15 Minutes of Infamy

The Bay Area was intrigued after an eccentric chemist explained how he had mastered a secret process for manufacturing artificial silk-- a process he claimed to have discovered as an Allied spy. But, after a deadly explosion rocked his laboratory, the truth about the mad scientist finally came to light-- and the truth was much more sinister than anyone could've imagined.  In 1924, Charles Henry Schwartz, a married 35-year-old chemist from the Bay Area of California and father of three small children, took over an abandoned factory at Walnut Creek and started a business called the Pacific Cellulose Chemical Company. The community was intrigued after Schwartz explained that he had mastered a secret process for manufacturing artificial silk-- a process he claimed to have discovered in Germany during his stint as an Allied spy in WW1. Schwartz, who was born in Germany, was an eccentric man-of-the-world who made many dubious claims-- that he had once held the rank of captain in the Fren...