Disappointment

In Germany last year the Gestapo concluded that slack-chinned William Colepaugh was really the collectors' item he claimed to be--an embittered U.S. citizen, anxious to serve the Third Reich. They sent him back home in a submarine with a German spy named Erich Gimpel. Both were promptly nabbed by the FBI. When they were tried last week at Governor's Island, the Army's historic post in New York Harbor, Willie Colepaugh demonstrated how faulty the Nazis' judgment of him had been.

Willie had joined the German war effort because life at home had been such a big disappointment. But disappointment was chronic with him--he soon found Germany extremely distasteful too. Once back in the U.S. he grew more and more lackadaisical in aiding Gimpel, finally skipped out one night with a hatful of the Third Reich's funds, leaving his fellow spy alone in Manhattan's unfamiliar canyons. But Willie Colepaugh had worked with Gimpel before leaving him in the lurch, could not explain to the Army court why he had never turned him in to U.S. authorities. The Army court listened, retired, voted. Its verdict on both Colepaugh and Gimpel: death by hanging.

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