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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gacy Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK
Speaker 3: every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 3: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 1: Good Evening, dubbed by The New York Times, is one
Speaker 1: of the most vexing and unexplained mysteries in aviation history.
Speaker 1: The crash of Pan American World Airways Flight seven in
Speaker 1: November nineteen fifty seven resulted in forty four deaths and
Speaker 1: remains officially unsolved to this day. But Ken H. Fortenberry,
Speaker 1: an award winning journalist whose father was the co pilot
Speaker 1: and navigator aboard the ill fated plane, has devoted nearly
Speaker 1: sixty years of his life to unraveling this cold case mystery.
Speaker 1: It has come to a staggering conclusion that the victims
Speaker 1: of the crash were murdered. A remarkably researched book packed
Speaker 1: with information and emotion, Flight seven Is Missing The Search
Speaker 1: from My Father's Killer is a gripping page that reads
Speaker 1: like a fast paced murder mystery. Joined Fortonberry on his
Speaker 1: crusade as he tiresly tracks down every possible lead and
Speaker 1: eventually exposes the person he believes responsible for this tragic crime.
Speaker 1: The book they're featuring this evening is Flight seven Is
Speaker 1: Missing The Search for My Father's Killer, with my special guest,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Ken H. Fortonberry. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for this interview. Ken H.
Speaker 2: Fort Berry, Thank you, Dan, and had a pleasure to
Speaker 2: be with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for this This is a remarkable
Speaker 1: personal and exciting I got to say, very very exciting story.
Speaker 1: Let's just give our audience your background in newspapers and
Speaker 1: as an investigative reporter, and what that experience has taught you,
Speaker 1: what important lessons, the most important lessons has that taught you?
Speaker 2: Well? Thanks? Dan. I spent gosh nearly fifty years as
Speaker 2: an investigative reporter and editor, primarily at newspapers in the
Speaker 2: Southeast United States, and I'm just trying to give you
Speaker 2: some background here. I spent an awful lot of time
Speaker 2: and investigative work, particularly with government agencies and public officials,
Speaker 2: and actually won more than two hundred awards or state
Speaker 2: national awards for journalism investigative work. And my entire life
Speaker 2: as a journalist has been dedicated to the premise that
Speaker 2: the truth has got to come out, and I would
Speaker 2: pursue that at great personal costs many times to ensure
Speaker 2: that that was done. I just have the belief that government,
Speaker 2: particularly was the responsibility to the people to be open, honest,
Speaker 2: and to be forthcoming in all time. So kind of
Speaker 2: as the premise for my background, I spent as I said,
Speaker 2: nearly fifty years and news paperwork. I started as investigator, reporter,
Speaker 2: and concluded as an owner of group papers in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: But have done the gamut of everything. I mean, I've
Speaker 2: tackled corrupt sheriffs. I wrote a book in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine called Kill the Messenger about a corrupt sheriff in
Speaker 2: South Carolina whose friends pretty much terroorized my family and
Speaker 2: have just dedicated my life to pursuing the truth.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to go to November eighth, nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: as you do in your book, and get right to
Speaker 1: this incredibly dramatic scene that you have here. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, tell us a little bit about your father,
Speaker 1: Bill Fortonberry, and his background in aviation and what his
Speaker 1: role was on this Pan American flight seven Honolulu, and
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 2: Bit of mind Go ahead, go ahead, I'm sorry, go ahead, no,
Speaker 2: I fat There was a former former Navy pilot, a
Speaker 2: World War Two pilot, who joined Pan American in Miami,
Speaker 2: Florida in early nineteen fifties as a navigator co pilot,
Speaker 2: and he was in San Francisco at the time as
Speaker 2: a co pilot on this particular flight. He'd been a
Speaker 2: pilot since his teens actually, and had a great deal
Speaker 2: of experience. On this particular flight, he was around the
Speaker 2: world flight that began in San Francisco to Honolulu and
Speaker 2: ultimately back to the United States around the world. So
Speaker 2: they had a fairly large crew that would sub out
Speaker 2: along the way, and this was just the first leg
Speaker 2: of the flight San Francisco to Honolulu, and where he
Speaker 2: acted as the navigator and a co pilot. You know
Speaker 2: I mentioned this, Go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you talk about that your situation. You have
Speaker 1: two other brothers and your mother, and so that you
Speaker 1: were accustomed to your father being away quite a bit
Speaker 1: with with his with his work, and also that he
Speaker 1: sent letters from all far away places, loving letters to
Speaker 1: your your mother and addressed to your boys, to you
Speaker 1: boys as well. So tell us about this Boeing Strato
Speaker 1: Cruiser and what it meant to aviation at that time.
Speaker 2: Well, Dan, the Strata Cruiser was at the time the largest,
Speaker 2: the fastest, and most luxurious commercial aircraft of its time.
Speaker 2: It was essentially the Boeing seven of its day. It
Speaker 2: was a gigantic airplane, a four engine prop, but it
Speaker 2: was plagued with a lot of mechanical issues. Some people,
Speaker 2: some pilots called it joked about the engines that it
Speaker 2: was a four engine plane, three burning and three turning
Speaker 2: in one burning. Because it did have a lot of issues,
Speaker 2: but pilots generally loved to fly because it was the
Speaker 2: premier aircraft of its time. It was the first pressurized aircraft.
Speaker 2: It was just a luxurious airliner including an airplane, including
Speaker 2: a lounge, cocktail lounge and the belly that passengers could
Speaker 2: descend through a winding staircase and have cocktails on board.
Speaker 2: I mean, they served luxurious meals. This was the day
Speaker 2: of the golden age of flying, as you probably recall,
Speaker 2: and then people dressed up to take a flight and
Speaker 2: it was a very special event and flying on a
Speaker 2: Strata cruiser was just about the most wonderful thing someone
Speaker 2: could do in the days of aviation in the fifties.
Speaker 2: The plane was a descendant of a World War two
Speaker 2: fly Boeing plane. It was converted into what it is
Speaker 2: what it was at that time, and it would hold
Speaker 2: up bullets in it. Dan they could convert the place
Speaker 2: to the plane to do that. So the plane was
Speaker 2: just a magnificent aircraft and people loved to fly it.
Speaker 1: Now there was just before we get to November eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, this same Boeing Strado Cruiser, this luxury
Speaker 1: airline or this something that everyone loved to fly, including
Speaker 1: pilots and passengers. But something had happened a year before,
Speaker 1: and they had resorted to something called water ditching, and
Speaker 1: these pilots and co pilots and the crew were trained
Speaker 1: in this water ditching. Just tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the sovereign of the Skies and what had happened
Speaker 1: a year before with this same plane.
Speaker 2: Okay, Dan, This sovereign of the Skies came off the
Speaker 2: assembly line right before my plane, romanswered the Skies. It
Speaker 2: was registered in nine O nine four three, and this
Speaker 2: was nine four the flight from San Francisco to Honolulu,
Speaker 2: what they lost an engine and there not long afterwards
Speaker 2: they lost another engine and there was no way for
Speaker 2: the pilot to make it to Honolulure, or certainly not
Speaker 2: back to San Francisco. The pilot was the Captain Richard Ogg,
Speaker 2: calm cool, professional fellow, who realized that he had a
Speaker 2: desperate situation on his hand. But there was a caveat
Speaker 2: here because the coast Guard at that time had a
Speaker 2: floating cutter, and about midway and the ocean, and it
Speaker 2: was the Poncher Train was the name of this one,
Speaker 2: and it was very close to where he had the
Speaker 2: engine problems with a Strata cruiser. So what he did
Speaker 2: was to let lurk the passengers that we're not going
Speaker 2: to make it to the coast. We're going to be
Speaker 2: ditching this thing in the ocean. And he flew the
Speaker 2: rest of that night very low altitude to run off
Speaker 2: the fuel of the plane because he didn't want to
Speaker 2: ditch that thing in the ocean full of fuel obviously,
Speaker 2: and dishes as closely as he could to the coast
Speaker 2: Guard cutter. It was really first miracle on the Hudson
Speaker 2: essentially because he did the same thing that the folks
Speaker 2: did with the US Air flight outside New York a
Speaker 2: few years ago. But very early in the morning he
Speaker 2: alerted everyone that we're going down now, and everyone was
Speaker 2: prepared for that. The coast guard laid a foam runway
Speaker 2: essentially on the ocean, and the plane landed and everyone
Speaker 2: got out that plane barely wet, and moments later it
Speaker 2: sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So this was
Speaker 2: not The pilots were aware that something like this could happen.
Speaker 2: They were very well trained for this type of thing.
Speaker 2: It was certainly very unusual for something like that to occur,
Speaker 2: but it had happened in the past, and certainly that
Speaker 2: was on the minds of all these people, the pastors
Speaker 2: probably and the crew as well. I remember I mentioned
Speaker 2: my book my mother was petrified of Strata Cruiser and
Speaker 2: she just hated it when my dad would fly those planes.
Speaker 2: But of course that was the main thing the Panama
Speaker 2: was flying at the time, certainly around the world in
Speaker 2: their national flights. So I remember she said she had
Speaker 2: a conversation with him not long before that flight about
Speaker 2: how afraid she was ring flying on it, and he
Speaker 2: had kind of teased her that we might take a
Speaker 2: trip to Honolulu with the kids this year and maybe
Speaker 2: you'll feel differently about the plane. At that time. Of course,
Speaker 2: we'd never made the Honolulu that year because the plane
Speaker 2: went down in November.
Speaker 1: Let's get to November eighth, nineteen fifty seven, and this
Speaker 1: Boeing Stratocruiser, and your father's a veteran aviator on this
Speaker 1: flight to Honolulu. The pilot is Gordon H. Brown and
Speaker 1: the first officer was William T. Wagant. Tell us about
Speaker 1: the flight, and then about this particular time that pilots
Speaker 1: call the point of no return, tell us how the
Speaker 1: flight progresses up to the.
Speaker 2: Day Boy flight. The flight had absolutely no trouble at all.
Speaker 2: Dan twenty minutes after takeoff. It was at plan cruising
Speaker 2: speed of two hundred and twenty six knots, and everyone
Speaker 2: was settled in. These stewardesses began serving a light lunch
Speaker 2: to everyone on board, and it was just a magnificent time.
Speaker 2: As I said, they were passing out magazines and the
Speaker 2: flight was just absolutely without any kind of hitch. And
Speaker 2: there's a place that pilots called the point of no return.
Speaker 2: It's essentially midway on the flight across the ocean where
Speaker 2: you have to go forward or you cou because you
Speaker 2: cannot go back, you don't have enough fuel to return,
Speaker 2: and you're in a situation where you simply have to
Speaker 2: go ahead with the flight or something else is going
Speaker 2: to happen. So, just a few minutes after they hit
Speaker 2: this point of no return and radio to the coastguard
Speaker 2: cutter on the ocean that everything was normal and everything
Speaker 2: was fine, the planes has simply disappeared, and no one knows,
Speaker 2: of course, what happened. Exactly at the time that people
Speaker 2: thought maybe they just lost radio transmission. And you know,
Speaker 2: little did the fellow know on the coast Guard cutter.
Speaker 2: He was the last person on the planet to talk
Speaker 2: to that plane because everything was perfectly normal. There'd been
Speaker 2: no issues with the plane at all, no issues with
Speaker 2: the flight at all until that time.
Speaker 1: Now, what is the protocol? You say that at first,
Speaker 1: no one is really concerned because they haven't heard from
Speaker 1: that last location report. But what is the protocol? What
Speaker 1: is normally supposed to happen if there is any emergency whatsoever?
Speaker 1: What are the well the contingencies that prepare the pilots
Speaker 1: for anything that could happen.
Speaker 2: Well, of course the trew as well trained for what
Speaker 2: might happen. But beyond the crew, when they do not
Speaker 2: report in as they're supposed to report in the airline
Speaker 2: panem at this time, then would alert officials, ships and everything.
Speaker 2: It'd see that there's look out for this thing. But
Speaker 2: more importantly, I think they used air to air transmissions
Speaker 2: and are the planes in the area see if you
Speaker 2: see this thing out there somewhere, or try to reach
Speaker 2: them on a radio. But here's the thing I think, Dan,
Speaker 2: you need to Remember, no one really thought was anything
Speaker 2: was wrong because they simply thought this is probably a
Speaker 2: radio transmission issue, or maybe they forgot to report. In
Speaker 2: This was not the days of satellites and that kind
Speaker 2: of tracking. These tracking of these airplanes was done by
Speaker 2: the old fashioned ways of looking at charting the stars
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. So they didn't really worry
Speaker 2: initially because the plane had plenty fuel to make it
Speaker 2: on into Honolulu. So they alerted people that, yeah, he's
Speaker 2: not reporting. It's don't let's not be concerned yet, but
Speaker 2: let everyone know that the plane has not reported as
Speaker 2: it's supposed to report. And you know, an hour or
Speaker 2: so later, it's the word is getting out that this
Speaker 2: is this is certainly beyond the norm. The crew has
Speaker 2: simply not forgotten to make a report. There's got to
Speaker 2: be something wrong. So the coast Guard was certainly alerted,
Speaker 2: and the coast Guard began to send aircraft and boats
Speaker 2: out from Honolulu and thinking they might find it's out
Speaker 2: there somewhere. All the ships in Honolulu were asked to
Speaker 2: turn their lights on in case the plane simply had
Speaker 2: lost radio communication and the pilots could see maybe the
Speaker 2: lights of Honolulu and the lights of the ships in
Speaker 2: Honolulu and helped guide them into the to the airport.
Speaker 2: But you know, it reached the point that they were
Speaker 2: out of fuel and there's no way the flight could
Speaker 2: have made it in. And at that point the PanAm
Speaker 2: people went around to the folks waiting in the terminal
Speaker 2: in Honolulu and said, the flight's missing, and we'll let
Speaker 2: you know what's going on, but right now, the flight
Speaker 2: is missing and they're out of fuel. Of course, my
Speaker 2: mother had been kept abreast of this during the evening
Speaker 2: from PanAm, calling her every hour or so to reassure
Speaker 2: her that it's probably going to be okay, everything's going
Speaker 2: to be okay, and then finally they had to give
Speaker 2: her the call that you know, they're out of fuel
Speaker 2: now and they must be presumed down in the ocean somewhere. So,
Speaker 2: you know, at that stage it became a massive air
Speaker 2: sea search to find the plane, hopefully that it had
Speaker 2: ditched successfully on the water in some fashion and they
Speaker 2: could find people on life rafts and wearing life jackets
Speaker 2: and would be rescued. So it was a search and
Speaker 2: rescue mission initially, but they had no clue where the
Speaker 2: plane was. Dan. I think that's one of the big
Speaker 2: problems because they reported everything was fine and that was
Speaker 2: the last location they had for so that's where they
Speaker 2: had to begin looking. So they sent PanAm, sent out
Speaker 2: aircraft from Honolulu and San Francisco, the Air Force and
Speaker 2: sent out aircraft, Australian Air Force sent out of aircraft
Speaker 2: and everyone. Any flights were flying over the Pacific of
Speaker 2: that time, commercial flights flew low and the crew told
Speaker 2: the passengers look out your windows and see if you
Speaker 2: see anything, because that's how frantic it was, and that
Speaker 2: they were just looking for, as one of the searchers said,
Speaker 2: a needle in a haystack.
Speaker 1: You talk about how big a search this was and
Speaker 1: how broadened area they had to search, one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand square miles. Tell us more about the search
Speaker 1: that's undertaken.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the thing to remember about this is that,
Speaker 2: as I said, it was a needle in a haystack,
Speaker 2: you're talking about finding a small plane on a gigantic ocean,
Speaker 2: and they put every kind of resource they had available.
Speaker 2: They called it at the time the biggest airs search
Speaker 2: since the search for the Amelia are Heart and her
Speaker 2: missing aircraft many years before that. So every kind of
Speaker 2: resource available was devoted to this. Even had submarines all
Speaker 2: things looking for this, and and commercial cruise ships crossing
Speaker 2: the ocean. They all got involved in the search. So
Speaker 2: I mean a Quantis airliner was flying over the area
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, and when he learned about it,
Speaker 2: the pilot descended down to five thousand feet and followed
Speaker 2: along the route of the plane and asked the passengers
Speaker 2: look out, see if you see anything. But no one
Speaker 2: saw anything. It just went on for days and days
Speaker 2: and days, and of course it became obviously more grim.
Speaker 2: You know that as the days went on, that this
Speaker 2: is this is not good. This plane is down and
Speaker 2: you know, you're looking at two hundred square miles of ocean.
Speaker 2: I think essentially what it was was it amounted to.
Speaker 2: But you know, people still held out hope, and my
Speaker 2: mother held out hope, and you know, everybody held out
Speaker 2: the hope that something was going to be found. But
Speaker 2: you know, they would see saying things in the water,
Speaker 2: floating in the water and think that's a part of
Speaker 2: the aircraft and it turns out that was nothing. They
Speaker 2: would see an oil slick in the water and think
Speaker 2: that was something, and of course that turned out to
Speaker 2: be nothing. And this just went on day after day
Speaker 2: after day, and of course I didn't like any other
Speaker 2: six year old, I guess at the time, I'm confident
Speaker 2: they're going to find my dad. He's a good swimmer,
Speaker 2: and everybody's going to live happily ever after. But you know,
Speaker 2: it turned out that it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 1: Tell us about what they finally do find in the
Speaker 1: in the ocean and what they can conclude about the
Speaker 1: crash itself.
Speaker 2: Okay, the main aircraft carrier that was involved in this
Speaker 2: search was USS Philippine Sea, and it was a docked
Speaker 2: at Long Beach north of Los Angeles, and and it
Speaker 2: had helicopters and propeller driven aircraft and a full crew,
Speaker 2: and it was essentially the home base for the folks
Speaker 2: who were searching for the plane. And they went day
Speaker 2: after day criss crossing the ocean. They mapped an ocean
Speaker 2: out for the search, and the planes flew from sun
Speaker 2: up to sundown as late as they could fly looking
Speaker 2: for something. They just crisscrossed this area. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think, as I recall, it seemed like they had
Speaker 2: thirty planes, fourteen boats, two submarines involved in this search
Speaker 2: at one time, and coast Guard spokes and said, we
Speaker 2: have everything that will float or fly that we can
Speaker 2: put our hands on as involved in the search. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, hope began to fade obviously that they were
Speaker 2: going to find anything on the plane. And it became
Speaker 2: obvious that not only was the plane down, but there
Speaker 2: was very likely not going to be any survivers to that. So,
Speaker 2: uh one morning, and I can't recall how many days later,
Speaker 2: it was well over a week. Uh later, a plane
Speaker 2: spotted what he believed to be, uh some debris in
Speaker 2: the ocean, and he moved down and closer and determined
Speaker 2: the s and d that was a piece of the aircraft.
Speaker 2: I believe it was this aircraft. And Uh then everybody
Speaker 2: zoomed in on that area and they began to, you know,
Speaker 2: find little bits and pieces of wreckage, and ultimately a
Speaker 2: body or two there was floating on the water here
Speaker 2: and there. It took them the rest of the next
Speaker 2: two days, I think, essentially to to search and finally
Speaker 2: just give up hope. I mean, they had they were
Speaker 2: They had folks then who were pulling bodies out of
Speaker 2: the water that sharks were attacking. As the sailors were
Speaker 2: pulling them up onto to the little boats, and I
Speaker 2: suspect and the theory is that a number of the people,
Speaker 2: of course, the bodies that were recovered had been pretty
Speaker 2: extensively hit by the sharks, but a number of the
Speaker 2: people who were not found likely were eaten by sharks
Speaker 2: on the ocean. But this fellow guy named Earl Kolowski
Speaker 2: and Dan John Stanley, they found some of this wreckage
Speaker 2: and then they you know, they look down there and
Speaker 2: there's lifeless bodies. There's arms and legs outstretched and they're
Speaker 2: floating under water. And the helicopters came in and ultimately
Speaker 2: they plucked nineteen bodies of forty four from the ocean
Speaker 2: there and precious little bit of cargo. This was a
Speaker 2: seventy ton aircraft and they came up with maybe five
Speaker 2: hundred pounds of wreckage and a little bit of mail.
Speaker 2: And that was stretching an area of eleven miles long
Speaker 2: and three miles wide. It was spread out over that
Speaker 2: large area. They brought all that a board the aircraft
Speaker 2: carrier Philippine Sea and they documented what they could. They
Speaker 2: put the bodies in cold freezer storage, essentially began doing
Speaker 2: some initial investigation of the body, but they still had
Speaker 2: no clue what happened to the plane. There were so
Speaker 2: many theories early on, from everything from a meteor hitting
Speaker 2: the plane to a bomb exploding on the plane, and
Speaker 2: nobody had a clue what happened. And the truth of
Speaker 2: the matter is, years later, they still didn't know what happened,
Speaker 2: in that the crew had and the passengers had been alerted,
Speaker 2: at least some of them had been alerted that something
Speaker 2: is wrong here because some of them had life jackets
Speaker 2: on and some of them did not, which is really
Speaker 2: kind of hard to explain, except that some pastors in
Speaker 2: one particular part of the plane had more life jackets
Speaker 2: than those in another part of the plane, So maybe
Speaker 2: people in one section were more aware of what was
Speaker 2: about to happen than others. But you know, the plane,
Speaker 2: the carrier went back to Long Beach, and investigation, of
Speaker 2: course got underway before they got back to Long Beach,
Speaker 2: but it really got very intense when they ported in
Speaker 2: Long Beach again and the mortuary crew came in and
Speaker 2: people began investigating the bodies and what little bit of
Speaker 2: wreckage was there.
Speaker 1: You talk about the forty four people that were on
Speaker 1: board and no survivors obviously, But now you take us
Speaker 1: to November one, a week before in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: before this fatal flight to Santa Cruz, California, and a
Speaker 1: person named Oliver Eugene Crosswait, and he's at a courthouse.
Speaker 1: He's forty five years old, and he's talking speaking to
Speaker 1: a Sergeant Johnson. Tell us what you have included in
Speaker 1: this book about this interaction with Sergeant Johnson, what he
Speaker 1: makes of this conversation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. First off, I think you need to recognize that
Speaker 2: the color we're talking about, Oliver us in Crosswaite was
Speaker 2: a perser, which is essentially the male steward, the main
Speaker 2: person in charge of the cabin, the passions and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. I was not even aware of his
Speaker 2: background at all. For nearly twenty years after this crash.
Speaker 2: His name was never mentioned in the media in any way
Speaker 2: other than the fact that he was one of the
Speaker 2: people who died on the plane, and so he was
Speaker 2: certainly below the radar most of my years of investigating this,
Speaker 2: which began when I was a kid. But Crosswait, as
Speaker 2: turns out I learned later on, had some issues of
Speaker 2: his own, and on November first, nineteen fifty seven, which
Speaker 2: was a week before this plane went down. As you mentioned,
Speaker 2: he was in the office of Sergeant Johnson in the
Speaker 2: Santa Cruz County Courthouse and was just kind of out
Speaker 2: of his mind. He was about to explode. And he
Speaker 2: talked about with his sergeant Johnson, who was a retired
Speaker 2: Navy warrant officer and a professional polygrapher and an expert
Speaker 2: of what he was doing, and he couldn't understand what
Speaker 2: was going on with the Crosswaight was his problem, Why
Speaker 2: isn't he making any sense? And Crosswaite was complaining about
Speaker 2: his daughter and wanted the authorities to arrest his sixteen
Speaker 2: year old daughter or take her into custody in some
Speaker 2: way and take him take her away from him. Essentially,
Speaker 2: this was his stepdaughter, I might point out. Her name
Speaker 2: was Tanya, and she just graduated from high school in
Speaker 2: a couple of months before that. And he was saying
Speaker 2: to this fellow that he had all kinds of troubles
Speaker 2: with her, and she was staying out all others of
Speaker 2: the day and night, and you know, she was the
Speaker 2: reason his wife died. Now that's pretty significant because the
Speaker 2: fellow's wife, Crossway's wife died a few months before the yes,
Speaker 2: and he blamed his stepdaughter for his wife's death. Actually,
Speaker 2: she died of cancer and the daughter had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with that. But he kept on and on with
Speaker 2: this fellow that the stepdaughter was the reason his wife
Speaker 2: had died. And he kept on with this guy to
Speaker 2: the to the point that the sergeant decided, this guy's
Speaker 2: got a problem here, and he told that investigators later
Speaker 2: that the guy was just out of his mind, that
Speaker 2: he was just talking off of his out of his head.
Speaker 2: So again this is I had none of this knowledge
Speaker 2: of mister Crosswait until many years later, but he was
Speaker 2: insisting that the authorities do something with a step daughter.
Speaker 2: On the first of November, and after he left the
Speaker 2: office of the sergeant at Santa Cruz, he stopped on
Speaker 2: his way home, got himself a bottle of whiskey, and
Speaker 2: then spent the rest of them next week pretty much.
Speaker 2: And I'm major funk, which he had been in since
Speaker 2: his wife had died. But he had gotten to the
Speaker 2: point that he wouldn't speak to anyone. He would glare
Speaker 2: at the step daughter every time she walked by. He
Speaker 2: just had this hatred in his eyes towards her. That
Speaker 2: was really just a bad situation for her obviously, and
Speaker 2: he was just seething inside with anger for some reason
Speaker 2: that the stepdaughter who had nothing to do at all
Speaker 2: with his wife's death. But this is the week before
Speaker 2: the plane goes down. None of this, i might point out, again,
Speaker 2: was ever brought up publicly at all. And it's just
Speaker 2: a result of my years of investigating this thing. So
Speaker 2: that was essentially the Crossway story originally from my standpoint,
Speaker 2: and as I got into it more years, years and later,
Speaker 2: I kind of put him aside and focused on another
Speaker 2: fellow that you may get into a minute, which was
Speaker 2: another it was a pass year on the plane. Initially, Dan,
Speaker 2: I looked at three here. I call it three p's,
Speaker 2: the propellers or mechanical issues, the purser who was mister
Speaker 2: Crosswait we just talked about, and a third fellow who
Speaker 2: is named Payne.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about before we get to that. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that at fourteen years of age you made a vow
Speaker 1: to be able to find out what happened. So just
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about this this crucial moment
Speaker 1: where you had this realization and you made this vowel.
Speaker 2: Well, then I think like all kids are certainly naives.
Speaker 2: At the time, I always felt that my dad was
Speaker 2: a great swimmer and was going to come waltzing back
Speaker 2: into my life one day, would just show up miraculously
Speaker 2: at the house and you know, he'd been on a
Speaker 2: Pacific island for many years and hug us all in
Speaker 2: life would be the same as it was. I clung
Speaker 2: to that notion as a kid for years that he
Speaker 2: was going to make it back. And I guess when
Speaker 2: the seven years official seven years, then you're dead. You're
Speaker 2: legally dead because he's dead. But that hit me when
Speaker 2: I was thirteen, fourteen years old, and I just said,
Speaker 2: you know, enough is enough. I need to know what
Speaker 2: happened to my dad all these other people on that aircraft.
Speaker 2: And I wrote a letter to the it was called
Speaker 2: the Civiler and Autus Board at the time, and asked
Speaker 2: them what had they learned about that crash in the
Speaker 2: six or seven years after it went down, Because they
Speaker 2: issued a report a year and a half later that
Speaker 2: said no probable cause could be established, but that further
Speaker 2: investigation was continuing. So I felt that after all those years,
Speaker 2: certainly they had learned something else about that plane crash.
Speaker 2: So as a young kid thirteen years old, I wrote
Speaker 2: a letter to the bureaucrats in Washington, which they responded
Speaker 2: to a week or so later, and since they told
Speaker 2: me to take a hike that nothing else had happened,
Speaker 2: there was no further information available good day, and that
Speaker 2: really angered me, and that set me off to the
Speaker 2: point that I'd spend the rest of them the rest
Speaker 2: of my life until a couple of years ago, definitely
Speaker 2: trying to find out what happened. I made a vow
Speaker 2: that day to my dad and forty people on board
Speaker 2: that plane that I'd spend the rest of my life
Speaker 2: if it was necessary to find out what happened to
Speaker 2: that plane, and I felt like I owed it to them.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me why, I guess I'm just a kid
Speaker 2: who idolized his dad and felt like not only I
Speaker 2: needed answers, but I felt that other folks needed answers
Speaker 2: as well. And there were so many families affected by this,
Speaker 2: including entire families that were on that plane that were lost.
Speaker 2: So I just felt an enormous sense of responsibility at
Speaker 2: that early age to find some answers, and that's what
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: In your investigation, you talked about the Civil Aeronautics Board
Speaker 1: and for short CAB, and you've just mentioned that they
Speaker 1: in their conclusion eighteen months after their investigation, they said
Speaker 1: there was no probable cause. And so more are questions
Speaker 1: and less answers from this. When you looked at this
Speaker 1: Civil Aeronautics Board and their investigation, you also found out
Speaker 1: about the role or lack of role of the FBI
Speaker 1: and Herbert Hoover and the FBI at that time, and
Speaker 1: it's reluctance to get involved with this case, with this investigation.
Speaker 1: Tell us about what you found out about Hubert Hoover,
Speaker 1: the FBI and the reluctance.
Speaker 2: Well, why Whover was so reluctant is still unclear to me,
Speaker 2: except that he was such a legend and a legend
Speaker 2: in his own mind in many ways, he always got
Speaker 2: his man, and the reality was in this case, it
Speaker 2: was pretty unlikely he was going to get his man
Speaker 2: or get this case resolved because the evidence is the
Speaker 2: bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Whether that's the motivation or not,
Speaker 2: I do not know, but I know that PanAm and
Speaker 2: other investigators, CAB investigators begged him repeatedly. He was the
Speaker 2: director of the FBI, and they begged him repeatedly to
Speaker 2: help them get involved in this investigation, and particularly to
Speaker 2: investigate this purs or crossway that we talked about just
Speaker 2: a few minutes ago, and he repeatedly refused, and it
Speaker 2: really angered certainly the investigators and PanAm as well. But
Speaker 2: it was still a mystery. Why did he not want
Speaker 2: to get involved. I don't have the answer to that
Speaker 2: even today. I just don't understand it, except for maybe
Speaker 2: the fact that he felt that he couldn't get the
Speaker 2: answers because they were at the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 2: and that might do something to ruin his reputation as
Speaker 2: a man who always gets his man. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I looked at every possible angle in that to see
Speaker 2: if maybe he was protecting someone. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a State Department employee on the plane. There was an
Speaker 2: Air Force major on a pretty much a secret spy
Speaker 2: mission to Burma. There were a lot of interesting people
Speaker 2: on that plane, and I always felt that maybe Hoover
Speaker 2: wasn't coming clean, which she was notorious for not doing,
Speaker 2: and trying to hide somebody or hide something about that crash.
Speaker 2: And I still don't know that he didn't, But I
Speaker 2: was never able to find that except the fact that
Speaker 2: he would not do it, an investigation was really inept
Speaker 2: and really inadequate because they couldn't. These were not professional
Speaker 2: criminal investigators, the guys investigate plane crashes, and he just
Speaker 2: wouldn't do it, and they really needed his help to
Speaker 2: look into this fell across weight, which they never did.
Speaker 1: What about the idea that in the investigation that there
Speaker 1: was some there was evidence that there was carbon monoxide
Speaker 1: poisoning in some passengers.
Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting angle in it. I'm sorry it's
Speaker 2: still never been resolved. It was left under determined at
Speaker 2: the time. There was too much carbon monoxide in some
Speaker 2: of these passengers in different ports of parts of the plane, okay,
Speaker 2: which leads you to believe that there was some kind
Speaker 2: of a fire of some sort that put this carbon
Speaker 2: dioxide out in certain sections of the plane, in other
Speaker 2: sections not. Some pan Am families felt that something happened
Speaker 2: in the cabin, either deliberate malicious introduction of carbon dioxide
Speaker 2: in the cabin, I mean in the cockpit, or something
Speaker 2: else could have caused that. There was a theory that
Speaker 2: maybe some smoldering film and the cargo hold had gotten
Speaker 2: into the cockpit, but it was left unresolved. The theory
Speaker 2: at the time was that carbon monoxide poisoning could have
Speaker 2: been the result of bodies decomposing on the ocean, on
Speaker 2: the water, and they left this to GAB investigation open
Speaker 2: to look further into that. It was later determined that
Speaker 2: carbon monoxide has to be ingested, you have to breathe
Speaker 2: in order to get that in your body, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't the result of the bodies decomposing on the water.
Speaker 2: But that's another issue that the CAAB left unresolved and
Speaker 2: unresolved until this day. So it was one of the
Speaker 2: angles I looked pretty deeply into as well. What could
Speaker 2: have caused the carbon dioxide issue in some people and
Speaker 2: not in others. I looked at everything from cargo issues
Speaker 2: to again the malicious introduction of the CO two in
Speaker 2: some fashion there to a heat maybe going bad, to
Speaker 2: fuel line rupturing a lot of things that could possibly
Speaker 2: have done this. But I was never able to determine
Speaker 2: the exact cause of that, and ultimately I decided, at
Speaker 2: least from my perspective, that carbon monoxide was not the
Speaker 2: reason that the plane went down. It could have incapacitated
Speaker 2: the crew in some fashion, and that could have they
Speaker 2: could have flown it into the ocean not knowing they
Speaker 2: were out of it. In fact, there are some pilots
Speaker 2: who believe that's what happened to that plane, that somehow
Speaker 2: the carbon dioxide got into the cockpit and the pilots
Speaker 2: or grow and didn't even know what was going on
Speaker 2: till it was too late. That really doesn't hold water.
Speaker 2: Because some of the passengers had lifejackets on again, so
Speaker 2: there was some kind of warning something went off, something
Speaker 2: pretty catastrophic to have some word of warning that the
Speaker 2: plane is going down. So the carbon oxide issue was
Speaker 2: never really resolved, and to my perspective it really still isn't,
Speaker 2: although I have reached my own conclusion that that wasn't
Speaker 2: the cause of the plane going down.
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Speaker 1: murder to start your ritual today. Now, Ken, you were
Speaker 1: involved in this investigations, as we mentioned in the introduction
Speaker 1: for over fifty years. One of the people that you
Speaker 1: looked into as a possibility of being responsible for the
Speaker 1: sabotage of this flight was William Harrison payin Why did
Speaker 1: this person come to anyone's attention and tell us about
Speaker 1: his story that some people thought added up to sabotage?
Speaker 2: And William Harrison pain is a mystery even today. I
Speaker 2: spent years trying to develop a biography about this fellow
Speaker 2: and learning is trying to learn as much as I
Speaker 2: could about him. There are so many gaps in his
Speaker 2: life that still don't make sense. But at any rate,
Speaker 2: the part of the investigation was to look to see
Speaker 2: who had insurance untowards amounts of insurance on the flight,
Speaker 2: and early on it was determined that this fellow, William
Speaker 2: Harrison Payne, who owned a fishing lodge in northern California,
Speaker 2: had bought extraordinary amount of life insurance, well over a
Speaker 2: million dollars in today's money, in the weeks prior to
Speaker 2: the crash, and he became a focus of a good
Speaker 2: deal of investigation, not only by the insurance company they
Speaker 2: did not want to pay the policy, but even the
Speaker 2: investigators of the crash from PanAm and the cap This
Speaker 2: fellow was a former frog man, which is an underwater
Speaker 2: guy in World War Two, who also was an explosives expert,
Speaker 2: and he was having financial difficulties with his lodge he
Speaker 2: owned in northern California, and he bought a one way
Speaker 2: ticket to Honolulu, and no one knows to this day
Speaker 2: why he bought the ticket to Honolulu, had no valid
Speaker 2: reason for going there, and his body was not among
Speaker 2: those recovered after the crash, and so a lot of
Speaker 2: investigation and newspaper accounts began focusing on this fellow, William
Speaker 2: Harrison Payne. What was he all about? Why did he
Speaker 2: go to Honolulu, Why wasn't his body found, or why
Speaker 2: did he buy all of this insurance? And some of
Speaker 2: those questions are still unanswered, although I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time again learning about him and developing a bio
Speaker 2: and learning something about his psychology. And this guy was
Speaker 2: sort of a suspicious character, and his wife was even
Speaker 2: suspicious to me. Not long after the plane went down,
Speaker 2: she and the family, the children in northern California essentially
Speaker 2: became recluse in the community where they lived, and she
Speaker 2: moved out and sold the lodge that they owned, but
Speaker 2: not before the lodge burned to the ground mysteriously. One
Speaker 2: investor's guests gaters that it was clearly arson. The fire
Speaker 2: occurred while she was on her honeymoon in Piajuana, so
Speaker 2: the greeting widow didn't grieve. Not even a year before
Speaker 2: she was remarried, the lodge that they owned together mysteriously
Speaker 2: burned to the ground, and she became, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: pretty darn suspicious as well. You've got to remember that
Speaker 2: when I began this investigation, there was no such thing
Speaker 2: as the Internet. It was extremely difficult to chase people
Speaker 2: down or develop information about people and learn not only
Speaker 2: where they lived, but anything about them. So unfortunately, so
Speaker 2: many people that I was able to zo were in
Speaker 2: on We're dead by the time. I really wanted to
Speaker 2: learn more about them. Her family that William Harrison Payne's
Speaker 2: family to this day will not utter a word to me. Now,
Speaker 2: I got to tell you, and this what bothered me
Speaker 2: for years is if look, my dad was suggested as
Speaker 2: a saboteur of an aircraft, I would do everything I
Speaker 2: can to clear his name and tell you immediately, no,
Speaker 2: my dad didn't do it. And here's why those folks
Speaker 2: will never speak to me and still will not speak
Speaker 2: to me. So that made him even more suspicious in
Speaker 2: my mind. And certainly the fire at the lodge and
Speaker 2: then her being remarried in such a short period of
Speaker 2: time after the death, and it was just a he's
Speaker 2: just a strange, strange fellow. Why did he buy that
Speaker 2: insurance policy? Why go? What was he going to Honolulu for?
Speaker 2: No one knows to this day. And the fact that
Speaker 2: his body wasn't recovered, you know, made it even more suspicious.
Speaker 2: There was an investigator for the insurance company who lived
Speaker 2: in Colorado who spent months and months instigating this case,
Speaker 2: and I report about him pretty extensively in the book
Speaker 2: as well, Dan, and he was convinced to his dying
Speaker 2: day he was paranoid in fact, that Pain was still alive,
Speaker 2: and the Pain, maybe even with the cooperation of his wife,
Speaker 2: had destroyed this plane intentionally, and they had done it
Speaker 2: for the insurance money. They split the money and went
Speaker 2: their separate ways. I don't know. I mean, I still
Speaker 2: don't know. We're never going to know. But I found
Speaker 2: absolutely no any information that this guy was ever alive
Speaker 2: after November eight, nineteen fifty seven, and the FBI kept
Speaker 2: his fingerprints and has his fingerprints on file to this day.
Speaker 2: If they ever show up that they would know something.
Speaker 2: We've got to look into here. But there's no proof
Speaker 2: the guy ever lived after that day, although he was
Speaker 2: certainly suspicious, and he was the only person who was
Speaker 2: mentioned as a possible suspect in the crash.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the distress signal. Your father is a
Speaker 1: co pilot, would have charted the last position and then
Speaker 1: would have made a distress signal. You write there was
Speaker 1: talk of originally in your book that there was a
Speaker 1: report of some garbled weak transmission from Romance of the
Speaker 1: Skies at some point, and it seems to get buried
Speaker 1: into reports. Maybe you can explain that, but you and
Speaker 1: your investigation with a doctor Hurkin, you want to look
Speaker 1: at whether technology can provide some answers much later and
Speaker 1: see if that signal can be deciphered. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there was some discussion that perhaps the plane did
Speaker 2: cindamat a signal and did make some transmissions thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of hours from experts from everything from the Voice
Speaker 2: of America too, raytheon, every organization you can think of
Speaker 2: a listen to any kind of transmission in that area
Speaker 2: during that time, and they were never able to determine
Speaker 2: that a call came from the plane. Although there was
Speaker 2: a recording a very garbled message that didn't make sense
Speaker 2: to many people that some people believe came from the
Speaker 2: plane saying that they had asking out a problem with
Speaker 2: one number three engine, for example. And although you could
Speaker 2: put five experts in the room and listen to this
Speaker 2: tape and they'd have five different explanations of what was said,
Speaker 2: if really anything from the tape. But the tape was
Speaker 2: analyzed with all the technology at the time and was
Speaker 2: shipped to various private companies as well as government agencies,
Speaker 2: and no one was ever able to determine for sure
Speaker 2: that it came from that plane and what that message
Speaker 2: was what was said. We have searched doctor Herkin, who's
Speaker 2: a retired professor of University of California who was a
Speaker 2: Smithsonian curator, and he and I became partners in this
Speaker 2: many years ago. We have searched every conceivable place to
Speaker 2: find a copy of that tape recording, because we're convinced
Speaker 2: that with the technology we have available to us today,
Speaker 2: that if we can find a copy of that tape recording,
Speaker 2: we'll be able to confirm if or not the plane
Speaker 2: sent a made a message in what was said, and
Speaker 2: may even determine the cause of the crash based upon
Speaker 2: what that technology shows from that recording. But we have searched, Dan,
Speaker 2: let me tell you everything from the CIA, to PanAm hangars,
Speaker 2: to retired emplories to anything and everyone you can think of,
Speaker 2: and have not been able to find a copy of
Speaker 2: that tape recording. I'm convinced it exists. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like probably the Raiders that they lost arc, where the
Speaker 2: ARC is in an storehouse, a warehouse somewhere buried, and
Speaker 2: there's probably that tape is buried something. But we would
Speaker 2: love to have a copy of that day because we
Speaker 2: think that would answer so many questions for so many people.
Speaker 1: You pled to many organizations I believe in including the
Speaker 1: FBI for assistance. Some organizations referred you to other organizations
Speaker 1: you didn't probably get or you didn't get what exactly
Speaker 1: what you wanted, But with each you got a little
Speaker 1: bit more information that led to more information. Tell us
Speaker 1: just a little bit about some of the pleadings that
Speaker 1: you did and to the organizations that you pled your case.
Speaker 2: Well, Ben, that's a classic case of just persistence paying off.
Speaker 2: And the FBI probably was my number one target all
Speaker 2: along for information and the FBI, or I take this back,
Speaker 2: the National Transportation Safety Board today, which was the CAAP
Speaker 2: at the time, was my first search area. And they
Speaker 2: told me repeatedly that there were no further information, they
Speaker 2: had nothing else in their files. And I would accept
Speaker 2: that first short term, and then a year later say bloney,
Speaker 2: you know there's something else there, and I would write
Speaker 2: another letter and they'd write back and say, no, we
Speaker 2: don't have anything. And ultimately I got in touch with
Speaker 2: a fellow on the phone at the which is now
Speaker 2: the National Transportation Safety Board, who I convinced to take
Speaker 2: one more look at anything they might have in the
Speaker 2: files and he came back and read to me a
Speaker 2: note that gave me the name Crossweight, which was the
Speaker 2: purser we talked about a minute ago. That was the
Speaker 2: very first time I had ever heard that name in
Speaker 2: any connection with the possible downing of this aircraft, and
Speaker 2: that set me off in the direction of investigating that fella.
Speaker 2: For many years, but the NTSB would tell me that
Speaker 2: we have nothing else here, and that there's nothing else
Speaker 2: in the files. Check with the FBI. So I checked
Speaker 2: with the FBI, and the FBI say we have nothing available.
Speaker 2: You know, a year later, I'd go back to them
Speaker 2: and maybe I'd find it different. Bureaucrad in that bureaucraft
Speaker 2: will say let me check, and he'd find ten pages
Speaker 2: of something. So that's always gotten nothing else available. It's
Speaker 2: went on year after year after year, bits and pieces
Speaker 2: from one agency to the other. But I never gave up.
Speaker 2: I just kept saying, you know, I'm going to hit
Speaker 2: a bingos someday, I'm going to get somebody to give
Speaker 2: me some information. So over time, and we're talking about
Speaker 2: decades here, I assembled so many documents on this plane
Speaker 2: crash that had been hidden or not. I guess that's
Speaker 2: not the right word to say, but it had been
Speaker 2: overlooked or discarded or whatever. But I think I put
Speaker 2: together the biggest file available on what happened at the plane.
Speaker 2: But it's a constant struggle for information. And I think
Speaker 2: that's the same thing that journalists face today just about everywhere.
Speaker 2: And you have to fight for your information, you have
Speaker 2: to battle, you have to keep on and on and
Speaker 2: on and on. And I feel so bad for families
Speaker 2: with loose loved ones, and whether it's a plane crash
Speaker 2: today or whatever it may be, that they have to
Speaker 2: struggle to get information. And that's something that I told
Speaker 2: you early on that I just dedicated my life to
Speaker 2: the pursuit of the truth, and I just just never
Speaker 2: gave up. I just continued to Look. If you don't
Speaker 2: mind me, let me just add something here from him,
Speaker 2: because this is very important to me. There's a family
Speaker 2: from Midland, Michigan, the entire family that died on that plane.
Speaker 2: Dan the fellow, his name is Hugh Klack, was the
Speaker 2: father of the family. He was a senior vice president
Speaker 2: with a dal chemical company and was running Dal Chemicals
Speaker 2: operations to Tokyo. Many say he was destined to become
Speaker 2: the president of the dal Chemical Company, and he and
Speaker 2: his wife and all of their children died on that plane.
Speaker 2: And that has been one reason I have pursued this
Speaker 2: case too, because I look at the pictures of those
Speaker 2: little children and it breaks my heart even today to
Speaker 2: see that these kids died on that plane and no
Speaker 2: one ever knew why, and no one ever pursued it
Speaker 2: beyond nineteen fifty eight. So I think that's something that
Speaker 2: drove me to say what I said in this book
Speaker 2: and the conclusions I reached in the book. I just
Speaker 2: believe that people needed answers. And I think about that
Speaker 2: family and you know, a fellow going to his wedding
Speaker 2: out there who died on the plane. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just so many people that every family has a story.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just my story, but I felt they all
Speaker 2: needed answers, and that continued to drive me as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, you do an admirable job. You chronicle all of
Speaker 1: these people, all the passengers' lives, what they were intending
Speaker 1: to do. All these people had bright futures, from the
Speaker 1: top officials and like you mentioned, the spy, even but
Speaker 1: very important people to very very honorable regular folks on
Speaker 1: this flight perished. You ruled out in your investigation, because
Speaker 1: that's what you are, a journalist, and you've ruled out
Speaker 1: mechanical problems for this flight. You even considered the extraordinary
Speaker 1: UFO sightings around that time in that area as well,
Speaker 1: that planes would have and vehicles would have mechanical failure
Speaker 1: at that time when they would have a sighting of
Speaker 1: these UFOs. But when you talked about Crosswaith and you
Speaker 1: look more into how this could have possibly happened and
Speaker 1: why he was a fantastic suspect in this regardless of
Speaker 1: being publicly named. Tell us more about the information that
Speaker 1: you found out about him, his tuberculosis, and his behavior
Speaker 1: afterwards and when investigators got a chance to speak to
Speaker 1: his mother.
Speaker 2: Well, he was the initial suspect for me, beyond the
Speaker 2: public William Harrison Pain that we talked about a minute ago.
Speaker 2: But I reached the dead end with him because I
Speaker 2: had no further information available about him and gave up
Speaker 2: on that. When I finally got the fellow at the
Speaker 2: NTSB twenty thirty years ago to tell me that Pain
Speaker 2: was a suspect, I really began to dig. Excuse me,
Speaker 2: that Crosswait was a suspect. I really began to dig
Speaker 2: in on him and tried to find people who flew
Speaker 2: with him, for other crew members who flew with him, neighbors,
Speaker 2: anything I could find. Had incredible difficulty doing that. I
Speaker 2: did one day luck into talking to a fellow who
Speaker 2: was one of the primary investigators at the time. He
Speaker 2: was retired and living in Miami, and he God had
Speaker 2: blessed him, gave me his notes from his investigation. They
Speaker 2: were very cryptic, but his notes pointed or excuse me,
Speaker 2: painted a picture of a very disturbed fellow. And of
Speaker 2: course this guy, this investigator, was one of the people
Speaker 2: who also tried to persuade the FBI to get involved
Speaker 2: in the case and investigate Crosswaight. But his notes just
Speaker 2: gave me a blueprint to follow and learning more about
Speaker 2: this guy Crosswaight. And it came to pretty obvious to
Speaker 2: me pretty early on that this guy was mentally disturbed
Speaker 2: that when his wife died, he was just incredibly distraught.
Speaker 2: He had, within months of his wife's death, began pursuing
Speaker 2: a friend of hers romantically, and she rebuffed him, and
Speaker 2: he cried repeatedly to her, why won't you marry me?
Speaker 2: Why won't you marry me? And he was so heartbroken
Speaker 2: about this, and he began to do some strange things.
Speaker 2: Not long afterwards, he was in his driveway one day,
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact, and he was washing the
Speaker 2: driveway down and his mother in law and what are
Speaker 2: you doing, Jeane, And he said, well, Tanya, that was
Speaker 2: his wife. She didn't like anything dirty from washing everything away.
Speaker 2: And he began to give away her clothes to this
Speaker 2: woman that he was pursuing and buying her expensive gifts
Speaker 2: and all, and she rebuffed him. So when she rebuffed him,
Speaker 2: that put him further, in my opinion, over the edge.
Speaker 2: He was just dis wrought over that he's got his
Speaker 2: wife who I mean, his daughter who he claims he
Speaker 2: has troubles with. And he also had suffered from TB
Speaker 2: and he was not allowed to fly for over a
Speaker 2: year and was in a to be sanitarium and was
Speaker 2: taking a lot of drugs at the time, one of
Speaker 2: which was sort of an experimental but widely used drug
Speaker 2: for treating TB. And when he was released from the
Speaker 2: TV hospital, he'd gained a significant not of weight. He
Speaker 2: began having troubles with his wife, he began drinking an
Speaker 2: awful lot, and he was just a changed person and
Speaker 2: it was obvious that the TB and the death of
Speaker 2: his wife, and these problems that he claims he was
Speaker 2: having with his stepdaughter were just pushing him over the edge.
Speaker 2: And in fact he was under doctor's care when the
Speaker 2: plane went down, and the week before the plane went
Speaker 2: down he started visiting old friends, reminiscing about the good
Speaker 2: old days. And this looked to me like a fellow
Speaker 2: who knows that the end is near. Maybe because of
Speaker 2: his own design, I don't know. But the most peculiar
Speaker 2: thing that came up in the investigation of him, that
Speaker 2: was left untouched beyond the cad guy was the fact
Speaker 2: that he had been spending an awful lot of time
Speaker 2: in his basement workshop in the week before the plane
Speaker 2: went down, doing something god knows what, except that his
Speaker 2: father in law told investigators he had some blasting caps
Speaker 2: and they tore the house apart and could never find
Speaker 2: any of the explosives. And where did they go, we
Speaker 2: don't know, But he was mysteriously working on something in
Speaker 2: the tinkering with something in the basement workshop in that
Speaker 2: week before the crash, and the explosives were not found.
Speaker 2: He also changed his will, signed the will the morning
Speaker 2: or flight took off to disinherit the step daughter if
Speaker 2: she didn't marry in the Catholic church and do the
Speaker 2: things he wanted her to do, because that was his
Speaker 2: final way of putting some control over her. And his
Speaker 2: will was found in his glove compartment of the car
Speaker 2: at the airport a week or so later, and in
Speaker 2: there was his wedding ring and his mother a jewelry wrapped
Speaker 2: around together inside like a handkerchief. So the guy, to me,
Speaker 2: the guy was psychotic, and the guy was mentally disturbed,
Speaker 2: lost with his wife so called controlled the daughter. And
Speaker 2: it looked to me as though this guy is going
Speaker 2: to bring this plane down one way or the other.
Speaker 2: Where he does it doing something in the cockpit, or
Speaker 2: he brings it down with his little lasting cap or something.
Speaker 2: But this guy just does not add up in any way.
Speaker 1: How does he fit in with the theory that the
Speaker 1: no point of return? Just before that they made a
Speaker 1: location report and everything seemed fine. How does he fit
Speaker 1: into that theory of the no point of return?
Speaker 2: Well, I think one thing is that most people don't
Speaker 2: know where that point is. Crew certainly would know that,
Speaker 2: and they would know that there's a place where we're
Speaker 2: in trouble. We're trouble here. We've got something's got to
Speaker 2: have to happen, so he would know that. The other
Speaker 2: thing to remember is that back in those days, nobody's
Speaker 2: luggage was checked and certainly not a crew member trusted
Speaker 2: crew members, so he could have brought anything he wanted
Speaker 2: to aboard. He was mad at PanAm. I didn't bring
Speaker 2: this out then earlier, but he was just angry with
Speaker 2: PanAm because PanAm wanted to fire him, but the union
Speaker 2: jumped in every time and prohibited PanAm from from firing
Speaker 2: because they said his work was was not up to
Speaker 2: par and he was. He was a real painted a
Speaker 2: butt to pan Am. Uh. So he had a grudge
Speaker 2: against PanAm, not only because they didn't let him fly
Speaker 2: and they were stricted just lying after he came back
Speaker 2: from his tuberculosis treatment, but he knew there after him
Speaker 2: his job was on the line, so he had he
Speaker 2: had an issue with pan Am. He had his issues
Speaker 2: with his wife dying and his daughter. He felt was
Speaker 2: out of control and being rejected by the the lady
Speaker 2: that he had pursued, and he knew the plane inside out.
Speaker 2: He had access to the plane. He was one of
Speaker 2: the fellows who would take coffee up into the cockpit
Speaker 2: to the crew. No one would would question him at all.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: He also, I also ran across a pilot who had
Speaker 2: run across him years earlier and said he was this
Speaker 2: evengeful guy. He would do anything. So the picture that
Speaker 2: was painted at him to me again was a fellow
Speaker 2: who had all the motivation and the access and the
Speaker 2: means and everything to bring the plane down.
Speaker 1: There was also investigators talked to Tanya, the stepdaughter, and
Speaker 1: he says some things the last time he sees her,
Speaker 1: some cryptic statements. Now in retrospect, what does he say
Speaker 1: to her that was support?
Speaker 2: Well, that's very interesting. He again, he and the stepdaughter
Speaker 2: did not get along at all. He would spend hours
Speaker 2: in an oversized chair in his living room just staring
Speaker 2: out the window, and every time she'd walk by, he'd
Speaker 2: glare at her with hatred in his eyes. And at
Speaker 2: any rate, in the morning the plane went down, he
Speaker 2: was leaving the house and she was petrified of him,
Speaker 2: and he glared at her and said to her, something
Speaker 2: big is going to happen, and you're not gonna like it.
Speaker 2: And of course my theory is what big is going
Speaker 2: to happen, is he's going to bring the plane down.
Speaker 2: She's not going to like it. They're gonna be disowned
Speaker 2: from his will unless she did what he told her
Speaker 2: to do. In other words, he'd have final control over
Speaker 2: her life no matter what. And that just added more
Speaker 2: to it. I had never been able to speak with
Speaker 2: Tanya and never been able to find her as a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, and pursued once I found out where
Speaker 2: she was, I would ask her through Facebook chats and
Speaker 2: letters and various things if she would talk to me,
Speaker 2: and she wouldn't give me the time of day. I
Speaker 2: felt that she had something. There was some reason she
Speaker 2: wasn't talking, and I needed to know what that was.
Speaker 2: So after I discarded the issue of the mechanical failure
Speaker 2: and decided that Paine really did not bring that plane down,
Speaker 2: then Crosswait was my number one suspect. But I desperately
Speaker 2: needed to talk to his stepdaughter Tanya. And what happens, well,
Speaker 2: this is very strange. I would maybe once a year
Speaker 2: just send her a message, and generally it was on
Speaker 2: a Facebook message and ask her, Tanya, please talk to me,
Speaker 2: just tell me something, just something, and she never responded,
Speaker 2: and one day just out of the blue, I get
Speaker 2: a bling on my computer and it's a Facebook message
Speaker 2: from Tanya, and she says, yes, I'm I'm ready to
Speaker 2: talk now. And I thought, oh my god, this is it.
Speaker 2: She's going to finally talk after all these years. And
Speaker 2: what is she going to say. Is she's going to
Speaker 2: send on a lone goose chase, or is she going
Speaker 2: to clear her conscience, or or she just want to
Speaker 2: I don't know. I had no idea what she was
Speaker 2: going to say, but the fact that she was opening
Speaker 2: up that conversation to me was just incredible. So I
Speaker 2: got in touch with her. Then, look, I'll be in
Speaker 2: Houston tomorrow. I'll be at your house tomorrow. Please let's talk.
Speaker 2: And she said that something the words. I decided, it's
Speaker 2: finally time. I need to let it all go. So
Speaker 2: I was on a flight too, and the very next
Speaker 2: day I drove to her house, not ever having spoken
Speaker 2: with a lady in person, never seeing her in person.
Speaker 2: And the truth matter is this is the first time
Speaker 2: I would ever come face to face with anyone who
Speaker 2: was directly involved in that plane. And I pulled up
Speaker 2: at her apartment and you know, my stomach was churning
Speaker 2: and I'd spent the night before wondering about what was
Speaker 2: going to happen, and going over all the questions and
Speaker 2: things I had in my mind. And I knocked on
Speaker 2: her door, and she opened it and liked it. Just
Speaker 2: opened up a whole new world for me because she
Speaker 2: she proceeded over the next few hours just to tell
Speaker 2: everything from her perspective that she knew, and for me,
Speaker 2: that was the end of the search for my father's killer.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you do in this book. Put what you think
Speaker 1: was said in that last message. As this plane kreemed
Speaker 1: from ten thousand feet into the oceans and crashed, hit
Speaker 1: eight foot waves or bigger and split in half, tell
Speaker 1: us about what you think was said that fatal day in.
Speaker 2: That last exchange. Again, I don't know what happened. Then
Speaker 2: no one's going to know for sure what happened until
Speaker 2: the wreckage is what's left of the wreckage is recovered
Speaker 2: from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But my feeling
Speaker 2: is that my feeling is that cross Weight brought that
Speaker 2: plane down. Now, he didn't have enough explosive device to
Speaker 2: bring the plane down entirely, but my feeling is that
Speaker 2: he set off some type of explosive device, small though
Speaker 2: it may have been, to render the plane in a
Speaker 2: very helpless situation. So the point is that some people
Speaker 2: knew that something bad was going on. The crew lost
Speaker 2: control of the plane, and my feeling, and my feeling
Speaker 2: is that they did send to me, they call that
Speaker 2: they were going down, but they had no control. It
Speaker 2: wasn't enough explosion, It wasn't enough to tear the plane
Speaker 2: apart instantly, but it was enough to maybe put a
Speaker 2: hole in the fuselage or something somewhere to bring it down.
Speaker 2: And my feeling is that they simply said, you know,
Speaker 2: we're going down. And they wouldn't have opportunity to say
Speaker 2: why they were going down, anything of that nature, but
Speaker 2: they were going down, and I think that they valiantly fought.
Speaker 2: The plane was significantly off course. When the record was found,
Speaker 2: it was ninety miles off course, so they were fighting
Speaker 2: desperately to keep it in the air. Something happened to
Speaker 2: the plane and I think that just simply hit the
Speaker 2: ocean and broke into Yes.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for coming on and talking
Speaker 1: about flight seven is missing. The search for my father's killer.
Speaker 1: For those people that might want to take a look
Speaker 1: at this Is there an Amazon page? You talked about
Speaker 1: another book, a previous book. Could people go to Amazon
Speaker 1: and take a look at your word now that can
Speaker 1: certain me find on Amazon?
Speaker 2: I wrote a book called Kill the Messenger back in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five eighty six for another experience I had
Speaker 2: with a crooked sheriff in South Carolina. But yeah, folks
Speaker 2: will go to Amazon, or they can go to my
Speaker 2: Facebook page, excuse me, my word web page that they want.
Speaker 2: It's Flight seven is Missing dot com and learn more
Speaker 2: about the plane, learn more about the crew, and hey,
Speaker 2: maybe even order a book. And Dan, I thank you
Speaker 2: so much for having me on here today. It's been
Speaker 2: a pleasure and I can't tell you how much I
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It's such an admirable and remarkable book.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for coming on and talking
Speaker 1: about Flight seven is Missing, the search for my father's killer.
Speaker 1: It's been fascinating. Thank you so much. And you have
Speaker 1: a great evening.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, Thank you. Good night.
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