As is often  the case, his death was not as it seemed and the wings of his uniform had slowed his dissent.  Swimming into a drain pipe, he emerged under a manhole cover, drenched and exposed to some passing criminals.  Laughing into the night, the crooks regaled their fellows that the Killer Moth was no match for Batman and his moth signal was silent for weeks.  Enraged that he had lost his angle of crime, the Killer Moth swore to avenge himself on Batman. 

As van Cleer, the Moth learned of a moth-themed archeological treasure in safe-keeping by the museum and decided to steal it piece by piece to restore his reputation in the underworld.  After the first piece is stolen, he leaves graffiti, revealing his identity to clue in the underworld but in so doing, his fellow member Bruce Wayne realizes that a member of the board must also be Killer Moth.  At a secret conclave to discuss the matter, the board is sealed in but the Moth cannot resist another brazen theft, moving an idol to a place that it can recovered later.  His theft is interrupted by Batman and the two struggle, setting off an X-ray device and toppling a set of artifacts onto Batman, allowing the Moth to escape. 

The following day, the Moth realized as Batman had, that his adversary was a member of the board.  From their builds, he deduced it had to be Bruce Wayne.   Before he could act on this knowledge, he got a Moth-Signal indicating that he had return to the good graces of the underworld but the arrival of Batman and Robin panicked him and he fled.  At a meeting of the board the following day, Batman searched for clues and when only Van Cleer took milk with his coffee, his milk moustache gave him away.  When the Moth staged his next robbery, the Batman following directly home, exposing him and finally arresting the Killer Moth (Batman #64).

Weeks later, the Moth escaped prison and lamented his plans.  He had squandered most of his money on the Van Cleer identity and had no obvious way to avenge himself on Batman.  He hit on the idea of adopting a new identity and selected Bruce Wayne from his prior encounters.  Kidnapping Wayne, he took him to a criminal plastic surgeon and had his face altered to exactly match.  Leaving the kidnapped Wayne in an old vault, the imposter ventured into Wayne Manor where he found Dick Grayson urgently calling him into the Bat-Cave.  Realizing that Wayne was in fact Batman, he suited up in the hero’s uniform and visited Commission Gordon with Robin.

At the police office, he learned  that the Whitey Casey Gang, who never bought into the Killer Moth strategy, was staging a series of thefts.  As Batman, the Moth and Robin intercepted the gang in a truck robbery and sent them fleeing.  Visiting Casey as the Moth later, he offered another chance at the racket and  the following evening, staged a hasty “retreat” for Batman and Robin as the Moth signal was fired. Convinced that the Moth was legit, Casey staged a second robbery but unknown to the Moth, the real Batman has escaped.  When he tried to stash Robin with Bruce Wayne, he realized the problem and raced back to warn Casey.  Instead, the real Batman arrived and thinking the Moth had lured them into a trap, the gangster gunned the Moth down as he tried to flee.  Batman rushed him to the hospital where his life was saved by the hail of bullets had ruined his feature and a bullet in his brain had ruined his short-term memory.  Any knowledge of Batman’s dual identity was lost.

No further cases on the Killer Moth are recorded on Earth-Two and his ultimate fate is unknown.