The Hijacking of American Flight 119

John Wigger
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The Hijacking of American Flight 119
The Hijacking of American Flight
119
How D.B. Cooper Inspired a Skyjacking Craze and
the FBI’s Battle to Stop It

JOHN WIGGER
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© John Wigger 2024

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Oxford University Press, at the address above.

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condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023938615

ISBN 978–0–19–769575–3
eISBN 978–0–19–769577–7

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197695753.001.0001
For my dad, who taught me how to fly.
He would have loved this story.
 Contents

Author’s Note
Prologue

PART I. The Heist

1. The Hijacking
2. Sharon Wetherley
3. David Spellman
4. The Friendly Skies
5. Heinrick von George
6. The Money
7. Mohawk Airlines Flight 452
8. The Pilots
9. The Parachutes
10. D.B. Cooper
11. Tom Parker
12. Richard McCoy
13. The Switch
14. David Hanley
15. Cadillac Impact
16. The Boeing 727
17. Snipers
18. Chase Planes
19. A Short History of Parachuting
20. Wheels Up
21. The Jump

PART II. The Chase

22. The Call
23. Dead or Alive
24. Peru, Indiana
25. Nowhere Man
26. The Sketch
27. Survivors
28. The Money, the Guns, and the Pants
29. Show Me the Money
30. Tell Me Your Name
31. The Parachute
32. The Tip
33. A Life of Crime
34. The Plan
35. A Ride Home
36. The Informant
37. Fingerprints
38. The Arrest
39. Evidence
40. Fallout
41. Hijacker’s Heaven
 PART III. Connecting Flights
42. How It Began
43. Take Me to Cuba
44. Anywhere but Here
45. Hijack House
46. Security
47. Ransoms
48. A Means of Escape
49. The Trial
50. Prison Break
51. Finding D.B. Cooper
52. Arrivals

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
 Author’s Note

THIS STORY IS largely based on the more than sixty in-depth interviews
I did with people directly connected to airline hijackings in the 1960s
and 1970s, including retired FBI agents, stewardesses, and pilots,
along with some of the hijackers and their friends, family, and
associates. Though these hijackings happened more than fifty years
ago, I was continually amazed at the accuracy of these people’s
memories when compared against court records and newspaper
accounts. The generosity of everyone who agreed to talk made this
book possible, and I am deeply grateful. The individual interviews
are cited in the endnotes.
 Prologue

HE INCHED HIS way feet first down the aft stairs of the Boeing 727. The
roar of the jet’s three engines, mounted on the tail only a few feet
above his head, was deafening. The stairway was buffeted by the
320-mile-an-hour slipstream, nearly flattened against the plane’s
fuselage by the force of the rushing air. The gap between the stair’s
bottom lip and the underbelly of the jet’s tail section was barely
three feet. Even in June, the air at ten thousand feet chilled his
limbs.
As he worked his way slowly down the stairs on his stomach, he
pulled along a mailbag with half a million dollars in cash, forty
pounds in all, tied to his leg. He had already tossed out the machine
gun he had carried onto the plane, a wig for which he had paid
thirty dollars, and the coat and pants he had worn when he boarded.
His only parachute was a small reserve chute attached to the front
of the harness he was wearing. He had never jumped out of a plane
before.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, his feet dangling over the
edge. Slowly he lowered himself down until only his fingers grasped
the bottom stair. The rest of his body was flying, stretched out prone
behind the plane, buoyed by the rushing wind.
He had only a vague idea where he was, didn’t even know what
state he was over. (In fact, it was Indiana.) It was not quite three
a.m., nearly twelve hours since he had hijacked the flight from St.
Louis to Tulsa. Much of his plan had gone awry, but it was too late to
change any of that. There was nothing left to consider.1
He let go and fell into the void.
 PART I

The Heist
 1
The Hijacking
AMERICAN FLIGHT 119

THE MAN WALKED across the apron adjacent to the terminal toward the
Boeing 727 carrying a briefcase containing the thirty-dollar wig, a
pair of rubber gloves, a smoke grenade, and two guns—a Spitfire
machine gun with the stock and front grip removed and eleven
inches cut off the barrel, making it compact enough to fit in the
briefcase, and a small-caliber pistol.1 It was Friday, June 23, 1972,
just after two p.m. and about eighty degrees, but not particularly
humid for St. Louis, with a light breeze. He had paid seventy dollars
for the round-trip ticket to Tulsa and back, under the name “Robert
Wilson.” As was almost always the case in the era before metal
detectors and heightened security, he had walked through the
terminal and directly to his gate without stopping. No one asked to
see what he was carrying.
He boarded the plane through the main cabin door and took a
middle seat toward the back in row 24, on the left side, in front of
the galley. To the stewardesses, there was nothing about him that
seemed unusual. Flight 119 had left LaGuardia Airport in New York
at 12:50 p.m., bound for Los Angeles, with stops in St. Louis, Tulsa,
and Phoenix.2
The man was twenty-eight but looked younger. He had a boyish
grin and the sort of boisterous personality that went with growing up
in a large Irish Catholic family. Neighbors would later describe him as
“clean-cut.”3
They left St. Louis at 2:35 p.m. It was only a fifty-eight-minute
flight from wheels up to landing. He still had a choice to make, but
time was running out. If he just sat there and did nothing, like any
other passenger, no one would ever know the difference. Friends
back in Detroit had urged him not to go through with his plans. But
he had already invested $1,500 in the scheme, all his available cash.
He was behind on his mortgage. He needed the money.4
Jerry Stewart had the aisle seat next to his. He owned a clothing
store in Tulsa and was on his way home. For the first half hour of
the flight, Stewart tried to engage the man, who was wearing
aviator-style sunglasses, but he seemed preoccupied.
“Are you going to Tulsa?” Stewart asked.
“Yes,” the man said, without elaborating.
In fact, he was about to make the most fateful decision of his life.
Damn. You’ve got to pump up your nuts here, he thought. You’ve
got to do it now or forget about it forever.5
Still, he hesitated until the plane was nearly to Tulsa. When the
pilot announced that they were starting their final descent and
would be on the ground in fifteen minutes, he turned to Stewart.
“Where is the men’s room at?” he asked.
“Around the corner,” Stewart said, motioning toward the back of
the plane.6
In the lavatory, the man opened his briefcase and put on the wig
and rubber gloves. He took out the machine gun and pulled back the
bolt, careful not to let it slip and fire a round. Stepping out of the
restroom, he stood at the back of the plane. And waited.7
For what seemed like several minutes, nothing happened. He
stood in the aisle, gun held across his chest, waving his hand,
waiting for someone to notice. This is fucked up, he thought as the
surreal silence stretched on. Finally, a stewardess, Jane Furlong,
looked up and saw him as she walked down the aisle collecting
glasses.
“Don’t hurt anybody,” she said, once she was close enough for him
to hear.8
 2
Sharon Wetherley
AMERICAN FLIGHT 119

THE STEWARDESSES THAT day were Jennifer Dumanois, Diana Rash,

Sharon Wetherley, and Jane Furlong, all based in New York. Rash
had joined American in July 1969. She and Dumanois, the senior
member of the group, tended to the twenty-three passengers in first
class on the flight to Tulsa. Furlong and Wetherley had only been
flying for three months. Together they worked the coach section
toward the back. This was what they called a “liquor and snack
flight.” The plane was a stretch 727-200, about two-thirds full, with
ninety-three passengers.1
Wetherley, twenty-two, had enrolled at the American Airlines
Stewardess College in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 1972. She and
Furlong were roommates and became friends. The school, which
opened in 1957, included classrooms, offices, a lounge, a rec room,
and dorm suites. By 1969, it could accommodate two hundred
students at a time. During the six-week course, only one afternoon
was spent talking about what to do in a hijacking. “Basically, do as
the hijacker says, and don’t try to play hero” was the gist of the
advice they were given, Wetherley remembered. It was generally
understood that domestic hijackers did not want to die or kill
passengers and crew unless they had no way out. Defusing tension
offered the best chance of getting everyone out alive.2
Wetherley took her first airplane ride in Ventura, California, when
she was around eleven. A friend’s father owned an open-cockpit
biplane. The pilot handed her a parachute. “If you see me jump, you
jump, too,” he told her. They did loops and rolls, and she loved it.
She graduated from high school in Ojai, California, and attended a
year of junior college a few miles away in Ventura. After a five-week
vacation in England with her mother, she decided not to return to
college. “All I wanted to do was to fly and to travel.”3
One of her four brothers had just deployed to Vietnam, and
Wetherley accompanied her sister-in-law to Florida to live with her
parents. There she became friends with a group who skydived. She
watched them one weekend and decided, I can do that. Growing up
with four brothers made her competitive and adventurous. At the
time, you didn’t learn by buddy-jumping or with a static line. The
next Saturday, she jumped on her own, pulling the ripcord on her
way down.4
In Florida, she worked in a grocery store and a bank until another
brother, who flew helicopters, invited her to fly with him to Alaska.
They went to Dallas and then spent six days ferrying a Bell Jet
Ranger helicopter to Anchorage. She loved the experience. In the
summer of 1971, she applied to become a stewardess at American
Airlines.5
Wetherley and Furlong graduated from stewardess college
together on March 21, 1972, and were transferred to New York.
Wetherley’s first two flights were in and out of LaGuardia. Her third
flight left from LaGuardia for Los Angeles but returned to Kennedy
Airport, arriving late at night. She was still new to New York and had
no idea how to get back to her apartment in Queens. A bus driver
took her to a subway station and told her what line to take from
there. That left her more than a half-mile walk to get home. On the
way, a car passed her and made a U-turn. A man jumped out,
grabbed her purse, and sped away. Afterward, she realized that it
could have been much worse.
Furlong had a car and lived close by. Once they were eligible, they
started bidding for the same flight assignments. Having a ride to and
from the airport made Wetherley feel safe. They had been flying
together for most of June when they boarded Flight 119 at
LaGuardia.6
Once he had Furlong’s attention, the man in the wig handed her
two typed notes, one in black type and the other in black and red.
The notes, which were mostly the same, demanded $502,500 in
cash (equivalent to $3.6 million today), five parachutes, five
parachute harnesses, an altimeter, a pair of goggles, and two
collapsible shovels. The shovel (he really only needed one) was to
bury the money once he was on the ground. He also instructed the
pilot to turn around and fly back to St. Louis. The extra $2,500 was
spending money. He wanted to make sure that he cleared an even
half million. He told Furlong to take one of the notes to the captain
and give the other one back to him.7
Wetherley had just finished serving sandwiches and drinks when
she noticed a “funny look” on Furlong’s face and a note in her hand.
She looked up to see a man “standing at the rear of the plane,
holding a gun.” As Furlong went forward to the cockpit, Wetherley
walked back to the galley without making eye contact and quickly
pulled plastic wrap off a tray of sandwiches, standing only a few feet
in front of the man. She made a point of smiling as she served the
sandwiches, determined to maintain a sense of calm.8
As Furlong approached the cockpit, she pulled Dumanois, the
head stewardess, aside. “Jenny, you’re not going to believe this, but
we are being hijacked.” She stepped into the cockpit and told the
pilots the same thing.9
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Captain Ted Kovalenko said.
“No, here’s the note,” Furlong said.10
Kovalenko still thought it might be a joke and handed the note to
flight engineer Rod Bradley.
Meanwhile, as Rash walked through first class, Dumanois pulled
her aside. “Diana, did you hear?” she asked.
“What?” Rash said.
“We are being hijacked.”
They always knew it could happen, but the reality of it was still a
shock.11
Copilot Richard Sturm radioed Air Traffic Control, reading the
single-spaced note, which filled nearly an entire 8½-by-11-inch
sheet. It began, “Don’t panic, this is a ransom hijacking.” The note
said that the hijacker was armed with a gun, a pistol, dynamite, and
a hand grenade. “There were a series of casual threats such as
‘don’t try to stop me,’ ” Sturm later recalled. Near the end was
written, “I will surely feel sorry for anybody who tries to stop the
hijacking.” It was all “poorly organized,” Sturm said, with lots of
misspelled words; “individual” was spelled “indivigal.” Bradley, the
flight engineer, also immediately noticed the poor spelling and
grammar. They had to read it several times to figure it all out. Sturm
shook his head. Hard to believe that the guy who wrote this was
now calling the shots.12
After Furlong returned from the cockpit, the hijacker—for that was
what he now was—demanded that they clear the last two rows on
the right side of the plane looking forward, rows 25 and 26. In front
of these two rows was an empty space adjacent to the emergency
exit door on the right. Across from the exit door on the left was the
galley. The emergency exit and galley provided a buffer from the
rest of the cabin, isolating the last two rows. Sitting on the right also
allowed the hijacker, who was left-handed, to point the gun down
the aisle from the aisle seat.13
From his command post in the back two rows, the hijacker began
shuffling the rest of the passengers around. He ordered all the
women and children moved to first class and the men moved back to
coach, which meant separating families. Wetherley did her best to
stay calm and smile, reassuring passengers that everything would be
OK. It was just a man who wanted to return to St. Louis, and he
happened to have a gun.14
 3
David Spellman
AMERICAN FLIGHT 119

DAVID SPELLMAN WAS in seat 4B in first class. Spellman, in his mid-

twenties, lived in Tulsa and had worked as a field auditor in
American’s Audit and Security Department for the past year and a
half. He had always been fascinated by airplanes and dreamed of
becoming an Air Force pilot growing up. But his vision fell short of
the 20/20 the Air Force required. Working for American kept him
connected to airplanes and flight, and flying first class was one of
the perks of the job. He was on his way back from Haiti, where
American had recently merged with a Caribbean airline, creating
several new routes.1
Stepping off the plane in Haiti had been like stepping back in time.
Scattered around the small airport were a few DC-3s and a
propeller-driven Lockheed Constellation, stalwarts of commercial
aviation in the 1940s and 1950s, obsolete in the jet age. He was
shocked by the poverty he encountered in Port-au-Prince and the
tension made obvious by the young men in uniform carrying
automatic weapons. Haiti had languished under the rule of François
“Papa Doc” Duvalier, who had died a year earlier, only to be replaced
by his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. The regime was
suspicious of Americans, and the family of the Caribbean airline’s
general manager had recently been threatened at gunpoint.
Deciding that there was little he could accomplish under the
circumstances in Haiti, Spellman booked a flight for New York,
leaving the next day. He got little sleep that night in his oppressively
hot hotel room, the sound of drums beating through the night. By
the time he made his way from Port-au-Prince to LaGuardia and onto
the flight to Tulsa, he was exhausted. The only thing keeping him
awake was the attractive stewardesses, with whom he had been
“flirting outrageously,” as he later put it. His efforts seemed to be
paying off. When the FBI interviewed Wetherley after she got off the
plane, she remembered his “sandy brown hair” and that he was
“sharply dressed in a blue and white striped shirt.” Spellman later
realized that when he told her he worked for American’s Audit and
Security Department, she might have assumed “security” meant
something more than accounting.2
As the women and children moved forward on the hijacker’s
orders, Spellman ended up about halfway back in coach, on the left
side. Once everyone was settled, an eerie silence descended over
the cabin. The hijacker demanded the film from all cameras on
board, which the stewardesses collected. Spellman overheard two
passengers whispering about rushing the hijacker and overpowering
him. He wasn’t sure that was a good idea. At least a few people
would likely get shot before it was over. Captain Kovalenko
announced that no one was to look back to the rear of the plane. A
woman tried to hand Wetherley her Bible.
As they prepared to land in St. Louis, the hijacker took out the
grenade, which resembled a can with a lever on top, and set it on
the seat beside him. “If this won’t do the job, then this will,” he said,
motioning first to the machine gun and then to the grenade.3
 4
The Friendly Skies

EARLY COMMERCIAL FLYING was not for the faint of heart. Planes were
slow, loud, and unpressurized, which meant that they could not fly
above the weather. A DC-3, the workhorse of commercial aviation
from the 1930s to the 1950s, cruised at 150 miles an hour. Flying
through thunderstorms and weather fronts meant getting bounced
around, sometimes for hours. Tickets were expensive, often five or
six times the cost of taking the train, and affordable only for
businessmen or the wealthy. To lure them into the skies, airlines
knew that they had to provide an exceptional level of service.
This is where stewardesses came in. The first stewardesses were
former nurses, hired by what would become United Airlines in 1930.
From the start, airlines wanted to give flying a sense of
professionalism. Stewardesses wore crisp uniforms and did not
accept tips. For young women who did not want to become nurses,
schoolteachers, secretaries, or salesclerks, flying offered adventure
and travel. Twenty thousand young women applied for fewer than
250 stewardess positions available at American Airlines in 1951.
“How else but by being caught up in aviation could a girl find time to
see so much of the world?” asked Lore Millick, who flew as a
stewardess for Capitol Airways beginning in 1955.1
It could be exhausting and sometimes dangerous. Engine failures
were frequent. “Every time we had a crash we flew with no
passengers for a while,” recalled Marjorie Howe, who began flying
with American Airlines in 1936.2 Duties included washing the
windows, loading baggage, punching tickets at each stop (a dozen
or more between Chicago and San Francisco), keeping up with train
schedules for each city in case of an engine failure, tightening the
bolts that held seats to the floor so that they would not rattle loose
and bounce around in flight, and making sure that passengers who
went to the lavatory did not open the exit door by mistake and fall
out. To save money, the airlines did not send enough meals for the
stewardesses. If they wanted to eat, they had to hope that one of
the passengers was not hungry.3
In prolonged turbulence, passengers often became airsick. Once
one vomited, they all did. Even without pressurized cabins, pilots
occasionally ventured up to 14,000 feet to escape the worst of the
weather. Passengers were given oxygen masks, but the
stewardesses continued to serve meals. Billie Crabtree, who became
an American Airlines stewardess in the mid-1940s, kept a diary of
her experiences. Describing a flight at 14,000 feet, she wrote,
“Stopped to breathe oxygen from a bottle, then served three more
passengers . . . stopped for more oxygen . . . my fingers and lips
were turning blue . . . I got so lightheaded I forgot the orders by the
time I got back to the galley.”4
Jets revolutionized commercial aviation in the 1960s. Flying
became more sophisticated, though it was still expensive. Comfort
replaced adventure. Jets flew above the weather, and men—70
percent of passengers—wore suits and ties when they traveled.
Airline deregulation, which began in 1978, would make flying
cheaper but also less luxurious. Bigger planes meant more seats to
fill. A DC-2, which began commercial service in 1934, carried
fourteen passengers. The Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, introduced in 1970,
could carry four hundred. With more capacity to sell, airlines turned
to their stewardesses to market the glamor of flight.
There was no shortage of interest. In 1968, there were twenty-
two applicants for every available position in the US. The sexy
stewardess became a staple of pop culture. Stewardesses were now
permitted to marry and keep their jobs, but the airlines still enforced
weight restrictions. A few extra pounds could lead to suspension.
During interviews, aspirants were routinely asked to lift their skirts
above their knees so that interviewers could get a good look at their
legs. Betty Riegel, who became a Pan Am stewardess in 1961,
remembered that before each flight, a supervisor would give the
stewardesses a “pinch or slap on the bottom” to make sure they
were wearing the “regulation girdle.” “We just got used to it,” Riegel
wrote. She loved wearing the iconic pale-blue Pan Am uniform and
the freedom to travel the world that her career afforded.
Over time, uniforms became racier. On Southwest Airlines,
stewardesses sported tangerine hot pants and miniskirts with white
go-go boots. In 1971, National Airlines launched its “Fly Me”
advertising campaign. The first printed ad featured a close-up of
stewardess Cheryl Fioravante, smiling sweetly, next to the caption
“I’m Cheryl. Fly Me.” A television version featured twenty-something
stewardess Judy saying, “I’m Judy, and I was born to fly,” as she
drove a convertible to a Florida beach. “You can fly me morning,
noon, or night,” she said, while stripping down to a bikini and then
running across the sand into the water. The ads were hugely
effective.5
The book Coffee, Tea, or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two
Airline Stewardesses, published in 1967, was supposedly written by
Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones, two new “stews” from small-town
America, navigating the swinging ’60s from 30,000 feet, partying
their way from coast to coast. “Airline crews stay at the same hotels
and layovers,” they wrote in the introduction. “But that doesn’t mean
it’s sex, sex, sex all the time. It can be if you want it that way, and
some do.”6 The book was actually written by Donald Bain, a young
public relations executive with American Airlines and an aspiring
writer. After an editor arranged for him to meet with two Eastern Air
Lines stewardesses, Bain realized that they only had half an hour’s
worth of material. So he used his imagination and industry
background to create a Playboy version of life in the sky. Coffee,
Tea, or Me? and its three sequels sold more than 5 million copies in
a dozen languages. Bain’s name originally appeared only in each
book’s dedication.7
The success of Coffee, Tea, or Me? led to imitators, including the
far more salacious and sexist How to Make a Good Airline
Stewardess, published in 1972, which described itself as the “expert
guide to the luscious stews of every airline you’re likely to fly.” It
made no pretense of being written by a woman. Partly in response
to these books, stewardesses campaigned to change their title to
“flight attendant” starting in the early 1970s, though for years most
people still called them stewardesses. “I’m tired of the company
selling our bodies rather than our service,” said Bernice Dolan in an
October 1970 interview.8
Despite these crosscurrents, glamor remained firmly entrenched in
the culture of commercial flight. Victoria Vantoch, author of The Jet
Sex, a history of stewardesses, writes that her mother, who had a BA
in Slavic languages from UCLA, lobbied on Capitol Hill for the Equal
Rights Amendment at the same time she was working as an Eastern
Air Lines stewardess, wearing “pale blue hot pants.”9 At Pan Am,
America’s most international airline in the 1960s and 1970s,
stewardesses touched down in nearly every corner of the world.
They transported troops on R&R from Vietnam, lived independently
in Hong Kong, spent long layovers in French Polynesia, stayed at the
InterContinental Phoenicia in Beirut, and went to beach parties in
Monrovia. “How can you change a world you’ve never seen?” asked
a Pan Am ad.10
“Suddenly your world becomes anywhere between the Atlantic
and the Pacific . . . Canada and Mexico . . . traveling, meeting
interesting people. Every day is different,” read an American Airlines
ad in 1969, inviting young women to apply. It was a “professional
career,” but only for women with the right look. The ad specified that
applicants needed to be single, over the age of twenty, five feet two
inches to five feet nine inches tall, and 100 to 140 pounds. Pan Am
had similar requirements: single, at least twenty years old, five feet
three inches to five feet nine inches, and 105 to 140 pounds. The
weight requirements persisted through 1972. A five-foot-two-inch
stewardess on American could weigh no more than 115 pounds; the
limit was 118 on Delta and 121 on United.11
The airlines may have been selling a certain look, but most of the
young women who made it through training were smart and
capable, as would be proven over and over during a sudden wave of
hijackings.
 5
Heinrick von George

BY THE 1970S,the frequent crashes of early flying were in the past, but
for stewardesses, a new threat took their place. Hijackers targeted
them as hostages. More often than not, they were the ones who
ended up with a gun at their back. In January 1972, less than two
weeks before Sharon Wetherley and Jane Furlong enrolled at the
American Airlines Stewardess College, a forty-five-year-old
unemployed father of seven, Heinrick von George, hijacked a
Mohawk Airlines turboprop with forty-two passengers, demanding
$200,000 and two parachutes. He seemed erratic and dangerous.
Saying that he had a bomb, von George held a pistol to stewardess
Eileen McAllister’s head for nine hours, getting “edgier” as the ordeal
dragged on, according to the pilot. Von George said that she was
going to jump with him.
In the nineteen years he and his wife, Barbara, had been married,
von George had frequently changed jobs in hopes of doing better.
Barbara went along with his decisions, always trusting her husband’s
judgment. Together they had seven children. In 1963, Ozzie, as
Barbara called him, left his job as a supermarket manager to open a
cigarette and candy company in Peekskill, New York, Barbara’s
hometown. The business failed, and they were forced into
bankruptcy, losing their car and their house. His confidence and the
family’s finances never fully recovered. Still, despite his periodic
setbacks, von George was generally upbeat, not the sort to sit
around and complain.
By 1970, he was back on his feet, working for a drugstore
company in Massachusetts. He and Barbara bought a modest two-
story house in Brockton, in a working-class neighborhood. But von
George was restless, and toward the end of the year, he took a job
with a new drug company that offered him fifty dollars more a week.
Three months later, the company went under.
Von George was meticulous about his appearance, always dressing
neatly in a suit and tie, and Barbara had always thought him
handsome. But he was now in his mid-forties and overweight. He
took a job selling insurance. After his eight-year-old son underwent a
difficult open-heart surgery, he lost interest, and soon that job was
gone.
He did not tell Barbara for three months. Instead, he applied for
both unemployment and welfare, a violation of the law. Their phone
was disconnected, and they fell behind on their mortgage. Even
after he confessed to Barbara that he had been indicted for fraud
over the welfare and unemployment payments, there were details he
kept from her. He was $87,000 in debt from his earlier business
dealings, a huge sum given his earning potential. He told her not to
worry, that he had a job prospect in New York.1
What Barbara did not know was that her husband, the father of
her seven children, was not Heinrick von George.
He was born Merlyn LaVerne St. George in St. Paul, Minnesota,
where his parents, Thelma G. Beaird and LaVerne St. George, had
married. Merlyn, born in 1926, was the oldest of seven children. By
the time of the 1930 census, they had moved to Cincinnati, where
Thelma’s parents lived. In February 1941, LaVerne joined the Army.
Following his father’s example, on his seventeenth birthday in July
1943, Merlyn enlisted in the Navy. That November, he boarded the
aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, serving as an aircraft gunner. Merlyn
had a difficult time adjusting to life aboard ship and made few
friends. In early 1944, his closest buddy, Harold L. Lerch, was killed
in action on the Yorktown. Lerch’s death traumatized von George, as
later events would prove.2
In April 1944, a week after returning to Pearl Harbor, Merlyn
boarded the SS Henry Bergh, a Liberty ship converted into a troop
transport, bound for San Francisco. The ship had a capacity of less
than 600 but was carrying 1,300 sailors and a crew of 100. On May
31, it ran aground on rocks two hundred yards offshore of South
Farallon Island, thirty miles off the coast of San Francisco. Though
everyone survived, some by swimming ashore through the frigid
water, Merlyn remembered it as a harrowing experience. After
returning to the Pacific, he was involved in an accident on the USS
Lexington that landed him in the Naval Hospital at Guam. From
there, he was transferred to a hospital at Pearl Harbor and, in
December 1944, to the Naval Hospital in Seattle. He received a
medical discharge for “emotional instability” on April 6, 1945. His
mother later told Barbara that when he called home collect from the
hospital, his father refused to accept the call.3
The war never left him. He spent the next several years in and out
of psychiatric hospitals. Today he would probably be diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition not widely
acknowledged at the time. Years later, Barbara remembered that he
had nightmares about the war, waking in the middle of the night in a
cold sweat. In October 1945, the director of student personnel at a
college in Texarkana sent a letter to Merlyn’s parents at their home
in St. Paul, addressed to “Mr. & Mrs. Howard Lerch.” “We had a
young man in Texarkana who registered under the name of Harold
L. Lerch,” the director wrote. “I have discovered through reliable
sources that his real name is Merlyn LaVerne St. George.” Merlyn
had evidently told the school that Howard was his stepfather.
The director had hoped that college would help Merlyn adjust to
civilian life, as so many young men needed to do after the war.
Initially, things seemed to go well. “I found him to be a good
natured and likeable boy during the short time I knew him,” the
director wrote. “He seemed to fit himself well into the group of
students here and showed indications of becoming popular on
campus.” Then he had disappeared, and rumor had it that he had
joined the Army.4
In fact, two weeks earlier, Merlyn, using his real name, sent a
telegram to his mother saying that he had enlisted in the Army.5
(Later Barbara would hear that he had joined under the name
Harold L. Lerch, though it seems unlikely that he had enlisted at all.)
In December 1945, Thelma received another letter from Arkansas,
this time from the Veterans Administration Hospital in North Little
Rock, which specialized in psychiatric care. A Colonel D. D. Campbell
wrote to say that “Mr. St. George is adjusting very satisfactorily here
in the hospital. He is up and about the ward every day, is in good
physical condition. . . . The history is that he was arrested and
accused of breaking into an armory in Texarkana, Arkansas. He was
placed in jail and later sent to this hospital, for examination and
observation.” According to later news reports, Merlyn had stolen a
gun from the armory. An evaluation at the hospital concluded that
he was “psychopathic” and “asocial,” with a tendency toward
“criminalism.” He was nonetheless released in early January 1946.6
Shortly thereafter, Merlyn L. St. George joined the Army at
Louisville, Kentucky, to serve in the Ordnance Department. Whatever
his treatment at North Little Rock had accomplished, he was still a
troubled nineteen-year-old. On April 10, he went AWOL while
stationed in Maryland. When he was tracked down the next day, he
struck “a non-commissioned officer on the back of the head with a
hollow piece of lead pipe,” according to a letter his mother received
from the Army in August. Barbara would later hear that he had been
drunk at the time and driving a Jeep he had taken without
permission. He had been confined to the post stockade for six
months at hard labor, beginning May 13. With good behavior, he
would be eligible for release that September.7
In August 1947, roughly a year later, he arrived in Fresno,
California, and got a room at the Salvation Army hotel and a job as a
“food checker” at the Californian Hotel. Two weeks later, he stole
$646 from the hotel and took a bus to Los Angeles. From there, he
flew to Seattle and signed on as a sailor on a merchant ship. When
the ship made port in San Francisco in September, he was arrested.
He pleaded guilty to theft of the money in Fresno County Superior
Court and was sent to San Quentin.8 After he was paroled in 1949,
he apparently returned to Minnesota, where, in 1951, he may have
received psychiatric treatment at a veterans’ hospital in St. Paul. An
arrest warrant issued in March 1952 charged him with stealing
nearly $4,300 from a theater in Duluth. Before the warrant could be
served, Merlyn St. George disappeared.
Barbara Gordineer met him at a convent in Peekskill in early 1952,
where Heinrick von George, as he now called himself, was
recuperating from a stay at a hospital for a heart murmur. In
exchange, he helped out with chores. Her grandfather was the
caretaker of the convent, and they met as he worked the grounds.
She was seventeen, and he was twenty-six, though he initially lied
about his age. They were married that summer.
He told her he was from Cincinnati and that his parents were
dead. He said that he was raised by an older brother and sister
whom he did not get along with. “For nineteen years we lived a very
happy life,” Barbara told a writer for Esquire after the hijacking.
“Ozzie” was a proud father who loved his kids. He went to Little
League games and Cub Scout meetings. When their youngest
daughter was born, he surprised his wife by painting the dining
room a “shocking pink.” Their only troubles had been financial, “but
we always figured we could pick ourselves up again,” Barbara said.9
Marriage and family grounded von George. It gave him a sense of
purpose and accomplishment. Much of this was the result of
Barbara’s stabilizing influence. The family was devoutly Catholic and
attended Mass every week. A pharmacist at a drugstore von George
worked at said, “The man I knew was a deeply devoted family man.
He talked constantly about his wife and kids.”10
Yet by January 1972, von George had lost the sense of control
that held his life together. Desperate to set things right, he turned to
darker impulses from his past. The fault line between his younger,
troubled self and the stable family man he had become suddenly
snapped.
He left the house in Brockton around nine a.m. on January 25 with
only one dollar, just enough for the bus to Boston. He said that a
ticket and money were waiting for him there, enough to get him to
New York. Barbara couldn’t understand why he refused to take an
overnight bag. He always packed a fresh change of clothes for each
day of a trip, but not this time. Still, as he walked away from the
house, he turned to blow her a kiss as she watched from the
window. She smiled and gave him the peace sign.11
 6
The Money
AMERICAN FLIGHT 119

AT 4:06 P.M.,
an hour and a half after it had taken off, American Flight
119 was back in St. Louis, where Captain Kovalenko taxied to an
open area of the ramp. The hijacker told the stewardesses that all
the women and children could leave. Since no stairs had been
brought to the plane, Jennifer Dumanois deployed the escape chute
at the left-front door for them to slide down. Dumanois and Diana
Rash helped passengers remove their shoes before dropping onto
the chute. Next, the hijacker allowed the men seated on the right
side of the plane to leave, giving him an unobstructed view to the
front.1
Rash suggested to the captain that some of the remaining men in
the left-side seats who had heart and diabetic conditions that
required medication should also be allowed to leave. The hijacker
agreed, and the captain made an announcement over the public
address system.
Suddenly, every man on the plane had a bad heart. In a moment,
they were all on their feet, pressing to get into the aisle. “Every one
of us, to a person, stood up,” said David Spellman, one of the
remaining passengers. Realizing that he was about to lose control,
the hijacker jumped up, brandishing his gun, and yelled for everyone
to sit down. It took another announcement over the public address
system to get the men back in their seats. Thirteen male passengers
remained.2
The hijacker did not want to sit on the ground waiting for the
money and parachutes, afraid that the FBI or police would storm the
plane. After refueling, he told the pilot to “fly around” until
everything he requested was ready on the ground. They took off at
5:17 p.m. Would it be OK to leave the St. Louis airspace? the pilot
asked. Sure, the hijacker replied, as long as they could get back
once everything was set.3
While they were in the air, at around seven p.m., Jane Furlong
relayed a message from the captain that the airline could not get
half a million dollars in St. Louis. The banks had already closed for
the day. Would it be OK if they flew to American’s headquarters at
Dallas–Fort Worth for the money? That was fine, the hijacker told
her, as long as they got the cash. The plane changed course and
picked up speed.4
He kept two or three of the stewardesses seated in front of him in
row 25. Eventually, they felt comfortable enough to turn around,
kneeling on their seats to chat him up. They were scared but wanted
to keep him calm. He wasn’t much older than they were. He said
please and thank you, indicating to Sharon Wetherley, at least, that
he “had been raised right.” She later remembered asking if they
were going “somewhere really fun and exciting.” Were they going to
Cuba? Maybe Algeria? She joked that they could all use the
overtime. The pilots worried that the stewardesses were developing
Stockholm syndrome—identifying with their captor. Instead, it was
the stewardesses who were drawing the hijacker into their world,
coaxing him to see things from their perspective.5
After a while, he asked Wetherley if she would like to sit next to
him and keep him company. “Not really,” she replied, but there
wasn’t much choice. She moved back to the window seat, 26F. The
hijacker sat in 26D, the aisle seat, with his briefcase between them.
From that point on, she was trapped beside him, too nervous even
to get up to use the lavatory.6
The hijacker remained coy but did not mind talking. In fact, he
seemed to like the attention. He knew all about previous hijackings,
particularly those to Cuba and Algeria. He didn’t mind the delay and
preferred not to return to St. Louis before 9:00 or 9:30 p.m. He
planned to leave St. Louis by 10:30 p.m. so that he could bail out in
the dark at an altitude higher than 5,000 feet, using the plane’s aft
stairs. Much later than 10:30 p.m., and he would have to hold the
plane for another twenty-four hours. He asked for flight plans from
the cockpit to San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, and Toronto. Copilot
Richard Sturm got out his manual flight computer, put together the
flight plans on American Airlines forms, and had one of the
stewardesses take them to the hijacker.7
When one of the stewardesses commented, “You’ll be a rich man,”
the hijacker replied that he wouldn’t get to keep it all. It cost
$100,000 to “pull it off,” and his share was between $350,000 and
$400,000. He said that he had associates on the ground whom he
could contact using the plane’s radio and demanded that the plane’s
weather radar be disabled and brought back to him. Rash went to
the cockpit and brought back the radar, which had been pulled from
its panel. The hijacker bragged that with the disabled radar, he could
tell if there were “any tracers on the plane.” He kept the grenade on
the seat beside him and said that he had dynamite in his briefcase.
If the FBI tried to rush the plane, he would “take care of everything.”
He was surrounded by attractive young women and could not resist
showing off.8
While they were in the air, he drank a lot of water. When he used
the lavatory in the rear, he kept the door open. He ate only
sandwiches and wore rubber gloves. Rash hoped to nab a pack of
Winston cigarettes he discarded, but he wiped it down with a damp
cloth before she had the chance. After a while, he took off his
rubber gloves because his hands were sweating. The stewardesses
had blue cotton gloves that they wore to remove hot dishes from the
oven. He asked for a pair, and Wetherley gave him a left glove,
which was all she had at the moment. Months later, she would see it
again, a good deal the worse for wear.9
About ten minutes after passing Fayetteville, Arkansas, on their
way to Fort Worth, the captain sent word that they had the money
waiting in St. Louis. Once again, they turned around.10
At First National Bank in St. Louis, auditor Frank Gresoski collected
the half-million dollars. The bills were microfilmed, and then Gresoski
and a cashier recorded the serial numbers of the first and last bills in
each pack. Gresoski then had the bills put on a counting machine to
verify the exact amount.11
Next, the bills were divided into three groups. The first package
contained $75,000 in hundred-dollar bills and $25,000 in fifty-dollar
bills, making a total of $100,000. The second package contained the
hijacker’s spending money, consisting of $2,000 in tens and $500 in
ones. The third pack consisted of $100,000 in thousand-dollar bills,
$100,000 in five-hundred-dollar bills, $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills,
and $190,000 in twenty-dollar bills, for a total of $400,000. The
grand total was $502,500. Each group was placed in a canvas
currency sack. Together the three sacks weighed about forty
pounds.12
Gresoski and the cashier “commandeered” a Brink’s armored
truck, using it to make two trips to the airport. On the first run, they
delivered the first two sacks, which totaled $102,500, arriving at the
airport around 8:30 p.m. At around 10:00 p.m., they delivered the
third bag with the remaining $400,000, handing it off to Ronald
Hutcheson, manager of ramp services for American Airlines in St.
Louis, and the FBI special agent in charge, William Sullivan. All of
the bills were put in an American Airlines mail pouch, a heavy brown
canvas bag with leather handles. At around 10:45 p.m., Hutcheson
loaded the money into the back of an American Airlines station
wagon for delivery to the plane.13
As American 119 approached St. Louis, the hijacker sent Furlong
to the cockpit to retrieve the typed hijack note. When she returned,
he realized he had given the pilots the wrong note. The first one he
sent to the cockpit was typed all in black, a carbon copy of the
original, which was typed in black and red, to emphasize certain
instructions. He sent her back to the cockpit with the red and black
note for the pilots to read.14
Before giving the note to the pilots, Furlong quickly read it over.
The grammar made sense, but “the spelling was atrocious,” she said.
It began, “Do not panic. This is a hijacking,” she later recalled. The
demands for the money, parachutes, shovels, and so on, were in
red. After the pilots read the second note, Furlong took it back to
the hijacker.15
As they prepared to land, the hijacker positioned Dumanois, Rash,
and Furlong in front of him in row 25 as a human shield, with
Wetherley beside him in row 26. By 9:30 p.m., they were back on
the ground.
 7
Mohawk Airlines Flight 452

AT THE ALBANY County Airport, Heinrick von George bought a one-way

ticket to LaGuardia Airport in New York for twenty-two dollars. He
took a seat in the last row of Mohawk Airlines Flight 452, a Fairchild
227 twin-engine turboprop. He apparently knew that hijackers
usually sat in the back, so that they could keep an eye on the rest of
the cabin.
Eileen McAllister had joined Mohawk Airlines in 1961, making her,
at thirty-five, one of its senior stewardesses. Her day had begun at
LaGuardia at noon, as she later told a writer for Good Housekeeping.
From there, she had flown to Albany and back and then to Albany
again, where von George boarded shortly before six p.m. There were
forty-three passengers, one fewer than the plane’s capacity. Soon
after lifting off at 6:05 p.m., she took drink orders and went to the
buffet at the back to begin mixing cocktails. A man in a heavy coat
got up to use the lavatory, which was directly opposite the buffet.
McAllister had to shift back a little to let him open the door. When he
came out, he had his coat draped over his arm. As she started to
move aside, she felt something hard against her ribs. “It’s a gun,” he
said. “You’re being hijacked.”1
“You’re kidding,” she replied. Who hijacked a commuter flight from
Albany to LaGuardia? But the man looked tense and serious. “Where
do you want to go?” she asked.
“White Plains.”
“No problem. It’s on the way.”
She called copilot Bill O’Hara on the interphone. “You’re not
serious,” he said. She was, telling him that along with the gun, the
man had two bombs. O’Hara and Captain Karl Rieth, who had been a
Mohawk pilot since 1961, locked the cockpit door and set the
transponder to squawk 7500, the emergency code for a hijacking.2
Then McAllister did what stewardesses always did in these
situations: she began working to defuse tension and establish a
connection with the hijacker. The pressurization system was leaking
slightly, faintly hissing through the back door, which meant that she
and von George could talk standing in the back without the rest of
the passengers hearing.
“Look, I’ve taken orders for drinks. People will be coming back
asking for them. They’ll get suspicious,” she told him. “If you let me
serve them, I won’t pull anything.”
Von George agreed but told her that if she opened the cockpit
door, he would start shooting. As McAllister served drinks, he
returned to his seat, watching her warily.3
Meanwhile, Mohawk Airlines, the FBI, and the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) scrambled to set up a response, the sort of
procedure that had been used in other hijackings. They established
an open telephone line that eventually included

• FAA hijack coordinator in Washington, DC

• FBI headquarters in Washington, DC
• FBI agents at the White Plains airport control tower, at the Boston Air Traffic
Control Center, and in New York City
• FAA personnel at the White Plains and Albany control towers, in New York,
and in Boston
• Air Traffic Control Centers, Poughkeepsie Flight Service Station, and
Washington Medical Center
• US Coast Guard at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York
• McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey
• North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)4

John Malone, assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, sped
to White Plains from Manhattan, still in his tuxedo from a dinner
party. Shortly after nine p.m., a second Mohawk Airlines 227 touched
down in White Plains carrying John Carver, the airline’s executive
vice president, and Ralph Colliander, the vice president of flight
operations. Colliander took over communications between the tower
and the hijacked plane.5
When the “Fasten Seat Belts” sign came on as they approached
White Plains, McAllister asked von George if she could walk through
the cabin and check on the passengers. He agreed, trusting her
more all the time.
“Is this LaGuardia?” a woman asked her.
“Oh, yes. We had a good tailwind,” McAllister replied.
When the plane landed at 6:57 p.m., she immediately went to von
George and asked if he would release the passengers, who were still
oblivious to what was happening. “Why not let them off? We don’t
need them,” she said. Again, he agreed.
Captain Rieth stopped abruptly on the runway, and McAllister
threw open the back door, announcing their arrival. All forty-two
passengers filed out past McAllister, with von George standing
behind her, the gun in her back.
“Is this LaGuardia?” they kept asking as they peered into the
darkness. “It doesn’t look like LaGuardia.” McAllister smiled and
assured them it was. It was only when they saw ground crew
running and waving that they understood what was happening.
Once the passengers were gone and the door was closed, von
George spelled out his demands. He wanted $200,000 in fives and
tens and two parachutes. He told McAllister to order jump boots in
her size and cold-weather gear. He set a deadline of 10:30 p.m. “If
the money and chutes aren’t here by then, the bombs go off,” he
said.6
Meanwhile, the FAA hijacking coordinator in Washington advised
fueling the plane as slowly as possible. The fuel truck did not pull up
until 7:26 p.m. Stalling was always one of the first tactics the FBI
and FAA used with hijackers, as they did with almost every hostage
situation. Even had they not been stalling, it took several hours to
collect the parachutes and money.
The Air Force sent four parachutes with homing devices from
McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey aboard a Lockheed C-141. A
Coast Guard helicopter delivered four more chutes from Floyd
Bennett Field in Brooklyn, two with tracking devices. At the same
time, the Air Force prepared to scramble chase planes, F-102 or F-
106 fighters, from Dover, Pittsburgh, or Griffiss Air Force Base in
Rome, New York. An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker, used for aerial
refueling, just happened to be over Albany with six hours of fuel on
board and offered to stand by and track the parachutes once they
left the plane.
The money took longer. Like most hijackers who planned to bail
out at night, when it would be more difficult to track them, von
George had not considered that bank vaults had timers that
prevented them from opening after hours. It was 11:20 p.m. before
the money left First National City Bank in New York. Television crews
monitored the control tower frequency and reported live from the
airport. With worries about a “heist” on the way to White Plains
because of all the news coverage, the convoy with the $200,000
included police and representatives of the bank and airline. They got
lost on the way and had to backtrack before finding the airport.7
As they waited, von George compulsively chewed ice chips and
ordered McAllister to turn out all the cabin lights so that no one
could see inside. At the same time, his rapport with her grew.
“I know you think I’m an animal,” he said.
“No, I think you’re a human being,” she replied.
He said he was following orders and did not even know where
they were going next. He said his name was Pete and that he was
married and had children. “I think he trusted me,” McAllister later
said. “I did everything I told him I would do, and he knew I wasn’t
afraid of him. Fear is something you can sense. I thought I had the
whole situation under control. He had gone along with lots of my
suggestions, like serving the passengers drinks and letting them off
the plane, and that was my hope—that he would continue to listen
to me.” He offered her a package of marshmallow cookies that he
had brought along.
Even from behind the cockpit door, Rieth was impressed with how
calmly McAllister managed the situation. He radioed the tower that
she was a “cool cookie.”8
 Meanwhile, three FBI agents crawled under the plane but had no
way to get inside. Someone suggested flooding the cabin with
carbon monoxide. The pilots had oxygen masks, but the “girl,” as
they referred to McAllister, would suffer the same fate as the
hijacker. All the while, an increasingly raucous crowd watched from
the airport bar, which was packed into the early morning hours,
having a banner night. At 10:16 p.m., Rieth, who had been in the
cockpit for more than five hours, radioed the tower that he “could
sure use a john.” “Tell no one to be under the window,” he
cautioned.9
As the 10:30 deadline passed and they continued to wait for the
money, von George grew more agitated. He moved from window to
window, trying to figure out what the FBI was up to. When the
tower offered to send a parachute expert to instruct McAllister, he
replied that he was an expert and could give her all the instruction
she needed. In fact, he had no parachute experience.10
By midnight, they had been stuck on the plane for more than six
hours, and von George was growing increasingly desperate. At 12:11
a.m., Rieth radioed that he “sounds like a religious fanatic. Wants
FBI to make peace with their maker as he has made peace with his.”
Forty minutes later, Rieth reported that von George was “getting
irrational, he will put bullet into cockpit if money not put on soon.”
After another four minutes, Rieth added, “Man very very upset.”
Rieth tried to issue an ultimatum of his own. He told von George
that he would not take off with a bomb on board. Von George said
that was fine. He was an “expert pilot” and “if necessary will shoot
crew and take aircraft off himself,” as Rieth reported to the tower. It
was another bluff. Von George knew nothing about flying a plane.11
At 1:30 a.m., the money was finally passed through the cockpit
window. Copilot O’Hara brought two chutes, which were too big to
fit through the window, to the forward cargo door, where von
George waited, holding a gun to McAllister’s ear. Once everything
was on board, he ordered Rieth to take off and circle the airport. By
two a.m., they were back in the air.12
 Von George lifted the bag with the money onto the rear buffet
and, with McAllister standing beside him, flung it open. The sight of
so much money suddenly made them giddy. “We looked at each
other and laughed,” McAllister later said.
“Did you ever see this much money at one time before?” von
George marveled.13
Using the interphone, he ordered Rieth to fly to Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, staying below 15,000 feet. The second Mohawk
Fairchild 227 followed a minute behind, carrying four armed FBI
agents. Four Air Force jets also shadowed the hijacked turboprop.
When von George told Rieth that he had a device that could detect
nearby transponder codes, they turned off their transponders.
The FAA advised Rieth to keep the plane pressurized so that they
would know when the hijacker opened the door. They were
squawking code 3100 on the plane’s transponder. When he bailed
out, the FAA told Rieth to immediately squawk 7700, the emergency
transponder code, akin to dialing 911 on a phone, so that they could
pinpoint the spot on radar. After that, copilot O’Hara would sweep
the cabin looking for the bombs.14
When they reached Pittsfield, von George told Rieth to circle the
area. Increasingly frantic, he rushed from window to window “like a
madman,” as McAllister later said, evidently looking for something
familiar. When he ordered McAllister to put on her chute, she
refused. “Pete, you said you wouldn’t hurt me. You promised,” she
said. “I’m not going. It’s suicide.” She had won his trust, and her
defiance was enough to make him change his mind.
As McAllister sat with her back to him, von George turned on a
reading light and shuffled through some papers. After turning the
light off, he announced, “It’s a good thing I read my orders! I’m
supposed to go to Poughkeepsie.”
He was improvising, anxious to maintain control.15 Using the
interphone, he told Rieth he wanted a four-door Ford with a police
radio waiting on the runway with the engine running and the lights
on when they arrived. He reminded Rieth that he still had the bombs
and was taking McAllister with him. He also claimed to have planted
bombs on two other airliners, set to go off the next day. Once he
was safely away, he would contact the New York Times with
additional information.16
The plane landed at Poughkeepsie at 3:22 a.m., followed closely
by the chase plane. As a detective drove the car up to the plane and
then walked away, the four FBI agents from the chase plane crept
up in the dark. After the copilot placed the bag with the money in
the car, von George, holding the bombs in his left hand, grabbed
McAllister’s wrist with his right. He led her to the car and forced her
into the seat next to him. She decided that at the first opportunity,
she “was going to hit him with something and make a run for it.”
She never got the chance.17
Before von George could drive away, three FBI agents rushed the
car from the front to distract him. At the same time, a fourth agent
darted up from behind and pulled the passenger’s-side door open.
Shoving a shotgun across McAllister’s chest, he ordered von George
to surrender. According to one account, von George “screamed
unintelligibly” and pointed his gun at the agent. The two blasts went
off simultaneously, inches from McAllister’s head. As McAllister
remembered it, it was only the FBI agent who fired as von George
reached for the parking-brake release. It turned out that von
George’s gun was only a starter’s pistol, firing blanks. The shotgun
blast was very real, slamming him against the driver’s-side door and
completely severing his windpipe.18
Afterward, an FBI agent described McAllister as “very cool dealing
with this maniac.” When a reporter suggested that she had been
through a “harrowing ordeal,” she shrugged it off.
“I feel fine,” she said, “just glad to be here.”
It turned out that the bombs were only two Boy Scout canteens
filled with water. It had all been a bluff. Acquaintances of von George
were stunned. “He would kid around a lot, but he wouldn’t hurt
anyone,” said a former boss at a grocery store in Peekskill.19
Barbara von George and her children had no idea what had
happened until FBI agents knocked on her door that morning. When
agents opened the driver’s-side door after von George had been
shot, his body tumbled out onto the pavement. They left it there for
two hours, blood pooling around his head, giving news
photographers plenty of time to document the scene. It was a photo
the Bureau was happy to see featured in papers the next day,
including the one that arrived at the von George home that
afternoon, with the photo on the front page.
After she had buried her husband, Barbara got a call from his
mother, Thelma St. George, a woman she had thought dead. Two
weeks after the funeral, Thelma came for a visit, to meet the seven
grandchildren she had not known she had. Barbara kept the house
in Brockton and raised her children in a stable, supportive home.
They moved on, refusing to let the hijacking define their family or
their memories of everything that came before.20
Hijackers like von George fit a profile. They had a history of
emotional trauma, often in the form of PTSD from military service,
and previous brushes with the law and time in prison. They had
experienced a recent setback, a triggering event that made them
desperate to set things right. They were daring but not criminally
sophisticated. There are, after all, easier ways to steal money. They
constructed elaborate plans and spun ruses involving secret devices
and associates on the ground. They were in their mid-twenties to
mid-forties, usually at one end or the other of this range
(corresponding to service in World War II or Vietnam). Above all,
they wanted to feel respected.
The hijacker of American 119 fit this profile almost exactly.
 8
The Pilots
AMERICAN FLIGHT 119

ART KOESTER WAS a check pilot for American Airlines, responsible for
making sure that American’s pilots stayed current on the planes they
flew. He grew up in Mount Prospect, Illinois, a few miles from O’Hare
Airport. He had always had a taste for adventure and a love of
speed. Added to these was a sense of mischief. When he was seven,
he climbed behind the wheel of a cousin’s Chevrolet with his five-
year-old brother, Johnny, in tow. For three hours, they raced over
Illinois roads, hitting 80 miles an hour before a truck driver spotted
them near Des Plaines. The story was featured in Life magazine,
including a photo of Art smiling behind the wheel and Johnny
looking apprehensive beside him. The escapade earned him
probation in juvenile court.1
Fifteen years later, in March 1956, he was again in Life, this time
for earning his wings as a Marine fighter pilot. The accompanying
photo showed Koester seated in a red Thunderbird convertible in
front of a row of Navy jet fighters, looking back at the camera with a
huge grin. Looking at that smile, you can’t help but feel his joy. The
caption reads, “Speeder at 7, Jet Pilot at 22.” He had the world by
the tail, and he knew it. He met his “soul mate,” Donna Mills, in the
sixth grade. They were married in 1958 after reconnecting in Florida,
where they were both living. “If you ain’t havin’ fun, you’re doin’
something wrong,” she remembered him saying.
As a Marine aviator, Koester flew off aircraft carriers in the Far
East, based in the Philippines. When he deployed overseas, he could
not take his Kawasaki motorcycle, so he learned to play the ukulele
to pass the time. He had grown up in a musical family. His older
sisters had lovely voices, and his father played the piano. The whole
family would sing together. His flying career in the Marines came to
an abrupt end when he broke his neck diving into a swimming pool,
leaving him paralyzed for six months.2
Koester used the GI Bill to enroll at the University of Illinois, but
he also applied to fly for American Airlines, where his sister was a
stewardess. During his first semester, a recruiter called and asked,
“Do you want to stay in school, or do you want to spend the rest of
your life flying from party to party?”
“Is that a trick question?” Koester replied. Of course, he wanted to
fly. When American laid him off shortly afterward, a fairly common
occurrence for new airline pilots at the time, he got a job flying a
twin-engine Beechcraft for a guy who imported “stuff” from Mexico.
“We’re talking dirt airstrips, landing at night . . .” Koester later joked.
After that, he flew for a couple of regional airlines. Then American
hired him back. He started his career with American flying propeller-
driven DC-6s and DC-7s, eventually flying just about every plane in
the airline’s fleet, before becoming part of American’s management
as a check pilot. After that, he was responsible for periodically flying
with American’s pilots to check their proficiency.3
On Friday, June 23, 1972, Koester had already worked a fourteen-
hour day, giving two check rides to Chicago-based captains,
involving a couple of round trips from Chicago to Washington, DC.
He was walking down the concourse at O’Hare on his way back to
his office when he spotted Captain Leroy Berkebile, American’s chief
pilot in Chicago, along with Captain Larry Tennis, another American
check pilot, both in uniform. He couldn’t imagine what had brought
Berky, as his colleagues called him, out so late.4
Berkebile had grown up in western Pennsylvania, earning his
pilot’s license in 1939. He flew SB2C dive bombers off carriers in the
Pacific during World War II and F4U Corsairs and jet fighters in
Korea, where he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. Once,
when the engine of his Corsair was destroyed by antiaircraft fire, he
made a dead-stick landing on an emergency strip on an island barely
a half mile across, where two American intelligence officers were
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 “Still, we must remember how singularly, of late years, the knowledge of the
introduction of cholera by persons coming from infected districts has increased, and
how very striking are the instances of this kind already recorded in several works on
influenza.
“In some cases, again, isolation or seclusion of a community, as in prisons, has given
immunity; or at least that community has not been attacked.”
The great rapidity of spread has caused even in 1918 some temporary doubt as to the
contagiousness of the disease. Thus, Zinsser wrote:
“The opinion of direct and indirect transmission from man to man is also well
supported by a detailed study of the epidemiology of individual outbreaks. In our own
experience with epidemics such as those at Chaumont, Baccarat and other places, the
suddenness with which the malady attacked large numbers of people at almost one and
the same time, caused me at first to be exceedingly skeptical of accepting transmission
by contact as the only means of conveyance. We considered food and insect transmission
as possibilities, and tried our best to find grounds for involving such agencies. But in
every case we were forced to return to the conclusion that direct and indirect contact
between men came nearest to doing justice to all observed facts.”
There have been many examples reported from personal experience to show that
influenza is transmitted from man to man. Two objections, however, have had to be met,
before this view was generally accepted. First, it has been claimed by some that the
disease spread more rapidly from an assumed focus than individuals could travel, and
second, that instances were on record of cases occurring spontaneously in isolated
communities. Yet a third argument formerly raised against the contagious character of
the disease was the claim that it broke out in mass attacks, that large numbers became ill
on the same day without the occurrence of isolated antecedent cases. The splendid work
of epidemiologists following the 1889 epidemic appears to have answered all of these
objections. Many, such as Leichtenstern, have gone into great detail on this subject. In
fact, at that time this was the question of greatest importance. Today we assume the
correctness of the hypothesis, and pass on to consideration of other subjects of more
recent development. We will, therefore, review very hurriedly some of the evidence
quoted to prove that influenza is transmitted only from man to man and only by human
intercourse.
Isolated places.—Has it ever been shown that individuals completely isolated from
communication with communities where influenza is present have, during an epidemic,
developed the disease? Leichtenstern, after a comprehensive review, concludes as
follows: “We have not a single example on record where influenza has attacked
individuals in completely isolated localities, as on mountain tops and mountain passes.
Study of this has been undertaken in Switzerland by F. Schmid. The same has been true
of ships at sea, as has been shown chiefly from the English Marine Reports. There have
been reports of influenza occurring in mid-ocean and particularly in the earlier
epidemics, but the information has been insufficient.”
Parkes at even an earlier period observed: “I cannot but consider that we require
better evidence of ships being attacked in mid-ocean. In some of the quoted instances
the ships had been at a port either known to be infected or in which influenza was really
present, although it had not become epidemic. As we are ignorant of the exact period of
incubation some men may have been infected before sailing.”
Critical investigation into stories of spontaneous infection in isolated localities such as
ships at sea and island lighthouses will quite invariably demonstrate that these popular
reports have been distortions of the actual facts. One or two examples will suffice.
Abbott records an example: “An impression having gained some credence that influenza
had appeared on board the squadron of naval vessels which sailed from Boston in
December, 1889, while on their course across the Atlantic and before their arrival in
Europe, a letter was addressed by the writer to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of
the United States Navy for information upon this point, to which a reply was received, as
follows:
“The ‘Chicago,’ ‘Boston,’ ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Yorktown’ left Boston December 7, 1889, for
Lisbon, Portugal. The first three arrived at Lisbon on December 21st without having
touched at any port en route. The ‘Yorktown’ arrived at that port December 23d, having,
stopped about twenty-four hours at Fayal, Azores.... Influenza first appeared on the
‘Chicago’ December 23d, on the ‘Boston’ December 28th, on the ‘Atlanta’ December
30th and on the ‘Yorktown’ December 28th.
“Influenza was prevailing in Lisbon at the date of arrival of the squadron.”
In March, 1920, the author was notified of a somewhat similar story which he
undertook to trace. The results show well the inaccuracy of verbal transmission through
several individuals. A letter was first sent to the Quarantine Officer at Portland, Maine:
“It has been reported to us that in a lighthouse just outside of Portland, Maine, there has
been a rather interesting prank played by influenza. We are told that three men and one
woman live in the lighthouse; that during the 1918 influenza epidemic the woman
contracted the disease while none of the men became sick, and that in the present
epidemic all three of the men became sick with the disease and the woman remained
well. It was claimed that they had had no communication with the mainland for some
time before the men became ill,” etc.
The reply was as follows: “I have inquired of the Light House Inspector’s office in
Portland and they know of no stations to which the terms of your inquiry would apply.
“At the Boon Island station, there are three keepers with families. At the Half Way
Rock station, there are three keepers but no woman. The Inspector does not seem to
know of any station where there are three men and one woman.”
A second letter, sent to the Inspector of Lighthouses at Portland brought corroborative
information:
“The Boon Island Light Station was stricken by this epidemic in the following manner:
The keeper, his wife and five children were all stricken, the keeper himself having had
the hardest battle, having apparently been subject to same while ashore in Portsmouth,
N. H. after provisions, supplies, etc. The 2d assistant’s wife and two children were also
stricken, but the 2d assistant, himself, and the 1st assistant keeper did not contract the
malady in spite of the fact that they were all confined on a small island working together
at the station.
“During the year 1920 none of the keepers or their families, consisting of thirteen in
number, were affected. The Halfway Rock Light Station where three keepers are
employed did not contract this malady either in the years 1918 or 1920.
“For your information I might add that during the inspection trip in the months of
January, February and March, 1920, all of the light stations in this district were visited,
and it was found that they were all enjoying good health and had not been visited by the
epidemic, with the possible exception of three stations which are located either on the
mainland or close to where the keeper or his family were able to visit the nearby cities or
towns.”
 Although it has not been shown that completely isolated places have been visited by
the disease, there is abundant evidence that such places have remained influenza free as
long as the isolation has remained complete. Islands and lighthouses, which have not
been in communication with the mainland, individuals living isolated on mountain tops,
and ships at sea remained free from influenza even in the presence of a pandemic, as
long as they did not come into communication with individuals sick with the disease.
The following places remained free from influenza throughout the 1889 epidemic: the
Isle of Man, several of the islands of the West Indies, particularly the Bahamas, Granada
and St. Lucia, also the British Honduras, British Guiana, and the Seychelle Islands.
Even in 1918, when the paths of commerce reached nearly every portion of the world,
we have examples of relative immunity of isolated places. Thus we know that the
Esquimaux were attacked late in the course of the pandemic, and we have the statement
of Barthélemy who traveled in 1919 to some of the oasis towns of the Sahara Desert, and
there discovered that there had not only been no influenza up to that time, but also that
they had not even heard of the pandemic.
Another type of isolated place is the closed institution. As early as 1709, Lancisi
remarked that the prisons of the Inquisition in Rome remained free from influenza.
Twenty-one prisons in Germany in 1889–90 remained entirely free from the disease.
This was true of 39 prisons in England, some of which were in cities where the epidemic
was most extensive. Linroth, who observed this same phenomenon in Sweden, makes
the wise remark that, “the influenza conquers more easily the space of 500 to 1,000
kilometers than it does the small barrier made by a prison wall.” A convent in
Charlottenburg housing one hundred women remained entirely free during the 1889–90
epidemic.
As a rule institutions of this sort have been unable to maintain a complete quarantine
throughout the period of an epidemic, and the relative immunity has been demonstrated
more in late invasions, at a time when the restrictions have become somewhat lax. Thus,
in 1918, Winslow and Rogers, report that in an orphan asylum in New Haven,
Connecticut, which had completely escaped during the month of October when the
epidemic was at its height, one of the Sisters and the priest in charge came down with
influenza about December 15th. By the 27th of December 127 cases had occurred in the
institution within twenty-four hours, and by January 7th there had been 424 cases, with
seven deaths out of a total population of 464. The probable source of the sudden
outbreak of December 27th seems to have been the Sister first affected who, when
convalescent, resumed her duties in the kitchen, which included the inspection and
handling of the milk given out to the children.
Crowd gatherings.—Yet another phenomenon which would lead us to conclude that
human intercourse is the most potent factor in the transmission of influenza is the fact
that there is frequently a high increase in the influenza rate following crowd gatherings.
Parkes observed long ago that persons in overcrowded habitations, particularly in some
epidemics, suffered especially, and several instances are on record of a large school or a
barracks being first attacked and the disease prevailing there for some days, before it
became prevalent in the towns around.
In England, the weekly market played an important role in the spread of the disease in
1889. One frequently saw such reports as that: “The first case of influenza was a man
who went to London daily.” Or, “All the earliest cases were men going to London daily,
while their wives and families were later affected.”
 In the epidemics at San Quentin Prison, it was noted that apices of incidence usually
occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday. During the first epidemic it was these days of the
second and third weeks. Stanley sees a direct connection between this fact and the fact
that every Sunday morning large groups of the men were crowded together in a
comparatively small auditorium where they saw moving pictures. On Sunday, October
20th, they sought to eliminate this source of spread by having a band concert in the open
air, but the prisoners crowded around the band and were loud in their cheers, and on the
following day there was a large increase in hospital admissions.
On November 24th after the second epidemic had apparently ceased the picture
shows were again started after having been closed for over six weeks. The following
Tuesday and Wednesday twenty-four well defined new cases were admitted to the
hospital. On Thanksgiving Day there was a field meet between the various departments
of the prison. About 200 prisoners took active part, while 1,600 prisoners were
spectators. The meet was held in the open air, but the prisoners were closely packed and
they cheered and yelled. For the three days following this celebration there were 9, 5 and
8 patients admitted respectively.
In discussing the recrudescence of influenza in Boston in November and December,
Woodward remarks as follows:
“Whether or not it may be more than a succession of coincidences it is certainly of
interest to note that the November outbreak of influenza showed itself three days after
the Peace Day celebration on November 12th, when the streets, eating places and public
conveyances were jammed with crowds; that the December epidemic began to manifest
itself after the Thanksgiving holiday, with its family re-unions and visiting; and that
reported cases mounted rapidly during the period of Christmas shopping, reaching a
maximum a week after the holiday.” That this may have been a coincidence is indicated
by the fact that, according to reports by Pearl and others this was not consistently true in
other large cities.
Dr. Meredith Davies records the case of a hostel in Wales accommodating 200
students. Infection was introduced on October 19th on the occasion of a dance attended
by some students from an infected institution in the neighborhood. Four cases occurred
on the 20th and within the short space of five days seventy-nine students out of the 200
were attacked.
Parsons found numerous similar examples in the epidemic of 1889. In 1918 it was
frequently observed that among American Soldiers in France, those troops quartered in
barracks suffered a much more rapid spread of the disease than those billetted out
among the houses of the towns.
Mass attack.—Another argument formerly raised against the contagious character
was the claim that it broke out in mass attack, and large numbers became ill on the same
day without the occurrence of isolated antecedent cases. The first cases of such epidemic
diseases as the plague and small pox became a matter of record because of the
accompanying high mortality, while in influenza, with its relatively low death rate the
record usually begins only after a comparatively large mass of individuals have been
attacked.
Watson in 1847 observed as follows: “Although the general descent of the malady is,
as I have said, very sudden and diffused, scattered cases of it, like the first droppings of a
thunder shower, have usually been remembered as having preceded it. The disorder is
most violent at the commencement of the visitation; then its severity abates; and the
epidemic is mostly over in about six weeks. Yet the morbific influence would seem to
have a longer duration. In a given place nearly all the inhabitants who are susceptible of
the distemper suffer it within that period, or become proof against its power. But
strangers, who, after that period, arrive from uninfected places have not, apparently, the
same immunity.”
Parkes in 1876 observed that, “When the disease enters a town it has occasionally
attacked numbers of the inhabitants almost simultaneously. But more frequently its
course is somewhat slower; it attacks a few families first and then in a few days rapidly
spreads; the accounts of thousands of persons being at once attacked at the onset of the
disease are chiefly taken from the older records, in which the suddenness of the
outbreak is exaggerated. Frequently, perhaps always, in a great city the outbreak is made
up by a number of localized attacks, certain streets or districts being more affected than
others, or being for a time solely affected, and in this way it successively passes to
different parts of the city. It has generally occurred in a great city before appearing in the
smaller towns and villages round it and sometimes these towns, though in the
neighborhood, have not been invaded for some weeks.
“In some cases and perhaps a large number, it breaks out after persons ill with
influenza have arrived from infected places.
“The decline in any great town is less rapid than its rise, and usually occupies from
four to six weeks, or sometimes longer.”
Detailed studies of the Munich epidemic of 1889 and numerous similar studies of the
recent epidemic, which will be referred to later, have shown a period of two or three
weeks of steadily increasing numbers of cases before the height of the epidemic was
reached.
Droplet infection and spread through inanimate objects.—The actual mode of spread
of the virus of influenza from one individual to another is unknown. The more generally
accepted explanation is that the infecting agent leaves the body through the respiratory
tract, usually in the spray of coughing or talking; contagion is by droplet infection, as is
sometimes the case in other respiratory infections. Thorne and others have called
attention to the capillary congestion of the conjunctivae very early in the disease. They
suggest that possibly the mucous membrane of the eye is the site of infection.
There has recently been considerable discussion concerning the spread of influenza
through inanimate objects.
Leichtenstern reviews the reports of 1889–93 in which influenza was supposed to
have been transmitted through wares, merchandise and other inanimate objects. He
concluded that the evidence in all of the cases cited was insufficient for conclusive proof.
Such an example was the supposed importation of the disease in goods sent from Russia
to the Grands Magazins du Louvre at Paris. In one day 100 people became ill and in a
few more 500 were sick with influenza. The explanation was that the germs had been
imported in goods sent from Russia to the store. Detailed investigation showed that this
could not have been the case because no goods had been received from Russia for a
period of three years. Another example is that of one of the two winter caretakers at the
St. Gothard Hospice. One of the two men went down into the valley where he purchased
supplies. Ten days after his return the man who had remained in the Hospice fell ill with
influenza while his comrade remained well. It was stated that influenza was introduced
into Basel by goods shipped to that place from the Magazins du Louvre in Paris. The first
case occurred in a man who had been working at unpacking these goods.
Lynch and Cumming believe that droplet infection plays but a minor role in the
spread of sputum-borne diseases, but that insanitary methods of washing dishes and
eating utensils was the chief cause for the high rates of “sputum-borne” infections both
in army and civilian life in 1918. They found that among 31,000 troops eating from
tableware which was cleaned by kitchen police, the influenza rate was 51 per 1,000,
while among 35,000 eating from mess kits which each individual washed himself the
rate was 252 per 1,000. “Eighty-four per cent. of the cases occurred among those whose
hands were contaminated by washing their own eating utensils.”
Among 17,236 employees of hotels, restaurants and department stores, who ate from
machine washed dishes, there occurred 349 cases of influenza, while among 4,175 who
ate from hand washed dishes there were 429 cases. The rate was but 20 per 1,000 in the
former, while in the latter group it reached 103 per 1,000. Here again the chances of
infection between the two groups were as one is to five.
These authors have records covering 252,186 individuals in scattered institutions in
the United States. Among those eating from machine washed dishes the rate was 108 per
1,000 while those eating from hand washed dishes suffered at the rate of 324 per 1,000.
The ratio was 1 to 3 between the two groups. Seventy-five per cent. of the cases occurred
in that group which ate from dishes not disinfected with boiling water. They do not state
the number of individuals in each of the two groups.
Lynch and Cumming claim that in the act of coughing only a few organisms are
expelled from the mouth, rarely over 1,500, and conclude that transmission by direct
contact through the air route but rarely, if ever, takes place. While about 1,500
organisms are expelled onto the floor by an act of coughing, a sterile glove wiped across
the lips may pick up nearly 2,000,000 organisms. Such organisms may be readily
transferred to inanimate objects which are handled by many people.
Hemolytic streptococci and pneumococci may be isolated with great regularity from
the hands of carriers or patients, from table ware, inanimate objects touched by these
patients, and from floor dust. Diphtheria and tubercle bacilli have been isolated from the
hands and eating utensils of patients. The average count of a large number of restaurant
dishwater specimens was 4,000,000 bacteria per c.c. The temperature of this water
averaged 43° C. and the dishes were practically never scalded. The water was often so
highly polluted, “that the dishes are more highly contaminated after they are washed
than before washing begins. The spoon or fork is often freer from organisms just after
being used by the restaurant patron than when taken from the restaurant’s polluted dish
water.”
Major John S. Billings, epidemiologist at Camp Custer, reported that one of the larger
organizations did not properly observe the regulation requiring that all mess kits and
table equipment be properly sterilized. The disease appeared early and spread unusually
rapidly in this particular organization.
In summarizing the subject of transmission through utensils, we may say that the
evidence is suggestive but inconclusive. It is possible, even probable, that this is one
mode of transmission. That it is the most important has not been proved. Lynch and
Cumming do not take into consideration that the regiments with more sanitary methods
of cleansing the dishes are apt to be those regiments with more sanitary habits
throughout their daily routine. Those restaurants using mechanical dish washers are
usually the cleaner restaurants.
Pontano in Italy is quoted by the Office International d’Hygiène Publique as having
observed in his epidemiological study that there was a constant connection between the
living conditions and the severity of the complications. Notable differences were
observed in neighboring houses according to the hygienic conditions of the various
households.
Healthy carriers and convalescents.—Leichtenstern, who apparently accepted the
Pfeiffer bacillus as the cause of influenza, did not believe that the disease could be
transmitted by healthy carriers. He based this assumption on the statement, made by
Pfeiffer, that the influenza bacillus was only found in acute influenza cases. In the past
few years it has been abundantly shown, however, that the influenza bacillus can and
does exist on the mucous membranes of healthy individuals.
The outbreak in an orphan asylum in New Haven has been previously described.
There the probable source of the sharp outbreak of December 27th seemed to be the
sister who, on convalescence, resumed her duties in the kitchen. There she inspected
and handled the milk served to the children. This suggests the possibility of infection
being propagated by convalescents and by food.
At present we do not know whether or not a patient remains infectious after the acute
symptoms have subsided; we are ignorant as to whether a convalescent patient can
transmit the disease; and we are not certain whether the organism found in healthy
carriers is virulent or not. The information at hand strongly indicates that apparently
healthy individuals may transmit the infection, but the wide distribution of the disease,
with multiple possible sources of infection for each individual, and the relative
insusceptibility of experimentally exposed individuals has made it impossible so far to
answer these questions satisfactorily.
 General Manner of Spread in Individual Localities.
Having discussed the mode of propagation of influenza among individuals we will
follow the disease as it attacks one person after another in a community and study the
epidemiologic picture, drawn no longer with the individual as a unit, but with the
community as the unit.
We must here distinguish between a primary epidemic, the first wave of a progressing
pandemic, and the secondary type in which may be grouped those large or small
recurrences which light up for a period of one to three or more years after the primary
wave.
Primary type of epidemic.—One of the first important statistical studies on this
subject was that of P. Friedrich who charted the influenza morbidity in Munich between
the months of December, 1889, and February, 1890. Similar observations have been
made by Parsons, Raats, Linroth, and H. Schmid, following the 1889 epidemic.
Between the occurrence of the first known case of influenza and the time of the first
very definite increase in influenza incidence in a community, which interval may be
termed the invasion period, there is as a rule two weeks. During this period, of course,
more and more cases are occurring, but remain usually sufficiently isolated to attract no
public notice. From this point the epidemic develops very rapidly and reaches its peak,
usually within two or at most three weeks. In another two or three weeks the incidence
has fallen away nearly to normal. The epidemic period comprises from four to six weeks,
or, including the invasion period, an entire duration of six to eight weeks. This is the
picture produced in a community by a primary uncomplicated epidemic of influenza.
Greenwood well describes the salient features of a primary epidemic as “first a rapid and
quasi-symmetrical evolution, and second, a frequency closely concentrated around the
maximum.” In other words the duration is short, the rise to a peak rapid, and the
subsequent fall equally rapid. He showed that in the July and August, 1918 epidemic in
Great Britain nearly 80 per cent. of the total incidence in the localities studied was
grouped within three weeks time. His curve corresponds so well with that of the Munich
epidemic that he is able to superimpose them (Chart I). The rapid rise to a peak, almost
explosive in character, more characteristic of this disease than of any other, is to be
explained by the high degree of invasiveness of the organism, by the short period of
incubation, by the fact that many of the sick continue at their work, thus spreading the
disease, and by the non-immunity of large masses of people, together with the fact that
the transmission of a respiratory infection is accomplished much more easily than is any
other type of infection.
The author holds that the infrequency of immunity is a most important factor in the
production of this type of outbreak. The mode of transmission of influenza is the same
as that of other respiratory diseases. The infectivity is probably no greater than that of
measles, although that indeed is relatively great. The means of transmission are
presumably the same in each. Were we able to develop an immunity for influenza of as
high degree and permanence as we possess against measles, pandemics of influenza
would disappear. We wish to emphasize that the primary type of curve is a phenomenon
not peculiar to influenza, but that under certain circumstances it may be found in other
infectious diseases, and that it would be found more frequently in the other diseases if
the immunity developed against them was of as short duration as it appears to be
against influenza. If, for example, measles were to break out in a large group of
individuals, none of whom had had the disease, the type of curve would be the same. We
will produce evidence supporting our theory under another subject. Of course, other
factors such as short incubation period and unusual opportunities for spread through
mildly ill individuals play a not unimportant role.
 CHART I.

The curves of incidence of influenza in

Munich, and of deaths in London during
the 1889 and subsequent epidemics.
(Greenwood.)

Secondary type of epidemic.—There is a decided difference

between the curve of a primary wave as it appears in the onward rush
of a new pandemic and that of a secondary wave occurring at a
greater or less interval following the primary spread. A secondary
epidemic affects, according to Greenwood, a relatively small
proportion of the population, is slower in reaching its maximum, and
thereafter declines slowly and irregularly, more slowly than it
increases. The distribution of the curve is less symmetrical and there
is less concentration around the maximum. A secondary epidemic
may be characterized by a much higher fatality than a primary one.
We believe that the configuration of a secondary type of wave is
due chiefly although not entirely to a certain degree of residual
immunity in a large number of individuals remaining from the first
spread. There is a striking similarity between Chart I and Chart
XXVIII, the latter showing the measles incidence in epidemics
among rural or chiefly non-immune troops in the United States
army. Chart XXIX shows a similar epidemic among urban or chiefly
immune individuals. Here the curves correspond more to those of a
secondary type of influenza epidemic. Thus we see that, in the
absence of immunity, other infectious diseases may produce the
primary type of curve, and that this curve is not a feature of influenza
alone.
A striking difference between the two types of waves of influenza is
the uniformity and relative constancy of the primary type as
contrasted to the great variation in the secondary type. The story of
the first spread of influenza in one community is usually similar to
that of its spread in any other community. Certain exceptions will be
alluded to later. But in the case of recurrent epidemics we may find
them more severe or much milder; we may find that they attack a
large number of individuals or a very few; we may even find an entire
absence of recurrent epidemics in certain communities. The primary
curves are relatively uniform; the secondary curves are variable.
Between 1889 and 1894 in England there were four epidemics. The
first was primary, symmetrical, and lasted between December and
February, 1889–90. The second was asymmetrical and much more
fatal in the localities studied by Greenwood. It occurred in the spring
and summer of 1891. There was a third epidemic in the autumn and
winter of 1891–92 and a fourth occurred from November, 1893 to
January, 1894. The third epidemic, according to Greenwood, showed
some tendency to revert to the primary type in respect to symmetry,
while the fatality rate partook of the character of a secondary
epidemic.
Creighton writes: “That which chiefly distinguishes the influenza
of the end of the nineteenth century from all other invasions of the
disease is the revival of the epidemic in three successive seasons, the
first recurrence having been more fatal than the original outbreak,
and the second recurrence more fatal (in London at least) than the
first. The closest scrutiny of the old records, including the series of
weekly bills of mortality issued by the parish clerks of London for
nearly two hundred years, discovers no such recurrences of influenza
on the great scale in successive seasons.”
 Greenwood, who has studied this subject in great detail in
England, discusses Creighton’s remarks as follows: “He would be a
bold man who challenged the accuracy of Creighton upon a point of
historical scholarship, and I have only to suggest that there are faint
indications of increased mortality in years following primary
epidemics of influenza prior to the nineteenth century. Thus 1675
was a year of primary epidemic influenza, fully described in
Sydenham’s Observationes Medicae.
“The nature of the succeeding constitutions is not clear, but the
deaths ‘within the bills’ for 1676 were considerably more numerous
than in 1675, although smallpox, fever and ‘griping of the guts’ were
noticeably less fatal.
“In the English Responsoria (1, 54) the epidemic constitution of
1679 is described as a recurrence of that of 1675—that is, as having
the features of primary epidemic influenza. In the five following
years intermittents prevailed, and in one (1684) the mortality much
exceeded that of 1679, although the deaths from smallpox were
fewer. Again, a hundred years later, in 1782, there was a famous
summer epidemic of influenza in London which gave rise to much
discussion. The London mortalities in 1782 and 1783 were, however,
almost equal, when the smallpox deaths (which were nearly three
times as numerous in 1783 as in 1782) are subtracted from the total
mortality of each year.
“Whether these vague indications are sufficient to permit of our
thinking that the epidemic constitution of 1889–94 was not entirely
unprecedented is disputable. But the contrast of the latter period
with the preceding single epidemic of 1847–48 is striking; that was a
primary epidemic without important sequelae.
“We have now to consider whether our experience this year is
concordant with that of the early nineties, a reversion to the earlier
type, or a new phenomenon.”
After comparing the 1889 curves with those for the July, 1918,
outbreak in England, Greenwood concludes: “I believe that the
evidence just presented establishes a substantial identity between the
summer outbreak of 1918 and the primary wave of 1889–90. We do
not need to appeal to any new factor arising out of the war to account
for it.
 “I next consider the secondary epidemic which we are now
experiencing (October, 1918). Evidently our knowledge of the events
in 1891 would lead us to feel no surprise at the emergence of a
secondary wave, although we could not be sure that the precedent of
1847 would not be followed.
“The summer epidemic of 1918 in the Royal Air Force included
nearly 80 per cent. of the total incidence within the three weeks
containing the maximum, and the Munich epidemic included just
over 80 per cent. within the same limits. Now if the current epidemic
has reached its maximum, not more than 65 per cent. of the
incidence will probably be so concentrated, and the duration will
therefore be longer than in the summer; if, as suggested by the ratio
of the last two ordinates, the maximum is not yet attained, then the
quota of the three first weeks is likely to be still smaller and the
complete duration still longer.
“The diagram of factory sickness leads to the same inference,
which is that, from the standpoint of prevalence, the present is a
typical secondary epidemic, congruent with that of 1891.
“It appears, then, that the origin of the summer epidemic must be
explained upon such epidemiological principles as will account for
the primary wave of 1889–90, that the current outbreak is in pari
materia with that of 1891, its excessive mortality being mainly due to
the accident of season, aided by the special circumstances of
overcrowding and fuel shortage which are due to the war. In a word,
this is not essentially a war epidemic.”
Wutzdorff found that in some towns, particularly in North
Germany, the 1891–1892 wave was almost as extensive as that of
1889–90 had been in other places, but that in general the morbidity
in Germany was much lower. He bases these conclusions on a study
of the extent of crowding in the hospitals in the two years, on
statistics of government physicians, etc.
In Europe the recurrent epidemics of 1891 increased as a rule very
gradually, developed slowly, reached their high point frequently after
many weeks, and as gradually decreased. The epidemic duration in
the winter of 1891–92 lasted four or five months. The morbidity in
spite of the longer duration was decidedly less. This is very different
from the explosive appearance of 1889 when the peak was reached in
fourteen days and the whole epidemic had been completed in six to
eight weeks. There were some exceptions to this rule, as in Yorkshire,
England, where the epidemic broke out suddenly between the 11th
and 13th of April, 1891, had reached its peak after ten days, and for
another twenty days declined. Especially interesting was Sheffield,
where the first spread began gradually and ran a slow course, while
the second epidemic of 1891 began explosively, lasted a short time
and declined rapidly, but showed a significantly greater mortality
than that of 1889.
The experiences in various communities in the United States have
been not unlike those described for European cities. Abbott in
describing the successive epidemics in Massachusetts remarked that
the 1889–90 spread manifested itself by a sudden rise in the
mortality from influenza and pneumonia, beginning about December
20th and culminating in the middle week of January, thereafter
falling off quite suddenly in February to about the usual rate for
these diseases. The second epidemic two years later began with a
more gradual rise in October and November and then increased
sharply in December, continued for nearly three weeks at its
maximum in January, and declined nearly as sharply as in the
previous epidemic two years before.
Winslow and Rogers who have studied the 1918 epidemic as it
affected the various towns of Connecticut observed that the outbreak
in a given community generally occupied a period of from six to eight
weeks, and was steep and abrupt in communities which were badly
hit, flatter and more gently sloping in those which escaped lightly.
Also the outbreak was more severe in communities receiving the
infection early than in those later affected.
Mortality curves.—Pearl has studied the epidemic constitution of
influenza in forty-two of the large cities of the United States. He has
plotted the annual death rate per 1,000 population from all causes in
each week, from the week ended July 6, 1918, up to January 1, 1919,
and observed a very distinct difference in the type of curve for deaths
from all causes during the epidemic period in the various cities.
These differences have been chiefly in respect to the severity and
suddenness with which they were attacked. Thus Albany, Boston,
Baltimore, Dayton and Philadelphia show an initial explosive
outbreak of great force, while Atlanta, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids,
Milwaukee and Minneapolis exhibit a much slower and milder
increase of the mortality rate. In Albany and Baltimore the curve of
the first epidemic outbreak rises to a peak and declines at about the
same rate. In Cleveland and St. Paul, on the other hand, the rate of
ascent to the peak is very rapid, while the decline is slow and long
drawn out.
Some of the cities, such as Albany, show but a single well defined
peak in the mortality curve. Others, such as Boston, New Orleans
and San Francisco show two peaks; while still others, like Louisville,
show three well marked peaks.
Usually the first was the highest and the second and third were
progressively lower. Milwaukee and St. Louis, on the other hand,
showed second peaks higher than the first. The usual phenomenon,
however, was a large first wave followed by smaller ones.
The highest, or maximum peak rate of mortality during the
epidemic varied greatly, from 31.6 per 1,000 in the case of Grand
Rapids, to 158.3 per 1,000 in the case of Philadelphia.
The death rates which were of the most frequent occurrence were,
generally speaking, rates below 70 per 1,000 per week.
The date of the week in which the maximum peak rate occurred
was earliest in Boston and Cambridge, where it occurred October
5th, and latest in Grand Rapids, Milwaukee and St. Louis (December
14th). Thirty-one of the 40 cities studied had attained the peak rate
of mortality prior to November 2d. In the case of Milwaukee and St.
Louis the maximum peak was the second peak, whereas in Grand
Rapids it was the first peak that was so late. Sixty-five per cent. of the
40 cities showed two distinct peaks in the mortality curve, while 15
per cent. had one peak, and 8 or 20 per cent. had three peaks.
“It appears clearly that there was a definite tendency for the two-
peak cities to fall into two groups in respect of the time elapsing
between first and second peaks. About a third of them had the
second mortality peak around eight weeks after the first peak. The
remaining two-thirds had the second peak, on the average, about
thirteen weeks after the first. The three-peak curves had the second
peak on an average 7.1 ± 0.3 weeks after the first, and the third peak
on an average 13.1 ± 0.3 weeks after the second. The cycle in the
epidemic waves would therefore appear to be nearly a multiple of
seven weeks rather than the ten weeks tentatively deduced from the
dates of peaks. There the process of averaging obscured the true
relations.”
Duration of explosive outbreak.—The range of the duration of the
first outbreak of epidemic mortality is great, varying from five weeks
in Richmond, Virginia, to twenty-three weeks in Atlanta, Georgia.
Twenty of the cities, one-half the total number, showed a duration of
ten weeks or less, while in the other half the duration was eleven
weeks or more. The mean duration of epidemic mortality in the first
outbreak was 11.90 ± 0.55 weeks. The ascending limb of mortality
rate was rapid in nearly all cities. The descending limb was usually
slower. In 34 of the 40 cities it required four weeks or less time for
the mortality rate to pass from normal to its epidemic peak. But in
only half as many (17) of the cities did the rate come down from its
peak to normal again in a period of four weeks or less. The mean
time from normal mortality rate to peak was 3.90 ± 0.21 weeks. The
mean time from peak mortality rate to normal was 8.00 ± 0.50
weeks. Thus it took about twice as many weeks for the mortality
curve to come back from its peak to normal, as were required for the
increase from normal to peak at the beginning of the explosion. This
is on the average. The ascending limb occupied about a month and
the descending limb two months.
Pearl’s curves which have been copied in this report (Charts II to
VII) enable us to follow his conclusions. Pearl offers a partial
explanation for the variations in the different cities. There can be no
doubt but what many factors play a role in the causation of these
variations, and it is to be regretted that up to the present no statistics
for smaller, more homogeneous communities have as yet been
reported which could be compared with Pearl’s excellent work on the
large cities of the country. Were his work supplemented by records
from smaller towns in which the varying factors are less numerous,
in which there is less occupational variation, additional conclusions
could probably be reached. The unfortunate feature is that as a rule
statistics from the smaller cities and towns are less reliable.
From a detailed mathematical study of influenza in 39 of our
largest cities, done chiefly by the means of multiple correlation, with
the hope of being able to explain the differences in the epidemic
curves of weekly mortality in the various cities, Pearl concludes as
follows:
 “The general conclusion to which we come from an examination of
the correlation data assembled to this point is that these four general
demographic factors, density of population, geographical position,
age distribution of population, and rate of recent growth in
population, have practically nothing to do, either severally or
collectively, with bringing about those differences between the
several cities in respect to explosiveness of the outbreak of epidemic
mortality in which we are interested. Significantly causal or
differentiating factors must be sought elsewhere.”
 CHART II.

Death rates from all causes by weeks in

certain large cities of the United States
during the winter of 1918–19. (Pearl.)
 CHART III.

Death rates from all causes by weeks in

certain large cities of the United States
during the winter of 1918–19. (Pearl.)
 CHART IV.

Death rates from all causes by weeks in

certain large cities of the United States
during the winter of 1918–19. (Pearl.)