Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne (/djuːˈkeɪn/ dew-KAYN; sometimes Du Quesne; 21 September 1877 – 24 May 1956) was a South African Boer and German soldier, big-game hunter, journalist, and spy.

As a Boer spy he was known as the "Black Panther", in World War II he operated under the code name DUNN, and in FBI files he is frequently referred to as "The Duke".

In World War I, he became a spy and ring leader for Imperial Germany, sabotaging and destroying British merchant ships in South America with concealed bombs.

After he was caught by federal agents in New York in 1917, Duquesne feigned paralysis for two years and cut the bars of his cell to make his escape, thereby avoiding deportation to Britain where he faced murder charges for the deaths of British sailors.

In 1932, Duquesne was again captured in New York by federal agents and charged with both homicide and for being an escaped prisoner, only this time he was set free after the British authorities declined to pursue his wartime crimes.

[4] Abraham made his living as a hunter who also frequently traveled to sell skins, tusks and horns, and he hired local indigenous peoples to work the farm.

[4] He was a descendant of the French Huguenot naval commander Abraham Duquesne (1610–1688) and claimed his uncle was Piet Joubert (1831–1900), a hero in the First Boer War and Commandant-General of the South African Republic, although his family relationship is disputed.

[22] He observed a black panther patiently waiting motionless for the perfect time to strike while a cautious African buffalo approached and drank from a nearby water hole.

[22] In the Second Boer War, Duquesne became known as the "Black Panther", and as a spy in the 1930s he stamped "all of his communiques to Germany with the figure of a cat, back arched and fur raised in anger.

[4][23] Not long after the killing, a war party from a Bantu-speaking tribe attacked the area near Nylstroom, and the Duquesne family was forced to retreat to the nearby river.

[25] Also, Duquesne himself writes that after he finished school in England he was sent to Europe to study engineering, but on the ship he met an embezzler named Christian de Vries and the two decided to take a trip around the world.

[16] After British forces began an offensive aimed at capturing Pretoria, a portion of the gold reserve in the city's central bank and national mint was sent by train to the small town of Machadodorp, then by road to the neutral harbor of Lourenço Marques in Portuguese Mozambique to be shipped to the Netherlands for the use of President Paul Kruger and other Boer exiles who had fled from Africa.

There, he passed through his hometown of Nylstroom, discovering that his parent's farm had been destroyed by British forces as part of scorched earth policies implemented by Lord Kitchener.

[16] Ronnie writes: "the fate of his country and of his family would breed in him an all-consuming hatred of England" and "would turn him into what (a biographer of Duquesne) Clement Wood called: a walking living breathing searing killing destroying torch of hate".

"[39] Duquesne escaped from several other prisoner-of-war camps, and on the night of 25 June 1902, he slipped out of his tent, climbed a barbed-wire fence, and swam 1.5 miles (2.4 km) past patrol boats and bright spot lights.

23261, also known as the American Hippo Bill, attempting the appropriation of $250,000 to import hippopotamus into the Louisiana bayous as a food source and to control the water hyacinth then clogging Southern river systems.

[45] Former US President Theodore Roosevelt backed the plan, as did the US Department of Agriculture, as well as editorial writers in The Washington Post[46] and The New York Times,[47] which praised the taste of hippopotamus as "lake cow bacon".

[53] From his base in Bahia, he planted time bombs disguised as cases of mineral samples on British ships and he was credited with sinking twenty-two of them;[16] among them were the Salvador and the Pembrokeshire.

[56] His cover now blown, Duquesne moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and several weeks later placed an article in a newspaper reporting his own death in Bolivia at the hands of Amazonian natives.

"[62] The authenticity of several of these claims has been challenged by modern biographers, and the German records that would confirm or deny at least parts of these accounts are now missing and presumed destroyed during the war.

Unaware that Duquesne was now a German spy, Broussard attempted to help him obtain a position with General George Washington Goethals, the acting US Army Quartermaster and former chief engineer of the Panama Canal, but he was not successful.

It is known that he was handsome, charismatic, intelligent, fluent in several languages and as FBI Agent Raymond Newkirk observed, "the Duke was a very interesting talker but he always had to be the center of attention.

With the advent of World War I, Duquesne's stories of great white hunters and African safaris no longer fascinated the American public, and when he returned to New York he was dropped from the lecture circuit.

"[56][68] Duquesne appeared before New York audiences dressed in uniform as Stoughton to tell them war stories, promote the sale of Liberty Bonds and to make patriotic speeches for organizations such as the Red Cross.

At the time of his arrest, he had in his possession a large file of news clippings related to the bombing of ships, as well as a letter from the Assistant German Vice Consul at Managua in Nicaragua.

If located, arrest, hold and wire, Detective Division, Police Headquarters, New York City, and an officer will be sent for him with necessary papers.The London Daily Mail published the following on 27 May 1919: Col. Fritz du Quesne, a fugitive from justice, is wanted by His Majesty's government for trial on the following charges: Murder on the high seas; the sinking and burning of British ships; the burning of military stores, warehouses, coaling stations, conspiracy, and the falsification of Admiralty documents.Duquesne fled to Mexico and Europe, but in 1926 he moved back to New York and assumed a new identity as Frank de Trafford Craven.

[78] After Britain declined to pursue his war crimes, noting that the statute of limitations had expired, the judge threw out the only remaining charge of escape from prison and released Duquesne.

"[12] FBI Agent Newkirk, using the name Ray McManus, was now assigned to DUNN and rented a room immediately above Duquesne's apartment near Central Park, using a hidden microphone to record his conversations.

[89] On 28 June 1941, following a two-year investigation, the FBI arrested Duquesne and thirty-two German spies on charges of relaying secret information on US weaponry and shipping movements to Germany.

[91] In a 1942 memo to his superiors, Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr reported on the importance of several of his captured spies by noting their valued contributions, and he writes that Duquesne "delivered valuable reports and important technical material in the original, including US gas masks, radio-controlled apparatus, leak-proof fuel tanks, television instruments, small bombs for airplanes versus airplanes, air separator, and propeller-driving mechanisms.