Black militants hijack plane

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32776, 29 November 1971, Page 1

Black militants hijack plane

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

TAMPA (Florida), November 28.

Three black men, including two who have been active in revolutionary activity in the San Francisco area, seized a Trans World Airlines jet in Albuquerque early yesterday and hijacked it to Cuba, United Press International reported.

The three men, who are wanted for the murder of a New Mexico policeman, brandished automatic weapons and a knife in commandeering the aircraft—the second to be hijacked in a week, and the twenty-fourth in the United States this year. Robert Goodwin, aged 24, also known as Ralph Goodwin and Michael R. Finney, aged 20, were members of the Republic of New Africa Organisation, based in Berkeley, California —a group which advocates establishment of a black nation in the American South. The other hijacker is identified as Charles Hill, aged 21. The hijacked aircraft landed in Tampa for more fuel and to allow 32 passengers to disembark. Six crew, including three stewardesses, were taken on to Havana. The F. 8.1. said it learned from Havana that the crew was “safe and sound” soon after the plane arrived in Cuba, and that the Cuban authorities had the hijackers in custody. SEARCH FOR HIJACKER Meanwhile, the F. 8.1. said that aircraft would search the entire route from Seattle to Reno for a hijacker who parachuted from an airliner last Wednesday with a $200,000 ransom. The “whole vector” of the jet airliner’s flight would be covered when the weather clears, it was said. The plane’s route passed over Portland and Medford, Oregon and Red Bluff, California, | i before landing in Reno. j Yesterday’s activity cen-j tred on a wooded area near i Woodland, Washington,,

where the F. 8.1. believes the man might have jumped. Other F. 8.1. agents think the wanted man may be in a 15 square mile stretch of rough timber country 35 miles north of Portland. “If we have to, we’ll cover every square foot of it,” one said. Drizzling rain and low

cloud forced the F. 8.1. to call off an afternoon air search of the area near Woodland, Washington, where it believes the man might be hiding, possibly with a broken leg. The hijacker, a swarthy, middle-aged man who called himself “D. B. Cooper,” took over a North-west Airlines 727 with a “bomb” during a flight from Portland on Wednesday. He forced the plane to land at Seattle, collected four parachutes and $200,000 in $2O notes in a white cloth bag, and allowed the passengers off. Then he ordered the crew to fly him to Reno, Nevada. PARACHUTE JUMP

Somewhere along the {route, he parachuted into the {night from the plane’s open i rear door. The plane’s inI flight recorder showed that when the plane was over the target area of the search, instruments showed the rear door being lowered, the F. 8.1. said.

Skydivers in the area have told the F. 8.1. that they doubt that a man wearing street shoes could jump with a “stunt” parachute of the type the hijacker was using and land in such a rough area at night without suffering injury.

A parade of cars, trucks, and motor-cycles, has meanwhile carried fortune-hunters looking for the money along soggy back roads in the rough country. “You start thinking about it, and you realise maybe he didn’t live through the fall, and there’s $200,000 sitting all alone in the woods,” said one of the treasure hunters, a girl who identified herself only as “Anita.”