The young screenwriter let it be known to his Berkshire hosts that he was interested in settling in the Berkshires, and he looked at a number of large estates with a real estate broker. The one that struck his fancy was Wheatleigh, the upscale hostelry. His name was Thilo Rethmann. In fact, however, he was wanted in Germany on 57 counts of fraud, and had fled California after swindling his landlady out of $40,000.
