Fred Allhoff

Allhoff was born Charles Frederick Allhoff in Dayton, Ohio in 1904.^[1] He was an only child, his father was a bookkeeper for a printing company,^[2] and then an insurance agent.^[3] His mother died when he was young and his maternal aunt moved in to help raise him.^[3] In 1930, at age 25, Fred Allhoff was employed as a newspaper reporter in Dayton^[4] and/or Cleveland, Ohio.^[5] Allhoff got married in 1931 in New York City.^[6] A 1936 article series for Liberty called "Tracking New York's Crime Barons" became the 1938 Edward G. Robinson picture I Am the Law.^[7] In 1939 he cowrote the six-part corruption exposé "The Lid Off Los Angeles"^[8][9] and in 1940 he wrote the 13-part "What if Hitler won?" series "Lightning in the Night", both for Liberty.^[10] "The Lid Off Los Angeles" triggered a libel lawsuit that was settled out of court in 1943.^[11]

Allhoff and his wife lived on Long Island in 1940; his work was "writer".^[12] Allhoff's wife Pauline died of illness in New York in 1944.^[13] Allhoff moved to Coral Gables, Florida in 1945, where he continued to work as a writer.^[14] Around 1948, Allhoff and his new wife bought 16 acres near the Caloosahatchee River.^[15] In 1950, he was living in Lee, Florida, with his second wife, and working as a fiction writer.^[16] He may have gone into the real estate business in Miami in the 1960s.^[17] Lightning in the Night was republished in book form in 1979.^[18] Allhoff died in Florida in 1988.^[19]