Criminal - Ten Thousand Feet in the Air

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

On the afternoon of June 23rd, 1972, Martin McNally walked into the St. Louis airport with a wig, a sawed-off rifle, and a plan. Special thanks to Danny Wicentowski. Learn more at the Riverfront Times: “The Final Flight of Martin McNally.” This episode was originally released in 2018. To hear the second part of this story, “The Fox,” click here.  How are we doing? Help us improve by completing our audience survey: https://thisiscriminal.com/survey. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. Here is an idea. A get-rich-quick scheme, no experience at all. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper bought a $20 one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle. He paid in cash. He boarded the plane, sat towards the back, and ordered a bourbon and soda. When the plane took off, he handed the flight attendant a note. She put it away without looking at it. She assumed he was trying to give her his number.

She was used to businessmen trying to flirt with her. But when the man saw that she didn't look at it, he leaned over and whispered, Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb. The note told her to sit down beside him, and when she did, the man opened his briefcase. Inside, there were eight red cylinders attached to wires. The flight attendant took the man's demands to the pilot. When the plane landed, he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes. Once the plane landed, the man let all of the passengers disembark, but he kept the crew on as hostages. He demanded that they take off again,

this time in the direction of Mexico City. And 45 minutes into the flight, the man strapped the cash to himself and jumped off the plane. Search parties looked for the man in the cash for days, but they couldn't find either. He had just disappeared. It was all over the news, although the hijacker's pseudonym, Dan Cooper,

was misreported as D.B. Cooper. He's still never been found. It's been 47 years. 28-year-old Martin McNally was driving with a friend in Detroit when he heard about D.B. Cooper on the radio. At that particular time, I laughed very loud, and I told my friend that that's not a bad way to make some money. Martin thought, how hard could it be?

If D.B. Cooper could do it, he could too. I had no experience bailing out of planes. I never put on a parachute, and I never owned a gun. Martin was unemployed. He'd worked a series of jobs after being discharged from the Navy years earlier. He'd tried a few small-time scams. Once he got busted putting fake quarters into a laundromat change machine, nothing had really worked out.

So he threw himself into trying to figure out how to hijack an airplane. First, he went to the local library. He spent about five hours pulling out books on parachuting and World War II adventures in flying and so forth. And it took about four hours to come across the calculation that I wanted. And it was an algebraic calculation to determine terminal velocity. And once I had that, I wrote down the formula and left and went home. Martin did all of the calculations himself,

figuring out how high above the ground the plane should be and how fast it should be going for him to safely jump out and open a parachute. He was most concerned with how long he would have after the jump before he needed to open the parachute. He was most concerned with how long he would have after the jump before he needed to open the parachute. He figured he had about 15 to 20 seconds. The next step was to find the right airport. For five months, Martin scouted airports across the Midwest. He visited Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. He finally chose St. Louis' Lambert Airport. He thought it had the worst security.

He visited two more times to prepare. He bought a ticket with forged Navy discharge papers under the name Robert Wilson. And on the afternoon of June 23, 1972, he walked into the airport, went up to the counter, gave the agent his ticket, and boarded the plane. We didn't go through any metal detectors at this time. If there had been metal detectors, I wouldn't have been on that plane, period. So I was able to get on the plane.

With a gun? Yeah, with my, I had a sawed-off rifle. It looked like a World War II grease gun. I had a pistol, and I had a smoke grenade, and I was dressed like a businessman, suit and tie and sport coat, sunglasses. Didn't have my wig on at that time. Sat down, and we took off. Martin McNally was planning to jump out of a plane 10,000 feet in the air,

going 500 miles an hour, and had almost no idea what he was doing. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend W highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these Series Essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home.

His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both?

And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. More than 130 American planes were hijacked between 1968 and 1972. Sometimes there was more than one case of air piracy on the same day. Anyone could have tried it. Anyone could have tried it. Anyone could have tried it. And quite frankly, a lot of people were doing it back then.

During the 1960s, it was most common for people to board planes and demand to be taken to Cuba. People trying to leave the United States to make a political statement, but also criminals seeking ransom payments. Airline companies and the U.S. government came up with some unusual solutions. Pilots flying to any destination were provided with charts outlining routes to Havana, just in case. Hijackings to Cuba were so common that in 1968, Time magazine published an article advising passengers to just stay calm and enjoy the mojitos. It included tips for the best hotels and cigar shopping. The federal government went so far as to consider building a fake version of the Havana airport in Florida, so hijacked planes could land there instead. The Federal Aviation Administration formed an anti-hijacking task force and solicited

ideas from the public. The public made suggestions like installing trap doors, arming flight attendants with tranquilizer darts, and making everyone on the plane wear boxing gloves so no one could hold a gun. The obvious solution was to just screen passengers with a metal detector. But airlines thought the inconvenience of walking through a metal detector outweighed the inconvenience of being threatened at gunpoint 10,000 feet in the air. Airlines argued that increased security would be bad for business. Customers didn't want to wait in line or feel like criminals on their way to vacation.

So on the afternoon of June 23, 1972, when Martin breezed onto his flight at the St. Louis airport, he didn't expect any trouble at all. We took off and were on our way to Tulsa, Oklahoma. And about 15 minutes out of Tulsa, the pilot came on the intercom and he said, we'll be landing in about 15 minutes. So I sat there and I said, this is it. I've got to make a decision. If I land in Tulsa and don't pull this thing right now, I'm going to be stuck in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

So I said, either pump up your gonads or forget about it. So I asked the guy where the restroom was in the plane and he said it's in the back on the right-hand side. So I picked up my attache case very cautiously and headed to the bathroom, went in the bathroom, closed the door, locked the door, and pulled out the gloves, and then pulled out the rifle. Martin says he kicked the safety back on the rifle so he wouldn't accidentally fire a bullet into the plane's fuselage. He put on what newspapers later described as a hippie-type wig. Then he opened the bathroom door and crouched down in the aisle at the back of the plane.

And I was waving, waving to the stewardesses, but no stewardesses could see me. Did see me for about three minutes. Finally, a stewardess saw me and came back, and she was a young lady lady and she said, don't hurt anybody. And I said, young lady, I'm not here to hurt anybody. I'm here to give the pilot a message. And I said, take this note and up to the pilot and then come back here immediately. So that's what she did. What did the note say? Had you written it at home? Yes, I typed it at home on a typewriter. And actually, I had the original and the carbon copy. And by mistake, I gave the stewardess the carbon copy. And the

carbon copy didn't have the red, bold type that was on the original. So it's hard to read? Yeah, it would have been a little harder to read, but the pilot got the gist of it. This is a skyjacking, all I want is the money, here's the instructions that you need to do, notify the FBI, I want $502,000. Why the extra $2,000? Why not just make it an even five? That's spending money.

That would have been pocket change. Martin says his plan was to bury the half-million-dollar package wherever he happened to land after he jumped out of the plane and use the extra $2,000 to get back home to Michigan, pick up his car, and drive to Canada. He would come back and dig up the half million once things had cooled down. But first, he had to get the money. The captain tells the over-the-income, he said, we have a passenger that wants to go back to St. Louis, so that's

what we're doing. Back then, when a hijacker made a demand, airline policy was total compliance. Martin demanded a new seat at the back of the airplane, and a flight attendant asked a family to move to make room for him. There was a dude, a tall dude, his wife, and he had two kids. So the wife got up, moved, the daughter got up to move, and the son, he was about 10 or 11, 12 years old. He got up into the aisle and turned back and looked at me for a couple of seconds, 10 or 15 seconds, and just shook his head, and then turned around and went up to the first class section, and then the old man, the father of the family, he got up and stood

in the aisle, and he was about four or five feet in front of me. He turned around, and he was looking at me, and I was looking at him. I was staring at him. I didn't blink. And I was thinking that what this guy wants to do here is charge me. He wants me to be blinking and kick the gun and subdue me. Martin says he pointed his gun at the man, and they stood there staring at each other until the man finally turned and followed his family up to first class. The pilot landed back in St. Louis.

As soon as they landed, Martin says he ordered the women and children off the plane. He didn't want anyone on the tarmac to get too close, so they used the inflatable slide. And then when that wasn't enough to get off, and there were still a lot of people on the plane, I told the stewardess to tell the pilot that anybody with heart problems, taking medication or old, they can get off the plane too.

So what the pilot did, he got on the intercom and he relayed that message. And unbelievably, everybody on that plane stood up, and they were going to leave, 100% of them. Okay, they all had heart problems, apparently. He needed to think. In the end, he did decide to let almost everyone off the plane. But he kept 15 healthy men, along with the crew, as hostages. Once we got all that done, they said, what next?

And I said, well, we need to get this plane in the air and tell the pilot to refuel and take us up in the air. The plane circled above St. Louis for almost five hours while banks and airlines scrambled to get together the $500,000. How are these passenger hostages doing? I mean, you were in the air with them for many hours. Were they in, what was the mood? I think they were in good mood. I think the moods were good. I mean, they had no reasons to be apprehensive about any serious problems,

I think. But yeah, the passengers were okay. At any point, though, when you were sitting there on the plane, were you feeling guilty? Were you looking at them and kind of wanting to say, listen, I'm sorry about this. I'm not actually trying to hurt you. No, no, not at all. Of course I'm not trying to hurt him. I'm not trying to hurt anybody, myself included. But I didn't feel, no, I didn't feel guilty at all. Just after 9 p.m., the plane made its second landing at the St. Louis airport. The money was delivered in a leather mail bag and a small paper bag. Martin gave the flight attendants $2,000.

He called it a tip because they'd, quote, been so nice through this thing. He had a few other demands. Two shovels, flight goggles, five parachutes, two harnesses, and an altimeter. Around midnight, Martin released all of the passengers except for one hostage. The plane was refueled for another takeoff. Everything was on schedule. And we are ready to take off. The pilot starts to gun the engine. We're rolling, rolling for takeoff.

He starts to gun the engine, and then he stops, puts the brakes on. And he says, there's something on the runway. And he says, oh, my God, it's going to hit us. A businessman named David Hanley had been watching the news of Martin's hijacking. He was sitting at the bar of the airport Marriott, watching the minute-by-minute updates about the hijacking on local TV. He told everyone at the bar to keep their eyes on the screen, got into his brand new Cadillac El Dorado, and drove to the airport. He then drove through

the chain-link fence around the runway and started driving towards the plane at 80 miles an hour. 80 miles an hour. Think of what's going to happen. The nose gear is going to collapse, and the plane, the cockpit and everything else is going to hit the concrete and the tarmac. A fully loaded plane, you can talk about a major explosion there and I'm dead. Everybody's dead at that point. But what the pilot did, he slammed on the brakes and the plane bounced twice. I moved up twice in my seat. I think at that point there, everything came to a stop and I realized that we were really hit by some damn fool,

we're going to have to order another plane. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast Pivot, Thank you. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to eat healthier but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories? You don't need to wait for the new year to start fresh. New year, new me. How about same year, new me?

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and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. After David Hanley smashed his Cadillac into Martin McNally's plane at 80 miles an hour, Martin didn't give up. He just asked for a new plane. This new plane would need to be fully fueled and parked as close as possible. They would all have to move from the damaged plane to this new one without anybody making a run for it and without anybody getting the chance to aim a gun at Martin.

Very nervous. I was very nervous. I would say I was even scared that that's a vulnerable position. And I told the pilot to tell the FBI on the ground that I know they got sharpshooters that are going to try to pick me off and I know they have cameras trying to get photos, and if I see any lights or any beams, this thing could come to a screeching halt very quick with an explosion. I said, I don't want to see any hanky-panky

when we make the move from plane to plane. It took an hour and a half for it to arrive. When it did, Martin changed planes using two flight attendants for cover and holding his briefcase over his head. It was almost 2.30 in the morning when they took off in the new plane towards Toronto. He had hoped to take off from St. Louis by midnight and jump out of the plane

by 1 a.m., but they were now hours behind schedule, which posed a problem because he knew he needed to jump before the sun came up. And so that's what happened. I made the decision I had to bail out then. That's what I did. But you had never used a parachute before? Never in my life had I put on a parachute. Did you have anyone who helped you on the plane? I mean, how did you even know how to put this thing on. I tried to do it myself, get this harness situated. And as I'm doing this, the four stewardesses are standing around me, and I told one of them, I need to clip these leg straps. I need to get these leg straps put on properly. And at one point she says,

I don't think we're supposed to be doing this. I said, young lady, believe me, trust me, you're supposed to be doing everything I tell you to do. Now let's get this harness taken care of. So that's what happened. I mean, I'd be happy to get you off that plane. I'd be just ready to throw you out the door. Yeah, I guess you would. He used twine to tie the 45-pound mail bag full of money to his leg. He also threaded his belt through the loop of the bag to make it more secure. And then he was ready to jump.

I was very worried. I was very worried. And when I was on the plane just getting ready to bail out, I had second thoughts, and I said, yeah is this is precarious I I have some options here I can go up to the cockpit and give him the gun and tell him this is a joke or I can kill myself or I can take a chance on bailing out I decided, well, I better bail out. And if I make it, fine. If I don't, death comes quick. He jumped. He could only see the clouds below him. The goggles were ripped off of his head.

He counted to 20 and pulled the ripcord. And when he did, the jolt of the parachute opening was so hard, the buckles on the belt holding the money bag snapped. The twine wasn't enough to hold the bag alone, and the bag went flying. The money was gone. And I said, I'm going to do this again in two weeks. And I landed on the ground. Yeah. And then my head slammed against the dirt, and I jumped up, and I could see stars, and I heard a lot of dogs barking, a lot of dogs barking.

I mean, the dogs must have known something was up. But I started walking towards the trees because I knew I couldn't get a car with my head being smashed up like it was. It was pitch dark, 100%. I laid down the parachute and crawled into the parachute and went to sleep. I think it was about 5 o'clock p.m. that I actually got up and brushed off my clothes and my shoes, shined my shoes a little bit, put the parachute under the tree and over some leaves, and headed out to a road. Martin had no idea where he was,

but he assumed the FBI was already looking for him. He decided to hitchhike into town. Finally, a car stopped for him. The chief of police, he was something. He was with his wife, and this was about 10 o'clock. He stopped, and he says, where are you going? I said, I'm going to Detroit. So he got out of his car, and he came up to me,

and he said, could I see some identification? I said, sure. So I pulled out my wallet. I pulled out a driver's license, and he said, do you have other identification? I said, sure. So I showed him some credit cards. The guy says, would you like a ride into town?

And I said, well, yeah, I certainly would. Thank you. Before I get in his And I said, well, yeah, I certainly would. Thank you. Before I get in his car, I pulled out my pistol and I tossed it about 20 feet. He didn't see it and his wife didn't see me do that. And then I got in the car and he said, it's not safe to be on the streets tonight. There's a lot of excitement. I said, yeah, I know. I've heard about the search that's going on here for that skyjacker. So he said, yeah, there's a lot of FBI around here. I said, I can imagine.

They drove a couple of miles into town where the police chief dropped Martin off. And my inclination was to grab a car, a hot wire car, and get out of the area. But then, on reflection, I said, no, I can't do that. If a car comes up missing here, reported stolen, that chief of police has my name and he could connect two and two so I said I can't do that I decided I couldn't hitchhike either it's too hot so I walked around and I noticed a bar

at the end of the road and at the street there and I walked into the bar and got up and sat down ordered a drink there were about 10 or 15 people in this bar they were and they were looking at me yeah they were looking at me and I wondered about that so I went into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and I looked a mess. I looked a mess. Both eyes were brown and my chin looked like it had been ripped and a little bloody and my hair was a mess. So yeah, I was messed up there. He put water on his hair and combed it and tried to clean off some of the blood. He then went back into the bar and ordered a hamburger and a beer. Around midnight, he went to a hotel.

The hotel clerk was listening to radio reports about the hijacker. She joked, you're not the hijacker, are you? Martin just smiled and went up to his room. I was looking out the window, looking down the street. There were a lot of cars on the street, and there were two men walking down the street, and they weren't in suits, and they were looking in windows. And, yeah, I figured they were the FBI.

I understand they had about 200 FBI agents searching, plus local police and so forth. The money was soon found in a field by a soybean farmer. A couple of hours later, another farmer ran over the gun with his tractor. The search for Martin was intensifying. He had a friend come pick him up and drive him back to Michigan. He didn't think anybody knew who he was, so he just went home. And immediately, he started making plans to do it all again, without losing the money this time.

He bragged to a friend about it, but Martin didn't know that the FBI was already watching his house. So, you do end up getting arrested? Yes. Yes, I do. Almost six days after Martin hijacked the plane, a dozen FBI agents surrounded him as he was walking home one night. They'd found his fingerprints on the plane and on the note that he'd handed to the flight attendant. They'd also searched his house and found ammunition and parts of a gun. He was charged with two counts of federal aircraft piracy. Part of his lawyer's defense was that the jump Martin made was impossible.

There was no way anyone could have survived it. It didn't work. Martin was given two life sentences. And in 1973, less than a year later, airports started installing metal detectors. I wonder if you ever thought, when you were in the courtroom hearing the two natural life sentences and thinking to yourself, I didn't even get the money. Yeah, of course. I said, I got two life sentences and it cost me about $2,000 or $3,000 to put everything together.

This thing took about five months. I did a lot of driving around and spending a lot of time looking at airports and seeing the sights and getting all the equipment together, the gun, and, yeah. Yeah, I thought that I got the life and it cost me two grand. Yeah. Do you feel bad about it? Oh, God, do I feel bad about it? I really don't know what to say.

I don't feel bad about anything. I don't feel bad about anything. Should I feel bad? Martin was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, where one day a fellow hijacker knocked on his door. Knocked on my door and said, can I come in? I said, yes, come on in. I said, what's up?

He said, how would you like to leave this place in a helicopter? And I said, well, I paused. Well, I don't know. We're going to have to discuss this. We'll have to discuss the details before I make a decision on something like that. But yeah, let's look into this. To hear that part of the story,

listen to episode 101 of Criminal, The Fox. There's a link in our show notes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, Sam Kim, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers, engineering by Russ Henry. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

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