Was CIA financier-turned Wall Street banker assassinated by the bearded bag lady? New evidence may solve mystery of 1985 shooting



Nearly 30 years after a former CIA money changer was murdered by a homeless bag lady, new details have emerged that suggest he may actually have been assassinated.



Nicholas L. Deak was nicknamed the 'James Bond of money,' for his suave, confident air and his central role in the 'black ops' world of clandestine CIA operations from World War II until the 1980s.

Following the war, the CIA helped him found Deak-Perera as a front company to help it move money around the world, funding armed coups and friendly regimes, all while insulating the US government.

Deak, a Ph.D. economist, also built it into a legitimate bank, offering foreign currency trades - including American families who often bought its bundled packs of French francs and German marks.

Icon: Nicholas Deak, seen on one of his famous gold coins, was murdered in 1985 after falling out with the CIA. He had helped it move money around the world

But in 1985, when 80-year-old Deak and his secretary were shot at close range by Lois Lang, his company had been investigated for laundering money and the CIA had abandoned him.

Officially, Lang acted alone when she travelled 4,500 miles by bus, and shot Deak with a .38-special revolver at his office in New York City - but now it has been claimed that there was more to the crime .

Salon.com reports that the death came as Deak was under investigation for money laundering, and felt that the CIA - who had once celebrated him - had turned against him.

Deak-Perera had also been forced to declare bankruptcy and a laundry list of gangsters, mobsters and cartel bosses who had money parked at the firm for safekeeping, lost millions.

The report noted that Lang had met with two Argentinian gangsters - perhaps connected to those who had lost money - in Miami, shortly before she purchased the revolver she used to kill Deak.

She also reportedly had connections to one, possibly two psychologists who were conducting CIA-sponsored research into mind control techniques.

Arkadi Kuhlmann, the CEO of ING Direct, had worked with Deak and has hired private investigators to dig into the case.

Crazy? Lois Lang, pictured here in a state mental hospital, has grown a beard since murdering Nicholas Deak in 1985

'I never believed that the whole thing was random,' said Arkadi Kuhlmann told Salon.

'We were the CIA's paymaster,' Kuhlman said. 'And that got to be a little bit embarrassing for them. Our time had passed and the usefulness of doing things our way had vanished.



'The world was changing in the '80s; you couldn’t just accept bags of cash. Deak was slow at making those changes. And when you lose your sponsorship, you're out of the game.'

IN November 1985, Lang walked into Deak's office at 29 Broadway and demanded to see him. When his secretary, Frances Lauder, said he was not in, she left and sat in a cafe across the street.



When Deak arrived in a limo, she returned to his office and shot Lauder in the head. Deak ran out and wrestled with Lang - who shot him in the chest.



Fall from grace: Deak, a once celebrated bank owner, declared bankruptcy before his death

When he crumpled to the floor and died, Lang reportedly said, 'Now you've got yours.' She then took out her camera and snapped a picture of his dead body.



When officers arrived and apprehended her, she suddenly became frightened and told them: 'Please don't hurt me. He told me I could carry the gun.'

According to state psychiatrists, Lang targetted Deak because of random delusions. She was tried, convicted and committed to a mental hospital in upstate New York, where she remains.

Lang was never able to explain why she travelled across the nation to kill Deak.

She had once been a standout student at the University of Illinois, before marrying in the 1960s and coaching tennis and fencing at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

But at this time, she also started to become paranoid, seeing 'fake' people around her that she thought were pretending to be her family members, Salon reported.

In 1970, her college did not renew her contract and her marriage fell apart. She was put in the care of psychiatrist from Stanford Research Institute who focused on drug-aided hypnosis - and who was later accused of 'brainwashing'.

Salon suggests a connection between Lang and the CIA by pointing out that congressional hearings later learned of a large network of top-secret CIA-funded psychological warfare programs.

Stanford Research Institute had received CIA funding and the doctor that treated Lang had published research about using drugs to create induced schizophrenia.

After she left the doctor's care, Lang became a drifter, involved in petty crimes and visits to psychiatric hospitals.

Bonnie Lauder, the daughter of Deak's murdered secretary, told Salon: 'I have always believed that there was something wrong with the story I was told about how my mother was killed by a random bag lady.'

Deak also experienced a dramatic fall from grace. He had arrived in the U.S. in 1939 after fleeing from Hungary and enlisted as a paratrooper in 1942.

He was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which preceded the CIA. In the last year of the war, he recruited locals into guerrilla units to fight the Japanese occupation, Salon reported.

After the war, the U.S. government funded Deak and Co. and the bank tracked foreign currency transactions so it could keep an eye on who was moving money around countries.

The bank tipped off the government about threats, and Deak became a celebrated figure, with his face appearing on golden 'Deak coins'.

But in 1983, a federal informant accused the company of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in Colombian cartel money - and Deak felt 'profoundly betrayed', friends said.