He was convicted of espionage at the Old Bailey on 24 October 1941, sentenced to death and hanged on 10 December 1941 at Wandsworth Prison.

Unemployed for six months, Richter sought to join the Czechoslovak Army but was rejected three times on medical grounds.

Richter was employed as a machinist in the engine room and made the round trip thirteen times that year.

In 1937, Richter joined the Hamburg, which also plied the Hamburg-New York route, and spent one year on board.

In October and November 1939, Richter travelled across Poland and Lithuania to Sweden where he was arrested by the Swedish police as his papers were not in order.

[3] Richter quickly hid his parachute and equipment and spent the next few days and nights hiding in a forest, too nervous to travel to London.

Unable to give directions, Richter aroused the suspicions of the lorry driver who drove a short distance and reported the strange foreigner to a police officer.

Richter's identity papers, in the name of Fred Snyder, were clearly forged and did not match the expired Czechoslovak passport in his possession (which was in his own name).

Faced with his imminent execution, Richter wrote a letter to one of the MI5 officers: "You can rely upon it that I shall not be less brave than Jakobs; I too will know how to die, yet not as a Nazi spy on your gallows, but as a man.

Four warders eventually subdued Richter and bundled him into the gallows chamber where a strap was fastened around his ankles, a hood placed over his head and the noose placed around his neck.