Dan Snow's History Hit - D.B. Cooper & the 70s Hijacking Craze

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

On 23 June 1972, a man boarded American Airlines Flight 119 in St Louis. He sat most of the way to Tulsa before donning a wig and a pair of gloves in the restroom, taking out a gun and handing a member of the cabin crew a note.'Don't panic. This is a ransom hijacking.'To find out more about this man, what he hoped to gain from his crimes, and how he and others were inspired by D.B. Cooper, Don speaks to John Wigger. John is a Professor of History at the University of Missouri and the author of ‘The Hijacking of American Flight 119: How D.B. Cooper Inspired a Skyjacking Craze and the FBI's Battle to Stop It’.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's that time of the week where I hand over the reins of this podcast to someone far more able, and that person is Don Wildman. Yes, this is one of our sibling podcasts we're going to be sharing this week. This is American History Hit presented by Don Wildman. It's all about the hijacking craze, the 1970s. It's crazy. On the 23rd of June, 1972, a man boarded an American Airlines flight in St. Louis. He sat most of the way to Tulsa before putting on a wig and a pair of gloves in the restroom. He then took out a gun and handed a member of the cabin crew a note. The note said, don't panic. This is a ransom hijacking. This is such an extraordinary podcast.

Don speaks to John Wigger. John is the professor of history at the University of Missouri and author of The Hijacking of American Flight 119. How D.B. Cooper inspired a skyjacking craze and the FBI's battle to stop it. It's quite a title, but it lives up to it. Enjoy. The engine of a Brinks armored truck starts up outside First National Bank in St. Louis, Missouri. Inside the bank, it's after closing time. But auditor Frank Grosowski and the cashier are still working, counting out half a million dollars. They microfilm the bills, noting down the serial numbers of the first and last bills in each pack. Then Grosowski double-checks the amount with a counting machine. Hurriedly, he and the cashier lug two of the heavy bags of cash into the waiting truck.

Hands clammy, foreheads sweaty, they are pumped full of adrenaline. This is not a situation they ever find themselves in, hauling around such bounty. They've carried the first $102,500 to the truck. They'll go back for the remaining $400,000. But this isn't some kind of heist we're talking about. These two people are organizing the ransom to be paid at the St. Louis airport to a hijacker on a commercial jet who is impatiently waiting on the runway, holding hostage its crew, stewards, and one very frightened passenger. Hi all, we're glad you're listening. This is American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman.

Here in the States, as the 1960s transitioned into the 70s, well, a lot of unusual stuff was going on in those days, politically, economically, culturally. Vietnam on TV, Nixon as president, the recession dragging on. Miniskirts went to maxi, while men, inexplicably, wore clogs. I myself was a middle schooler in polyester bell-bottoms, quite proud of my pendant necklace, and for a brief time even dared myself to wear a Gatsby cap, for about a day. necklace and for a brief time even dared myself to wear a Gatsby cap for about a day. We were, all of us, young and old, working out how to leave the age of Aquarius behind and move into a brand new era. Adding to the backdrop of this strange and unstable time were regular reports of airline

hijackings. And when I say regular, in a five-year period between 1968 and 72, there were something like 140 hijackings in America. Think about that. That's almost every other week. Creepy men on the nightly news, brandishing guns, grenades, dynamite, commandeering planes, taking hostages, demanding ransom, and passage abroad to places like Havana and Algiers. Over time, the methods became more dangerous and desperate, while airline companies and the FBI struggled with their coping strategies. And like so much else in that strange 70s air, the sad routine of airline hijackings became emblematic of our national fabric unraveling. John Wigger is a professor of history at the University of Missouri, and he has written a book about this time,

a brand new book entitled The Hijacking of American Flight 119, How D.B. Cooper Inspired a Skyjacking Craze and the FBI's Battle to Stop It. Greetings, Professor Wigger. John, great to meet you. Yeah, it's wonderful to be with you. It is one of those elements of life back then that sounds made up, almost like a movie. You had to be there to believe it. Maybe a good equivalent would be the bank robberies of the Great Depression, you know,

Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. But these guys, those things, they seem more heroic than the ones we're talking about. Your narrative covers a lot of different hijacking crimes, but anchors them all in the most notorious and famous of them, D.B. Cooper and the Northwest Orient Flight 305, which is, it inspired a number of copycat crimes. And that's where this story starts, right in the title, The Hijacking of Flight 119. So let's go through the specifics of this particular hijacking, the McNally hijacking, one of the copycat crimes, as you've mentioned. It is. D.B. Cooper hijacked his flight in November of 1971.

And in many ways, it made him a celebrity, a cultural folk hero. And one of the people who heard about this on the radio was Martin McNally. And it took McNally several months to plan out his hijacking, which actually occurred in June of 1972. But he lived near Detroit, selected the St. Louis airport because some of the airlines did not yet have a more modern security. They didn't have metal detectors or x-ray machines. And he planned to carry a small arsenal onto the plane. a small arsenal onto the plane. So he picked St. Louis and made sure to get a flight with a 727 so that it would have the aft stairs that he could parachute off of. One of the fascinating things about McNally is he had absolutely no parachuting experience at all. He went to the public library to read up on parachuting before he hijacked his flight. Wow. So he bought a ticket in St. Louis under the name Robert Wilson. By then some airlines were requiring ID to purchase a ticket and he had a fake birth certificate with the name Robert Wilson on it. Bought a round trip ticket to Tulsa for $70 and boarded the flight on

the afternoon of June 23rd in 1972. As the flight was, it actually took him a while to build up the nerve to actually go through with it. And he waited until the plane was almost to Tulsa. And then he went to the lavatory and took his briefcase with him, took out a wig and sunglasses and a machine gun that he'd sawed both the barrel off of 11 inches and taken the stock off of. He also had a pistol and a smoke grenade that looked like a hand grenade. It is unthinkable today that this, of course, could happen because of metal detectors and all the security elements. None of that existed. This is a day when you could walk into an airport straight to your gate, present your ticket, walk onto a plane and carry whatever you wanted on

there with you. Nobody was checking any bags, right? Yeah, this fascinates, of course, my students, most of whom weren't even born before 9-11. But no one checked your carry-on. Many airlines didn't check ID. Of course, D.B. Cooper bought his ticket with cash and just told the salesperson at the counter that he was Dan Cooper. So it allowed hijackers to carry on just a wide variety of shotguns, rifles, machine guns, pistols, bombs of every description, most of them fake. One hijacker, Arthur Barkley, carried on a gallon of gasoline, if you can imagine that, in his carry-on bags. This is an era when most people refused to wear seatbelts, and airlines actually resisted

putting in more security because they thought it would alienate passengers. They would see it as an invasion of their privacy. And what follows inside the plane is typically a very intimate moment when there's a, it's almost like pushing a note to the teller in a bank, that kind of quiet sort of thing. This is the immediately a relationship between the hijacker and the stewardess in those days, right? The typically female stewardess. And that's how it all begins. Yes. In almost every instance. And if there are unsung heroes in all of these hijacking stories, it's the stewardesses, as they were always called at the time. They were the ones who negotiated with the hijackers, interacted with them, worked to

diffuse tension and keep the passengers calm. And in almost every instance, they performed their jobs with just admirable professionalism and efficiency. So you mentioned a wig, rubber gloves, smoke grenade, an elaborate arsenal, as you say, of weaponry. What was the idea? Was that he would be not recognized from this, that he would be able to slip away and jump off this plane and never be seen again? That was the notion, right? Yes. The parachute hijackers all had a plan, and his was to jump near Detroit. And he had a friend who was going to pick him up.

I guess they would make a telephone call and pick him up with a half million dollars ransom in a bag. And no one would ever figure out who he was. But first they had to get the money. How was that going to be procured? So he gave the pilots a hijack note that had pretty specific instructions. And what he wanted was half a million dollars. He wanted them in large bills, but only part of it was actually in large bills because it would weigh less in a bag. And he also wanted five parachutes. He didn't really specify anything in particular about the parachutes because he actually didn't know very much about parachuting or parachutes. and hide the money, hopefully by burying it in the ground, and then do what other hijackers like

Richard McCoy had earlier done, which is walk to a road, hitchhike to a diner someplace where he could make a telephone call, have his friend come and pick him up, and then either go out and get the money then if the coast was clear or wait until later and go recover the money. How many times in those days did violence occur? I mean, generally speaking, the airlines and even the FBI had an approach of allowing these guys to do whatever they needed to do to get them off the plane and keep the hostages safe, right? Yes. There were almost no hijacking of U.S. commercial flights before 1968. And then, of U.S. commercial flights before 1968. And then, as you say, between 1968 and 1972, there were about 140. And early on in 1968 and 1969, the majority of the hijackings were to Cuba. And the interesting

thing about the take-me-to-Havana hijackings is that no passengers were injured. In fact, the Cuban government went out of its way to show passengers a good time. If it involved an overnight stay, they put them up at the former Havana Hilton or one of the beachside hotels. They took them to nightclubs. They wined them and dined them. Of course, they charged the airlines for all of this,

but they were actually determined to treat passengers well. And the end result was very few people saw this as a really sinister prospect. In fact, there were people who deliberately booked connections through Miami in the hopes of being hijacked and getting to spend a night on the town in Havana at the expense of the airline. So early on, this didn't really seem like a very dangerous thing to be involved in, despite the guns and alleged bombs that hijackers brought on planes. The first passenger doesn't die in a hijacking in the U.S. until 1971. But then what happens, two things happen. One, the Cuban government gets a lot less welcoming of hijackers, so Cuba is less of an option. Certainly, the hijackers were not treated as well as the

passengers were as a result of hijackings to Havana. And the other thing is you get this uptick in extortion hijackings, people demanding a ransom and holding the plane and passengers for ransom. The problem with the extortion hijackings was even if you get the money on the plane, then what? How do you get away? And that's the thing that D.B. Cooper solved, so to speak, a way to make off with the money. In a broader perspective, what happens is in 1972, a lot of these extortion hijackings become a lot more violent. There are shootouts on planes, one notorious incident while the passengers were on board and a passenger was shot and killed and two others wounded. And so it does get to the point

where this doesn't look quite so innocent as it had in 1968. McNally asked for $502,500. I don't understand that amount of money. What was that? Yeah, Martin McNally, he's an interesting guy. I've talked to him many times. His reasoning was that he saw this as a business venture and he wanted to make sure he cleared a half a million dollars. So he needed $2,500 in spending money to make sure that he could negotiate his way back home on the ground and still clear an even half million. Wow. No small amount. Today, that would be $3.6 million. So this is a considerable haul that he's going to get. When he has these bags of money, first of all, what is the process of getting this money? There's various steps in this, right?

Yes, there were. The FBI and FAA deliberately stalled, but even if they hadn't tried to do that, I mean, that's a typical tactic in hostage negotiations. were at night because the hijackers, except for one instance, wanted to jump at night. Parachuting during the day is safer, but of course, everyone can see your parachute come down and they know where you are. But what most of the hijackers didn't consider was that if you hijack a plane late Friday afternoon, it's difficult to get a large sum of money from a bank. late Friday afternoon, it's difficult to get a large sum of money from a bank. And the airlines were responsible for obtaining the money. They actually had to fly around for several hours before American Airlines could get the half million dollars from St. Louis Bank and count it all out and deliver it to the airport. And the FBI could get the five parachutes and other gear that McNally demanded and also get

that to the airport. They decide at some point they're going to fly to Dallas because they can get the money faster there, but then suddenly St. Louis has the money and so they turn the plane around and come back. It's incredibly idiosyncratic, all of this stuff. It's a crazy adventure, really. It is. And at that point, there were still passengers on the plane. And it's this kind of eerie experience where you're just flying around, not knowing quite what's going to happen. And there's a guy sitting in the back row with a machine gun and allegedly a bomb. Yes. And as you mentioned, the stewardesses, they're the front line of this whole effort to pacify this person, keep them calm, keep them in one place. All of that was

part of their instruction, wasn't it? It was. From talking to stewardesses who were involved in various hijackings in this period, actually they didn't get a whole lot of instruction from the airline on how to handle it, except they were simply told to cooperate with whatever the hijacker wanted. If it seemed like it would lead to a peaceful outcome, try and keep the passengers safe. And when they had the chance, get everyone off the plane as quickly and safely as possible. So as soon as they hear about parachutes, they know what this guy's going to do, right? This is no mystery at this point. It's already happened several different times. Yes, of course. And of course, the hijackers always asked for more than one parachute, implying that they might make someone

else jump with them so that there wouldn't be any tampering with the chutes. And in this case, that was the plan, or at least that's what he announced, right? That one of the stewardesses would have to go with him? Probably one of the hostages or one of the pilots, but he actually did seem intent on having someone jump before he did. Tell me about the FBI on the other side of this. By the time you get to McNally's 72 hijacking, they have been through this 130 whatever amount of times before this. As law enforcement, how do they approach the situation? Specifically with what was happening on the plane, they always tried to get agents on the plane, usually disguised as pilots. And they were remarkably successful in talking hijackers

into switching out the flight crews, so switching one set of pilots for a different set. And that's what they did with American 119. And one of the switch pilots, as they were called, was actually an FBI agent, Tom Parker, posing as a pilot. There's a guy named David Hanley in this story who drives a Cadillac at a precipitous moment. Tell me about that. Yeah, this is the sort of thing you just couldn't make up. As the hijacking is going on, of course, it becomes news in St. Louis. Television crews go out to the airport. It's on the radio. And across the street from the control tower and the terminal, there's a hotel that has

a rooftop bar. And of course, in this era, when security was pretty light and you could easily move from the front entrance to a gate, people would sit in the bar and watch the planes land and wait either for their flight or to pick someone up. Hanley had been to that hotel earlier in the day for a meeting, and then he went up to the rooftop bar when the hijacking started. And he sat there all afternoon and into the evening, like everyone else, just watching it unfold, watching the plane take off and return, and various vehicles go out and law enforcement surround the plane. And at one point, he was probably the only person in the bar actually not drinking. But at one point, just before midnight,

he got up and announced that this was taking too long, and he was going to put a stop to it. So he went down and got in his wife's 1971 Eldorado Cadillac convertible. He knew the airport and he knew where there were gates. He drove to a gate in the chain link fence and rammed the Cadillac through it. It actually took him two tries. And then he drove down to the opposite end of the runway from where the plane was sitting, and they were just getting ready to take off at that point. As he was driving down the runway, the FBI agent in charge, Bill Sullivan, got on the radio and started yelling, trying to find out who was driving on the runway. And they finally figured out it wasn't an FBI agent or any other law enforcement,

in part because the FBI didn't drive Cadillac convertibles. But Hanley got to the opposite end of the runway, turned around, and then he put his foot down and accelerated toward the plane. The pilots saw the headlights coming. They didn't quite know what was going on until he got fairly close. And then he realized that he was coming for the plane. He was, at that point, by most accounts, going about 90 miles an hour. He indeed hit the front nose gear of the 727, careened off that and slammed up against

the port side main gear. That's amazing. This damages the airplane and they have to get a new one, right? Yes, right. There's no way they can fly it. There's fuel leaking on the ground. It's not clear whether it's the car or the plane. The landing gear's been damaged. Remarkably, everyone just assumed Hanley was dead, but they dragged him out of the car and took him to the hospital and he actually lived. Oh, my God. So after the plane is hit by the Cadillac, what's McNally's response to this? He must be freaking out. Of course, he had no idea what was going on. His first thought was that this was some kind of FBI plot to try and board the plane and take him down. According to the stewardesses and the hostage who still was on the plane, David Spellman, Martin McNally just freaked out when he felt the impact. And one of the pilots,

Art Kester, had gotten over the intercom and said, there's a car approaching the plane and he's going to hit us and tried to convince him that they didn't know anything about this. He actually tried to make it sound like this happened all the time. People wandered onto runways and ran into planes. The stewardesses also did what they could to calm McNally down. And finally, they convinced him that he would simply need to switch to another plane. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after the break with more from American History Hit. And while you're listening, make sure you never miss another episode by clicking like and follow. And while you're at it, please share this episode with a

friend or family member. Thank you so much. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans.

Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So after they get the new plane and up in the air this is when he's got his money he's got his parachutes he knows how to get out of the plane and everybody goes in the cockpit except the

hijacker and he's gone yes correct although the pilots had tricked him in a sense, they figured out that he was trying to time where he would jump out by how long they were flying, knowing their speed. And so when they took off, they made two really broad sweeping circles around St. Louis that added 20 or 30 minutes to their flight time. Of course, if you're in a plane and you're not paying attention, looking out the window, it's really impossible to keep a sense of balance and know whether a plane is banking or going up or down. So, McNally didn't know this. And what it meant was when he figured it was time to go so that he would land somewhere near Detroit, they were actually only over central Indiana.

Oh, wow. Peiru or Peiru, right? Peiru, Indiana. As it was central Indiana. Oh, wow. Peru or P-Ru, right? Peru, Indiana. As it was pronounced at the time. Yes. I love that. There's a place up here. I live in New York. It's Cairo, but they call it Cairo because we're not going to call it Cairo. So he jumps out. It's 2.53 a.m. when he goes, drops the money when he parachutes. After all that, he drops the money just as he's parachuting. Yes, it's really, he knew that he had to wait. He jumped it over 300 miles an hour, and he knew he had to wait to slow to terminal velocity from what he had read at the public library. So he counted to 15 and then pulled the ripcord. But the shock of the parachute opening tore the money bag from

his leg where he had it tied, and he saw it drop away. Never should be seen again. Well, McNally didn't get it, but it was found a few days later, yeah, which is an interesting story in itself. Okay. What did happen to the money? I'm curious. So the money landed about a half a mile from where McNally landed. But of course, it's nighttime and he has no way of knowing where that is. And it ended up in a farmer's soybean field. So over the next couple of days, of course, there was a small army of FBI and law

enforcement out looking for McNally and the money. Everybody knew that they hadn't found it yet. And a couple of days later, this farmer was out in his field and he saw something brown in the soybeans and he thought it was a groundhog. And then he watched it for a while and it wasn't moving. So he walked on out and it was a brown American Airlines mail pouch. And he knew immediately what it was. He went ahead and opened it up, but there was the half million dollars just sitting in his field. Wow. And what happened to McNally? One of the things that makes the American 119 hijacking fascinating is that it took the FBI

almost a week to track Martin McNally down. He almost got away with it, got his $500,000 ransom and managed to jump from the back of a 727. So McNally landed nearby, near a small wood, so to speak, just off a county road and hit his head when he landed because he didn't know anything about how to land in a parachute jump. Stayed there that day. And the next night he decided there looks like there's a town up the road. I need to walk into town and figure out a way to get home back to Detroit. By then, I think he realized that he wasn't anywhere near Detroit. He set out at night to walk into town. And as he was walking, the Peru, Indiana chief of police, Richard Blair, was out driving the road with his wife. He had had a full day of coordinating the search for McNally.

And he was just trying to unwind and driving down the road. And he saw a young man walking on the shoulder. So he turned around and pulled over and asked him who he was. over and asked him who he was. Martin McNally made up a story that he had come to Indiana to bring his brother a car, and they'd gotten drunk, and they'd gotten in a fight. McNally needed to explain some cuts and bruises on his face that were the result of his parachute jump. And he convinced police chief Blair that he just really wanted to go into town and figure out how to get home. Blair listened to his story and believed him and in the end said something to the effect of, well son you better get off the road because we're looking for a hijacker and you're going to get swept up in this if you

don't. So he loaded McNally in his car, drove him into town and dropped him off at the only motel in Peru, Indiana which happened to be the place where most of the FBI agents were staying as well. And McNally stayed there for three nights before he managed to get a friend to come down and pick him up. Went down every morning and ate in the dining room where the FBI agents were eating before they went out to look for him. That's nuts. And they eventually apprehend him when he gets back to Detroit or there? No, his friend, Walt Petlikowski, picked him up in Peru, took some convincing to get him to do that. And they went back to Detroit. McNally's mistake was that the cardinal rule for getting away with

it is don't talk. But Marty wanted to brag about what he'd done. Of course, Walt knew, and he called up another friend immediately and told him about it. But as McNally's luck would have it, the FBI had already talked to that person. Basically, he flipped on McNally. How long do you spend in prison for this kind of thing? He hurt nobody, right? He did not. So most of the hijackers from this period got very long prison sentences because by 1972, it seemed to be the sort of thing that demanded some kind of harsh remedy. Most of them got out after six or eight years. Martin McNally was not a model prisoner, and he spent 37 years in federal prison. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. For that one crime. Yes, although while in prison, he and another notorious airline hijacker, Garrett Trapnell, tried to escape by Garrett Trapnell had befriended a woman who tried to hijack a helicopter and fly it into the prison yard so that McNally and Trapnell and another prisoner could escape.

So not a model prison. Yeah, bold plans. We've talked about this era as specifically 68-72. Honestly, it goes back before this. It's just not so much. When does the hijacking period begin and why is that? Yeah, these hijackings are really a function of the jet age. If you go back before the 1960s, the planes that airlines were flying were mostly what we would think of as short-haul planes. The workhorse of aviation through the 1950s was the DC-3. It was an incredibly reliable plane, but it was not pressurized. It could not fly above the weather.

And this changes with the jet age, specifically the introduction of the Boeing 707. Now you can carry a lot more people. You can go a lot faster. For the first time, passengers experience jet lag, right? But it also makes it possible to hijack a plane and take it somewhere far distant. This period of hijacking is really a product of the jet age, although, again, it really doesn't kick in until 1968. And the thing about the

hijackings at that point, at least in their early phase in 68, 69, is that they seemed a lot more normal. Well, if not normal, understandable. They seem to fit the moment in a way that's really hard for us to comprehend now. I remember the first movie I ever saw was Airport. That's this 1968, right? Somewhere on there, maybe 70. I don't know. But it was such a popular thing that they were making movies about it while it was happening, while the trend was on.

And in Airport with Helen Hayes, the whole thing, there's a guy with a bomb and he's taken out insurance policy. Seems lame as can be in the movie. And indeed, it's not can be in the movie. And indeed, it's not that different in real life. Yeah. One of the funny things about the 119 hijacking is that when Martin McNally landed outside of Peru, the local theater was showing the movie Skyjacked. Yes, exactly. You're right in there. It's really also a product of the fact that there was absolutely no security as we were talking about. You really could just get away with anything. And once it begins, that's really a self-sustaining process because nobody seems to be in so much danger. The passengers almost take it in stride

when this happens. I remember very well, the news broadcasts were like a yawn. Okay, here's another one. So here we go again. And they'd have, it was like the shootings that we hear about at night nowadays, which are more dangerous than the hijacking seemed for a while anyway. What really kicks this off, the era we're talking about

as far as the parachuters go, is D.B. Cooper. Let's get the basics about D.B. Cooper because it is a fascinating mystery. It really is, especially when you put it in this larger context. D.B. Cooper, he actually comes pretty late in this hijacking window from 1968 to 1972. Cooper's hijacking is November of 1971.

hijack a commercial flight in the US. In fact, not the first person to demand a ransom. But he comes up with this novel idea that no one had expected, which is that he also asked for parachutes. And he made sure that he was in a 727, which had the aft stairs, the stairs that came out of the back. In many ways, the parachute hijackers, their story really wouldn't have been possible without the 727. But it makes him a kind of folk hero. It makes him seem like someone that people admire rather than anything sinister. And one result of that is there were five copycat hijackers who actually jumped after obtaining a ransom. And Martin McNally and American 119 was the last of those in June of 1972. And in many ways, each of the five was equally as daring and as involved as D.B. Cooper's hijacking was.

I think the difference is that the mystery is that we don't know who Cooper was and the other hijackers were apprehended. Yeah, there's a quality of D.B. Cooper that really stands out. The man was bland as can be the drawings anyway. Keep in mind, we don't know who this man is to this day. That's what the mystery sustains. But the sketches of him look like the average fellow on the street, kind of handsome. He's very polite to the stewardesses. He handles himself with a great deal of equanimity, right? And so he's very calm about all of this. And all of this has contributed to the sort of folk hero status. You think of him in the same way as you went with Dillinger in a way. The people liked him secretly. You know, he's violent as heck.

This is the quality that really mystifies the man, isn't it? Yes, people liked him, not secretly, but openly. He seemed to be someone that lots of Americans could look up to. He took a large amount of cash from a big corporation. He didn't hurt anyone. Both of the stewardesses, Flo Schaffner and Tina Mucklow, made a point of saying that he was very polite to them on the plane. He joked with them. He sipped his bourbon and seven up and chain smoked his Raleigh cigarettes in his wraparound sunglasses. To many people who heard the story, he just seemed really cool. And he got away with a large sum of money to boot. Yeah. This all happens up in the Northwest, Seattle-Tacoma Airport and all

of that. Describe his escape from the plane. Well, D.B. Cooper knew something about airplanes. He knew to have the pilots fly with the landing gear down and the flaps at 15 degrees, which meant that the plane had to fly slowly. He asked them to stay under 10,000 feet so that it wouldn't be pressurized. He knew that the aft stairs could be lowered, but he didn't know how to do it. He didn't know the 727 very well himself, but he knew that those stairs could be left down or could come down in flight. So he had this pretty well planned out that he would get the money, get the parachutes, have the pilots fly low and slow back towards Portland. And then at some point for whatever plan he had in mind, he walked down there, crawled down the back stairs and let go, fell into the void.

Suspicion is that he died. That seems to be the common notion. What are your feelings about this? So the FBI was convinced from the beginning that Cooper was dead. And in fact, in the American 119 hijacking, they were convinced that Martin McNally was dead as well. They maintain this conviction that it was impossible to jump out of the back of a 727 and live.

In fact, all of the parachute hijackers survived with at most minor injuries, even the ones who had absolutely no parachuting experience whatsoever. And many of their jumps were, in a sense, more difficult than Cooper's. Cooper jumped at just over 200 miles an hour. Martin McNally jumped at 320 miles an hour at the same altitude, 10,000 feet. Actually, I don't see any reason to assume that Cooper died. No one else did. It seems entirely likely to me that he survived the jump, which is why the parachute and body have never been found because they're not there, or at least if the parachute's there, it's hidden. That's my thought as well, that you would have found some arm or something like that. Somebody would have come across something over the years.

But they did find the money, or they found some of it anyway, next to a river, right? Yeah, that's a really bizarre twist in this story that no one's really figured out. This young boy out with his family digging along the banks of the Columbia River uncovered $5,800 of the Cooper ransom. The serial numbers matched, but not more of it, not the rest of the $200,000. So how that money got there, how it became buried in that sand is really a mystery. And they never found the rest of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Cooper got, right? Right. $200,000 in $20 bills. Which was advertised as a success story. Anyone who was interested in this would have said,

wow, that guy got away with it. They literally didn't catch him. So he is followed by five copycats in 1972. I'll just go through the list, spare you the breath here. Richard LaPointe, troubled Vietnam veteran, hijacked a plane from Las Vegas, jumping near Denver. Frederick Hahnemann, commandeered an Eastern Airlines flight from Miami, jumped into the night over Honduras with $303,000. Rob Hedy, these names and their criminal acts are so colorful, hijacked a 727 in Reno by running across the apron with a pillowcase over his head and a.357 Magnum revolver in his hand. Okay, that wouldn't get you far these days. Richard McCoy jumped near Provo, Utah after obtaining $500,000 in ransom in San Francisco. It's an amazing period. I don't recall those. That wasn't as clear in the news that this was going on. It was just didn't continue for very long. The Rob Heddy case is really fascinating and highlights a couple of commonalities between the hijackers.

In terms of ages, they were grouped in two age range, mid to late 20s and mid 40s, which corresponds to service either in Vietnam or the Second World War. It's pretty clear that all of these hijackers, or at least most of them that we know about, were suffering from some form of PTSD related to their military service. Most of them had some kind of brush with the law before this. Hijacking a plane is probably not your first crime, so to speak, although it was for some of them. Rob Hetty, his plan, he had parked his car about 20 miles from the airport at the south end of Washu Lake. And he gave the pilots pretty detailed instructions on the path he wanted them to fly so that he could jump where his car was

parked. Unfortunately for him, their route was off by a few miles and he ended up landing three to five miles from where his car was. So while he's walking to where he'd parked his car, of course, every law enforcement in the area is out looking for him. They knew he had jumped. And there were a couple of sheriff deputies who were driving the dirt roads around Lake Washu, and they came across a parked car with a Parachute Association bumper sticker. Yes, that's funny. And they looked at each other and just thought, what are the odds? So they just sat there and about five in the morning,

Rob Heddy came walking up and retrieved his keys from under a rock and they arrested him. Voila. Another one bites the dust, so to speak. What all brings this to the end i guess the advent of security the airline companies changing their tune about for so long the airline companies thought that creating a security system metal detectors etc etc would be counterproductive to their business so instating that kind of security system would actually keep people away they would want to drive instead of fly all that sort of tips the other way in the 70s, doesn't it?

Yes. So through much of this period, the airlines, exactly as you say, were afraid that if they put in more intimidating security, that first of all, it would just take too long to load planes and they would need too many personnel to do that. And secondly, passengers would become annoyed to see it as a violation of their personal freedoms and just decide not to fly as much. And of course, this is the period where they're bringing into service bigger and bigger jets, including the Boeing 747. But in 1972, a number of these hijackings turn pretty violent, and public

opinion seems to sway in favor of really cracking down on this. And the solution was really fairly easy. They installed metal detectors and x-ray machines for carry-on luggage, and it became much more difficult to carry weapons on planes. The result was that there was only one unsuccessful attempt to hijack a U.S. commercial flight in 1973. Okay, so if things just drop off, it really does end right away, which is why for so long, I remember it occurring to me about two decades ago. I was like, oh, wait a minute. I remember that strange time when everybody, and we started talking about it among people of a certain age, that this really was a defining element of our youth, the way airplanes used to be like so much else. But you don't remember it like 9-11, right?

No, exactly. It took 9-11 to change the world. This was like a blip in our culture that was almost entertaining sometimes, sick as that sounds. No, it was. I mean, so few people were injured and some of the stories are really colorful. I know, but it was just relentless. John, thank you so much. This is a glimpse into the past that I bet many people who are listening today do not have any memory of, if any reference points at all. John Wigger is a professor of history, as I say, at the University of Missouri, author of The Hijacking of American Flight 119, How D.B. Cooper Inspired a Skyjacking Craze and the FBI's Battle to Stop It. It comes out in 2024.

You are a flyer yourself, am I right? Yes, I grew up flying with my dad and was a pilot. Beats hijacking. See you later, John. Thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays.

All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much. you you