The Spy in the Doll Shop

Smithsonian

Velvalee Dickinson’s secret began to unravel with a letter sent from Springfield, Ohio, to Buenos Aires. U.S. postal censors had intercepted a January 27, 1942 missive from Mrs. Mary Wallace to Señora Inez Lopez de Molinali. The letter proved undeliverable, and its typewritten contents were suspicious and perplexing. It was turned over to the FBI.

Velvalee Dickinson (FBI)

One odd passage read: “The only three dolls I have are three love Irish dolls. One of these dolls is an old fisherman with a net over his back, another is an old woman with wood on her back and a third is a little boy.” Could such innocuous “doll talk” mask something more suspicious?

From then until August 1942, a total of five such letters surfaced, all from different correspondents and all, except Mrs. Wallace, living west of the Rockies. Agents interviewed the five women: each recognized her signature but denied either writing the letter or knowing any Señora Lopez de Molinali. If so, who was actually writing them? Argentina-bound mail was being closely monitored because of that nation’s fascist leanings. ‘Señora Molinali” either never existed or was an Axis front. The chatty letters, meanwhile, might violate wartime postal censorship regulations, supplying information that purposely or inadvertently helped the enemy.

The storefront of Velvalee's doll shop (FBI)

Soon the focus narrowed. Each woman was a doll collector and each had corresponded with a diminutive 50-year-old New York City dealer named Velvalee Dickinson who, it turned out, had unusually cozy pre-war ties with the Empire of Japan...   READ MORE