At this point Duncan decided to drop the searches at the airport and to take another tack. A good starting point seemed to be the Henry Hudson Hotel. Agents Smith and Moseley were ordered to obtain from the hotel all records of outgoing telephone calls made by Sabena personnel over a period of several months. Hotels normally keep such records for as long as four or five years—or until there is no further need for them in verifying accounts.
The checking of the telephone calls was slow, tedious work. At last one of the agents came up with the record of two interesting calls—both made to Trafalgar 3-8682, the telephone of Julius Falkenstein. The calls had been placed from the room occupied at the time by Capt. Robert Edmund Deppe. “I think we had better keep a check on this gentleman,” Duncan said.
From that day forward, each time Captain Deppe arrived in New York he was under surveillance by Customs agents. They checked him in and out of the hotel, in and out of restaurants, and in and out of movies, cabs and subways. Wherever he went, he had an agent as a shadow.
It was a boring surveillance. Captain Deppe was a methodical and unimaginative man who stayed pretty much to himself. He made few outside calls, and the incoming calls usually were those from the airline’s flight operations office relaying routine instructions.
At last Deppe strayed from his normal routine. After bringing his plane into Idlewild International Airport on September 27 he left the airport and headed for the Henry Hudson Hotel, followed as usual by the Customs agents. When he arrived at the hotel he did not go directly to his room as he customarily did. He slipped into a lobby telephone booth and made a brief call. Then he went to his room to change into civilian dress.
A short time later, Deppe left the hotel. He walked to the subway and took a train to Columbus Circle. He changed trains and rode into the Bronx, where he left the subway and strolled to an apartment building on Bennett Avenue. He was reaching for the pushbutton at the door of Apartment 1A when the agents closed in on him.
“We are U.S. Treasury agents,” Smith said. “We want to talk to you.” He asked Deppe why he had come to this particular apartment.
Deppe made no pretense of innocence or outrage. He said calmly, “I came here to deliver a package.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out two envelopes. Inside each of them was a package containing dozens of diamonds whose value was later appraised at $233,230.
“Go ahead and ring the bell,” Smith said. “Give this package to the person who opens the door and don’t try any tricks.”
The agents stepped to one side and Deppe rang the doorbell. The door was opened by Mrs. Julia Michelson, a dark-haired, plump woman whose husband operated two neighborhood grocery stores.