William Curtis Colepaugh (March 25, 1918 – March 16, 2005) was an American who, following his 1943 discharge from the U.S. Naval Reserve ("for the good of the service", according to official reports), defected to Nazi Germany in 1944. While a crewman on a repatriation ship that stopped off in Lisbon, Colepaugh defected at the German consulate. Colepaugh had attended Admiral Farragut Academy in Pine Beach, New Jersey. Early years Colepaugh was born in Connecticut. His mother didn't send him to public school. She instead sent Colepaugh to the Admiral Farragut Academy. He flunked out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Colepaugh was remembered there for being rabidly anti-Semitic. He would launch into a tirade against the Jews at the slightest provocation. Secret agent Colepaugh was given extensive firearms and espionage training at a spy-school in the German-occupied The Hague. He spoke virtually no German. With the German agent Erich Gimpel, he was transported back to the United States by the , landing at Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission, Operation Elster ("Magpie"), was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort and transmit it back to Germany using a radio they were expected to build. Together Colepaugh and Gimpel made their way to Boston and then by train to New York. Soon, Colepaugh abandoned the mission, taking US$48,000 ($ today) of the currency they had brought and spending a month partying and carousing with local women. After spending $1,500 ($ today) in less than a month, Colepaugh visited an old schoolfriend and asked for help to turn himself in to the FBI, hoping for immunity. The FBI was already searching for the two German agents following the sinking of a Canadian ship a few miles from the Maine coastline (indicating a U-boat had been nearby) and reports of suspicious sightings by local residents. The FBI interrogated Colepaugh, which then enabled them to track down Gimpel. After their capture, the pair were handed over to U.S. military authorities on the instructions of the Attorney General. In February 1945, they stood trial before a Military Commission, accused of conspiracy and violating the 82nd Article of War. They were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The execution date was sent for April 15, 1945. Three days before their executions were to be carried out, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unexpectedly died. As tradition for