his way to a meeting with Rochambeau on March 5, 1781. Mulligan and Cato remained under suspicion and could not communicate directly with Washington's headquarters, so Mulligan gave the information to Townsend, who sent it to Washington via the Culper Ring. The message arrived in time for Washington to avoid the trap and travel to the meeting by another route. Women Women were not considered threats to military commanders allowing them to spy uninterrupted. Women who were cooks and maids were recruited to spy on soldiers. A prominent woman who played a major role in the Culper Spy ring was Agent 355. Agent 355 was best known for providing the intelligence that led to the capture of the treasonous Benedict Arnold. While some sources make note of Agent 355 as an intelligence gatherer, others believe the code number simply referred to Anna Strong, or was a misunderstanding of a cryptic reference in one of Abraham Woodhull's letters. Other women were informants for the Culper Ring, such as Robert Townsend's sister Sarah (Sally) Townsend and Abraham Woodhull's sister Mary Underhill, who provided important information about Major John Andre and his alias of John Anderson, according to some sources. 20th-century disclosures The general public was unaware of the Culper Ring's existence until the 1930s. Robert Townsend's identity as "Culper Jr." was discovered in 1929 upon examination of old letters written by Townsend in the Townsend family home. The historian Morton Pennypacker reviewed the letters and noticed that the handwriting in letters from the trunk, written by Robert Townsend, was similar to handwriting in letters written by "Samuel Culper Jr.", in Washington's collection. Other evidence later corroborated Townsend's identity. James Rivington was confirmed by scholars to be a member of the ring only in the 1950s. In popular culture James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy (1821) may have been based on the Culper Ring, and Woodhull and Townsend (as the combined Samuel Culper) specifically. The 2014-2017 AMC TV series Turn: Washington's Spies is based on the Culper Spy Ring. Brian K. Vaughan's comic book series Y: The Last Man features Agent 355, a Culper Ring operative in the year 2002. Lucia St. Clair Robson's novel Shadow Patriots features the Culper Ring. The TV series White Collar contains an episode, Identity Crisis, whose plot revolves around the modern-day descendants of the Culper Spies. The Culper Ring is featured in Brad Meltzer's trilogy of books