Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Db Cooper 20 The Skyjacker Who Stole 500k Survived

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Martin McNally recounts how, inspired by a wave of 1970s skyjackings, he meticulously planned and executed a daring midair heist for $500,000... and actually survived the jump.⁣ ⁣ Martin's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/americanskyjacker⁣ https://www.americanskyjacker.com/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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investing fix.com that's fix with two X's and join us. Grab an extortion note, some weapons, I disguise border plane, demand the money, bailout. What could be more simpler? Mid-January of 1972. I'm in a Cadillac with my partner. He's driving. We're going to do another friend who runs a gas station in Detroit. And I hear on the radio, this is about 10 o'clock in the morning, I hear on the radio, how can we stop these skyjackings that are going down here?

A lot of them. What can we do? So, in the discussion, the guy says, well, what we need to do is anybody who buys a ticket, a plane ticket, we give them a half a million dollars. And it'll stop all this nonsense. So I immediately laughed like hell. And I told my partner, that is so, so funny.

Just grab a note, extortion note, get some weapons, get a disguise, and board a plane, demand the money, and bail out. What could be more simpler? What could be more easy? I was stupid. I mean, this is an insane thing to do. There's no question about it. But right from there, I began putting it together. At some point, you must sit down with these guys seriously and say,

listen, I'm seriously thinking about doing this. Like, was there any prep or is this something like the next day you said, I'm going to buy a ticket? No, it didn't happen like that. I didn't sit down with these two guys. and tell them this is what I'm going to do. I didn't do that. What I did ask him was, how can I hot wear a vehicle?

Explain that to me. To me, if I was a business partner, my business partner started to talk about this, I'd be like, I might start thinking, you know, maybe we shouldn't be in business with this guy. Like, we're running a litreate gas stations here. This guy's not talking about. Well, my close friend,

Jim Petty after I did all this stuff just before I was going to pull this in June of 1972 I had a ticket

I went to St. Louis, got the ticket and drove back to Michigan and I said I have the ticket here it's going down Friday and my part partner says, Mac, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do this. And I said, well, I've got so much, so much involved in this. A lot of money and a lot of traveling around. I'm going to go for it. What could be easier? Have a million bucks coming up. So, yeah, that's what he told me. But

like I say, when I got out of this, when I did it and then bailed out everything, they just went to the FBI and boom I was arrested quick and I was stupid I was stupid I understand but what happened when you so you go to the airport you get on the plane have you what what is the plan how does it happen

you know and have you ever skydive before have you ever parachuted out of a plane before no I never put on the parachute. I never put on the harness. As a matter of fact, when I was on the plane, the stewardesses helped me put on the parachute harness. And I was able to clip on the parachute. They only gave me a reserve shoot. And I said, where's the backpacks? I said, where's the backpacks? The back shoots. He said, you didn't ask for him. You didn't ask one.

I looked at my watch. I said, damn, I don't have enough time to have you people deliver the backpacks. So it's going to have to go. Okay. So you got on the plane. You're in the air. Are you in the air and you, do you hand the stewardess a note? What do they call them now?

Flight attendants. Did you hand the flight attendant a note? Do you, what happens? How many people are on the plane? There's about 90 people on the plane about that. A lot of couples, men, women, children. We took off from St. Louis around 2.30 a.m. on June the 23rd, 1972. We're going to, I'm going to Tulsa.

And we're about 15 minutes of the Tulsa. The pilot comes on, the intercom, he says, we'll be landing in about 15 minutes. I'm sitting there. I got two men beside me, one on the left, one on the right, I'm in the center. I got my Adichet case, which weighs about 15 pounds or so, on the floor, under my feet. And I'm thinking here, this is it. got to do it. If you don't do it now, you're going to land and you're going to have all these weapons and it's going to be a mess because you're going to go through this security.

They may have more security than St. Louis, which didn't have much at all. And I said, if you don't do it now, it's going to be forget about it. And you're going to land and you're going to have to try to get back to Michigan without being in trouble. So, you need to pump up your nuts here and get this thing done. I asked the guy, I asked this guy that was sitting next to me, I says, where's the restroom? And he says, it's in the back on the right. I said, okay. So I picked up my Anderchet case and went in the aisle and went back to the restaurant,

restral, close the door, lock. the door, opened my case, pulled out my wig, put that on, pulled out gloves, and pulled up the weapon. It looked like a grease gun,

World War II grease gun. I put the clip in it and I very cautiously pull the lever back, the I engaged the weapon

and I didn't want it to slip and fire off a bullet. So I got that done. I opened up the door and I'm sitting there I'm crouched in the back of the plane. I got the gun up here

and I'm going like this trying to alert the stewardess. In the world of true crime, bad habits usually lead to bad outcomes. But it doesn't have to be that way. Meet Fume, the flavored air device designed to help you ditch the bad habits and feel good about what you're reaching for. No nicotine, no vapor, no batteries, just an awesome design, and delicious flavor like crisp mint, peachy blush, and cinnamon hearts. I like how it feels. Smooth, fidget-friendly. You can even twist it to adjust the airflow. Fume has already helped over 700,000 people, take steps towards better habits.

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For three minutes, I'm like this. For three minutes. finally a stewarder sees me comes to me and she first thing was don't hurt anybody I said miss I'm not here to hurt anybody I'm here for money take this note give it to the pilot and come back here

immediately that's what she did she ran up there the cockpit came running back and she said what next I said, I need a seat to sit down. So have these people here in the two seats in the rear, have these people moved up to first class. No charge to them.

Get them up the first class now. So she told these family. The man was, look like a football player, big, stocky. and he had two kids, a boy and a girl. And the girl got up. She went going up the aisle, following the stewardess. And the boy got up, and he turned around and looked at me for a little bit. But he shook his head like that.

and then the wife got up and she went forward to the first class section and then the dude got up and he was about six six or seven feet in front of me and he turned around and he's just staring at me staring at me he's not blinking and i'm not blinking and i'm looking like this i'm not blinking and I took my gun, it was about this long, like a grease gun, and I pointed at him, and I gave him the growl. Mm.

Hmm. And he got the message. But I wasn't going to blink. If he hadn't turned around, well, it could have gone south, but it didn't. So, I got in my seat, And that began the ordeal.

Yeah. So they, the plane lands, right? And they call in the request for money. And the plane lands. And the FBI's got a, or the airline has to scrape together this money, right? Because the, because the government's not going to come up with the money.

So the airline scrapes together the money in cash. How long does that take? And how much money was it? $500,000. plus $2,500 in a separate bag. And that's another story. I got the $500,000 in the, yeah, I got the $500,000 in two bags.

I never opened them up. They were in big bags with a lead seal on each one. And it was in a leather bag. And the money that was $2,500 was in a bag. I told the steward, I said, what's in the bag? So she handed me the bag, and I looked in the bag. And all these $1 bills coming up. I said, what the hell is this shit?

This is garbage. So I wound up giving the stewarders tips. I said, listen, I can't use this. this money here, the ones and everything, I eventually gave the stewardesses $1,500. But before I gave it to him, I said, I got some tips for you, girls. If you promise me, you won't turn it into the airlines or give it to the FBI. Every one of them immediately says, we promise. So they got the money.

And when they did get off the plane, they gave it immediately to the FBI. And when I read about that, days later, when I was in the hotel in Peru, Indiana, I said, no goddamn bitches. I wouldn't, I would have just threw that money out the back door if I didn't know they were going to give it to the FBI. Okay, go ahead. So you landed, you got the money. What do you do? You have them take back off. You know exactly where you want the plane to go.

Do you actually have an area where you actually have an area where you? You know I need to jump out at this time in this general area because I have all that information. Okay. I have all that information. I have the speed that I want to go. I have the area, which is south of Detroit, south of Toledo. It's a farming area. I have all of that.

Right. And I'm ready to do that. But this is later, this is about 12 midnight. We got all the money. we got the parachutes. I'm complaining about no backpacks. I actually said, when this guy brought these shoots on,

you guys are trying to kill me here. Yeah. The main stewardess, your name is Sharon Maddiell, she knew that they were trying to kill me. When she saw that I didn't have the backpack, All I had was a reserve shoot. Yeah, she...

And I asked her later within the last four or five years. I said, Sharon, why didn't you tell me? You knew they were trying to kill me. She's, no, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't tell you about it. But at one point in this thing, she said the...

She came close to jump of me. when I had problems putting on the harness. I needed help putting on this parachute harness. It's shocking to me that you're irritated with all the people that you've skyjacked, that they're not being more cooperative and helping you along the way. Like you're upset that the FBI is not giving you tips.

Like, well, you do realize you should probably get to ask for a backpack, right? Like, you do realize you'd be asking for like 50s and hundreds, not, you know, because if you give it a leave, it up to us, we're going to make it as difficult as possible. That's exactly what they did. And they actually said that, that they were making it difficult. And there was no way

that I could have survived that jump, parachute jump, and all they're looking for is a body. And for O'Neada. Yeah, that's what they said. But, yeah, that was it. So, I think I answered your question.

Yeah, so you tell them to take the plane up, right? I mean, once you get everything, you then say, okay, take off and we're going to fly, you're going to fly me here, but you know you're going to exit the back of the plane. Yeah, but here's what happened. As I'm telling them, at midnight, 12 midnight, okay, I got everything, ready to go. Let's get this plane in the air. So let me tell you. The pilot, we're getting ready to go.

The pilot starts to, we're ready to roll down the runway. The pilot gives it some gas. And within 20 or 30 seconds, he says, there's a vehicle on the runway. There's a vehicle on the runway. He puts the brakes on. we're going to have to wait a second here vehicle coming down the runway

oh my god he's going to hit us boom there were two bumps the first bump sent me forward in my seat and then there was the second bump that set me forward in my seat and the first bump was one of the Cadillac, big Cadillac New Cadillac that he hadn't paid the first payment

of it. But when it hit the nose gear, it care it careened over to hit the main strut. Main will strike.

And it stopped. Totally destroyed. I jumped up and I was screaming. I'm talking about screaming. Get this fucking plane in the air now. I'm going nuts.

Get this fucking plane in the air now! The pilot could hear me. He said, we've been hit by a vehicle and this plane is disabled. We can't move this plane.

So, I settled down. I realized it wasn't a scam. It wasn't the FBI trying to stop this thing. And I says, Okay, a stewardess was there, and I told the stewardess, tell the pilot to tell ground control that we are taking a 727 jetliner on this tarmac here. I don't care which airline owns it. We're going to take it, and we're going to get up in the air.

but tell them to get I'm sorry why that particular plane 727 yeah that's the only plane that you can bail out of that's the only plane with the rear steps

you can't do it with a 727 a 737 any other planes it's got to be a 727 it has the rear the rear stairs that goes out of the rear stair is the rear stairs uh

that you can bail out of. Right. So I'm screaming and everything. And I said, tell the ground control to have the plane, the tanks topped off with fuel. So that's what they did.

And I said, then it took about 60 minutes to 90 minutes to get done. Now, we're going in from 12 midnight to about 130 or something like that around there. Can I mention one more thing? Ask one more question. Yes. The car, the vehicle that hit the plane,

I know from watching the documentary, was some jackass in a local bar that had heard on the news that a plane was being skyjacked. And he decided he was drunk and he decided that something needed to be done and jumped in his car, his new Cadillac, and he drove, got onto the tarmac, and found the plane and just rammed it. Did he die?

No, he didn't. That was David Hanley. What happened here is that... Is that right? I guess they're right. What happened is that he was in the Marriott Inn. He was in Marriott Inn. And when this thing was happening,

All the meeting in St. Louis started covering it. I mean, minute by minute, second by second. They didn't show anything else. And so he's in that bar. He's watching this on the TV. And he's drinking the beers and everything. He got drunk. He got drunk.

About 10 minutes before midnight, he said, keep watching your screen. you're going to see something that shakes the world. So he got in his Cadillac, and he had to go through a fence. And there were some reporters. There were some reporters on the roofs here. We were watching all of this. And he had to bust through chain link fences, and he did. And he was coming down that, roughly, at about 80 miles an hour.

Yeah, this was a attempt. But he lives about 40 miles north from me right now. I'm not going to go see him. None of my bitch. He threw your time off too. Yeah. I had all this timetable that I wanted to follow. And first of all, I wanted the plane to go at five.

500 miles per hour. And the co-pilot was there at the stairs, and he says, you won't be able to get out the back door at 500 miles an hour. I said, okay, let's tell the, get on the radio here and tell the pilot to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow on. So he did that, and we got it going. And was it going properly? 330 miles per hour. And this was huge speed. And, yeah, we're getting into the story here about losing the money and everything.

But I had my itinerary where I was going to land south of Detroit, south of Toledo. And just go home. Live my day. Yeah. I plan to do that. Things don't always go to plan. They don't always follow. Like they say in the military,

if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And this thing here, like everything went wrong. And it was terrible. I couldn't imagine in any lifetime that somebody would be in a Cadillac coming down the runway to destroy this aircraft, there would have been a hell of an explosion. If we had been rolling down for the takeoff,

we're going, let's say, 50 or 60, 70 miles per hour, and we're hitting this Cadillac. Everything collapses. 10,000 gallons of fuel explodes. I'm dead. And I hear today talking to you. that was that was the moment that when we first read this story that really connected us to it honestly

was that it was so much so insane such stranger than fiction that we knew we had to pursue it yeah you can't you can't you can't you can't account for yeah um so you guys so you do end up you get off the ground you well you wait when you switch planes you let everybody go right except for the crew a few of the crew members? After I had all the money and everything, I let everybody go. I think we had about 15 men on the plane at that time. Because earlier, when we first landed at about 4 o'clock, 4 p.m. or something,

I said, we need to get all the women and children off of this plane. All the women and children off this plane. plane. So we didn't get all the women and children off the plane. There were a couple women who were hugging under their husbands like this. I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving you. And yeah, I told the stewardesses at that point there, yeah, get the couples off. Get those couples that are hugging each other off. So we got all the women and children off. We had all the, we, we, we, we, we, we, and children are. We still had a lot of men on the plane. And I told the stewardesses, I won about 15 men, healthy men, on the plane. So let's get rid of them. But before that,

I had told the stewardesses that they can tell the pilot that the pilot can announce that anybody on the plane who has health problems, taking men. medications, having heart problems, they can get off the plane too. They can get off the plane. So he announces that. So what happens? Everybody jumps up. They're getting ready to go off the plane.

They figure that's their key to get off. I jumped onto my chair and I said, sit down. And everybody sat down. And I told the stewardess and I told the stewardess of that, You go up to that cockpit and tell that pilot, you better not do that again or I'm going to come up there and throttle him. So that's what she did. But, yeah, that was something at that point there.

So you take off? How many people are on the plane when you take off? We have the pilot, the co-pilot, and an FBI agent in the cockpit. He was posing as a flight engineer. He had a weapon on him. Yeah, he had a weapon on him at all times, and he was there to shoot me, kill me. Yeah, that's what his purpose was. And then we had a volunteer hostage, and the volunteer was an auditor for American Airlines. And when he had the chance to volunteer, he told the stewardess, says, yes, I'll be your volunteer. And I have, and I had a chance.

had two stewardesses. So he had one pilot, co-pilot, the FBI agent, the auditor, and two, two stewardesses. So what do we got? Five, six. I think we had six people in that cockpit as we're getting ready to go. And that's when the, that's when the Cadillac hit the plane. we're getting ready to take off. Right. You switch planes and take off in another plane. Yes.

We switched planes and then we take off. After we boarded the second plane, I went through the airline to check for FBI agents stashed between the seats and stuff like that, who were there to kill me.

And there weren't any before that we aboarded their plane. I told... I don't understand why you're irritated that you would think that these guys would be there to kill you when you're skyjacking a plane as probably, even back in the 70s, is probably a million dollars or half a million dollars. And you're stealing their money and you're threatening people with a gun. And, I mean, what do you expect them to do? Kill me? I mean... Okay.

I'm just making sure we're on the same page here. I mean, kill me. If they get a chance, they're going to kill me. As a matter of fact, I think one week or two weeks after my case, there was a case in California, I think it was at L.A. Two guys were getting one in the skyjack a plane. And the FBI, oh, they, They just, they wouldn't let it go.

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plus acetaminopheum atville the official pain relief partner of the NFL ask your pharmacist at this product's rate for you always read and follow the label killed them and uh somebody else got an actor got uh shot shot too uh but yeah um i expecting them to kill me if they get a chance right yeah that's all there is to it so you're in that you're in the air do you know you know about when to jump out. You're like, yeah, about 12 minutes in, 22 minutes in, I need to jump to be close to my, no, you've no idea. You just figure.

At that point there, when we did take off, when I checked the airport, I said, okay, everything's cool. Raise the stairs, raise the stairs that we had come up on and get this aircraft. in the air. And we were in the air within two minutes on our way. And I gave him, at that point there, I told them where we're going. We're going to Toronto Airport. We're going to fly in about 200 feet off the runway so I can verify that we are actually in Toronto. And then we're going to... I was in the Toronto airport yesterday, by the way. That's coincidental.

Yeah, I just flew back last night. I got home at like a 1, 1.30 in the morning. But yeah, that's funny. I said we will make the run on the air, a runway there, 200 feet, 300 feet, to verify where we are. And then we're going to go up to about 5,000 feet and hit on to JFK in New York.

This isn't your play. You have no intention of doing any of this, right? That's right. Okay. That's right. I'm just, this is, uh, yeah, this is phony stuff. Because, uh, I just want them to think that we're going to Toronto. So we're in the area.

I know that between St. Louis and Toronto on a globe, we got right in, right in there. We got, uh, Detroit and. Toledo. So I know at approximately 35 to 40 minutes going at the speed that we're going, which was 330, that's when I bail out at this time here. And yeah, that's what happened. And approximately, I think it was 3.15 a.m. I'm thinking in my head

I got to get out of this plane now that it's going to get light dawn is coming up and I can't have that be bailed out of the plane at that time. So I'm in the back of the stairs. I'm looking down.

It's clear and I'm looking at lights on the ground. So I know we're in farmland. These lights are separated, so forth. But then we go into what

I can't see anything on the ground. And I think at this time that that is water. Now we're up 10,000 feet. And I'm thinking that, oh my God, I think we're in Lake Michigan, over Lake Michigan. But I still got to go.

Yeah. So When I did bail out, I free fell about a mile, 5,000 feet. And then I started to go for the ripcourt to get that shoot opened. And so that's it. I'm coming down, free falling, and that's where I'm at right now. I'm in the air. I'm not pulling the ripcord yet, but more questions? Yeah, I was going to say the money, have you tied the money on?

I mean, how bulky is this, is half a million dollars in, you don't really know whether there's ones yet. You gave away a bunch of the ones, right? Yeah. What does it weigh? About me 45 pounds. It's in a leather mail bag. Are they ones and fives? I mean, no, in the leather bag, there was two packages.

One was a big package about like this, and the other one was a small one. The big package held $20 bills approximately, I think, $400,000. And I discovered that during my court case. And another bag with $100,000. So are you tying, is this tied on to you or you think you're going to hold it? I'm going to put it on my belts. I have a belt, leather belt, and then I have some nylon twine. That was stupid.

I should have had rope or just cut the shroud lines on some of these parachutes that I didn't take. but what happened is that the belt that I had, nice leather belt, when I got home, I had an identical belt in my closet. I pulled it out and I looked at it. The buckle had two snaps. And those snaps, when that parachute opened up, this package, 45 pounds just

flew away and these snaps on this belt would have opened up and that's what happened I said oh this is terrible I can't believe this so you're in the air and you watch this package

falling and just falls and it's gone that's all the money it's gone yeah yeah that's a situation there when I did pull the rip cord open the parachute blasted open the silk and so forth

and I grabbed the shroud lines and I yanked on them and I knew that if I have resistance I'm okay if I don't have resistance it's time to say a good act of contrition oh my God I'm heartless heart because the shoot is blown up and falling apart

shredded and I'm going down at 130 miles per hour terminal velocity and I'm going to be smacked like a bug on the ground. And yeah. When this thing happened, right.

The money goes away. I look down, snap my left leg and to check the bag. And I look down and I, this thing is tumbling. about 25 to 30 feet away from me. It's tumbling.

So I immediately look around the area down. I need three points on the ground, three rapture points, and if I can get them, maybe I can find this package when I hit the ground. I couldn't see anything. It was going into clouds. And at that point there,

Oh, my God. Oh, this is terrible. And I disconnected this leg strap, right? I just disconnected both leg straps and went to the chest strap and disconnected that. Took it out about three or four inches. And I said, wait a minute.

What I was going to do was just drop my, get rid of the parachute I couldn't drop it down and it's all over. Quick death on ground. But I said, well, wait a minute here. I connected the chest strap back up. And I said, and I'm doing this up in the air. I'm talking to myself.

The money's gone, the money can be replaced. Let's see, the money's gone, and I'm still here. The money can be replaced, but I can't. And I'm one in 50 million people. At that time, five D.B. Cooper copycats had bailed all the planes, and I was one of them. And so right then, I'm thinking I'm going to do it again. And I was. I was going to get a plane in Indianapolis.

My sister told me to stop. but yeah i was going to do it again okay so you you you you eventually do you land where do you land and how long does they i mean you know how close to a road are you in the middle of a field you you know like how do you get to back to civilization i mean i don't think people realize just how vast you know of this country is and there just aren't roads everywhere like i mean

I was lucky. I was lucky. When I landed, I landed hard. This is a reserve shoot. It's a very small shoot. I was just going to say this, this is a small shoot. The canopy is I think 24 feet. I think it 18 feet somewhere around there. I don't know. But I landed hard.

My feet dug in and then my butt hit the ground, and then my back and head hit. And my head hit so hard, it was like a two by four banging me in the back of the head. And I jumped up immediately, and I was seeing stars where there were no stars. It was full cloud cover. And I ran at the shoot to collapse the shoot and I just stood there. Stood there. And I'm looking around. Now, I'm in farm country. There's no question about it. I'm on a farm.

And there's, yeah, farms, farm country. And I'm standing there, just standing there, looking for lights on these houses. Nothing came on. The only thing that was happening in the area were the dogs. And the dogs were barking like hell. Every area that had a dog, they were barking.

The dogs knew something was going down. And, yeah, they were barking. So what I did, I took this shoot, and there was a block of trees over here. And I knew I couldn't get out of the area at that time. my head was, it was hurting. It was hurting. So I went over the trees and there was a barbed wire fence there.

I looked at that and I said, damn, I landed about 20 feet from that barbedoher fence. And I'm looking at that and thinking that, wow, that was close. If I'd hit that, I'll have been tore up like the floor up. Yeah, still. So I got over that fence. and then there was another barbed wire fence. I'm thinking, wow, I was a lucky year. So I go over that fence too,

and I get into the trees about less than 10 feet. I look at my hands, and I can't see my hands. It's pitch black. I laid the shoot down on the ground and landed on top of the shoot, and I went to sleep. I woke up about probably 5.30, 6 o'clock in the morning. And it was cold.

I was cold. So I took the chute and went deeper into the woods, about 20 feet deeper. And I put this chute under a tree trunk, a fallen tree trunk, put some leaves over it, got into the chute and went to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghostbed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patented technology that adjust to your body's temperature,

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Just visit ghostbed.com slash cox and use code cox at the checkout. I went to sleep. I woke up about 12 noon listening to a helicopter, the rotors of a helicopter, going overhead. Right there. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, they're looking for me. And the shadow of the rotors actually went over me. And this thing is about probably 150 feet. in the year. And then that kept going. Didn't stop. Didn't land. And I went back to sleep.

Went back to sleep. And I woke up about maybe 7 p.m. 7 p.m. I brushed off my shoes, brushed off my clothes. walked over the bobber fence there. And there was a road about 200 feet, 200 feet down from where I was. So I got in the road and it's dark. And I'm looking at the cars. Indiana. I'm looking at the license place.

Indiana, Indiana, Indiana. Five vehicles. going down the road, all at Indiana place. And I said, I'm somewhere in Indiana. I have no idea where I am in Indiana, but that's it. I landed in Indiana.

So, yeah. So you, do you, I mean, you get somebody to bring you to a hotel, do you, you know, to a, to a phone, you call somebody. How do you get, home. How are you planning on getting home? Well, actually, the chief of police gave me a ride into the city on the road.

He stopped. I was hitchiking. Right. The chief of police stopped. The chief of police was in his personal car. He wasn't in a cop car. And he was with his wife. And he stopped and questioned me. asked me where I was going, who I was.

He checked my ID and asked me where I came from. And I told him I came from a friend's house. His name, he asked for his name. I said, that's Hillary Johnson. He lives about a mile and a half down the road. And he said, what happened to you? My face was, yeah, it was. was pretty much tore up from the parachute that when it opened up, he slammed into my face

and blackened my eyes a little bit, cut my chin. It would blood on that, even when I was being questioned. There was blood on my chin. So I passed his interrogations and everything. And as he was getting into his car, He says, would you like a ride in the town? I said, yes, I sure would, officer. So I got into his car and he was driving. He was telling me that there's a lot of people on these roads. You need to stay off the roads because we were looking for that hijacker last night. And I said, yeah, I've heard that on the radio all day today.

That was really something. So, as I'm, he takes me into the city there, right near a hotel, and he says, yeah, you stay off the road. I said, okay, officer, thank you very much. Good night. So I got out of the car and walked on the street. And I'm thinking, I need to get out of this town. And I said, I can't hire a car because this chief of police has my information. And two and two, and he's looking for me.

So I went into a bar, there was a bar there, had a beer, and went into the, the, uh, went into the, John in the restroom there and looked into a mirror. and I was shocked. My face was tore up from the floor up. I said, oh, my God. I really look bad. And I'm damn lucky that I wasn't pulled in by that cop. Right.

And I went back into the bar, cleaned up in the sink there, went back in the bar, Had another beer, had a hamburger, and then left the bar, and went across the street to the hotel and told the, there were the clerk there, a woman, she's about 75 or 80 years old. She was old. And I said, I'd like to get a room for the night. So I gave her, gave her my...

She asked for it. I gave her a credit card. And as I'm taking care of this payment, she says, You aren't that hijacker, are you? Yeah, just like, you aren't that hijacker, are you? Yeah, ma'am, I'm the hijacker. Yeah, go ahead and call the cop.

No, I didn't say that. I says, my goodness, no, I'm not that guy. That happened yesterday. I'm sure he's out of the area by now. Okay? So, she didn't call the car. I went up to my room, and I was there in that hotel for three days. I never came out of the hotel.

And the only reason I came out was to get a soda. Yeah, to get a soda and make some phone calls to get picked. to get to get picked up. And I finally got my, my chauffeur in Ecores, River Rouge, okay, to come and pick me up. That took three days.

Who was that? Walter Pellikowski. He didn't, when I first called him, I says, wow, he said, I thought you were dead. I said, Walt, I'm not dead. I'm alive. So listen, I need some help here. And I need some help here. I need you to come down here and to pick me up. I can't get out of this town. And he said, oh, okay, okay, what's the address? I gave him the address. Well, he didn't come in 24 hours. So I called them back. I said, Walt, I expect.

you to be here. I can't get rid of this town, Walt. You got to come down here and pick me up. You're my chauffeur. You're going to get you $25,000 that I promised you. And you said, okay, I'll come down and pick you up. So he was there. It was Tuesday. He got there about 5.5.30 p.m. Tuesday. And he picked me up, and we drove back to Detroit down I-70. He said, do you want to drive? When we came out of the hotel, and I says, no, you drove us here. You drove here, and you can get us out of here. Just be careful.

I don't want to be stopped by the cops. So we got in the car, and he very slowly got on the road, and he said, where to? And I said, just keep driving. Just keep driving. So we hit a secondary road in about two miles, and he said, which way? And I said, turn right.

And it doesn't matter, turn right, because I don't know where we're at. And so he turned right. And we're driving down in the highway, 40, 50 miles per hour. And I finally see a road sign. I-70. Boom.

As soon as I see that sign for I-70, I says, I know where we're at now. Hit I-70. We're going to go east and to I-75. We're going to go north right into Detroit. Take us about four or five hours. So as we're driving, Donahe 70, Walt says to me, why did you call me? There's a record. I said, Walt, I had to call you. I had, I don't have anybody else involved. Nobody else knows I'm here. And you're the only one. And he said, there's a record. I said, Walt, don't worry about that. Listen, if I get arrested, if I get arrested, okay?

and it's for this caper, this score, the FBI is going to come and talk to you because you're a known associate of mine. Right. When they do, what you say is, I don't know what Mac was involved in. I have no idea. It's not, I wasn't involved in something like that.

I told him, deny, deny, deny, deny. and there's nothing that tying you up into this case. Right. You're a known associate. Everybody, all of my known associates are going to be a question. So that's what I told them. Denied. And they did talk to him.

26 hours after my arrest. He was in a bar in Ecores. and it was about 2 o'clock, 2.30, that he went home. And he knew that the FBI was looking for somebody how I got back to Michigan. They didn't know at that time. And he went home, and he told his wife, Faye, Pellikowski, Faye.

He said, I think I should turn myself in, because they're looking for me. They want to know how Mac got back to the truck. And his wife said, well, if you think so, Walt, go ahead. Hey, the idiot went down to the police station and the guy at the desk knew Walt. He said, what's up, Walt? Walt said, I'm here to turn myself in.

Turn yourself in for what? He said, well, the FBI is looking for how that McNally. got back into Detroit I drove them so I'm here to turn myself in within do they know it's you at this point how do they know it's you at this point?

I was arrested okay so well we didn't get that we skipped that okay we skipped that we can get back to that okay but yeah the FBI was there in 15 minutes

where you you went in ecorse michoregreens so you got home yeah i got home and and you're you walk into your house yeah money's gone and within 15 minutes the so how did they with that they show up at your house how did they figure out it was you in general just in general to begin with okay they figured that out uh here's what happened i bail out at about 2 30 maybe 3.30. Within seven hours, James Polzak in Detroit called, a friend of his, Robert Krishki, Robert Kritsky, was an undercover Detroit sheriff, deputy. And he said, I need to talk to you. He said, well, what's up? Tell me over the phone. He said, I can't tell you over the phone.

I need to talk to you. So he arranged an appointment in Lincoln Park, just a couple miles from here, and on Southfield Road. So he gets into the car with this cop, and he says, I know who pulled that hijacking in St. Louis. His name was Martin McNally. I don't know where he lives, but he's the one. Okay.

How does this guy know you? He was a business associate. Okay. Not making money with him, but he was a business associate. He was in the gas business, shell station, just like I was for a time there. So he's one of the guys you had discussed this with prior. Yeah, in January. Okay.

In January, you're seven to do. Five months before this thing happened. I discussed this thing, asked him how do we, how are we a car. Okay? So he told this Robert Crischke, Detroit Sheriff, undercover cop, that I'm the one. Critchkey called the FBI immediately, and he said, hey, that guy, the skyjacking in St. Louis, The perpetrator of that was Martin McNally. And he lives in Wynod, Michigan.

That's the guy that did it. The Detroit FBI took that information. And I guess they looked at me and my family and everything. And they didn't believe it. They figured it was somebody just trying to finger me for whatever, whatever, whatever reasons. the next day he called back. That was Monday.

The next day was Monday. And he said, why haven't you arrested this McNally character? I told you that he was involved in that St. Louis caper. And he said, you need to arrest him because he's getting ready to do it again. And he's going to get another half a million or a million, but yeah, he's going to pull it again.

So at that point there, the Detroit FBI began to get on the case. And that was Monday. By Wednesday, yeah, they arrested me at my house at approximately 10 minutes after 11 p.m. Yeah. So what happened in the money? the money got away and it was 1,200 feet from where I landed. Now, I was able to figure that it was 1,200 feet from the data that was stated in court when I went to trial in December.

So I was able to look at that, and yeah, it was 1,200 feet away from me. I knew I could find that money. If I had a continuous circle, walked a continuous circle. Okay? But come on. If anybody sees me walking in a circle in this area, they're going to have the cops there. What's this nut doing walking around in this farm on our property?

Yeah, the cops are going to be over there and I would have been dead in the water. So the money is gone. I'm not going to get that back. A farmer, he was an old man. He was about 60, 65 years old. He had a bean farm, and he was out on his bean farm and saw this leather package, this leather mailbag.

And he saw A-A on it. So the old man knew what it was. And what he did, he called his grandson, I think it was. He was about 19 years old. And he was working at the railroad. And he said, whatever his name was, you need to come to the farm. I need to see you now.

So the kid said, Gramps, I got a lunch coming up here and I'll be there in about 30 minutes, 45 minutes. The old man said okay. So the old man waited for him to come to the farm

they got to the farm. The old man took him out to this package and the youngster unzipped it, looked inside, pulled these bags out. And he says, you know what this is Gramps. This is the money

that gave that hijacker. We got it. So the old man said, well, what do you think we should do? Now, the old man, just asking that question, he's got larceny in his heart. Yeah. And if the

youngster says, well, well, Gramps, we need to put it in the bedroom under the bed and just wait and see what happens. Right. And he didn't say that. The youngster said, we need to call the sheriff right now. So the old man said, yeah, you think so? So they called the sheriff and within 15 minutes, they were there.

The media was there. And boom, this was all over the world. A half million dollars that the skyjacker got, we got it. we got it back. Yeah, fuck him. Yeah, so that's what happened. The old man had it. The airlines came to his house with a check for $10,000.

Knocked on the door and said, Mr. So-and-So, the airlines would like to give you a reward for throwing in the money like that. Here it is. The old man looked at the check and he says, Oh, no, this is no good. I got to have, I'm not going to take this, I'm going to have more money than this, at least 5% or 10%.

So he wanted 50 grand at least. And I understand the airlines took their check back and he didn't get anything. That's what I understand. His wife told the media that this case destroyed his family. Well, I guess it would. All the neighbors and everybody knows this guy, I would say, you idiot.

You had a half a million dollars man from heaven, and nobody knew you had it. Yeah. What are you doing, turn it in? Okay. Well, I wonder if the FBI had written down or made copies of any of those notes, you know, the social security, I mean, sorry, the serial numbers on the notes, like that's what they had done with about half the money that D.B. Cooper took, about half that money they had, they had transcribed or the serial numbers on the notes.

So that's why they feel like he didn't make it because they feel like none of those, those, none of that money's recirculated. Yes. I don't think they copied all the, uh, all the numbers on my bills. I just don't see it happening. Yeah, that would have been a lot. It would have been a lot. $400,000 in $20 bills.

That's a lot of bills. They may have done some of the $100 bills, but I think I had all new bills and everything. But as far as D.B. Cooper goes, I think it's a 50-50 whether he actually made it. I just don't know. I like the idea that he did make it.

Yeah, they're still trying to figure it out. But I'm done with this case. I don't care about him. I wish I had never heard of his case. Is there in January? Yeah. So how much time did they give you? I had two life sentences out of St. Louis.

That was initial. The judge didn't like that. me at all. I was not a good defendant because I was objecting in court at one time when the prosecutor was talking to the jury during summation, he told him, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to find Martin McNally guilty of aircraft piracy so that we can show the world in St. Louis, we don't turn skyjackers loose. When I heard that, my defense attorney was there, and I said, object. Object.

Object. My defense attorney wasn't standing up and objecting. And what I did, I went like this on the table. Hard. I said, object! And he got up and he said, I object, Your Honor. And at that point there, I spoke. And I said, he can't be telling these people to be mindful of what happens in the other parts of the world from St. Louis?

Yeah. I didn't know the law at that time. My attorney, he betrayed me. Okay? I know he betrayed me. and if I had known the law, the case would have gone much different. But what my attorney should have done was ask for a mistrial because the instruction that the prosecutor was given to the jury was not a, it was not a curative.

would not cure the damage because it was embedded in the jury's mind at that time. The judge would have probably denied a motion for a mistrial, but it would have been in the record. So, and I could have appealed. Why did you go to trial at all? Were they making you an offer? Like, I mean, okay, here's what we got. my attorney told me that he says, Mack, they're offering 28 years.

You plead guilty, and it's 28 years. And you can appeal that search issue. And I said, Fred, Frederick Meyer was his name. I said, these FBI agents, entered my house before a searchworm was issued in Detroit. There's no question about it. It was demonstrated during this one week suppression hearing. And under the doctrine of the fruit of the poisonous tree,

any evidence that arose after that search is suppressible. And on that basis, I don't care if they offer me 10 years. I'm not pleading guilty. This entire case should be dismissed. And I believe it may be dismissed by an appellate court. That's just the way it is. I'm not accepting 20 years or 10 years. And that's the way it is.

So I went to trial. And it lasted about a week or so. and the jury convicted me less than an hour. As a matter of fact, one of the jurors, an older woman said that, well, we had a jury, we had the verdict in about fast, about 15 to 20 minutes, but we figured the trial lasted so long, we should wait a little bit longer before we come back then into the court. But we did have a verdict, and if we could have given him the death penalty,

we would have. That's what she said. If we can, if we could have given him the death penalty, we would have. I guess they figured I was very belligerent. I was a northerner coming down to Missouri, trying to take their mind and everything. So give me the death penalty. So the judge gave me two life sentences.

They were concurrent, okay? So I went on to do my time And six months later Where I was involved in an escape attempt And with a helicopter You probably What happened that? What's the guy?

What is the escape attempt? That was at Marion Federal Penitentiary That's a fact Okay So what happened there? Who was that guy? He's kind of a character too. Well, yeah, that's

Garrett Trafnell, he was my partner in prison there. And he had an aircraft piracy conviction. And he was a lifetime criminal. He got married, I think, five times, never got a divorce. So he had a lot of these women around the country and everything. He would pick up a girl. Will you marry me? Yeah, he married.

But there was that helicopter escape at Marion. That was something. That was terrible how it went down. So what was the plan? I mean, how do you convince somebody to, to, so someone's going to take a helicopter, fly it in, land, pick you guys up and leave? Yes, yes.

And Trappnell was a hell of a talker, hell of a writer. and he connected with this woman out of St. Louis who read his book, The Fox is Crazy Too, and she said, I would like to meet you. I would like to meet you. She claimed that she knew Trabnel before he went to prison and the Bureau of Prisons approved her application to come for visits.

And so Barbara was coming to the person visiting him, and he was a, yeah, he convinced her, he was a bad dude. He was a, he was a monster to even conceive of all this stuff. But he convinced her to take a helicopter. Actually, it was, we were going to train her, pay for her. training to become a helicopter pilot, and then she was going to rent a helicopter and just come in and pick us up. But that didn't happen because in March, the prison at Marion's began to construct a watchtower, a gun watchtower right in front of the administration building. And I told old trap now. I says,

Trap, we got to do this now. We can't wait for Barbara to become a competent pilot, helicopter pilot. They're building that tower right there and we got to go now.

So, Trapp agreed and yeah, we set it up and I told him under no circumstances should she come in here, she could,

under those circumstances, should she commandeered the plane on the same day that she comes to see you because she needs her mental capabilities 150% on that particular day. What happened on the 23rd of May he came to my cell at approximately 1 p.m. And knocked down my cell door.

I said, what's up, Trap? I said, are you ready to go? I says, go where? He says, we're leaving tonight. I said, you just had a visit. I know we're leaving. So I said, well, I'm ready. so he left and went to his cell. He lived about three cells down. I sat on my bed. I sat on my bed. I laid on my bed. I was twiddling my thumbs. And I'm thinking, this can't go down. Not today. How can we stop it? How can I stop it? And there was no way to get a telephone call.

of the prison because after open house, which happens every day right after Chow, it lasts for about 30 minutes. That's when you make your phone calls. And that was closed. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, oh, my God, got to go with it. Guy that go with it. Yeah. So at 4.30, this was right after the evening meal. We're waiting for the door to open up to the rec yard. It didn't open up at 4.20. That's when it would usually open up.

4.30, quarter to 5. 5 o'clock. 515. So you're afraid what? She's going to come in and you're not going to be on the rec yard. That's right. I'm thinking, why hasn't that door opened up? Maybe she got busted in St. Louis. What is up? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. If that door doesn't open up, she's coming in the helicopter because she wasn't arrested in St. so she's on her way. And eventually the door opened up. And I went in and told Trabnell and Kenny Johnson,

they were going with us, of course. I said, it's on. The door is open. Let's get out to the yard. So that's what we did when we went out to the yard. At approximately 6 p.m., we hear this chopper in the air. He's up about three or four thousand feet.

And, uh, yeah, he said it's on. So, so the chopper headed south, uh, at about, uh, four or five thousand feet, got down about two miles from the prison. And then, um, the pilot, Alan Barkledge, He turned it around and he's coming in. And he told Barbara, he said the door is hard to open. So you need to open it up now before we get in there so that these guys can just jump in when we land. So she said, okay.

She had the gun in one hand and she leaned over. to open the door. When the pilot saw that she wasn't looking, didn't have the gun pointed at him, and she was looking at the door, that's when he turned around.

And releasing control of the stick. The helicopter I don't know, I forget the name of it, but he turned around, released control of the controllers, and he grabbed the gun.

The gun went off and fired a shell about two or three inches away from his head and blew out the door. blew a big hole in the glass door, plexiglass door. And he grabbed the gun from her. And it was a big gun, 44 caliber, I believe. And turned the gun, she said,

well, that's okay, I got another gun here. And at that point there, the pilot turned the gun around and facing her, blew her away with four slugs. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I think two in the skull and two in the chest cavity. The autopsy showed she had 1,100 cc's of blood in her chest cavity.

I think that was the number of 1100 cc's. But, yeah, she was instantly dead. And later, I told Drabnel, and I says, you sure fucked up here, dude. I told you, you can't bring her in here on the same day that she visits. And what did you do? Boom. That's what you did.

And he said, well, if it had been successful, you wouldn't be harping about it. And I said, yeah, I would because you didn't follow my instructions. Yeah. So do you know who Benny Kramer is? Yeah, Ben Kramer? Yeah. I think he was at I think he was at Marion.

I think he was at Terre Haute. And I think he's from Detroit. I'm not sure. But I think he was here in Detroit in a penitentiary prison not too long ago. Ben Kramer. He was doing a life sentence.

Yeah. So I only mention it because he was in Miami. and he and his brother had paid to hire a guy who trained, they trained him to be a helicopter pilot and break him out. And Ben Kramer, that didn't work out well either. That guy actually landed in the little wreckyard in Miami and was landing and he runs up and he apparently had gained like 80 pounds or 100 pounds.

And so when he goes to climb in the chopper, he reaches in to pull himself in and he actually grabs the stick, like the elevator stick, thinking it's just a, piece of of the chopper and grabs it and yanks it and the it starts to swoop you know the the helicopter swings around and the back tail part of it hits the fence and it flips it over and throws him in the helicopter pilot and then it's outside of the fence I mean the one guy like I think I don't know if kramer broke his leg or something the pilot broke a couple what broke his leg his arm some ribs and stuff and he you know there's not much you can do to ben kramer he was already screwed but anyway you know, these helicopter,

these things, they don't go well. It seems like a good idea. On paper, they just don't go well. That was in 89. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't help his cake. Yeah, Ben Kramer, he was at,

Tara Ode, when I was working on the, in the kitchen, and I was serving eggs. I think it was a Sunday after Sunday morning. And Ben Kramer was, was coming through the line. All these guys, they wanted extra, extra eggs. And this cop that was the supervisor there, he had told me.

He says, don't be giving these people extra eggs. Don't be doing that. So Ben Kramer came through there. She's Mac, Mac. I said, Ben, I can't do anything. I can't do anything. and this this this this this this this this cop yeah he was he was watching me he wasn't like that but he was he had his eyes like that he was watching me making sure i wasn't giving these guys

eggs i had one guy come through there and he said uh he was a new guy in the prison uh and uh he wanted some extra eggs he said What are you scared? Yeah. He said, what are you scared? And I dropped down everything, my servers. I stood back. I said, scared, scared.

You motherfucker, you don't know who the fuck you're talking to. Yeah. Scared? Yeah. I was ready to jump all over him. Okay, that's it. That's prison violence. We can't talk into that stuff.

Okay. But Ben Kramer was a nice dude. He was a good conflict, okay? All right. My question is, at what point? So the attempted escape didn't help your case. Oh, no, I picked up two license. sentences.

For the helicopter escape, I picked up life plus 75 years, plus five years, plus five years. And they were all consecutive. And I was dead in the water. My release date was 2082. And the federal judge, Earl Baker was his name. He was a youngster. And he didn't like me. at sentencing on February the 9th of 1979,

he said, this defendant should never be released from prison, ever. That's what he said. So, hey. How did you get released? How did this happen? Well, I did a lot of work. I did a lot of work, and I reversed those two life sentences

that I got for the helicopter. Yeah. I got reversed those. And the two nickels, which were consecutive, the two five-year sentences were consecutive. But what happened is that I had a lot of, a couple of decades of good behavior. And when I went to the parole board,

actually in 2009 in June, I went to the, my case manager called me in, and he said, Mac, you got a parole hearing coming up here. And I said, well, every time I go to the parole board, they disrespect me, kick me in the ass. And, yeah, every time, close to 15 times that I've gone to the parole board, I'm done with it. I'm not going to treat me like that again.

So I'm waiving my right to parole. I'm done with it. I'm just going to stay in prison, twiddle my thumbs until I die. That's what I told the case manager. So I signed the waiver. Sheet of paper. I'm waiving my parole hearings. And the next day,

he goes on vacation. He goes on vacation. He comes back about three weeks later, and by that time, I, on July the 18th, a dude told me that I had, I was on the board,

the bulletin board designated for a parole hearing at 9.30 a.m. And I said, dude, don't, don't, uh, run that nonsense to me. Uh, I waived that parole hearing.

He says, no, Mac, you're on the board. So I got up. I was watching television at about 8.30 p.m. And I went over to the bulletin board, and I looked at that, and I said, damn, they got me scheduled for a hearing in the morning. I had to make a decision. Am I going to go? And I just said, yeah, I'm going to go. I went to the hearing without any paperwork, any plan to speak of.

and I walked into that room. There was a male BFP guard. There was a female BFP guard, prison's guard. And they didn't know me and I didn't know them, which was good. And we had the hearing. It lasted about 45 minutes.

And I told this guy, I said, I've been in prison 37 years. I've never done drugs. I've never done tattoos. I've never joined the gang. I'm still in good health and I can be a productive member of society.

So, he asked if the guard over here had anything to say, guard over here, had something to say. And they both said, no, we don't have anything to say. They didn't know me. If they knew my history, they would probably say something. But he said, okay, I'm going to go

away from the screen, and I'll come back in just a couple of minutes. He went away for 10 minutes. He came back to the screen, and he said, I'm going to recommend you for parole. I'm going to recommend you for parole. I was shot. I was startled.

Yeah, totally floored. And he said, that determines whether the entire board agrees with my recommendation. They have to. There were 12 members of the parole board, the federal parole board, and within 30 days, I got to notice, you're approved for release. You're approved for parole. So that was it. I had a parole plan to go to Tennessee to go to work for a friend of mine in telemarketing.

He ran a big business. That wasn't approved by the poll board. Nothing I could say would get it approved. I told the Tennessee people that I have a lot of money. I can buy a house right away. I could buy a car. And I'm going to have a good working relationship with my friend and good business. Nothing would convince them.

So I told my case manager, I said, okay, I was convicted out of St. Louis, so I'll go to St. Louis. So that's what happened. I went to St. Louis. when was that 2009 10 I was released on January the 27th

of 19 of 2010 January 27th of 2010 and I took a bus to back from California to St. Louis

it took three days I wanted to go to Las Vegas but I couldn't get determined if I was on the no-fly list. But I wanted to take a bus to Las Vegas, stay there for 24 hours rocking and rolling with all the girls and everything. And that couldn't happen.

I wanted to take a plane from Las Vegas back to St. Louis. So, when I had to take a plane. got to Las Vegas, I called the airport and said I'd like to get a flight to St. Louis. And I'd like to know if I'm on the no-fly list because I have some convictions regarding aircraft. And the clerk said, well, we can't tell you that over the phone, but you can come in here and we'll tell you when you get here. Yeah, right. I don't have the phone. I said, yeah, right.

I hung up the phone. And I got back on the bus when I had to. Took the bus. It took three days to get from Atwater, California, to St. Louis. Okay. And so now you're, that's where you're staying now? No, I'm in Melvindale. Okay.

Malvindale, Michigan. I was in St. Louis for about 10 years. and then in 2019, about September, about September, I think it was, everybody in my apartment building were told that they were had to move. They were being kicked out. And they were being kicked out by this youngster who bought the building. When I talked to him, I said, you bought this site unseen for cash?

$95,000 cash? I said, due diligence is to inspect the properties and stuff. He said, in this case, it's location, location, location. If I got to destroy the building and build something else here, yeah, it's location. And yeah, I paid cash. And he was the owner's here about 35 years old. But I told him, I said, I would like to do a 10-year lease. with you. $500

every month. A good 10-year lease. Guaranteed money. No, he wouldn't do it. Well, I had to go and I gave away a big old Harley motorcycle that I own.

I gave that to a friend. And I eventually called my younger sister. She's an angel. She saved me. My younger sister, yeah, she's 30. years younger than me. And she stepped up and said, okay, I'll bring you to Michigan. And she immediately, when we got here, she put me in a house that she owns.

And I still live in that house and I'll probably live there until I die. So that's the way it is. So how did the documentary come about? Eli can tell you that. Okay, okay. So how did you find out about this story? Danny Wissentowski was a journalist in St. Louis. He wrote for the Riverfront Times, which is a weekly, alt-weekly in St. Louis.

And he wrote a piece in 2016 called The Final Flight of Martin McNally, which we read, me and Joshua Schaefer, who is my production company partner and co-director on American Skyjacker. We'd been writing screenplays and selling screenplays for about six years in L.A. And in 2017, we started Peglow Pictures, our production company. and we were picking up articles and optioning them and adapting them to scripts and selling them and this article blew us away and reached out to Danny and Danny said the other rights are available

and we started the long process of trying to adapt it into a script and in the midst of that we're working with Danny, Danny was like, you know, Martin McNally's still alive. He'd love to talk to you if you'd be interested in talking to him and putting him on camera and I said, man, just for posterity's sake, we should get this guy on camera. He's living history, you know? And so we went and we scripted.

scrambled a crew. We got shot with him for three or four days in St. Louis in 2019, and that is the vast majority of the interview you see in the American Skyjacker documentary. And then realized we were now selling a documentary as well as trying to turn it into a scripted project and started shopping it around Los Angeles. And in the midst of that, we walked into an imperative entertainment who did Killers the Flower Moon and the Mule and a bunch of other massive films. And they said, we're starting a podcast division. The idea being you make a podcast. you build an audience and you get the whole story out there. And our vision for the podcast, too, is more of a radio play.

It's not an interview like this is. It was more of doing interviews, building high-end sound around it, giving the audience everything they needed except for the visuals to really immerse themselves in the story. And imperative wrote us to check and let us go, which was music to our years, creatives. And we started doing that. And the podcast came out in the midst of the pandemic when it was great to listen to podcasts. And did pretty well.

And then a few years later, after we'd gotten the rights back, we had a lot of fans and had some investors interested. And we were able to finance the recreations. Most of the interviews you hear in the podcast, we actually shot as well. So we had banked those interviews. And so we just built our recreations around the story. Okay. All right. So where is this going to show up?

Like, is this on, you know, what streaming platform? is this going to be featured? Because the doc I just thought, is it already somebody somewhere? Because I mean, I was just sent a link and I watched it, you know, on like a Google drive or something. Yeah, you're, you're press. So you get special treatment. Oh, it was in limited theaters in October. It is now on Apple TV to purchase.

It will be on YouTube TV to purchase, then Amazon to purchase, and then Fandango at home. So we have it available in many platforms around the world to. So all right. So my question is, why was it not picked up or did you decide against it being picked up by someone like Hulu or Netflix, which would give it a lot more? Because, because, I mean, like, it's, it's really good. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's pretty fucking good, bro. Like, I mean, the whole time, the reenactments, the whole thing.

is really, really good, especially for something that is so, you know, long ago and you have, you have no assets. You know what I'm saying? Like now when you go to pitch a dock, all they will, oh, do you have photographs? Do you have video? Do you have like, no, I don't.

What are you, there's in 1971? There's no video. Well, what about the fit footage on TV? Are you out of your mind? There's no footage on TV. There might be a. couple black and white photographs that maybe survived in 50 years. Like, you know, so the reenactments was obviously the only way to go, but they were really good. And they, and the whole time I'm

watching them, too, I'm thinking like, God, this had to be expensive to make this. I mean, they're, they are, they are, what do they call it? What is it? What do they call it? It's, it's, it's, it's appropriate for the time period. It's period, time, you know, period appropriate. Like, I mean, you know, the vehicles are or you you can't tell like it looks like something that other than the fact that obviously was shot with you know uh in great resolution uh you know it looks like something that would have been shot by a Hollywood film crew and everything you know the vehicles the outfits the the airplane like I'm thinking like where they get this fucking plane from like these planes these planes don't exist you need to build this plane of course I'm also

thinking like a producer or the whole time I'm like, you don't find this plane. You can't rent this plane. These things don't exist. Like, how would you track this old plane down? We can take a little behind the scenes inside baseball here

and I'll get to your initial question last. We actually didn't spend an outrageous amount of money on it. It was a very indie production. We just took a lot of time on the production front and got our ducks in a row. And that was primarily me spearheading that. We found an actual plane. We actually had two planes that had rear staircases.

We originally were going to shoot on an actual 727 with what they call the Cooper vein, which was the lock that locked the staircase that they put on there after this man hijacked a plane. So he's responsible for that as well. Unfortunately, we couldn't shoot at the Ontario airport where we found that plane because of ironically security. So we had to go to a skydiving airport in Paris, California. All this was also shot in Southern California, all the recrees at least. and had an actual skydiving crew and a plane that had a rear staircase who were able to recreate all of that. Yeah, it was a fun, very, very intensive involved production.

As to why Netflix or Hulu did not buy it, they had the opportunity, you'll have to ask them. There's a lot of mandates and things that they think the public wants, which I think a lot of the public disagrees with, and they buy what they think the public wants or they make what they think the public wants. And I don't know if that's necessarily true. But it was not this initially. And we decided after some offers to distribute ourselves because then we get to control it. And we also get to distribute it how we want to. Okay.

Yeah. Well, you know, the other things, too, I was thinking about when I was watching it was, you know, there's lots of these kind of old timers that are out there that you talk to. And you have a conversation with them. They're very vague and they don't tell details. And, you know, obviously you get up there in age. You start jumping around. You don't tell things chronologically. But, but Mac is a character, right?

Like, he's, you know, he's very good on the detail, better on the, on the dock than you were here. But you also were heavily edited, I'm sure. So, I mean, you were very concise and really good on the dock and it was really good. And you're such a character where if you weren't such a character, it wouldn't have been such a, you know, so interesting. I watched it in two parts. I think I watched like 20 minutes once. And then I went down and I had breakfast and I told my wife I had to come, go back.

We had to go do something. And I told her like multiple times during the day. Well, I got to go back and watch this doc. I got to go back and watch this doc. So then I watched the rest of it throughout the day. It was, but it was really, it was definitely one of those things you could just sit out and binge watch the entire thing. And like I said, your interview was great.

But also, I was almost just shocked how many of these people are still alive. Yeah. And most of them were. And there's a handful of them like that David Hanley guy just wouldn't get back to us, unfortunately. A few other people wouldn't either for various reasons. You know, we tried to anchor a lot of the incredible moments, David Hanley hitting the plane, the skyjacking in general, Mack doing it, all these incredible, almost unbelievable moments in actual. archive footage too where we have you have Walter Cronkite literally talk about like oh shit that's actually real this isn't stranger than this isn't fiction this is actually just stranger than fiction

where is it located now it just came out on Apple TV this week to purchase it'll be available for rent next week and then YouTube TV and uh Amazon after that if anything else you what are you talking about oh long you can tell me well hold I'll put them I got them No, man, this has been great. Thank you for doing it. You know, it's a, it's a hell of a project. I'm glad you supported and liked it. All the things you said is wonderful to hear.

All right. Matt. Hello. Are you good? You good with everything? Can you hear me? Yes, sir. I'm good with everything.

Who are you? What do you do? All right. Can you hold on a second. I'm going to, I have to call. I have to do like an outro. Hold on one second. you guys give me one second and i'm going to put i'm going to put mac on on on mute because who knows

who's going to walk in the room hold on hey you guys i appreciate you watching do me favor hit the subscribe button the bell if you like the video also please share this video also in the description box we're going to leave the link to american skyjacker so you can click on it and we'll we're going to bring you straight there you can buy it and check it out it really was a great doc um also if you're interested in being a guest on the program. We're also going to leave the link to our website where you can go there, go to the be a guest page, and you can leave a short three-minute to five-minute video, fill out a very brief application. It's like five or six questions. It's not a big deal. And we will get back with you as soon as possible. Thank you very much. See you.