How Crewe hotel was at centre of plot to smuggle 10,000 machine guns to revolutionaries
The Hunters Lodge hotel was the British base of owner and rogue CIA spy Frank Terpil
Hunters Lodge Hotel, once owned by rogue CIA agent Frank Terpil and scene of the 1979 raid, has now been demolished after closing in 2021(Image: Google)
On the last weekend before Christmas, 1979, a pair of FBI agents posing as Latin American revolutionaries sat across from Frank Terpil, a Crewe hotel owner and CIA spy. Terpil, 40, was a large man with a broad Brooklyn accent. He wore a dark, drooping mustache and wavy hair combed back from his balding head.
Terpil agreed to sell the supposed revolutionaries 10,000 British-made machine guns for $2 million, over $8 million dollars today. The agents handed over a deposit of $56,000, before revealing themselves, arresting Terpil, along with his associate George Gregary Korkala, a New Jersey electronics business owner, and a professional assassin who sat with them.
Around 3,000 miles away, word of the arrests reached Scotland Yard officers, who raided the Hunters Lodge Hotel in the Sydney area of Crewe, owned by Terpin. Documents were seized and a number of people were arrested.
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On Christmas Eve, 1979, the story hit newstands. The New York Times carried the headline: 'Two Seized in City in Sale to Agents of 10,000 Guns'.
"Briefcase bombs, letter bombs, grenades, poison darts, dozens of firearms and scores of documents were seized over the weekend in simultaneous raids in New York City, Nutley, N.J., and Crewe, England, and criminal charges were filed against two men described by the Manhattan District Attorney as major international gunrunners," the Times reported.
Frank Terpil's mugshot after being arrested in the sting at the New York Hilton in 1979, from Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man
"As the arrests were made, agents of New Scotland Yard raided a building in Crewe — owned by one of the suspects arrested at the Hilton — seized documents and took several persons into custody."
Paul Hurley, writes in his 2019 book A-Z of Crewe: Places-People-History that "Terpil had purchased the Hunters Lodge Hotel in Crewe in 1978 to use as a lodge for his associates. It is believed that the British SAS were both undercover in the hotel working as staff and also took part in the raid.
"Afterwards, the journalists spoke to a Sergeant Jackson at Crewe police station, and he told them that he knew nothing about the 'job', other than that there was one."
Hurley continues: "Frank Edward Terpil was described in court as a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and had provided firearms to Libya, had trained terrorists and been an adviser to the deposed Ugandan dictator, ex-President Idi Amin. He had sold at least $3.2 million worth of weapons to the Ugandans."
Frank Terpil interviewed in Beirut from Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man, 1982
Terpil was bailed, and managed to escape the US, fleeing first to Lebanon. He and George Gregary Korkala were convicted in absentia to 53 years in prison each.
From Beirut, he gave extensive interviews for an Emmy award-winning documentary entitled Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man, aired on PBS in 1982, which uncovered his supply of weapons to Muammar Gaddafi and his role as confidant to the Shah of Iran.
Terpil contacted the producers of the documentary directly by coded telex, two weeks after he disappeared from the US. He said he wanted to present 'the defence side of his case via TV and cine media.'
The Hunters Lodge Hotel on Sydney Road, Crewe, has been demolished (Image: Cheshire Live )
Terpil later fled once more to Cuba, where he posed as an Australian retiree under the psuedonym 'Robert Hunter' until he died aged 76 in 2016.
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