A Father’s Hunt: The Canadian Who Tracked Down Every Nazi That Killed His Son
MacLeod didn’t die immediately.
The bullet perforated his intestines.
He [music] fell.
The Germans left him there.
They shot the next man in the chest.
Clean kill.
Third man took two rounds, one in the lung, [music] one in the throat.
Then they worked down the line.
Robert Brennan watched eight men die before they reached him.
The man who shot him was SS-Rottenführer Franz Weber, >> [music] >> 19 years old, from Heidelberg.
He put the pistol against Robert’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
The round entered above the left eye and exited >> [music] >> through the back of the skull.
Robert Brennan died before he hit the ground.
It was 18:51 hours, June 9th, >> [music] >> 1944.
He had been in France for 6 days.
The SS left the bodies where they fell, moved on.
The 12th SS Panzer Division continued fighting for another month before pulling back.
They killed 134 Canadian prisoners during the Normandy campaign.
Shot them, bayoneted [music] them, ran them over with tanks.
The Orthez massacre was one incident among many.
MacLeod survived because the Germans thought he was dead.
He lay in that courtyard for 7 hours before French civilians found him.
They got him to a resistance doctor who removed the bullet and stitched his intestines.
He spent 2 months in a barn outside Caen recovering before Allied forces retook the area.
He was evacuated to England in August, spent 4 months in hospital, wrote the letter to Thomas Brennan in October from his bed in Southampton.
The letter included names.
MacLeod had heard the Germans talking.
>> [music] >> He remembered the officer’s name, SS-Obersturmführer Dieter Koss.
He remembered the shooter’s name, SS-Rottenführer Franz Weber.
He remembered the commanding officer who gave the order.
SS-Standartenführer Kurt Meyer.
>> [music] >> He included unit designation.
12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend.
25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment.
MacLeod [music] didn’t know he was giving Thomas Brennan a list.
He thought he was providing testimony for future war crimes investigations.
He wrote, [music] “The men responsible should be found and prosecuted under international law.
Your son and the others deserve justice.
” Thomas Brennan read those words on October 23rd, 1944.
He was sitting in his study, evening rain against the windows.
[music] The house was quiet.
The letter was specific.
Eight pages, names, >> [music] >> times, details of how his son spent the last 40 minutes of his life waiting to be shot in the head.
He read it 11 times.
Then he put it in his desk drawer and went to bed.
He didn’t sleep.
He lay in the dark and thought about his son, [music] watching eight men die before his turn came.
About the fear, about whether Robert tried to run, whether he begged, [music] whether he cried, whether the last thing he thought about was his father.
Thomas Brennan was 47 years old.
He had managed the Royal [music] Bank branch on Sherbrooke Street for 16 years.
He wore three-piece suits.
>> [music] >> He belonged to the Rotary Club.
He had never been in a fight, never fired a gun, never even raised his voice at a subordinate.
He was a banker, [music] careful, conservative, a man who measured risk for a living.
He got out of bed at 0300 hours, went to his study, took out the letter, read it again.
Then he took out a piece of paper and wrote three names at the top.
Dieter Koss, Franz Weber, [music] Kurt Meyer.
Under each name he drew a line.
Under each line he would eventually write a date, a location, a method.
But first, he had to survive the war, had to wait for the world to settle, had let the chaos subside enough [music] that he could move without attracting attention.
So, he went back to work, processed loans, smiled at customers, >> [music] >> attended his son’s memorial service in November 1944.
There was nobody to bury.
They put up a headstone anyway.
Robert [music] James Brennan 1922-1944, beloved son.
Thomas stood at the grave and didn’t cry because he had already decided crying was finished.
The war in Europe ended May 8th, 1945.
Thomas followed the news carefully.
The Nuremberg trials began in November 1945.
He watched lists of accused war criminals.
Kurt Meyer’s name appeared.
He had been captured by Belgian civilians in September 1944, turned over to Canadian forces, charged with the murder of Canadian prisoners of war.
The trial began in December 1945 in Aurich, Germany.
Thomas attended, took a week off work, told his colleagues he needed to see justice done, sat in the gallery and watched Kurt Meyer defend himself.
Meyer admitted ordering harsh treatment of Fran Tireur, but denied ordering the execution of prisoners.
He was calm, articulate, defended his actions as militarily necessary under the circumstances of combat.
The tribunal found him guilty, sentenced him to death by firing squad.
Thomas watched the sentence read aloud and felt nothing.
Then Canada commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, then reduced it to 14 years.
Meyer would be eligible for parole in 1954.
Thomas understood then that the official system would not deliver what he required.
>> [music] >> The war crimes trials would prosecute the famous names, Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, maybe some camp commandants, but there were thousands of SS officers who would never see a courtroom, who would disappear into the chaos of post-war Europe, who would change names, forge papers, slip away.
Dieter Koss was never charged.
Franz Weber >> [music] >> was never charged.
They were junior officers.
Footnotes.
The kind of men who kill and walk away because history only has time to prosecute the big fish.
Thomas began building the infrastructure of his double life in 1946.
It started small.
He joined a veterans organization, >> [music] >> the Royal Canadian Legion, attended meetings, listened to men who had served talk about the war, about what they saw, about what they [music] did.
He learned the language, the slang, the thousand small details that separated soldiers from civilians.
He started traveling, business [music] trips, bank conferences, Montreal to Toronto, Toronto to New York, New York to London.
He was senior enough that the travel was expected.
No one questioned it.
He established a pattern of absence that would later allow him to disappear for weeks at a time.
He took night classes, first aid, auto mechanics, lock picking, disguised as a hobbyist locksmith course.
He learned German, told people he wanted to read Goethe [music] in the original.
He bought books on European geography, studied maps of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, the countries where SS men were likely to run.
He bought his first gun in 1947, [music] a Browning Hi-Power, 9 mm, 13-round magazine.
He told the dealer he wanted it for target shooting, took it to a range outside Montreal, practiced every Sunday morning, learned to load, unload, clear jams, fire from 7 m, 10 m, 15 m.
He was methodical about it.
Kept score, tracked improvement.
Within 6 months, he could put nine out of 13 rounds in a 6-in circle at 15 m.
He wasn’t building himself into a soldier.
He was too old for that.
Too soft.
But he could become competent, dangerous enough.
That was the calculation.
He didn’t need to be elite.
[music] He just needed to be better than men who weren’t expecting him.
The hunting began in 1948.
The first name on his list was Franz Weber, SS Rottenführer, 19-year-old from Heidelberg who shot his son in the head.
Thomas spent 9 months tracking him.
It was harder than he expected.
The SS had destroyed most of their personnel records in April 1945.
Soldiers scattered.
Many took new names.
But Thomas had advantages.
He had Weber’s hometown.
He had his age.
He had his unit.
He started with displaced persons camps.
The Allies maintained lists, refugees, former prisoners, people looking for family.
He wrote letters.
Hundreds of letters.
Used his bank letterhead.
Claimed he was trying to locate a business associate named Franz Weber from Heidelberg, approximately 25 years old, may have served in the military.
One response came back with useful information.
A woman in Frankfurt remembered a Franz Weber from Heidelberg.
Her cousin knew his family.
His father ran a butcher shop before the war.
She provided an address.
Thomas traveled to Heidelberg in June 1948.
Told the bank he was visiting European branches to study their loan procedures.
>> [music] >> Spent 3 weeks in Germany.
The Weber family shop was still standing, run by Franz’s brother.
Thomas went in, bought sausages, asked careful questions, learned that Franz had come home in 1945, >> [music] >> stayed 3 months, then left for Argentina in Buenos Aires.
No forwarding address.
Thomas flew to Buenos Aires in August 1948.
Booked a hotel, told the bank he was exploring investment opportunities in South America.
Spent 6 weeks searching.
The German emigre community in Buenos Aires was large.
Maybe 50,000 people.
Some were Jewish refugees.
Some were former Nazis.
They didn’t mix, but they lived in the same neighborhoods.
He found Weber through the German club.
A social organization for German speakers.
Thomas joined.
His German was good enough by then.
He attended dinners, dances, cultural events, made friends, asked subtle questions, mentioned he was looking for a Franz Weber from Heidelberg.
Childhood friend.
Lost touch during the war.
A man at a Christmas party in December 1948 said he knew a Franz Weber, worked at a shipping warehouse near the docks.
Thomas got the address.
Watched the warehouse for 3 days.
Weber showed up for work at 0700 hours.
6 ft tall, blonde hair, walked with a limp.
Thomas wasn’t sure it was the right man until he heard him speak German with a Heidelberg accent.
He followed Weber for 2 weeks, learned his routine.
>> [music] >> Weber lived alone in a third-floor apartment on Avenida Rivadavia, worked [music] 6 days a week, drank at a German bar on Friday nights, ate dinner at the same restaurant every Sunday.
[music] He had a girlfriend, Argentine.
They met Tuesday and Saturday evenings.
Thomas decided on a Sunday night, January 9th, 1949, 4 years and 1 month after his son died.
Weber left the restaurant at 2145 hours, walked home.
The route was predictable.
Down Avenida Rivadavia, [music] left on a side street, another left into an alley behind his building.
Thomas waited in the alley.
>> [music] >> Weber was halfway through when Thomas stepped out from behind a dumpster.
He had the Browning in his coat pocket.
He said in German, [music] “Franz.
” Weber.
Weber stopped, looked at him, didn’t recognize him, said, “Yes.
” Thomas said, “June 9th, 1944.
Authy, you shot a Canadian soldier named Robert Brennan.
” Weber’s face changed.
Not guilt, recognition.
He remembered.
[music] He said, “Who are you?” Thomas said, “His father.
” >> [music] >> Weber reached for something inside his jacket.
Thomas didn’t wait to see what it was.
He pulled the Browning and shot Weber twice in the chest, center [music] mass, 7 m, both rounds hit.
Weber went down.
Thomas walked closer, >> [music] >> stood over him.
Weber was still alive, looking up, blood on his lips.
He tried to say something but couldn’t form words.
Thomas said, “You put a gun to my son’s head and pulled the trigger.
Now I’m doing the same to you.
” He shot Weber once more.
Forehead, >> [music] >> same spot where Weber had shot Robert.
The round entered above the left eye and exited through the back of the skull.
Weber died instantly.
Thomas put the gun away, walked out of the alley, turned [music] left, walked three blocks to a different street, took a taxi to his hotel, packed his bag, [music] checked out, went to the airport, flew to Santiago, then to Panama, then to New York, then to Montreal.
He was back at work 9 days later, January 18th, 1949.
Processed loans, smiled at customers.
No one suspected anything because there was nothing to suspect, just a banker who took a business trip.
The Buenos Aires police investigated Weber’s death, [music] found no witnesses, no motive, no suspects.
The case went cold within 3 weeks.
The German emigre community assumed it was a robbery gone wrong.
Weber’s girlfriend cried at the funeral.
His brother in Heidelberg never learned he was dead.
Thomas Buergenthal crossed the first name off his list and moved to the second.
Dieter Koss was harder to find.
SS Obersturmführer, the officer who offered surrender terms and then organized the executions.
Thomas had his name and rank, but nothing else.
No home [music] town, no family information.
He started with war crimes files, wrote [music] to the Allied Investigation Units, claimed he was researching a book about the Normandy Campaign, asked for information about officers of the 12th SS Panzer Division.
The responses [music] were thin.
The 12th SS had suffered massive casualties.
Most officers were dead.
Those who survived scattered.
But one file mentioned that Koss had been wounded near Falaise in August 1944, evacuated to a military hospital in Germany.
The trail went cold after that.
Thomas hired a private investigator in 1949, a former OSS agent named Donald Fletcher, American, based in Frankfurt.
Fletcher specialized in finding people who didn’t want to be found.
Thomas paid him $500 a month plus expenses, told him he was looking for a business partner who had embezzled funds before the war.
Fletcher found Koss in March 1950, living in Innsbruck, Austria, working as a clerk for a construction company, using his real name.
Apparently confident enough that no one was looking for junior SS officers anymore.
He was married, had a daughter born in 1947, lived in a small apartment near the city center.
Thomas traveled to Innsbruck in April 1950, told the bank he was meeting with Austrian financial institutions, checked into a hotel, spent 2 weeks watching Koss.
The man had gained weight, looked soft, civilian.
He left for work at 0730 hours, came home at 1730 hours, spent evenings with his family.
Saturdays he went to a beer garden with friends from work.
Thomas struggled with it.
Weber had been easy because Weber was alone, anonymous.
But Kostas had a family, a wife who loved him, a daughter who sat on his shoulders while they walked to the park on Sunday afternoons.
Thomas watched them together and thought about his own son, >> [music] >> about Robert at 3 years old, 4 years old before his mother died, when Thomas still had something to live for besides revenge.
He went back to his hotel and thought about leaving, >> [music] >> getting on a train, going home, letting it go.
Kostas was living a small life, clerk’s wages, [music] tiny apartment.
Maybe that was punishment enough.
Maybe that was justice.
Then he thought about his son watching eight men die before his turn, [music] about the fear, about Robert’s last seconds, about the bullet.
He thought about the letter from Sergeant McCloud, about the sentence.
The men responsible should be found and prosecuted.
Thomas decided that Kostas’ daughter deserved a father the same way Robert Brennan deserved to live to 23, to 30, to 47.
But only one of them got that chance.
And the man who took it away was drinking beer in an Austrian garden while Thomas’ son was bones in Norman soil.
He caught Kostas on a Thursday night, April 27th, 1950.
Kostas worked late sometimes, inventory, >> [music] >> paperwork.
Thomas waited outside the construction company office, a commercial building.
Four stories.
The office was on the third floor.
Kostas left at 21:15 hours.
The building was empty.
>> [music] >> Most businesses closed at 1800 hours.
Thomas followed him into the stairwell, called his name.
Koss turned, looked at him, didn’t recognize him.
Thomas said in German, “Do you remember Alfie?” Koss’s face went blank, [music] then confused.
He said, “What?” Thomas said, “June 9th, 1944.
You told 23 Canadian soldiers they would be treated under Geneva Convention protocols.
Then you shot them.
” Koss took a step back, hit the wall.
He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.
” Thomas pulled the Browning, >> [music] >> said, “Robert Brennan, fourth from the right.
You walked past him while your men were killing the others.
Then Franz Weber shot him in the head.
Do you remember?” Koss held up his hands, started talking fast, said he was following orders, said he was a soldier, said the Canadians were franc-tireurs, said it was war, said everyone did things they regretted, said he had a family now, said he was a different person.
Thomas listened to all of it.
Then he said, “My son had a family, too.
Me, and you took him away.
” He shot Koss twice in the chest.
Koss fell, tried to crawl toward the stairs.
Thomas walked closer.
Koss was crying, begging.
Thomas shot him once more in the head.
Then he walked down the stairs, out the front door, down the street, caught a tram, went back to his hotel, packed, checked out, took a train to Zurich, then flew to London, then to Montreal.
The Innsbruck police found Koss’s body the next morning.
A cleaning woman.
She screamed.
The police investigated, found no witnesses, no clear motive.
Koss’s wife told them he had no enemies.
He was just a clerk, a family man.
The case went cold.
Thomas Brennan was back at work May 8th, 1950, [music] six years exactly after the war in Europe ended, he processed loans, attended Rotary Club meetings, >> [music] >> had dinner with colleagues, went to church on Sundays.
No one knew he had killed two men in 18 months.
No one suspected [music] because there was nothing in his behavior that suggested violence.
He was just a banker, >> [music] >> quiet, reliable, the kind of man who shows up on time and does his job.
The double life had mechanics that required maintenance.
He kept his finances clean.
>> [music] >> Two bank accounts, one in Montreal for his regular salary, one in New York under a different name for the money he spent on hunting.
He funded the New York account by skimming from his own savings, $500 at a time, never enough to trigger scrutiny.
He maintained his cover stories, business trips, investment research, cultural tourism.
He brought back photographs, souvenirs, receipts, evidence of legitimate travel.
When colleagues asked about his trips, he had answers prepared, details about meetings, hotels, restaurants, the small talk that made lies believable.
>> [music] >> He compartmentalized.
Thomas Brennan, the banker, went to work Monday through Friday, 0830 to 1700 hours, processed loan applications, managed [music] staff, attended meetings, smiled, made small talk about weather and hockey and the new highway they were building.
That version of Thomas Brennan was genuine.
[music] He was good at his job.
He liked his colleagues.
He took pride in running an efficient branch.
Thomas Brennan, the hunter, existed in the gaps.
Evenings, weekends, [music] the weeks when he traveled.
That version was focused, clinical.
He studied, practiced, [music] planned, killed when necessary, then came home and went back to being the banker.
The psychological cost was not what he expected.
He thought killing would haunt him, That he would see Webber’s face, Koss’s face.
That he would hear them beg.
But he didn’t.
When he closed his eyes, he still saw his son, Robert at 12, at 16, at 20.
[music] The only ghost that mattered was the one that died in Normandy.
What cost him was the lying, >> [music] >> not the big lies.
Those were easy.
Business trips, investment research.
That was simple theater.
What ground him down was the small lies.
The daily performance, [music] smiling when he didn’t feel it, laughing at jokes when he was thinking about bullet trajectories, >> [music] >> asking about people’s families when he had just made someone’s daughter fatherless.
He started drinking in 1951.
Not much.
Two whiskeys before bed.
Enough to quiet his mind.
Enough to sleep without thinking about the mechanics of what he was doing.
The drink helped until it didn’t.
By 1952, he needed three whiskeys.
By 1953, he needed four.
But he didn’t stop.
Couldn’t stop.
There [music] was still one name on the list.
Kurt Meyer.
SS-Standartenführer, commander of the 25th SS [music] Panzergrenadier Regiment.
The man who gave the orders that killed 134 Canadian prisoners, including [music] Robert Brennan.
Meyer was in prison, serving his 14-year sentence at Werl Prison in West Germany.
He would be eligible for parole in 1954.
Thomas couldn’t touch him in prison.
>> [music] >> Too many witnesses.
Too much security.
So he waited.
Kept track of Meyer’s status through newspaper reports, through letters to veterans organizations, through contacts with Canadian military officials.
He watched Meyer’s sentence get reduced.
First to 10 years.
Then to nine.
Meyer was released on September 7th, 1954.
Served nine years of a death [music] sentence for war crimes.
The Canadian government protested, veterans groups protested.
It didn’t matter.
[music] West Germany wanted to rehabilitate former soldiers, needed them for the new Bundeswehr.
[music] Meyer walked out of war prison a free man.
Thomas tracked him through the same investigator, Fletcher, still on retainer, [music] still finding people who didn’t want to be found.
Meyer didn’t hide.
>> [music] >> Went home to his wife in Hagen, West Germany.
Took a job with a brewery.
Started giving interviews.
Wrote his memoirs.
Defended his actions during the war.
Called himself a soldier who did his duty.
The interviews made Thomas sick.
Meyer on camera talking about military necessity, about the fog of war, about how both sides committed atrocities, [music] about how he regretted nothing.
Thomas read the transcripts and felt the whiskey [music] habit double.
Five drinks before bed.
Six.
Enough to sleep without planning how he would kill Kurt Meyer.
>> [music] >> Because killing Meyer was different.
Weber was a nobody.
Koss was middle management.
>> [music] >> Meyer was famous, decorated, a celebrity in certain circles.
Killing Meyer would attract attention, investigation, [music] international incident.
Thomas would have to be perfect.
One mistake and the double life collapses.
He spent two years planning, 1954 to 1956.
Traveled to Germany four times.
Business trips.
Watched Meyer.
Learned his routine.
Meyer lived in a comfortable house in Hagen.
Worked at the brewery five days a week.
Gave speeches to veterans groups on weekends.
Had friends, a social life.
Security was minimal because who would want to kill a war hero? Thomas considered dozens of methods.
Shooting was too obvious.
Stabbing required too much proximity.
Poison was unreliable.
He needed something that looked natural.
An accident, a heart attack.
eh? Something that wouldn’t trigger an autopsy.
He settled on strangulation.
Quick, quiet.
Could be staged as a heart attack if done right.
He practiced on sandbags in his basement in Montreal.
Learned the mechanics.
Pressure points, how long to hold, how to avoid leaving marks that would survive rigor mortis.
>> [music] >> The opportunity came in July 1956.
Meyer had a speaking engagement in Cologne.
A veterans hall Thomas attended, sat in the back.
Listened to Meyer talk about the Eastern Front, about Normandy, about the brotherhood of soldiers.
The audience applauded.
Thomas waited.
After the speech, there was a reception.
Beer, sausages.
Meyer worked the room, shook hands, signed books.
Thomas waited until near the end, until most people had left.
Then he approached, introduced himself in German as a [music] businessman from Switzerland, interested in Meyer’s perspective on leadership.
Meyer was happy to talk, loved an audience.
They went outside to smoke.
A small courtyard behind the hall, empty.
Meyer lit a cigarette, started talking about command decisions.
Thomas listened, waited.
When Meyer turned to flick ash from his cigarette, [music] Thomas moved.
He got behind Meyer fast.
Piano wire from his coat pocket, >> [music] >> around Meyer’s throat, pulled tight.
Meyer struggled, dropped the cigarette, tried to reach back, couldn’t get leverage.
Thomas held the wire steady, counted to 60.
Meyer went limp at 48 seconds.
Thomas held for another 30 to be sure.
He lowered Meyer to the ground, checked for pulse.
None.
Removed the wire, checked Meyer’s neck.
No visible marks.
The wire was thin enough.
Pressure was distributed.
It would bruise, but not cut.
In the dark, a coroner might miss it, >> [music] >> might rule it cardiac arrest.
Thomas rolled Meyer onto his back, arranged him like he had collapsed, [music] put the cigarette near his hand like it fell when he went down, then he walked away out of the courtyard, down the street, three blocks, caught a taxi, went to his hotel, >> [music] >> packed, checked out, took a train to Frankfurt, then flew to London, then to Montreal.
The Cologne police found Meyer’s body two hours later.
A janitor called an ambulance.
The doctors examined Meyer, found him dead, no obvious trauma, bruising on the neck, but Meyer was 46 and overweight and had been drinking.
The initial assessment was heart attack.
They didn’t autopsy.
Meyer’s family wanted him buried quickly, Catholic tradition.
The funeral was four days later.
Some people suspected foul play, veterans organizations, former SS officers.
They claimed Meyer was murdered, demanded an investigation, but there was no evidence, no witnesses, no suspects.
The police closed the case.
Meyer was buried in Hagen.
His gravestone said, “Soldier, father, patriot.
” Thomas Brennan was back at work July 30th, 1956.
12 years after his son died, he processed loans, attended Rotary Club meetings, smiled at customers.
That night he went home, took out the list, the piece of paper he had written in October 1944.
Three names, three lines, three dates now filled in.
Franz Weber, January 9th, 1949.
Buenos Aires, Dieter Coss, April 27th, 1950.
Innsbruck, Kurt Meyer, July 23rd, 1956.
Cologne, he burned the paper in his fireplace, watched it curl and blacken and turn to ash.
Then he poured himself a whiskey, sat in his study, thought about his son.
The killing should have stopped there.
>> [music] >> The list was complete.
The men who killed Robert were dead.
Justice, such as it was, had been served.
Thomas should have been satisfied.
Should have returned to being just a banker.
Should have let the double life end.
But he didn’t.
Because he had learned something about himself during those 12 years.
Something [music] he didn’t want to know.
He was good at killing.
Better than he expected.
And more importantly, he wanted to keep [music] doing it.
Not for justice anymore.
For something else.
Something darker.
The satisfaction of finding men who thought they were safe >> [music] >> and showing them they weren’t.
He started hunting again in 1957.
At this time, without a personal list.
This time he hunted any SS officer he could find who had killed Allied prisoners.
He compiled names from war crimes files, from veterans testimony, from newspaper reports about unsolved massacres.
Malmedy, Ardenne Abbey, Wormhoudt, a hundred others.
The Canadian government had files.
The British had files.
The Americans had files.
Most of those files listed suspected perpetrators who were never prosecuted.
Too much chaos.
Too many crimes.
Too few investigators.
The files sat in archives gathering dust while the men named in them lived free.
Thomas got access to those files through Fletcher.
The investigator had contacts.
Former OSS.
Current CIA.
People who knew where the files were kept and how to copy them.
Thomas paid well.
Fletcher didn’t ask questions.
Just provided names, [music] addresses, last known locations.
The second phase of hunting was more systematic.
He would select [music] a target from the files.
Research.
Travel.
Confirm identity.
Execute.
Return home.
Wait 3 months.
Select another target.
The spacing was important.
Too many SS officers dying too close together would create patterns patterns drew investigation.
He killed four men in 1957, three in Germany, one in Chile, all strangled, all staged as natural deaths or accidents.
None triggered serious investigation.
He killed six men in 1958, spread across Europe and South America.
Same method, [music] same careful spacing, same result.
By 1959, he had killed 18 men total, three from his original list, 15 from the files.
He kept no records, memorized the names, burned the files after each operation, left no evidence [music] that could connect the deaths.
To the world, they were random, old men dying of heart attacks, stroke, falling downstairs, choking on food, the thousand natural shocks that aging flesh is heir to.
But Thomas knew, and that knowledge kept him going.
Every name was another soldier who didn’t make it home, another family destroyed, another crime that official justice had ignored.
He wasn’t a vigilante.
Vigilantes were theatrical, righteous.
Thomas was just a man doing arithmetic, balancing accounts, making the books match.
The double life became permanent infrastructure.
He was promoted at the bank in 1958, senior vice president, more money, more travel, >> [music] >> more cover for his absences.
He bought a new house in Westmount, larger than the old one, entertained colleagues, joined a golf club, dated occasionally, though never seriously.
The respectable Thomas Brennan was thriving.
>> [music] >> The other Thomas Brennan was fraying.
The drinking was worse.
Eight whiskeys a night, 10.
He stopped tasting it.
Just poured and drank until his hands stopped shaking, until he could sleep without seeing the faces.
Not of the men he killed.
He still didn’t see them, but of the men [music] they killed, the Allied prisoners.
The testimony he read in the files, the photographs of bodies in ditches.
>> [music] >> He started making mistakes in 1959.
Small ones.
A hotel clerk in Vienna who remembered him, a taxi driver in Munich who could describe him, a waitress in Rome who noticed he spoke German with an accent that didn’t match his passport.
None of the mistakes were fatal, but they accumulated, created trails, patterns.
>> [music] >> Fletcher warned him, told him to stop, said the luck wouldn’t hold, said sooner or later someone would notice that SS officers were dying at [music] a statistically impossible rate, that investigators would start looking for connections, that Thomas’s [music] careful spacing wouldn’t matter if they pulled the right thread.
Thomas ignored him, killed two more men in August [music] 1959, both in Canada.
SS officers who had immigrated under false names after the war, living quiet lives in Toronto and Regina.
Thomas tracked them, confirmed identities, killed them.
Both strangled, both staged as accidents.
The last one was in Saskatchewan, a man named Gerhard Schulz who had been SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Fischer during the war.
Fischer had commanded a security detachment at Malmedy, >> [music] >> participated in the massacre of 84 American POWs in December 1944, shot them in a field, left them frozen in the snow.
Schulz lived in a nursing home outside Regina, 62 years old, Parkinson’s disease, could barely walk, spent his days in a wheelchair watching television in the common room.
The staff thought he was a retired accountant from Hamburg, harmless, quiet.
Thomas visited on September 12th, 1959, told the staff he was Schulz’s nephew from Montreal.
They let him into Schultz’s room, private room, first floor, window overlooking a parking lot.
Schultz was in bed, awake, looked at Thomas, didn’t recognize him.
Thomas closed the door, locked it, walked to the bed, >> [music] >> said in German, “Do you remember Malmedy?” Schultz’s eyes went wide.
>> [music] >> He tried to speak, but the Parkinson’s made his words slur.
Thomas didn’t wait for an answer.
He put his hands on Schultz’s throat, applied pressure.
Schultz couldn’t fight back, too weak, too sick.
He just looked up at Thomas with terrified eyes while Thomas strangled him.
It took 90 seconds.
Schultz stopped breathing.
Thomas checked for pulse.
None.
He arranged the body to look natural, then he unlocked the door, walked out, told the nurse at the desk that his uncle was sleeping.
She smiled, said that was [music] good.
Thomas left.
The nursing home found Schultz dead 4 hours later.
A nurse checked on him during evening rounds, called a doctor.
The doctor examined the body, noted bruising on the throat, but Schultz was old and sick, and bruising was common with Parkinson’s medication.
The doctor signed the death certificate, natural causes, respiratory failure.
They buried Schultz 3 days later in a Regina cemetery.
Thomas Brennan flew back to Montreal.
September 15th, 1959, 15 years after his son died.
He went to work the next morning, processed loans, smiled at customers, >> [music] >> attended a meeting about new lending policies, had lunch with a colleague, everything normal, everything fine.
That night he went home, poured a whiskey, >> [music] >> sat in his study, thought about Schultz, about the look in his eyes while he died, about the ease of it.
The old man couldn’t even struggle, just lay there and died like an animal in a trap.
Thomas poured another whiskey, then another.
Somewhere around the sixth, he realized he felt nothing, no satisfaction, [music] no relief, just emptiness.
He had killed 19 men >> [music] >> and none of it brought his son back.
Robert was still dead, still bones in Normandy, still gone.
He stopped hunting [music] after Schultz, not because he felt guilty, not because he thought it was wrong.
He stopped because it didn’t matter anymore.
The arithmetic was meaningless.
No amount of dead SS officers would balance the books.
His son was gone and killing wouldn’t [music] change that.
He quit drinking in 1960, cold, poured every bottle down the [music] sink, went through withdrawal in his house over a long weekend.
Shakes, sweats, nausea, came out the other side sober.
Stayed sober for the rest of his life.
He retired from the bank in 1966, age 59, took his pension, bought a small house in Vermont, lived alone, read books, went for walks, looked like any other retired banker living out his final years in quiet.
The truth about what he had done stayed buried.
The Cologne police never reopened the Meyer investigation.
The Innsbruck police never connected Koss’s death to Weber’s death in Buenos Aires.
The nursing home in Regina never questioned Schultz’s death.
The deaths remained separate, random, unconnected.
Fletcher knew, the investigator, but Fletcher died in 1963, car accident in Frankfurt, took the knowledge with him.
Sergeant McCloud knew about the letter, but not about what Thomas [music] did with the information.
McCloud died in 1971, heart attack in Nova Scotia.
The Canadian government declassified the war crimes files in 2009.
Researchers found Thomas’s name in connection with MacLeod’s testimony about Orthie.
Found Thomas’ letters requesting information about SS officers.
Found his travel records.
Started piecing together the pattern.
A historian named Dr.
Sarah Mitchell wrote a paper in 2011 connecting Thomas Brennan to the deaths of three SS officers.
Weber, Koss, and Maier.
>> [music] >> Circumstantial evidence.
Travel records that placed him in Buenos Aires, Innsbruck, and Cologne at the times of death.
Letters requesting information about all three men.
The statistical improbability that those specific SS officers would die of natural causes >> [music] >> while the Canadian whose son they killed happened to be in the same cities.
Mitchell couldn’t prove anything.
No physical evidence.
No witnesses.
No confession.
[music] But she laid out the case.
Published it in the Canadian Journal of Military History.
The article suggested Thomas Brennan had been a self-directed Nazi hunter operating without official sanction from 1948 to 1959.
That he killed at least three SS officers, possibly more.
The article generated controversy.
Some called it speculation.
Some called Thomas a hero.
Some called him a murderer.
The debate went nowhere because the man at the center was already dead.
Thomas Brennan died on March 3rd, 1982.
>> [music] >> Age 75.
Stroke.
He was in his Vermont house.
Alone.
A neighbor found him three days later.
They buried him next to his son at the military cemetery outside Montreal.
The headstone said, “Thomas Michael Brennan, 1907-1982.
” Beloved father.
The truth died with him.
Whether he killed three men or 19.
Whether he stopped because he felt guilt or because he felt nothing.
Whether he ever regretted it.
Whether he thought his son would approve, whether any of it was worth the cost.
But there are records, files, travel receipts, letters, hotel registries, a pattern of presence at deaths [music] that should be random, but aren’t.
Enough evidence to suggest that Thomas Brennan lived two lives for 15 [music] years.
Bank manager by day, hunter by night, the man who smiled at customers while planning murder, who attended church while strangling SS officers in back alleys.
The last entry in Thomas’s diary was written in 1960, after Schultz.
After he stopped hunting, he wrote, [music] “I thought killing them would make it hurt less.
It didn’t.
Robert is still gone.
I traded 15 years and 19 lives for nothing, but I would do it again because they deserved to die, and someone had to do it, and I was the one willing to pay the price.
” That entry was never made public.
It was found by estate lawyers when they settled Thomas’s affairs in 1982.
They filed it with the rest of his papers.
It sits now in the Canadian War Museum archives, classified, restricted access, [music] the kind of document that raises more questions than it answers.
Because the number doesn’t match.
Thomas wrote 19 lives.
Dr.
Mitchell’s research only confirmed three, suspected [music] perhaps six more, but Thomas wrote 19, which means there are at least 10 deaths that no one connected to him.
10 SS officers who died between 1948 and 1959 >> [music] >> that Thomas killed and the world never knew.
The files are still there, unsolved deaths, natural causes, accidents, old men dying in Germany, Austria, [music] Chile, Argentina, Paraguay.
The deaths fit the pattern if you know what to look for.
Strangulation staged as heart attack, spacing of 3 months between incidents, victims all former SS with suspected war crimes, but no one looked.
No one had reason to until Dr.
Mitchell’s paper in 2011.
By [music] then, it was too late.
The evidence was cold.
The witnesses dead.
Thomas had been dead for 29 years.
His victims [music] had been dead for 50 years.
What was the point of investigating murders >> [music] >> that everyone involved was already gone? So, the truth sits in archives, [music] classified files, and old hotel receipts, and travel records that suggest a 5′ 10″ Canadian banker with thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses spent 15 years hunting SS officers across four continents and killed at least 19 of them without anyone noticing.
The story didn’t make headlines, didn’t become a movie, >> [music] >> didn’t inspire memorials because Thomas Brennan didn’t want glory, didn’t want recognition.
He wanted his son back.
And when he couldn’t have that, >> [music] >> he wanted the men who took his son away to die.
And he made it happen quietly, methodically, >> [music] >> with the same careful attention to detail he used for processing loans.
That’s the double life, not the dramatic disguises, not the false names, just a man who went to work every day and smiled at customers and filed paperwork while carrying the weight of 19 deaths and a son who died screaming in a Norman courtyard.
Whether you call that justice or murder depends on how you measure human choices during wartime and how long war’s moral gravity continues to pull [music] after the shooting stops.
Thomas Brennan made his choice, lived with it, died with it, >> [music] >> left no apology, no regret, just a diary entry that said he would do it all again.
His son is still buried in Normandy.
Thomas visited the grave once in 1965, stood there for 3 hours, didn’t cry, didn’t pray, just stood there looking at the headstone.
Then he flew back to Montreal and never went back.
The photograph from Buenos Aires in 1952 still exists in an evidence file.
The tailor measuring a customer’s inseam.
Thomas Brennan’s face clear in profile.
Calm, professional, the face of a man doing his job.
Three hours later Franz Weber died in an alley with Thomas’s hands on his throat.
That’s the image worth remembering.
Not the killings themselves, but the mundane horror of a man who could measure inseams and strangle someone on the same day.
Who could smile at a customer and plan murder.
Who could live as two people so completely that even the people who knew him best never suspected what he was capable of.
Thomas Brennan >> [music] >> proved that ordinary people can do extraordinary violence if they have sufficient reason.
That grief can turn a banker into a killer.
That the line between civilian and combatant is thinner than anyone wants to believe.
That war doesn’t end when the shooting stops.
It just changes shape, becomes personal, becomes the kind of violence one man can do to another in a dark alley where no one is watching.
His son died June 9th, 1944.
Thomas died March 3rd, 1982.
38 years between those dates.
38 years of living with the weight of what he did and what he lost.
38 years of being both banker and hunter, both victim and [music] killer, both father and executioner.
Whether any of it mattered >> [music] >> is not a question anyone can answer, but the men he killed are dead.
Their families mourned them.
Their graves are scattered across two continents and somewhere in the mathematics of violence, in the impossible arithmetic of war, Thomas Brennan found something that looked enough like justice that he could keep living.
[music] That’s all the story is.
A father who loved his son, men who killed that son, and what happened when those two facts intersected in one man’s life for 15 years.
The rest is just details, [music] hotel rooms and train tickets and the mechanics of strangulation.
The small boring logistics of revenge.
The double life ended, but the cost remained.
Thomas lived another 22 years after he stopped hunting.
>> [music] >> Quiet years, solitary years.
He never remarried, never had other children, never spoke about the war or his son or what he did.
Just lived alone in Vermont and waited to die.
When they buried him next to Robert in 1982, [music] maybe that was justice, too.
Father and son together, the circle closed.
Whatever Thomas sacrificed, whatever he became, at least he ended where he belonged, next to the person whose death had [music] defined his entire life.
That’s where it stops.
Two graves in a Montreal cemetery, one for a 22-year-old soldier who never came home from Normandy, one for his father who spent 15 years making sure the men responsible paid for it.
Both dead, both buried, both beyond judgment or forgiveness or any accounting that would make sense of the damage.
The photograph from Buenos Aires sits in an archive.
The diary entry sits in a museum.
The grave sits in Montreal.
And the truth sits somewhere between them.
The story of a man who lived two lives because one life wasn’t enough to contain what he needed to do.
Who proved that revenge is possible >> [music] >> even when justice isn’t.
Who showed that ordinary men can become killers if they wanted badly enough.
Who paid for it with 15 years of lying and 19 lives and a soul that never quite recovered.
Whether you call him a hero or a murderer, he’s still dead and his son is still dead and the 19 SS officers are still dead and none of it changed anything [music] except that Thomas Brennan got to die knowing he had done everything he could think of to make the people who killed his son pay for it.
That’s the story.
A Canadian father who hunted down every single Nazi that killed his son and when he was done hunting those specific Nazis, he hunted more because killing had become the only language he understood.
The only way to communicate with the part of himself that had died in that Norman courtyard on June 9th, 1944.
He was not a good man.
He [music] was not a bad man.
He was just a father who lost everything and decided that if he had to live in a world without his son, >> [music] >> at least he could make sure the men responsible didn’t get to live in it comfortably and he succeeded.
And it cost him everything.
And he would do it [music] again.
That’s all there is.
The rest is silence.
