Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Hello. Welcome back to The Spy Guys, where we cover spy facts, spy fiction, and everything in between. I'm Zach and I'm Christian. And today we have a microdot for you. So what is this microdot today? Is that Cause I'm in the dark as much as our listeners. So last week we were talking about the movie Elizabeth, and during that episode, if you go back and listen, the King's man was disgusted <laugh>. Oh boy. All right. I see. So I would like you to take your mind all the way back to the beginning of 2022 when we talked about the Kings band. Okay. Okay. That this is a heck of a way to <laugh> heck of a way to tell that in. So remember what happens. Remember who the characters were and so on, because today we're talking about Fritz Gilbert Duney. Okay. He was born to a French Huguenot family in South Africa where he learned to hunt.
Speaker 1 00:01:02 And at one point he observed a Black Panther stalking and then attacking an African buffalo at a watering hole. The Black panther became a symbol, his totem. He signed his correspondence with a little Black Panther logo, and his nickname was the Black Panther during the Boer War, and then again in the Second World War. Ah, the Boer War, you say? Yes. Hang on. All right. All right. Okay. At age 12, Fritz killed his first man Azulu, who attacked his mother, and the next year he was sent to boarding school in England. So he was well prepared for it. Okay. So he joined the Boer Commandos after the English invaded South Africa in 1899, where he fought in a couple of battles. He was captured by the English, but then escaped later, he had a few adventures. He infiltrated the British army, so acting as a spy again in South Africa.
Speaker 1 00:01:58 During this period, he marched through this area called Nostrom, and discovered his parents' form was destroyed under Lord Kitner's scorched earth policy. Kitchner, you say? That's right. <laugh>. And also the parents' form destroyed makes me think of Star Wars. Uh, his family is also abused by kitner's people. It's the fate of his country and of his family would breed him in an all consuming hatred of England. Oh, sorry. That was the historian talking about Fritz. I see. Okay. And turned him into what? A biographer called a walking, living, breathing, searing, killing, destroying torch of hate. Wow. That's quite descriptive. Yeah. Seriously. So Fritz became an English officer in order to betray the English kill Lord Kirchner and otherwise caused some problems. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. He recruited 20 Boer men to take out kitchner. One of their wives betrayed them and all 20 were executed. Oh. But Fritz plea bargain to get life in prison. Instead, in exchange for life in prison, he agreed to divulge secret Boer codes and to translate several Boer dispatches. But he swore for the rest of his life, he never betrayed the Boer cause, but instead created new codes to mislead the in clash. So you believe what you want, <laugh>. Eventually he escaped from British captivity by digging out with an iron spoon.
Speaker 2 00:03:26 Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 00:03:27 Well, I should say he, he nearly escaped one night with the iron spoon. But a Lord stone slept and pinned him in his tunnel, and then the guard found him unconscious the next day. But he was able to escape when he got transferred to Bermuda. A prison colony there eventually made his way to Baltimore, the United States.
Speaker 2 00:03:46 Wow. All right.
Speaker 1 00:03:48 Yeah. So while in the usa, he was a journalist and a writer, he became former president theater Roosevelt's personal shooting instructor and a company to have historical expedition. I know this guy's quite the guy, right? Yeah. For a living, breathing torch of hate. He seems to be doing pretty well for himself. Yeah. He also wrote articles about going hunting and became a US citizen in December, 1913. He went to the UK in June, 1916, after the Germans asked him to go and be a spy. Hmm. So he just couldn't give it up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So he posed as a Russian, and he joined Kitchner on the HMS Hampshire in Scotland. Oh. While on board he signaled the German sub that sank the cruiser and killed Lord Kitchner.
Speaker 2 00:04:35 Oh, hey.
Speaker 1 00:04:38 Hey. Now we were paying attention.
Speaker 2 00:04:40 There we are.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 Just like in the movie.
Speaker 2 00:04:43 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:43 I don't exactly remember what happened in the Kings man.
Speaker 2 00:04:46 In the Kings man, the Scottish guy, um, is the one who signaled Yeah. And somehow got off the boat and all the way onto a submarine.
Speaker 1 00:04:56 Well, that's what Fritz did. I was about to say that he made his escape using a life raft before the ship was torpedoed and got picked up by a submarine.
Speaker 2 00:05:04 Okay, hold up. I'm gonna, again, we're going listen back to our, I remember you having a huge problem with that happening.
Speaker 1 00:05:11 Okay. I say, Dude, truth is stranger than fiction. Uh,
Speaker 2 00:05:14 Yeah. Right, right, right. Okay. Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1 00:05:16 So, Fritz got the Iron Cross for his successful role in the assassination. Uh, he went back to the us but after the war was over, people didn't care about big game hunting anymore.
Speaker 2 00:05:27 Okay.
Speaker 1 00:05:28 So he pretended to be this allied war hero, <laugh> named Captain Claude Staton of the Western Australian Light Horse regiment. Huh. He claimed it that he was banning at it three times, Gased four times, and stuck once with a Huck.
Speaker 2 00:05:44 Oof. But that's all lies
Speaker 1 00:05:46 <laugh>. It's all lies. Yeah. <laugh>, he went over all these New York audiences to tell them war stories, promote the sale of Liberty Bonds. Patriotic speeches, uh, as a historian described it. Captain Stanton's career took off. He made decent money. His heroism earned in respect, and ladies found him alluring. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. He also said the Black Panther was an adrenaline junkie. His invented persona had such magnetism and such possibility that he began deploying his alter ego in a wide variety of personal appearances. He, he thought that Fritz just liked their performance. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in 1919, he was arrested on charge of insurance fraud. You'll, I think you might like this because under an alias, he put out insurance on the British ships that he sank during the war
Speaker 2 00:06:32 <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:06:33 Wow. And it took a few years for the insurance companies to catch up with him.
Speaker 2 00:06:37 Oh,
Speaker 1 00:06:38 Wow. The British figured it out. They were on him. He was gonna be extradited to the uk, but while in prison, he pretended to be paralyzed for two years, heed paralysis.
Speaker 2 00:06:51 Right.
Speaker 1 00:06:52 But then just days before his extradition, he disguised himself as a woman, cut the bars of his cell, climbed over the wall to freedom.
Speaker 2 00:07:00 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:07:01 Yeah. This is quite the guy I,
Speaker 2 00:07:02 Right. Yeah. That sets out lot of, that's a lot of things. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:07:05 Well, and we're getting there. We're not quite done. We're almost done. So he fled to Mexico then to Europe. 1926, he made his way back to New York on 23 million. 1932, he was arrested. He was interrogated and beaten by the police in charge of murder on the high seas. He said it was a mistaken identity.
Speaker 2 00:07:24 Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:07:24 <affirmative>. But Britain declined to pursue his war crimes because the statue of limitations had expired.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 Uh,
Speaker 1 00:07:31 Statue of limitations on
Speaker 2 00:07:33 War crimes. I did not know that. I guess, I don't know. Britain's got weird laws.
Speaker 1 00:07:39 I mean, also makes like killing Lord Kitter. That's not a war crime. Maybe he sent some other
Speaker 2 00:07:43 Shit's murder,
Speaker 1 00:07:44 But No, it's war.
Speaker 2 00:07:46 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:07:47 Let's not get into it. <laugh>. Okay. So in 1934, he became an intelligence officer for the order of 76, which was an American pro-Nazi organization.
Speaker 2 00:07:57 I see.
Speaker 1 00:07:59 And then started working for the Works Progress Administration, which was a US government, uh, institution. Okay. He was a spy with a code named Don, d u n n.
Speaker 2 00:08:09 All right.
Speaker 1 00:08:10 So the FBI discovered him through a double agent of their own within the German spy ring. They rented a room immediately above his apartment and used a hidden microphone to record all of Fritz's conversations.
Speaker 2 00:08:22 <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:08:23 There's a little bit about how he knew it was under surveillance. It would do all these tricks to avoid them, but it didn't really matter. On 28 June, 1941, he was arrested along with 32 German spies, less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaring war in the United States. All 33 members of the Duquesne Spy Ring. So it was named after him, Duquesne Spy Ring. He was named after him. Hmm. Were sentenced to a total more than 300 years in prison. Historian Peter Duffy said it was still to this day, the largest espionage case in the history of the United States.
Speaker 2 00:08:57 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:08:58 One German spy master commented that it was the death blow to their espionage efforts in the United States. J Edgar Hoover called it the greatest spy roundup in US history. Pritz was 64 years old. He did not escape this time. <laugh>, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. A $2,000 fine. In 1954, he was released to ing to Ill Health. He died on 24 May, 1956 at 78 years old, and he died in New York City.
Speaker 2 00:09:27 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:09:28 And that is the chaotic and strange life of Fritz Gilbert Duney.
Speaker 2 00:09:33 That is quite the tale. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 McCane and my source for all of that was Wikipedia.
Speaker 2 00:09:38 All right. Interesting stuff and all of that. Because I made reference to the King's man in that episode. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:09:46 No, I I wanted to bring it up at some point cuz I saw Boers hunting catcher.
Speaker 2 00:09:50 No, it's all, it's all very much in that of that period. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:54 Yeah. If only I had found it in time to pair it up with the Kings man. But,
Speaker 2 00:09:58 But you know, for all of our listeners who haven't gone back to it, go and listen to our episode of the Kings Man, that was an interesting one cuz I think we had very, I think that was the one where we had the most differing opinions. Like in terms of like our ratings.
Speaker 1 00:10:12 No, <laugh>. I think the biggest difference is still Michael Collins. I gave it a four.
Speaker 2 00:10:18 I didn't give Michael Collins a four.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 Yeah. You wanna check?
Speaker 2 00:10:22 Oh, hey look, I gave it a four <laugh>. Yep. All right. I guess I did. Um, no, but what did we, Well, no, our difference between go and listen to it to find out what, what that big range range was. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:10:34 We're not gonna give it away.
Speaker 2 00:10:35 Yeah. Well, thank you all for joining us today. You can find us on social media, the Spotify guys on Facebook, maybe Twitter and Instagram. Until next time, I'm Christian.
Speaker 1 00:10:46 And I'm Zach.
Speaker 2 00:10:47 And we are the Spotify guys signing off.
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