A sleeping pill for the four-year-old: the American's Ford at Checkpoint Charlie

In July 1964 an American from Wisconsin, born in 1944,, who worked as a loader for Lufthansa in Hamburg, learned from a colleague that the colleague's cousin, a spray painter living in Berlin-Friedrichshagen, wanted to leave the GDR. He agreed to help, and a Ford was bought and fitted with a hiding place behind the back seat.

On 10 October 1964 the American entered East Berlin in the Ford through the Friedrichstraße crossing, while his colleague came in a DKW with Hamburg plates through Heinrich-Heine-Straße. At her flat the woman gave her four-year-old child a sleeping pill the American had brought, so that the child would stay quiet. In a quiet street on the way to the checkpoint, mother and child climbed into the hiding place.

At the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße checkpoint the American and the woman were arrested; the colleague had already left through Heinrich-Heine-Straße. An unloaded small-calibre pistol was found in the American's luggage. The Stasi handed the child to the woman's husband, who according to the report had been in constant conflict with her and apparently knew nothing of the plan.