A Fatal Pickup

On an October night in 1944 on a lonely highway on the outskirts of London, a young soldier who had deserted from the US Army and his teenage partner hijacked a hire car and robbed and brutally murdered the unsuspecting driver. The case made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic and was seen by the Germans, who were on the retreat from the Allies after D-Day, as a valuable means of encouraging hostility between Britain and the USA. 22-year-old Karl Gustav Hulten went to the gallows a few ...