The Real McCoy

The best-known, high-altitude, highwayman, was a calm character calling himself D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a Northwest Airlines 727 to Seattle last November, collected a $200,000 ransom and four parachutes, coolly bailed out as the plane flew on toward Reno, and was never caught. Immortalized in song and on sweatshirts, Cooper has inspired nearly half a dozen imitators, all of whom have failed. But a new spate of plane snatchings last week seemed to stem from the more recent exploits of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., 29, who came the closest to succeeding since the Cooper caper.

Listed on the passenger roster as T. Johnson and armed with a hand grenade, pistol and prewritten instructions for the pilot, McCoy had no trouble hijacking the United Airlines, Denver-Los Angeles 727 to San Francisco. United met his demands: $500,000 in small bills, six hours worth of fuel and four parachutes. With an expert's efficiency, McCoy then directed the pilot on a wandering eastward course and parachuted over Provo, Utah.

McCoy might have got away with it had he not in effect used the hijack to hitchhike home. Robert Van leperen, a Utah highway patrolman and close friend, recalled that McCoy, an enthusiastic skydiver, had talked about hijacking a plane in Cooper style. He may have put FBI agents on the skyjacker's tail; the FBI is not telling how it cracked the case. McCoy's picture was identified by a United passenger, and his military record yielded handwriting that the FBI said matched the ransom instructions. Less than 48 hours after he hijacked the plane, McCoy was taken into custody without a struggle. A search of his house and yard quickly turned up all but $30 of the ransom. Charged with air piracy, he could receive a death sentence.

Family, friends and neighbors were incredulous, for McCoy hardly seemed the hijacker type. A quiet family man, father of two and devout Mormon, McCoy had taught Sunday school until last March. "All he ever talked about was sin," recalled one of his students. "He's a fine man," insisted his landlord. A classmate at Brigham Young University, where McCoy was a senior majoring in law enforcement, called him "an organized-crime freak" who "wanted to make his dent on the world by busting crime syndicates." His mother was mystified. "He's been very devoted to his church." Sobbed his wife: "How could he?" McCoy offered no explanation.

He had served two hitches in Viet Nam as a demolition expert and pilot and won both the Army Commendation Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross. A warrant officer in the Utah National Guard, McCoy showed up for a scheduled training stint only hours after parachuting from the United plane in a risky night maneuver. Fellow Guardsman Van leperen said McCoy had given no indication at the Guard session that anything was amiss. "Richard's my best friend," he added in disbelief. "He's one of the finest people I know." McCoy's well-publicized hijacking quickly triggered others:

> High over California, an unemployed Stanford graduate named Stanley Harlan Speck, 31, demanded $500,000 and four parachutes in a plan to commandeer a Pacific Southwest Airlines 727 to Miami. But he imprudently left the plane at San Diego to pick up navigation charts for the crew, and was overpowered by police and PSA's hard-nosed president, J. Floyd Andrews, who said: "What these guys really need is to get shot right in the face."

> In Portland, Ore., an accountant for the Washington state highway department, Major Burton Davenport, 56, threatened to blow up a Continental Airlines 707 bound for Hawaii unless paid $500,000 from the U.S. Treasury. After an hour, he was talked out of it.

> When Ricardo Chavez-Ortiz, a 37-year-old Mexican with a history of psychiatric problems, hijacked a Frontier Airlines 737 from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, his motive was to gain not money but a public forum for alleged injustice to U.S. minorities. He got it in the form of radio and TV interviews aboard the plane with local Spanish-language stations and then meekly surrendered with apologies to the pilot.

To allay public jitters, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it was investigating the airlines involved for failure to screen passengers before departure. An offense against that rule, which was adopted by the FAA last February, could bring fines of $1,000 each. The FAA charged that neither United nor PSA had prescreened passengers on the flights that were hijacked, and Frontier admitted that its metal-detection devices at Albuquerque were not working on the day Chavez-Ortiz pulled his protest hijack. In addition to using metal detectors, airlines are supposed to scrutinize passenger behavior at ticket counters to spot potential hijackers. But in United's case at least, it is doubtful that any profile could have pinpointed Richard McCoy, the man it seemed nobody really knew.

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