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Removing The 'RomanceA second attempt la emulate the feat of the briefly celebrated “D, H, Cooper” — skyjacking a plane and escaping with the ransom by parachute — has been thwarted.The hijacker of a Hughes Air-west DC-9 in Las Vegas was given a “bugged” parachute whose signals were followed by Air Force jets trailing the airliner. He waspicked up a mile from where helanded.In the other episode, which tookplace on Christmas Eve, thehijacker of a Northwest Orient 707never got that far. While he waitedm the plane at Chicago’s O’HareAirport for delivery of $300,000ransom and parachutes, the crewescaped. Deprived of his hostages, he gave up.The first and only successful parachbte_ escape by a skyjacker was. carried out on the evening before -Thanksgiving by someone who later wrote letters to several newspapers under the name “D. B. Cooper.” This involved another Northwest plane, and $200,000 ransom.Because of the daring and novelty of the robbery, the hijacker was immediately called a Robin Hood (though in his letter Cooper” disavowed being any such thing and no poor people have yet reportedreceiving any share of his loot).“We all like adventure stories,” explained a professor of sociology *Lthle University of Washington.That hijacker took the greatest ulhmate risk. He showed real heroic -eatures — mystery, drama, romanticism, a high degree of skill and all the necessities for the perfect crime.“This was neither political nor neurotic. His motive was simply $200,000, and people can understand tnat much better.”Strip away the “drama and romanticism,” however, and what you have is a man who threatened to blow up an airplane and everyone in it if he didn’t get his way.Suppose his bluff had been called. He would either have had to go through with it and commit mass murder and suicide (had he really carried a bomb) or else sit down in a comer like a chastized schoolboy and wait to be taken into custody, as did the frustrated hijacker in Chicago. In either case,some hero.It is to be hoped that the failure of his two would-be imitators will get the message across that this particular ploy works only once and we will see no more of this sup-posedly “romantic” style of skyjacker.
Newspaper Details
Centralia Daily Chronicle
Centralia, Washington, US
Tue, Feb 01, 1972
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
WV, USA 05 May 2020
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