William Curtis Colepaugh (March 25, 1918 – March 16, 2005) was an American who defected to Nazi Germany in 1944 following his 1943 discharge from the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was a crewman on a repatriation ship that stopped off in Lisbon, at which time he defected at the German consulate. Colepaugh had attended Admiral Farragut Academy in Pine Beach, New Jersey. He later 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 Hague. He spoke virtually no German. He was then transported back to the United States by the along with German agent Erich Gimpel, landing at Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission under Operation Elster ("Magpie") was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort and transmit it back to Germany using a radio that they were expected to build.
Colepaugh and Gimpel made their way to Boston and then by train to New York. Soon, Colepaugh abandoned the mission, taking $48,000 ($ today) of the currency that they had brought and spending a month partying and carousing with local women. After the war ended, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by President Harry Truman. Gimpel was paroled in 1955; Colepaugh was paroled in 1960.
Last years
After his release, Colepaugh moved to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania where he worked in a print shop. He subsequently owned and operated a retail business that sold office furniture. He married and participated in community activities, volunteered with the Boy Scouts, and became a member of Rotary.
Gimpel and Colepaugh are believed to have been the last Nazi German spies in World War II who reached the United States.