Kurt Frederick Ludwig - Associates

Associates

Soon, the FBI was able to gather information on all who were connected with the Joe K spy ring, aside from Ludwig and Boehmler:

• Rene Charles Froehlich, an enlisted man in the U.S. Army who was stationed in Fort Jay, Governors Island in New York Harbor. He arranged mail drops for Ludwig and picked up his mail when Ludwig went out of town;
• Mrs. Helen Pauline Mayer, who aided Ludwig in obtaining information about aircraft manufacturing in plants in the Long Island area; and
• Hans Helmut Pagel, Frederick Edward Schlosser and Karl Victor Mueller, youths of German extraction who were recruited from the German-American Bund, assisted Ludwig in making observations of various docks and Army posts in the New York area and in mailing the reports through various mail drops.

A ninth member of the ring, known only as "Robert," was tracked down by the FBI through papers obtained from a janitor in a building that housed the German Consulate; the janitor was in charge of the burn-bag detail and regularly put papers in the furnace while the Germans watched. However, he would surreptitiously pull them out, douse the flames, and hand them over to the FBI. "Robert" was identified as Paul Borchardt, a World War I veteran who served in the German Army from 1913-1933. He later became a scientist, but was fired from his university post for being a Jew. Despite this treatment Borchardt agreed to travel to the U.S. posing as a refugee and to spy for Germany due to patriotism.

There was also a tenth member of the ring, codenamed "Bill", who was a German-born Argentinian named Teodore Erdman Erich Lau. He served as paymaster for the Joe K ring.