interacting with American-resident, German passport holders, and those with family and assets in Germany. Von Killinger was reputed to be in charge of many spies and thugs across many US states even.
Below is a summary from the book webpage:
Fetch the Devil: The Sierra Diablo Murders and Nazi Espionage in America (2014) by Clint Richmond
“In 1938, Hazel Frome, the wife of a powerful executive at Atlas Powder Company, a San Francisco explosives manufacturer, set out on a cross-country motor trip with her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Nancy. When their car broke down in El Paso, Texas, they made the most of being stranded by staying at a posh hotel and crossing the border to Juarez for shopping, dining, and drinking. A week later, their near-nude bodies were found in the Chihuahuan Desert. Though they had been seen on occasion with two mystery men, there were no clues as to why they had apparently been abducted, tortured for days, and shot execution style.”
“El Paso sheriff Chris Fox, a lawman right out of central casting, engaged in a turf war with the Texas Rangers and local officials that hampered the investigation. But the victims’ detours had placed them in the path of a Nazi spy ring operating from the West Coast to Latin America through a deep-cover portal at El Paso.”
“The sleeper cell was run by spymasters at the German consulate in San Francisco. In 1938, only the inner circle of the Roosevelt White House and a few FBI agents were aware of the extent to which German agents had infiltrated American industry. Fetch the Devil is the first narrative account of this still officially unsolved case. Based on long forgotten archives and recently declassified FBI files, Richmond paints a convincing portrait of a sheriff’s dogged investigation into a baffling murder, the international spy ring that orchestrated it, and America on the brink of another world war.”
It’s a really good book and a page-turner. A Kindle version is also available. Sadly, the author died a few years ago.
So who among the ex-military intelligence and investigator-types in the AFP readership might pick up the case? After reading, please do feel free to reach out for a fuller brief.
This article was previously published at Armed Forces Press on 13 July 2026.