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Season Six: Holiday Episode 17 (2025)
7 Plays6 minutes ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
History and Anatomy of Hijackings
00:00:59
Speaker
You and I have, over the years, we've kind of talked about the fact that there's this weird period of time where there were hijackings in the U.S. And I realize there's there's one guy we've kind of talked about here and there, particularly with the holiday stories because he kind of overlaps in between them.
00:01:21
Speaker
um But I was just telling you, like i every time I read this guy's story, I find something else like crazy about it. So I'm including like a version of that story where like there's sort of multiple avenues that we go down.
00:01:40
Speaker
um And you know I never know like how to tell this version of it, so I figured I'd just... we know Yeah. Like, like wing it. I've got a bunch of the articles open and I've outlined like, like kind of the direction I wanted to go.
00:01:55
Speaker
But this is one of those. um i think if people are listening to it and they're like, Oh, this sounds familiar. We do mention this when we were talking about Angela Davis, who was like a part of some of the insanity that goes on related to this story.
00:02:14
Speaker
But I thought we'd talk about sort of what leads to TWA flight 541, which that's a hijacking. And I guess when I think about it, like in terms of a a hijacking, it's almost always a hostage taking of some kind. Well, it is just by the nature of it, I guess. Now, like in a, well, I guess a,
00:02:41
Speaker
carjack isn't a hijack right not technically okay because i was gonna say sometimes in carjacking like they just make people get out of the car right right right but like hijacking on a plane by its very nature they are in control of the plane and therefore i in control of all the people on the plane right and that's the hostage situation right Yeah, and there was this whole there was this time period between 1968 and 1972 where the the idea of being taken hostage in the air was a very real thing. And a lot of that happens like when the U.S. s and and Cuba is sort of going at it.
00:03:23
Speaker
So like Cuba-bound hijackings, for some reason, were... like a huge deal so we have to talk about that ah ah like a little bit and then there's one person that's sort of in at the center of all of this but i wanted to sort of mention those type hijackings come back to 541 and the origin story which we've covered at one point Right. And I would just like to say, so, you know, we're doing hostage situations for the holidays, guess. Right. Yeah. and
00:03:55
Speaker
you know, hostage taking is a very interesting concept, right? It is. Because it's ultimately about, it's some variation of you know, one or more people trying to get something, even if it's just to be heard, right? Yes. By...
00:04:16
Speaker
essentially putting other people in a at least a perceived peril, right? Yes. And it's one of the truly horrifying things that any person could face in life because you're not you're never prepared for it, right?
00:04:37
Speaker
i would I would say yes. like yeah It just happens, at least for the people who end up being the hostages, it happens out of nowhere. Exactly. And then they've, you know, the even the highest level concept of hostage situations is, in my opinion, it's on a shaky foundation because you basically... all it maybe not always a lunatic, but most of the time it's going to be a lunatic wanting something crazy.
00:05:06
Speaker
yeah And your life hangs in the balance. That's how I look at it. i would agree that. It's not a, it's not a well thought out plan. Right. Yeah.
00:05:18
Speaker
Because even, even if it's some semblance of nobody's ever successful. Right. I mean, hostage situations always go wrong. And I don't know of anybody who's ever actually gotten what they wanted out of it. And so our human brains say, well, that wouldn't be the way to do that now, would Right.
00:05:40
Speaker
Except some you know people were still doing it. We have less and less of them now.
Impact of 9/11 on Airline Security
00:05:46
Speaker
We do. and And that was one of the things I found interesting. So between 1955 and there are literally hundreds of air hijackings, but they really peak right?
00:06:03
Speaker
and sort of end around the end of nineteen seventy two like after nineteen seventy two you you kind of hear about them sporadically there's i tracked about eight during the 1980s.
00:06:17
Speaker
And then during the 1990s, I was able to track five. So this is not a completely comprehensive number. And then after, of course, you know, like sort of the ultimate hostage situation with 9-11.
00:06:30
Speaker
There's five. To today, there's about five that affect like U.S. airplanes. Right. And so there's been like... After 9-11, there were substantial changes made to airline travel, right? Yes.
00:06:42
Speaker
And they made them pretty much, I think, impossible. and i can actually remember being on airplanes and having things that I probably should have never had. Not that I was going to do anything with them, right? It just changed. that like During our lifetime, it evolved severely. Right.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, i I remember a time when like a pocket knife, a lighter lighter, and various other things that you would keep um like were kind of tool-like. I mean, I remember having a Leatherman.
00:07:12
Speaker
Like the little folding sort of multipurpose tool, like in my carry on and nobody said anything. And like one of the fold outs on that was a knife. But now today that would never happen. In fact, of those my husband has lost quite a few of his little, I mean, he would never take like a weapon knife on a plane, but you can't even take like an instrument knife on a plane. And he's lost several of them.
00:07:35
Speaker
ah Because he's just forgotten. i have an interesting memory of right before 9-11. It was in August of 2001. happened to go on a plane trip. And I did my nails on the plane. So you had like the nail file on little scissors, all that? Nail polish, nail file, like ah acetone remover. Like I had all of it, right? Interesting. Interesting.
00:08:02
Speaker
And of course you couldn't do that afterwards, but that's one of my memories was that, oh, and the funniest part was that like the flight attendant was like, do you have any nail polish? And like, cause she had a run in her hose, which is hilarious. But so that's one of my memories that I really think about. Cause you, I would never have gotten through security now with all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember,
00:08:32
Speaker
I had this one weird job a long time ago, and I would fly back and forth between two locations. One of the people at the job was very into, like, firing odd weapons, big guns and whatnot. And he had given me a bullet, and that bullet was like, and I don't remember exactly exactly.
00:08:54
Speaker
what caliber or what gun we were shooting, but he had given me like a, it was a live round of ammunition and it was a large one. Probably.
00:09:06
Speaker
i want to say at least like, um, a 223 round, but maybe larger than that. And it was in my pocket. And somehow I flew all the way back to my home airport and like, it never came up at all. It was like in my jacket pocket, jacket went off and into a bin and through the machine and blah, blah, blah. And somehow as I was getting back into my car, that bullet was in the pocket and I was like, oh wow. I just flew all this way.
00:09:36
Speaker
and that was before 9-11. That was prior to 9-11. Yeah, that was like a year before 9-11. can This is probably a dumb question. Can anything happen to a bullet if it doesn't have a weapon that can discharge it? Not really. i mean, like, there are...
00:09:52
Speaker
and do You could set it on fire or something, right? Oh, I mean, you could make a bullet. Without a gun, you could, like, strike a bullet. It's just dangerous. Like, you could strike a bullet in a way that it, like...
00:10:02
Speaker
went off It would be, was just, you would hurt yourself probably. Yeah. Yeah.
Cuba's Role in Early Hijackings
00:10:07
Speaker
Cause I like but the main way that bullets work in terms of like just ballistics is like, like you have a series of things that even though they're not part of the bullet, they're making the bullets action, like a forward projectile, like the barrel and the mechanisms that are enclosed for firing all of those things working together is what makes the bullet really dangerous and like a lethal weapon.
00:10:31
Speaker
the bullet itself is sort of pyrotechnic otherwise. Interesting. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like it could explode, but it wouldn't necessarily be what you were thinking. Right. So I pulled like a few of those hijackings to talk about. um But specifically, we're going to come back to 541 here in just a second. So it's interesting.
00:10:54
Speaker
one of the like earliest documented hijackings that's like, sort of before the Cuban revolution is April 9th, 1958. That is a Douglas DC three that's ah piloted by Armando Piedra and Ramon Vasquez.
00:11:11
Speaker
And it's a Cubana de aviación flight. It's hijacked and root from the Havana airport, headed over to the Santa Clara airport and it ends up going into Mexico. So like, this is considered to be the first hijacking that takes place in the Western hemisphere, April 9th, 1958. It actually lands in Mexico. And I was, I had to like, look it up on a map and I was like,
00:11:42
Speaker
what like What are they doing there? So I pulled up a little information, and they did not keep like records of this hijacking. and terms I mean, you could find them now, but at them at the time, they were just like, you know,
00:11:57
Speaker
This is the documented path, motive unknown. and then they didn't like put down the hijacker's name. they didn't say how many passengers or or any of that. It's Douglas d c three And it's a pretty... like In terms of like aircrafts today, like what we think of, um it's a relatively small plane.
00:12:21
Speaker
It's like from... like I always think of it as being ah the plane from Casablanca. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:12:36
Speaker
versions of it built since then but it is one of those planes that i guess at the time would have been really common even though most of them were built in the forty s they certainly still would have been common in cuba and i always think of cuba as having you know old cars and older equipment There's like ah almost a thousand variants of this airplane, but what I picture is that plane for that being the first hijacking. And that feels kind of apropos, like that it's it's something that is almost from an old movie.
00:13:13
Speaker
The next recorded hijacking is April 12th, 1958, on the same path, three days later. Same type of plane. 12 passengers are on board that plane. And instead of going Havana to Santa Clara, which all would be in Cuba, this one makes its way to Miami, Florida.
00:13:34
Speaker
and like According to press reports from 1958, halfway into this flight, like the people on board decided, well, we're going to defect to the U.S. So that's how we end up with, you know, is it a hijacking? Is it a defection flight? I think you tell whatever story you have to tell to kind of keep moving. And that's what these first three hijackings appear to be, because the next one takes place.
00:14:05
Speaker
ah The next day, and that's April 13th, 1958, same DC-3 aircraft, and it's hijacked, but this time, it's hijacked by the crew.
00:14:18
Speaker
So the crew hijack the captain, and again, they fly into Miami. So they were just deporting themselves. So, yeah, that's what I was going to say. So this seems, these being the first three Western Hemisphere hijackings, because that's how it's documented.
00:14:34
Speaker
In my opinion, that's a completely different thing than, if you don't give us money, we're going to kill these people by crashing this plane.
FAA and Federal Regulation
00:14:44
Speaker
that make sense? Well, right, but it also is a hostage situation because, like, all those people went to Miami whether they wanted to or not. Right, right. And so... i haven't I have a hard time wrapping my head around what it would have been like in 1958. have no idea. Like, flying and stuff, it would be a lot different.
00:15:05
Speaker
And it's almost like... See, I'm not really exactly sure what was happening, but it's almost like when the crew did it, like they were just taking stock from what, what you know, i I assume it was like political issues, like either pro Castro, anti Castro, something like that.
00:15:26
Speaker
And then the c crew was like, hey, we could do that to move to Miami. Right. Yeah. ah Ultimately, yes. And so it's almost like they were feeding off of one another in a way.
00:15:38
Speaker
Well, they are. so those first three hijackings take place in April, but by November 1958, we have our first big, like like, and I'm not minimizing the fact that those are hijackings.
00:15:50
Speaker
I'm just saying they had a different purpose. Like you just said, like there's a political element to it that's not violent. But it's still taking people hostage. It is taking people hostage. So that's April 9th, April 12th, April 13th. But by November, but a Flight 495, which is a different kind of plane, by the way. And the reason I say that is because it's still a big turboprop plane, but ah it's a Vickers Viscount, larger plane. It actually is coming out of Miami. and it was supposed to be headed over to a resort called Veradero.
00:16:25
Speaker
So while it's on its way, it's suddenly hijacked by Cuban militants, so it's doing the opposite of the first three. And these hijackers had it in their mind they were going to land in eastern Cuba, and what nobody realized at the time is they had apparently loaded up the plane's underbelly with weapons.
00:16:46
Speaker
So November 1st, 1958, flight 495, this is our first big, like, there's something happening. Now, it's still tied to the political climate in Cuba, and it's just ahead of the Cuban Revolution.
00:17:01
Speaker
So this plane is ultimately going to deliver to Fidel Castro at that time, because he's about to take over. But you've got to think, he's not he's not the leader yet.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's going to be the leader in a couple of months. They're trying to take the rebels' weapons. But as night approaches, the plane runs out of fuel. it's tried It's overshot like how far it could have gone. Because if what I'm reading is correct, my guess is they were going to stop in Veradero and refuel and then go on to Havana if it's the normal flight.
00:17:41
Speaker
But they push it too far meaning the hijackers, and they try for an emergency landing at this location known as the Preston Sugar Mill.
00:17:52
Speaker
But the the plane does not make it into the sugar mill. And instead, it ends up landing in the ocean, and it breaks apart. There's only six survivors of this flight. It kills most of the passengers. And most of the crew and the stories that we get about that, we're not going to get full understanding of what happened on that flight until like the early 2000. Right. And then it's had the test of time, I guess. I mean, then it's like, it's so much later. And, you know, I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but in 1958, that is, I believe the year the FAA was.
00:18:33
Speaker
was the and like the beginning of it. Yeah, and I don't think that the FAA came about because of like the Cuban side of this. And I will say...
00:18:45
Speaker
It was created in August of 1958, but it was replacing the Civil Aeronautics Administration. And largely, it was being brought about because they needed a way, as air traffic expanded, to keep track of everything that was happening in the sky. Exactly. They had a forward-thinking view of how it was going to become like a commercial industry, right? Right. Like ah a a more commercialized industry. i don't know how... I've never really studied the history of like how many people actually flew way back then, right? Right. But it wasn't like it is now. Well, yeah.
00:19:28
Speaker
The people who died on the November hijack plane... I don't know the exact number, but we're not talking about hundreds. It was more like probably like 20. I think it was 15. think 15 people died. And the hijacker and 14 passengers and crew. Right. And, you know, so, okay, that that would make sense because that would make about 21 people on the plane total. Correct.
00:19:50
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. And that's to the size plane you're looking at. Yeah, it's ah it's a small plane. Right. I will say, so the FAA comes about because of, and I don't know the name of the act off my head, I think it's the Federal Administration Act of 1958 or something like that.
00:20:07
Speaker
And what you will find is... the The primary driver in us getting the FAA was not this type of like hijacking problem. It was mid-air collisions.
00:20:21
Speaker
Because what we had discovered was if you don't know where other planes are in the sky... then there was ah an interesting possibility that, like, potentially you could run into one of those other planes. And one of those collisions had actually occurred in summer of 1956.
00:20:42
Speaker
And that's when a Lockheed Super Constellation slammed into a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 and 128 people died. And they went, oh, well, that's a problem. Right. And it just took them...
00:20:55
Speaker
Long enough to get the legislation through, right? Because we put the United States puts a ton of money into the FAA and like international airline travel, right? Absolutely, yes.
00:21:06
Speaker
And so that was sort of like the beginning of that. I mean, it wasn't really the beginning. it was already trying They were trying to get it in place, but see... It had to be federal because it and the travel of planes is usually not only between states, but then between countries, right? Right. And got to have a consistent playing field.
00:21:25
Speaker
Right. And like they even it they made all of it federal basically for that reason and the fact that like the skies were going to be federal, even if you're like traveling within a state. Like you're still in the sky and you need to be tied into the systems of passing planes and planes pointing state to state. So you don't crash into them. Exactly.
00:21:45
Speaker
um So yes, the, the FAA came out. I always find the wisdom behind what we take for granted now. Like for example, the FAA, I always find that fascinating because,
00:22:00
Speaker
Because like they literally went from like, oh, let's build some planes. Let's fly some planes. Oh, now we've got to regulate flying of planes, right? Yeah. And to me, it's just fascinating that there was so much collective wisdom to to kind of put...
00:22:16
Speaker
things in place now granted we all take it for granted now but it wasn't always that way right yeah and this was one of those things that like the caa was really designed and i don't know what it says if you go read a summary of it but it was really designed to make sure that people who were getting on planes and flying them with people like as their liability or responsibility knew what they were doing so the caa being replaced by the fa it kind of suddenly became all encompassing The CAA had been basically making sure you had your driver's license for this guy.
00:22:49
Speaker
And then they realized, oh, that's not enough. um So that's how we get the FAA. And I take it for granted, too. But I will say, if you want a rabbit hole that's not really true crime related, looking at how between about 1948 and 1980...
00:23:05
Speaker
and nineteen eighty 85 maybe looking at all the different government agencies that were created in that time and what spurred them to be created is fascinating. It really is. Unfortunately, we're at the point now, in my opinion, that they went through a time where like, it was very like strict and tight ship.
00:23:24
Speaker
And then it started kind of falling apart. Right. And now that's what has led me to reflect on it. Like seeing all the problems that occur when like the ship is in tight Oh, yeah. And we're just pumping money into like endless nothing, basically. Yeah, it's um it's very disheartening because it's in some ways it's kind of like looking at an empire from the perspective of its golden age and then seeing what happens as that golden age unravels and it moves to a new era.
00:23:55
Speaker
Exactly. That's exactly how I see it. But it takes that long to kind of reflect back. It does. And one of the interesting things about the case that we're going to cover today is it's like actually covered like it's actually multiple cases.
The Complex Life of Garrett Brock Trapnell
00:24:09
Speaker
It's actually really and truly at its heart is a person.
00:24:13
Speaker
Right. That person's name is Garrett Brock Trapnell. Now, Garrett Trapnell, he was a con man. He was also a bank robber, and he himself was a hijacker.
00:24:27
Speaker
So he spent a lot of time in the 60s and 70s doing some really interesting stuff, but one of the most interesting things he appears to have done is he maintained marriages with at least six women simultaneously.
00:24:43
Speaker
Which wasn't legal. No, it's big of me. and But the fact that he's doing it at all is sort of... In my opinion, it makes it relatively clear that you're dealing with someone who is very smart, but also unhinged. Yep. I believe we've talked about him before. He's come up, he's come up a couple of different ways. And I said, like, I mean, yeah I've, I've been married one time, 20 years.
00:25:13
Speaker
and I think to myself, why would anybody want to be married to that many people? Well, you know, it's... it It sounds to me like, and I may be wrong on this, I think he used it as a means to an end so that he was always able to be somewhere else. Because among the other weird things he did, go ahead.
00:25:37
Speaker
Well, i was going to say, that makes sense. Yeah. yeah He also like frequently would pose as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. He's a character. He really is. And he pulled off a
00:25:53
Speaker
off $100,000 jewelry store heist in Freeport, Bahamas, which is not like, that's not nothing considering the timing of it all.
00:26:04
Speaker
Right. It would have been, you know, as it would have been a lot more now. Correct. Correct. Yeah. January 28th, 1972, kind of in the middle of this hijacking time, Garrett Trapnell, using a.45 caliber pistol that he has smuggled inside a plaster cast, like an elbow cast on his arm, he manages to hijack TWA flight number two from Los Angeles to New York. And he waits until the plane is over Illinois to do this.
00:26:39
Speaker
Now, he demands $306,800 in cash, what happens which happens to be the judgment in a recent court case that he had lost.
00:26:50
Speaker
He wants the release of Angela Davis, which is how he's come up with us talking about him in the past, because we talked at length about Angela Yvonne Davis in our um Home for the Holidays series.
00:27:04
Speaker
And he also has on that list a friend of his who's in prison. But the thing that he wants the most is he wants a formal pardon from President Richard Nixon. Now, during a cruise switch, when the plane lands at Kennedy Airport, the FBI takes over the plane.
00:27:23
Speaker
And Garrett Trapnel is shot and wounded. No one else is hurt. But this is like one of those things that you were saying, like, could this be directly responsible for things within the FAA?
00:27:41
Speaker
it's It's not 1958 version. It's the 1972 version. But ah pretty much when he does this skyjacking, it's... He is almost directly responsible for a massive overhaul in procedures by the FAA.
00:27:59
Speaker
And most of those procedures will remain in place. And if you are a 70s or an 80s kid, this is how you would remember flying on a plane, even into the 90s. But they will change again, and you mentioned this already, in the September 11th attacks.
00:28:15
Speaker
That will be the first major overhaul that happens. So we have 1972 with Garrett Trapnel and this incident in January 28th. And then the next time will be the September 11th attack, September 11th, 2001. That'll be the next big overhaul.
00:28:30
Speaker
In this instance, he pleads insanity. And he explains to the court that he suffers from multiple personality disorders and he has schizophrenia and that the hijacking was not committed by ah Garrett Trapnel at all.
00:28:44
Speaker
It was committed by one of his alter egos named Greg Ross. So... There's a lot of audio recordings out there if you want to get into Trapnel. A lot of people have now started sharing those things.
00:28:57
Speaker
um According to journalists who have interviewed him and his own voice, he has developed a skill, much like maintaining six wives and pulling off these grandiose things, and that skill is faking insanity. Right?
00:29:17
Speaker
So this particular trial ends in a hung jury because there's a holdout on the jury, happens to be a social worker on the jury, and that person holds out for acquittal.
00:29:28
Speaker
So he's retried four months later, and he ends up being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. And he is going to be one of the folks who, unfortunately, are going to be experiencing USP Marion.
00:29:42
Speaker
And USP Marion was the first federal supermax prison. So he's going to end up in there. But that's not the story for today. That's just how we get to the story for today.
00:29:56
Speaker
So... On May 24th, 1978, so just over six years after that skyjacking, a 43-year-old woman named Barbara Ann Oswald hijacks a St. Louis-based charter helicopter.
00:30:16
Speaker
And she forces the pilot to land in the yard at USP Marion. So this is where Trapnel is serving as Senate.
00:30:30
Speaker
The pilot of the aircraft is a guy named Alan Barklage. He's a Vietnam vet. He gets into ah shoving match aboard the plane with Barbara Ann Oswald, and he gets the gun away from her.
00:30:43
Speaker
He then shoots and kills Barbara Oswald. Which, I have to say, like in terms of all of this, is it is very, very disheartening that like a death happens here. Right, but the pilot wasn't in the wrong. No, no, not at all.
00:31:02
Speaker
But it stops the escape in progress. And you would think that would be the end of our story. Of course, of course it isn't. You know, it's interesting because... I know of at least like a couple of instances and at least movies where like there's been prisoners who have like dreamt of air of, uh, helicopters coming in to like get out of, and there's somebody there to bust them out of jail. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And this is her actually doing that or trying
00:31:34
Speaker
Correct. this is This is our actually doing that. Before we get to like the next part that happened, I'm going to throw in like a piece bizarre. There was a period of time, and I don't know if you remember that, the Huffington Post used to be like people could freely post there. and i remember that. Yeah. So I went back and I found an April 2010 post there.
00:32:00
Speaker
And it this post was just interesting, so I'm including it as part of this. It says fan mail from prison. And it says, I began, it began when I was on the soap opera search for tomorrow.
00:32:12
Speaker
And I got a letter in my fan mail from Marion state penitentiary, a brilliant letter filled with glorious poetry, quoting Keats and Yates and Shakespeare.
00:32:24
Speaker
And this is by Tina Sloan who identifies as an actress and an author. And she says, a man named Garrett Brock Trapnell, who was a Brock from Brockton, Massachusetts, became my, quote, pen pal, end quote.
00:32:37
Speaker
In this case, could that be short for penitentiary, question mark? It began when I was on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and I got a letter in my fan name. It was a brilliant letter filled with glorious poetry quoting Keats and Yeats and Shakespeare from Marion State Peminentiary. You get the picture. I was enthralled, and I wrote him back with answering quotes. I told my husband, Steve.
00:33:00
Speaker
So... Apparently there's red flags on both sides of this equation. About this wonderful prisoner and where he was. And Steve suggested i stop writing him, as that prison is for lifers.
00:33:12
Speaker
But oh no, not me. We kept writing and discussing books and poetry and reasons for quote being and became great friends. Garrett mentioned in a letter that I reminded in him of his wife.
00:33:23
Speaker
Well, since he was a lifer, I wondered if he had murdered said wife, who I reminded him of. so And I wonder which wife she reminded him of. i' Just saying. was con man. Right. Yeah, 100%.
00:33:39
Speaker
So I ran out instantly to get the book he told me he had written about his life called The Fox is Crazy zo Too. Hmm, it turns out he had six wives, all at the same time, and he and each wife belonged to country clubs up and down the East Coast.
00:33:53
Speaker
Needless to say, none of the wives knew about the other. He had a plane and would fly to Canada, where he was number one on the Royal Canadian Mounties Most Wanted list. He'd rob a bank in Canada, dressed impeccably, and let me add, he never used a weapon, but pretended he had a gun inside a cast on his arm.
00:34:12
Speaker
After robbing the bank, he'd fly himself back to one of his many homes in the U.S. Now and then he would get caught. Then he would pretend he was insane and, quote, crazy like the fox, end quote, in the book title.
00:34:25
Speaker
He would get sent to a mental institution, and of course, his feigned insanity would instantly clear up. He was so brilliant, he always got away with it. On and on with his life until he finally, for some reason, I forget, hijacked TWA Flight 1, which was going around the world. He was captured for that rather small piccadillo and sentenced to life in prison, from which he was writing me constantly and making my husband Steve very upset.
00:34:51
Speaker
Then one night, Steve and I were getting ready to go to sleep. We were half-heartedly listening to the news on the radio. There was a story about a prison breakout in, oh God, Marion, Illinois.
00:35:02
Speaker
Marion, Illinois, where my poet was. a small plane had landed in the prison yard, and my poet was escaping in the getaway plane that one of his six wives, one that looked like me, question mark, had landed there.
00:35:13
Speaker
My heart was pounding. Of course, my apartment would be the place to hide, a place where no one would think of looking for him. The perfect place to hide. Steve looked at me. I had said again and again, Steve, he will never get out of prison, so of course i am going to write him.
00:35:26
Speaker
He is so interesting, and on and on. Steve just kept looking at me. No, I told you so. He just looked, and I started to shake as Garrett and I were communicating all, all the time.
00:35:39
Speaker
We finally turned off the lights with no news as to whether their Garrett and his, quote, wife had gotten away with it. The stations just kept repeating there had been a prison breakout. Steve slept and I paced the apartment all night, checking for updates as to what was happening.
00:35:53
Speaker
And I kept imagining him and his wife flying through the air to land near New York City and arrive at our apartment. I had given him my home address so our letters could whiz back and forth faster than going through the CBS.
00:36:05
Speaker
I kept thinking of his last letters with glowing references to the fields of daffodils he yearned to see again. It was spring when a young man's fancy turns to love, and he was missing the poetry of nature in his prison cell.
00:36:17
Speaker
Oh, the next morning, it was announced the attempt to escape from the Marion State Penitentiary had failed. And since I'd never heard from him again, i had to believe he was put in solitary and not allowed to write me letters. Since obviously, while he was quoting poetry to me, he was plotting a bold escape with her.
00:36:35
Speaker
He was sort of two-timing me. i thought that was hilarious. i don't know if it's true or not, but I do find like some of the stuff I've read about Garrett Trapenwell hilarious.
00:36:48
Speaker
Um...
00:36:52
Speaker
I wonder, so my first thought was he was probably pen palling with like lots of people to throw off, like, because if he was just sending one set of letters to the person who, ah Barbara Ann Oswald, who ultimately was the one who tried to break him out. Right. Right.
00:37:11
Speaker
Um, it the more people he was writing, the more they could have gotten lost in the shuffle, you know? Right. I don't know that they were screening mail back then. No, that's a, uh, the way they screen mail now is a relatively new phenomenon in terms of these types stories. Right.
00:37:29
Speaker
Okay. It's interesting, though, because he just couldn't help himself. And I'm not really sure what that soap opera was, because I guess it was back in the before I was born, right? Of course.
00:37:41
Speaker
But he just literally took a shot by sending an actress a letter, right? He did, yes. And she responded. And her husband, can you imagine? i can totally imagine. i can see the look on his face. Yeah, exactly. Because he's going, man, I told her stop doing that. But he didn't say it out loud, right? Right.
00:38:05
Speaker
And then, you know, obviously she totally freaked out. And ultimately, it didn't end up mattering. But I can totally find my, I can, it's it's interesting. Yeah.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yes, and it doesn't get less interesting, and I bring all of that stuff up to say, on May 24th of 1978, we have this Barbara Ann Oswald attempting to get him out of USP Mary Ann.
00:38:38
Speaker
Now, that is foiled by Alan Barclitch, the Vietnam vet, shooting Barbara Ann Oswald. She dies at the scene, right? Right.
00:38:49
Speaker
From this story, another one of the inmates involved was a guy named Martin McNally.
The Saga of Martin McNally and Robin Oswald
00:38:55
Speaker
So he had hijacked St. Louis Tulsa American Airlines flight back in 1972, and he had demanded...
00:39:04
Speaker
and he had demanded half a million dollars before jumping out of a a plane over Peru, Indiana. So keep that in mind that like there's, this is not a small thing that's going on.
00:39:18
Speaker
Like multiple people are involved. And I say that, and this is a side note I'm going to put out. Alan Barclay dies in a helicopter crash September 1998.
00:39:29
Speaker
I think he died that week, maybe. ah Martin McNally, that guy that was involved in this attempted breakout, he's going to finally be paroled January 2010. But going back to for a second, on December Oswald, Robin Oswald,
00:39:46
Speaker
the seventeen year old daughter of barbara an oswald robin os hijacks TWA flight 541, and she demands that Garrett Trapnell be freed, or she was going to detonate dynamite strapped to her body.
00:40:06
Speaker
So, according to all the hostages on this flight, she is very beautiful, she seems very serious, and she is not anxious, and she is not nervous. This is a 17-year-old girl.
00:40:21
Speaker
She's vindicating her mom. Yeah. I can see where that would have been a mission that would leave 17-year-old girl with no fear.
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah. But it's it's misd it's ah misguided. it is incredibly misguided. And so just to put it out there, the plane ends up landing. fbi negotiators, they free all the hostages, and they have— Robin Oswald surrendered. There's no injuries or death involved in this particular skyjacking.
00:40:58
Speaker
The bomb that was strapped to her chest, it turned out to be railroad flares wired with what appeared to them to be a doorbell. And they end up charging her as a juvenile.
00:41:10
Speaker
And i will say this for Illinois. We do not know very much about like what happened with her. And I can only find one good article on this. and I don't know if you've read this. It comes out of the Kentucky New Era that same year, December 1978.
00:41:28
Speaker
And it just says, 17-year-old hijacks plane to free hijacker. It says that Robin Oswald, at a 17-year-old high school dropout, hijacked a Transworld Airlines jet to free a man her mother loved and had died for.
00:41:45
Speaker
Today, Robin is in jail while authorities ponder whether to charge her as juvenile or an adult. And U.S. s Attorney James Burgess said a decision has not yet been made on what charges to bring or whether to bring it in state or federal court.
00:41:58
Speaker
He said she might be charged as an adult with air piracy or could be treated as a juvenile. She was to be transferred from a jail ah in, I think it's Benton, down to East St. Louis.
00:42:13
Speaker
Passengers aboard the TWA Flight 541, which is a DC-9 jetliner, said that she was a sweet-looking girl with blonde hair and curls, but her finger was firmly placed on what she said was a bomb, and she was angry.
00:42:28
Speaker
The hijacking lasted 10 hours Thursday until she surrendered. The bomb turned out to be a device rigged with flares. This is according to FBI agent and Edward Hegarty. He said it could have done some damage but would not itself have caused an explosion.
00:42:42
Speaker
According to Army Private levi Levi King in Seattle, who was on the flight, he said she was very beautiful, but I know she was serious, particularly when she yelled that she was going to blow the whole plane up.
00:42:53
Speaker
She kept talking about how her mother had died in a helicopter and her family had disowned her. I told her I've been in the same boat and that this was no way to take revenge, but she wouldn't listen.
00:43:04
Speaker
The girl, identified by the FBI as Robin Oswald, is a high school dropout from St. Louis. She had been demanding the freedom of convicted hijacker Garrett Brock Trapnel. Her mother was killed seven months ago in another air piracy aimed at freeing Trapwell.
00:43:20
Speaker
ah Miss Oswald has been arraigned as a juvenile, but charges were not announced as is customary under Illinois law. No hearing date was set. and And they kind of go on to describe like what we just talked about. I just want to point out...
00:43:34
Speaker
I don't think there's ever been another juvenile charged with air piracy or who's tried to take an airplane hostage for real. Well, most juveniles wouldn't have a reason to.
00:43:47
Speaker
Right. that's I'm telling you, that it's it's the dry I think that he probably got to her, and it was all about vindicating her mom. Right, yeah. And, you know, 17-year-olds, she didn't have a mother any longer. Right.
00:44:02
Speaker
I don't know about other parental rules or whatever, but I totally, I see this coming from a mile away. But most 17-year-olds wouldn't have it in them to do it because they just, there's nothing that would light a fire under them figuratively. Right. to, to want to do something like that.
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i so i found a record for a Robin Oswald that is, I think she would have been 18. So she might be too old, but I couldn't find any like records indicating that a Robin Oswald had been put in prison.
00:44:43
Speaker
like Interesting. So I don't know for sure if she was or was not imprisoned for this. I can only say that if you go and read about it, there are quite a few jurisdictional debates that happened in 1978 and 1979. Like, what do you do with a girl from St. Louis that took over a plane but is still a juvenile?
00:45:02
Speaker
which She's committed a crime that technically would be... in adult court, but in the type of adult court that doesn't have a juvenile proceeding? Because at the time, there would have been very few air piracy proceedings of juveniles. I mean, there'd be none. There'd be zero.
00:45:23
Speaker
So like what do you do with this girl? Well, there was no precedent, right? Yeah. And there was no, like, aftermath. yeah There's no need for a precedent. In fact, I wouldn't encourage them to do it, but maybe if they some of our 17-year-olds could, like, plan something as complicated, it would be impressive. Yeah.
00:45:44
Speaker
Like, it's it's actually it's actually fairly, like, organized and, like, it sort of fits the insanity of all of this. Well, right, exactly, because it is insane. And what do you do? i don't I don't know what the answer is. Deprogram her?
00:46:02
Speaker
i mean, potentially, but, like, she's not programmed by Trapnel. She's literally just doing what I think she perceives as this thing her mom was trying to do.
00:46:14
Speaker
Well, right, but like that in and of itself requires deeper. I mean, imagine what their conversations were before her mom did that, right? Right, yes. And you so it it is a certain amount of deep programming and Like this dude, he had crazy game somehow, right? Oh yeah, he did. I have no idea how that works. Exactly. But he, he knew what to say. And so I could see where the fact that her mom died tragically doing something, I mean, I would say stupid, but she would say was like,
00:46:53
Speaker
worthy i imagine because of the narrative that was being spun on that side of it right this poor girl she just i do feel like there is going to be to some extent some deprogramming that has to happen so she can realize like oh he was in jail because of our judicial process the pilot was absolutely like while it's sad the pilot he didn't know what she was gonna do right As far as the mom, right like, you know, what if he she had wanted to free, like, all the prisoners or something? i don't know. But he wasn't in the wrong. it It was terrible that her mom died that way, but she put herself in that position, right? And so I would say even Barbara Ann Oswald was a victim to some extent that could have used some deprogramming. Yes. And I will say there's an article on hood.edu about ah Garrett Trapnel. It's called the return of Dr. Jekyll towards the ending of that article. It had like one of the most interesting ah summations that I feel like,
00:48:00
Speaker
not just applies to trap. No, I think it applies to like everybody who was brought into this and i want to throw it out there. It's, it's a quote from the article itself and the the article, I'll just go ahead and say it does not have a writer on it.
00:48:16
Speaker
Um, it's just like a news clipping from the times and it's taking place right in the middle of a paragraph talking about the fact that, ah to this freelance writer, Cy Berlowitz, Trotinol has basically admitted.
00:48:30
Speaker
I was told by a lawyer that I either needed to go to like the world the... the the mental institutions or I was going to prison. And he basically said, well, I guess I'm going to the mental institution. How this shakes out is Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Schlamm, who's in charge of one of his trials, he brings in two psychiatrists to testify. And in their opinion, not only was Trapnel perfectly sane, but he had an IQ of 130.
00:49:02
Speaker
so The social worker that we talked about, she was the juror that like held out. Her name was Gertrude Haas. She had been working for ah about 30 years as a psychiatric social worker, and this was her summation of what was happening.
Conclusion: Trapnell's Legacy and Skyjacking's Decline
00:49:22
Speaker
For her professional eye look at everything she saw, she said, Trapnel's account of how he had faked insanity was itself further evidence of actual insanity.
00:49:37
Speaker
And all of this, these people are all living in like ah soap opera.
00:49:45
Speaker
I don't disagree with that. Even the daughter... that'st it But it is an interesting concept, right? i I see that all the time, and I agree with her. Like, that's the best way I've heard it summed up.
00:49:58
Speaker
Because initially, somewhere way back at the beginning of the story, you said something like, he'll pretend to be insane. And my thought is, like, is he the only one who thinks he's pretending?
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah. i like the just the like I understand people want to go oh, he's a criminal, which he is. But like those two things, notwithstanding, like I think the behavior and the level of crimes he was committing are insane. Right.
00:50:36
Speaker
and They are They are. And like the only, you know, just because he's said, oh, I'm going to pretend to be insane to like, I don't know. i don't see how he's getting away with it. Because even if you go to the insane ward of the, of being incarcerated, it's not getting away with something. Right. Yeah.
00:50:56
Speaker
I don't think. And it's interesting though, because that was my immediate thought when that came up. Like, oh, oh it was during, I think, the pen pal letters um where he explained he did all these crazy you know things that he wanted to do. And then he just pretended to be insane. Well, I got news for you, buddy.
00:51:14
Speaker
I don't think you're completely pretending. No, not at all. I don't think i don't think he was ever pretending. um I will say he he has kind of um unceremonious death. He ends up dying of emphysema because, honestly, like in the federal prisons at the time, he would have been in them. Really, all you had to do all day was read and smoke.
00:51:34
Speaker
um There was not a lot of programming back then, but he makes his way over to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, and September 7th, 1993, he dies of infants. That is is very unceremonious. And i for the life of me, have not figured out how to track down Robin Oswald.
00:51:54
Speaker
I've tried several different times because i would be totally curious to see what, if anything, she did next. You know what i mean? I'm going to go with she probably changed her name. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. i was like, I think, like, among the first things I would want to do since I would be 17, and, like, this was basically the equivalent of my entire permanent record. I know that permanent records aren't real. I'm just being...
00:52:21
Speaker
tongue in cheek that like, this would be the thing that would set me towards a name change petition. Yes, exactly. ah And that's why we're probably never going to find her. no I, I assume so. But this story is like one of those that if you're talking about hostage taking, you kind of have to talk about skyjacking. And if you talk about skyjacking, you have to talk about Garrett Trapnel and This is sort of the button on his story. Like the last big thing that occurs is Robin Oswald trying to like get him freed by strapping road flares to her chest and like declaring she has a bomb.
00:53:01
Speaker
I find it fascinating. I find the whole era that we have of skyjackings and how they're gone now. to be so interesting. It's fortunate they did something about it then. Can you imagine the technological evolution? and Because if you think about it, the September 11th events, the last major overhaul was in 2001. Right. and we were not we were at the very beginning of the technological evolution, right? Yes. Can you imagine if the overhaul hadn't happened before that? Yeah, it would be crazy.
00:53:37
Speaker
It would be crazy. And it's interesting to me that we sort of beat that. i guess we'll see what happens, right? Yeah, of course. I mean, I have this um short story I wrote that i decided i wanted to write about the first hijacking in space.
00:53:58
Speaker
And so that's where I'm at. I'm like like, what will the next frontier of this type of thing? Because like I think we've settled into an age where it's like really easy to basically take people's money from their phone.
00:54:12
Speaker
And like that's where we're at now is trying to trick older people who are not familiar with technology into giving us their money over the phone. So what does it say that like all of the potential highjackers became spammers, scammers? I mean, ultimately, they kind of did.
00:54:29
Speaker
like And a lot of bank robbers, too. Well, it's not a great... It's it's not great. No, no. I don't understand a lot of that. It's it's a weird concept, but that's kind of how I feel like it landed.
00:54:43
Speaker
It did. Yeah. We're only about halfway through. Well, a little more than halfway. We've got several more episodes for Home for the Holidays. You got anything else on technology and skyjacking and trap null and Robin Oswald? No, I feel like we covered it. This is always an interesting case with so many facets. Yeah, it's got so many rabbit holes to go down.
00:55:10
Speaker
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00:55:22
Speaker
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00:57:26
Speaker
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00:57:44
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.