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