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Walter Paul Minx (February 7, 1917-June 30, 2009)〔http://www.tributes.com/show/86254893〕 was a young German immigrant who, in 1940, conspired with his brother Kurt , to extort $100,000 from a Sears Co. executive by threatening to blow up a Sears store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Minx planned to abscond with the money in a home-built submarine but quick police work eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment. ==A Watery Plot== Walter Minx's family emigrated from Germany to Milwaukee in 1925. He was nicknamed "Der Macher" (The Doer) because of his ability to build almost anything. In his early twenties, Walter opened an ornamental ironworks shop and the business was soon thriving. But despite the amount of work coming in, Walter was in serious debt. He'd borrowed money from relatives and was uncertain of his ability to pay it back. "I was petrified," he would later tell a reporter, "I was terrified." So he decided on a quick money-making scheme: he would extort money from a rich man using a bomb threat.〔Loohauis, Jackie."A bomb, a homemade sub and an unbelievable plot".''The Milwaukee Journal''. February 15, 1993.〕 Minx first set about building a bomb using a one-inch metal pipe, gunpowder collected from 35 12-gauge shotgun shells, a wind-up clock and a spring mechanism. Minx related that, "It took a long time to get the trigger just right." But he had an even more ambitious project going on the side: a one-man submarine.〔 Minx needed a foolproof method of retrieving the extortion money without getting caught and a submarine, with its ability to submerge and creep away undetected from a watery drop-off point, seemed ideal. One newspaper account said he got the notion from reading a story in a detective magazine but Minx later claimed it was entirely his own idea. Using sheet metal, tin cans and plumbing fixtures, he set about constructing his sub.〔 The first prototype proved inadequate to the task and was later found by the police, resting in a patch of weeds behind his parent's home at 3725-A N. Holton St. Minx began work on a second model.〔Milwaukee Journal."Three Confess 'Sub' Extortion Plot Here".''The Milwaukee Journal''. August 3, 1940.〕 The resulting craft was seven feet long, powered by automobile batteries connected to a small electric starter motor. It weighed about 400lbs. Moveable fins on the exterior hull enabled the sub to dive while two-gallon tin cans inside could be filled with lake water using a valve made from a kitchen sink faucet. The cans acted as ballast tanks and helped maintain neutral buoyancy once the vessel dipped below the waves. A small pressurized oxygen tank allowed the sub to stay submerged up to 48 hours. The sub's operator navigated via a conning tower featuring clear celluloid windows on three sides. Hand-operated levers were used to raise and lower the diving fins and steer the rudder while a radiator petcock could be opened to regulate interior air pressure when necessary. The sub's entry hatch could be bolted closed and opened from the inside.〔 Once completed, Minx and his brother Kurt then tested the sub several times in the shallow waters of Whitefish Bay. It seemed to work satisfactorily.〔 The man targeted for the extortion plot was Rowland H. Davie whose picture Minx had once seen in a newspaper. Davie managed the Sears stores in Milwaukee and Minx figured that "...a fellow like that would get a big salary." Minx's plan was for Davie to hire a small plane from Curtis Wright Airport at 7:30pm on July 26, fly in a designated straight line and drop a money bundle containing $100,000 over Lake Michigan upon sighting two blinking lights (coming from Minx's sub). The plane was to continue flying another 50 miles before turning back, giving Minx time to maneuver his submarine over to the bundle and retrieve the money. He would then submerge for several hours before deliberately scuttling the craft off McKinley Beach and swimming to shore where his car was parked nearby.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Walter Minx」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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