SKYJACK: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

by Geoffrey Gray

  The word flashes in her mind. RAPE.

  How would she know how to pull the parachute cord? Would he pull the cord for her? They could parachute into a dark forest. He could steal her uniform and leave her there—with cougars, bears. She would have to run through the woods in bare feet and find a road. A pair of headlights would flash against her naked body, and she would have to scream out into the headlights, Stop, stop. Please stop.

  “I have to go to the cockpit,” she tells him

  He does not want her to leave. That is his rule. Sit by me.

  His rule does not make sense, she says. If he wants his demands met, she has to take the note to the captain, no?

  Kneeling in the aisle, stewardess Tina Mucklow is eavesdropping on the conversation.

  “Do you want me to take the note?” Tina says.

  “No,” he says.

  Flo is pushy.

  “I have to go to the cockpit,” Flo tells him.

  He thinks it over.

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Do you want me to stay here?” Tina says.

  He looks her over.

  “Yes,” he says.

  Flo steps out of the seat and into the aisle and strains to walk toward the cockpit. The jet is still climbing. The gravitational pull forces her back toward the lavatory. She pushes off the armrests and propels herself forward. In first class she passes Alice. The first-class stew can see the fear on Flo’s face. Alice looks back into the tourist cabin to see the hijacker. Tina, she can see, is sitting next to him. He is wearing sunglasses. Tina was right. This is no joke.

  As the oldest stew, Alice has to do something. She wants Tina away from this man. She walks to her.

  “Tina, can you help me find a deck of playing cards?”

  Tina is not listening. Alice walks away. Is Tina in shock?

  Inside the cockpit, the Northwest pilots hear the door open. Flo slips in. The envelope with the hijacker’s instructions is in her hand.

  “Did you get a good look at the bomb?”

  “What was in the briefcase?”

  “Red sticks,” she says.

  “Dynamite?”

  “They looked like dynamite.”

  “What else?”

  “Lots of wires, a battery.”

  Copilot Rataczak reads the hijacker’s note. He notices the fine lettering, the felt-tip pen. The hijacker could be a master criminal, he thinks. The pilots better play his game. No funny stuff.

  Scotty reaches for his radio. He calls Northwest Flight Operations back in Minnesota. His words are recorded via Teletype.

  PASSENGER HAS ADVISED THIS IS A HIJACKING. EN ROUTE TO SEATTLE. THE STEW HAS BEEN HANDED A NOTE. HE REQUESTS $200,000 IN A KNAPSACK BY 5:00 PM. HE WANTS TWO BACK PARACHUTES, TWO FRONT PARACHUTES. HE WANTS THE MONEY IN NEGOTIABLE AMERICAN CURRENCY. DENOMINATION OF THE BILLS IS NOT IMPORTANT. HAS BOMB IN BRIEFCASE AND WILL USE IT IF ANYTHING IS DONE TO BLOCK HIS REQUEST.

  Dispatch is calling.

  “PD 32, PD 32.”

  PD 32 is the number of Special Agent Ralph Himmelsbach’s unmarked ’68 Plymouth. He’s driving back to the field office from Yaw’s Top Notch, a drive-in burger joint on the outskirts of Portland. He had a light lunch—grilled cheese, chased down with a glass of milk—because his wife is cooking a pre-Thanksgiving dinner and he needs to be home with a healthy appetite. There is tension in the marriage. Himmelsbach is never around, either working cases or flying his airplane. He suspects she is having an affair with her boss.

  “164 in progress, Portland International.”

  In the Bureau, each crime has a code number. 164 is an airplane hijacking. Is it real or a prank?

  “Verified,” the dispatcher says. “Report to Northwest Airlines Operations Office.”

  Himmelsbach reaches for the radio.

  “PD 32,” he says. “Ten four.”

  He slams the brakes, banks into a U-turn, cuts off traffic, and heads toward the Portland airport. He places the sirens on the car roof. He wants to drive faster. Can’t move. Traffic.

  “Damn, this is a long light,” he says.

  Himmelsbach hates what Portland has become. His city has been sacked! From the East, the liberals have come from New York and Boston, purchasing property and running for office. From the South, the hippies come from Northern California. He can see them in bus stations begging for money or rides. The spoiled kids don’t have the decency to cut their hair. The women don’t shave under their arms. They do drugs and sell drugs. They don’t believe in relationships. Only a short drive from Portland, a group of girls has built the first lesbian commune. The girls have rules. Monogamy is forbidden. Imagine that!

  Ralph Himmelsbach can’t. In the rearview mirror of his Bureau squad car, the agent’s reflection is all straight lines. His jawline is sharp and angular. His Wyatt Earp mustache is full and trimmed. His eyebrows are hawklike, fitting for the hunter he is.

  It is elk season and he could be hunting elk on a day like today. Elk can be invisible creatures. One of the best places to hunt them is in the eastern part of Washington, up in the Blue and Wallowa Mountains. Himmelsbach and his brother, a district attorney there, set up camp in waist-high snow, crouch near the trees, look for tracks, and wait. But in ten years hunting them, Himmelsbach has never taken an elk.

  “PD 32, PD 32.”

  Dispatch again.

  “On the 164 … we’ve learned the suspect has an explosive device.”

  Himmelsbach leans on the horn. Bastards, let’s move. The guy has a bomb!

  Another one? Was this a copycat? Ten days ago, a Canadian man slipped on a mask, brandished a shotgun, and threatened to blow up an Air Canada flight with forty pounds of plastic explosives. The man, Paul Cini, told the flight crew he was a member of the Irish Republican Army (he wasn’t) and wanted the plane rerouted to Ireland. He also demanded $1.5 million in cash. He couldn’t make up his mind though. He wanted the pilots to refuel in Saskatchewan and then changed the location to Great Falls, Montana, where the governor negotiated a lower ransom of $50,000. On the ground in Great Falls, the hijacker listened to the news of his hijacking on the radio in real time, and in glee, passengers later reported, as if he had achieved his fifteen minutes of fame.

  Cini then demanded the pilots fly him to New York. In the air, Cini then shocked the crew and passengers by stepping into the harness of a parachute. The plane was a DC-8, which like the Boeing 727 had aftstairs that could be opened during flight.

  Cini nearly made it. As he was planning to jump, according to news reports, the Air Canada purser on the flight “let him have it with a fire ax.”

  The story of Cini, who was rushed to the emergency room after the plane landed, was national news. Images of the bloodied hijacker, who was too foolish and deranged to execute his daring escape with $50,000, also ran on the national news.

  Agent Himmelsbach cursed the media outlets for publishing them. Like bank robbers, Cini could inspire others to board planes with bombs and crazy demands, hold the passengers hostage, and attempt to make a getaway via parachute.

  In Seattle, the Bureau field office is located in an old bank downtown, a few blocks from the piers off Alaskan Way. The boss, J. Earl Milnes, steps out of his office.

  The first agent he sees is Bob Fuhrman, a recent transfer. Fuhrman is trained as an accountant. Hoover wants only lawyers and accountants to be G-men.

  Milnes points a finger at Fuhrman. “You,” he says. “Drive me to the airport.”

  Fuhrman follows Milnes out to an ummarked car and turns over the keys. The radio is on. Voices are on the frequency. What is the procedure for hijackings? Should the feds cooperate with the hijacker and give him $200,000 and parachutes? Should they storm the plane, take him out? Is it even their responsibility to make the decision?

  The airlines and agencies are feuding over how to handle skyjackings. Who is in control? At the FAA, officials argue that it is the pilot who is responsible for the plane and its passengers. At the FBI, Hoover arg
ues that once a plane lands, the hijacker has violated federal air piracy laws; therefore, he is within the Bureau’s jurisdiction and should be apprehended immediately. It’s too dangerous to think otherwise. What if the hijacker had a manic episode, killed the pilot, and crashed the plane into downtown Cleveland? Hundreds of bystanders would die in the explosion. Or worse. What if hijackers demanded that pilots fly airplanes into skyscrapers?

  In New York, tenants have already moved into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Construction on the South Tower is almost finished. With a hijacker at the controls, a domestic airplane becomes its own bomb. Thousands could die.

  The jockeying over who controls a hijacked plane unfolded only weeks before on the front pages. A charter jet to the Bahamas was taken over by a man with a gun and a bomb.

  Onboard, the flight crew could see the man was delusional. The captain begged Bureau agents to let them refuel. He felt that if the plane was back in the air, the armed hijacker would relax and nobody would get injured.

  After landing in Florida to refuel, the request was denied. Agents fired gunshots at the plane’s tires. The skyjacker panicked. He fatally shot the captain, his wife, then himself.

  Hoover’s lawyers raced into court to keep the transcriptions between the pilots and Bureau agents sealed. A federal judge tossed out the request. The transcript made national news.

  Pilot: This is fifty-eight November. Uh, this gentleman has about 12.5 pounds of plastic explosives back here and, uh, I got no yen to join it right now so I would please … appreciate it if you would stay away from the airplane.

  Tower: This is the FBI. There will be no fuel. Repeat. There will be no fuel.

  Pilot: Uh, (gasp) look, I don’t think this fellow’s kiddin’—I wish you’d get that fuel truck out here.

  Tower: Fifty-eight November. There will be no fuel. I repeat. There will be no fuel.

  Pilot: This is fifty-eight November. You are endangering lives by doing this, and for the sake of some lives we request some fuel out here, please.

  Skyjacking had a twisted history. Early on, passengers who hijacked planes wanted to flee Communist countries and come to America. The skyjack was a means of escape, and the United States welcomed political dissidents from Eastern Europe and later Cuba. By the late 1960s, the direction had turned.

  Since the United States cut off ties with Fidel Castro and banished travel to Cuba in 1961, eighty airplanes had been successfully hijacked to Cuba. The frequency of hijackings to the island was so high, airline pilots began to carry approach maps for the Havana airport. “Take me to Cuba” became a catchphase. One government plan was to build a replica of the Havana airport near Miami as a decoy to hijackers.

  Around the world, an airplane was taken over once every week. In newspapers and on television, passengers reported live from the new war zone: airplane cabins. “We had no control,” one passenger said after a grenade went off on an Ethiopian Air flight. “We were weaving all over. When that bomb took off I thought, This is it.” On a flight out of Sacramento: “I counted twenty-two shots. There was a pause and a man shouted, ‘I’m shot.’ The bullet went through the back of his seat and out his chest. The wound—it was as big as a fist. He said good-bye to his wife. She embraced him and said, ‘God have mercy on him.’ ”

  Struggling to keep their companies afloat during the recession, airline presidents don’t want to spend millions to install magnetometers, or metal detectors, in airport terminals. Won’t the devices be an inconvenience to their customers, most of whom are businessmen? Executives would cringe at having to walk through the detectors and have each bag checked for weapons and explosives. President Nixon, who counts several airline presidents among his supporters and contributors, does not want to force the airlines to comply with costly security mandates. Nixon prefers a voluntary approach, and has introduced the sky marshals, a new breed of armed undercover agents who travel on airplanes to deter hijackers. At the Federal Aviation Administration, officials have also developed a secret psychological profile of hijackers, and brief airport officials on what types of passengers to look for. As effective as the program is, it is left up to airline officials to screen passengers. Security is now a judgment call, and somewhere along the flight path of Northwest 305, a hijacker was allowed to board.

  At Northwest Orient, the decisions on how to handle the hijacker—comply with his requests, or turn him down—go to the airline’s president, Don Nyrop.

  Nyrop. A bit to the left of Genghis Khan, one executive calls him. Nyrop is stubborn, abrasive, unpredictable, cheap, a brilliant administrator.

  According to company legend, Nyrop popped into a hangar one afternoon to check on Northwest’s mechanics. After inspecting the work, Nyrop used the hangar bathroom and heard the rustling of paper in the stall next to him. Reading a newspaper on company time! All men’s bathroom doors in Northwest buildings were removed henceforth.

  In turn, the thousands of Northwest stewardesses, pursers, mechanics, pilots, and ground crewmembers rob his planes blind. After flights, they steal toilet paper, booze, pillows, blankets, silverware. They went on strike last year over pay and working conditions. Picket lines formed. Nyrop wouldn’t budge. President Nixon had to help negotiate a settlement. Nyrop’s stinginess made him a hero to Northwest management and the company’s stockholders. During the recession, other airlines tanked. Northwest Orient posted profits.

  Nyrop’s decision is swift. At the airport in Minnesota, Nyrop tells the feds he wants to comply with the hijacker. The airline has insurance. They will cover the $200,000 ransom. Now the feds in Seattle need to find parachutes.

  Throughout Northwest’s facilities, officials listen to the radio. In the hangar, mechanic John Rataczak, father of copilot Bill Rataczak, can hear his son’s voice on the frequency. Who is the man in the back with a bomb? What if it detonates?

  In the cockpit, the phone is ringing. It is Tina.

  The hijacker is getting nervous, she says.

  About what?

  About the radio currents on the plane.

  Why?

  He thinks the radio currents might be too strong, she says. They could accidentally detonate the device he’s packed in his briefcase.

  Is he sure?

  No.

  On the radio, Scotty and Rataczak hear new voices. It’s the feds.

  “Do you know where he wants to go …?”

  “Negative. Have asked him once and so we don’t want to ask him again.… Would suggest we wait and see where he wants to go.”

  “Can bring out the manuals to Alaska if you think so.”

  Outside the cockpit window, it is getting dark. The weather is changing. The storm should hit any minute.

  “Approach, NW305, ah … a little rain up over here. We’d like to hold it at about … ah … turn back on the radio now and go out to about, oh, thirty would be a little better.”

  On the ground in Seattle, officials are concerned about the radio communications. Can the hijacker hear the conversation between the pilots and the authorities on the frequency?

  “I don’t know. I think it’s free to call us. Nobody’s giving us any trouble up here. He’s in the back.”

  August 25, 1977

  Hilton Airport Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia

  It is her birthday. She sits at the bar alone. She wears a brown jumpsuit and a white handkerchief around her neck, wrapping herself up like a present. She is out of work. She has two children at home, and she has saved all week to splurge on a glass of champagne or two for herself. She thought about going to the Admiral Bimbo, but that airport bar is a meat market and she isn’t with her girlfriend tonight. Besides, she isn’t in the mood to be picked up anyway. So she drove here, to the Hilton. If she’s going to celebrate, she might as well do it classy.

  The bartender places a bucket of ice on a stand beside her. She looks inside the bucket. Inside is a bottle of champagne.

  “From the gentleman,” the bartender says.

  The ma
n is in a suit. He is sitting at the far corner of the bar, nursing his drink. He has dark eyeglasses and dark eyes.

  She nods. She smiles. Wow. Champagne!

  “I think you better look closer,” the bartender says.

  She looks. Wrapped around the neck of the perspiring bottle is a hundred-dollar bill.

  The man in the suit gets up from his seat and walks toward her. She can see his suit is gray and wool, a sophisticated cut, not like the plaid flannel jackets her ex-husband wore. This suit is tailor-made.

  He says his name is Duane, Duane Lorin Weber.

  Her name is Josephine Collins. Call her Jo.

  He is an older man, older than she is used to dating. She would never consider him as a suitor except that she is alone now and the pangs of emptiness have pierced her for months—so alone!—and she has two daughters to support and so what if the man in the nice suit is a little old.

  He asks her what a woman like her is doing here by herself.

  It’s her birthday, she says.

  He is celebrating too, he says.

  She raises her glass of champagne. So, sir, what are you celebrating?

  “Divorce,” he says.

  They talk for most of the night.

  Before she started selling real estate, Jo was a Sunday school teacher. She was raised on the family farm in Kentucky. She learned the verses of the Bible and how to call a pig. She was the only child in her family to smoke and drink, even if it was only a few glasses of light wine.

  He tells her how attractive she is. He walks her to her car, holds the door. He is a gentleman. Of course he can have her number and call her, she says.

  Jo’s parents don’t want her to marry Duane when she brings him home. He is too old, her father says. She has doubts about his age, too. He is sick. A kidney disease, he tells her. He doubts he will live five more years. Still, Duane is fun. He croons to her. She sits on the couch and he stands in front and turns his hand into a microphone. He is a baritone. The songs he sings are etched in her mind.