by Colin Wilson
That was the story. But Miller’s wife, Helen – the childhood sweetheart whom he had married – didn’t want to believe it. To begin with, she hoped that he had been taken prisoner. And when, after the end of the war, it became clear that this was a forlorn hope, she began instituting inquiries that involved searching war cemeteries, hoping that at least she could find a grave that she could visit. In February 1946 a certain Colonel Donnell wrote in answer to her inquiry to tell her that her husband had not been flying in one of the passenger planes but in a combat aircraft not designed for passengers. This aircraft, he said, was cleared to fly from Abbotts Ripton Field, near Huntington, to Bordeaux. Now Bordeaux is long way short of Paris, and Helen Miller must have found herself wondering whether her husband was supposed to walk the extra distance. Of course, the Norseman could have been intended to land at Paris and then go on to Bordeaux; but if so, the clearance would have said as much. The letter concluded by telling her firmly that no further information was available.
The rumor that there had been some sort of cover-up in the case led various researchers to try to track down the official documents. One of these, an ex-RAF officer named John Edwards, dismissed the cover-up theory and set out to prove that Glenn Miller had been on board the Norseman when it crashed. It was simply, he thought, a matter of getting the official form – called a 201 – about Miller’s death from the Washington file where it must be kept. But he found it to be a less simple task than he expected. The Records Office in Washington denied all knowledge of the file. The National Personnel Records Center in St Louis said they thought the records had been lost in a fire. It began to dawn on Edwards that somebody had a reason for sitting on the evidence.
Another RAF man, Squadron Leader Jack Taylor, decided to have a try. He succeeded in obtaining the MACR (Missing Air Crew Report) but found that the signature was illegible and the typed details so blurred as to be almost unreadable. Two other documents he succeeded in obtaining showed only that no kind of search for Glenn Miller had been instituted at the time. This in itself seemed odd, for the Allies were by then in control of most of France, and there would have been nothing to prevent a thorough search for the famous bandleader.
It was Taylor who approached another ex-RAF pilot named Wilbur Wright, who had become a highly successful novelist and therefore had time to spare. It was true that, by 1986, most of the witnesses were dead; but Wright reasoned that it ought to be straightforward enough to obtain whatever records existed. If there was any difficulty, he could invoke the Freedom of Information Act. And so Wilbur Wright took a deep breath and wrote to the United States Air Force Inspection and Safety Center in Norton, California, for the accident report on the missing plane. The reply stated that they had no record of an accident involving a Norseman on that date. A second letter drew from them the reply that no Norseman airplanes had been reported missing in December 1944. But Wright had a way of checking this – a document called the Cumulative Loss Listing. And this told him that there had been no fewer than eight Norseman airplanes lost in December 1944.
Wright began to smell a rat. And when letters to the Washington Records Office, the Army Casualty Division, and the Air Force History department met with similar blanks, one thing at least became obvious. This was not vagueness or incompetence; he was being deliberately stonewalled. Another letter to the Casualty Division in Alexandria, Virginia, brought a fascinating revelation. They admitted plaintively that they had been trying for years to obtain the Glenn Miller file from Washington and had been totally ignored.
Over the next month or so Wright kept up a furious barrage of letters to various agencies. He even wrote directly to President Reagan, asking him to intervene. He secured one grudging admission from Military Reference, admitting that there were several documents in the Miller file and listing them. But the Washington Records Office continued to insist that all documents had been lost or mislaid. In January 1987 Wright telephoned the records office and demanded to talk to the “top man”. He was put through to a Mr George Chalou, and he explained that he was a professional author and wanted to see the Glenn Miller burial file. He added that he had written repeatedly and got nowhere and that the Casualty Division people in Alexandria complained that Washington would not give them the file. “Right”!, said Mr Chalou, “and there’s no way they’ll get them back either. Those files have been under lock and key for years, and that’s how they’ll stay”. Wilbur Wright, who was recording the conversation, stared at the phone in dumbstruck astonishment. At last he had an admission that the file was being kept under wraps.
He went on to mention that he had written to Ronald Reagan – but did not mention that so far he had received no reply. That drew a gasp of “You didn’t!” followed by a demand for Wright’s telephone number. But there was no return telephone call – only more letters assuring Wright that he had now received all the information that was available. But further pressure elicited the reply that the missing file had now been found and that when Wright came to visit the office, he would see the “original MACR”. That confirmed what Wright had already deduced: that the MACR obtained by Squadron Leader Jack Taylor was a fake.
The Washington Records Office then decided to send the file to the Casualty Division in Virginia, assuring them that it had only just been located. Virginia wrote to Wright telling him that they had now mailed him a copy of the missing file. And eventually, weeks later, the file finally arrived.
This – as might be expected – included no astounding revelations; if it had, presumably it would not have been sent. But it confirmed one thing: the Missing Air Crew Report obtained by Taylor was not the original; close study revealed that it had been altered. Moreover, only page 1 had been included; page 2, which should have contained the signature, was missing. And when, with his usual incredible persistence, Wright obtained the missing page – which turned up in the pilot’s Burial File – it had no signature. The later “signed” version was a fabrication. So why had the original unsigned version not been given to Taylor – or released soon after the accident? Obviously, because it had not been signed, and this would have caused suspicion. Because Captain Ralph S. Cramer, who should have signed it, must have known that he would have been putting his signature to something that was untrue, he preferred not to.
All this, Wright realized, sounded inconclusive; perhaps Cramer was in a hurry and forgot to sign it; perhaps the Washington Records Office genuinely mislaid the file. But there was one other piece of evidence that Wilbur Wright felt was far more striking: the actor David Niven had been a friend of Miller’s since they had met in Hollywood in the early 1940s. As mentioned earlier, he was Miller’s “boss” when Miller came to London as a member of the U.S. Air Force, and he arranged that final tour, which was never made. Yet in his bestselling autobiography, The Moon’s a Balloon, Niven did not even mention Glenn Miller. And he also failed to say anything about him to his biographer, Sheridan Morley.
There is an equally odd omission in Niven’s autobiography. He was in Paris at the time of Miller’s disappearance, arranging a tour for Marlene Dietrich, another old friend – in fact, she, Niven, and Miller met for dinner whenever they could. The Battle of the Bulge – in which the Germans tried to relaunch the offensive against the Allies – began on the day after Miller “disappeared”, and Marlene Dietrich (who was, of course, German, and could have been shot as a traitor if captured) had to be hastily evacuated to Paris. Niven made a frantic phone call to a colleague in England, Colonel Hignett, to try to borrow a squad of “rough-necks” (commandos) to go and rescue Miss Dietrich. Hignett had to refuse, since all his men were on red alert. Then why did Niven fail to mention this important episode in his autobiography? He mentions the period but says he was elsewhere, at a place called Spa, two hundred miles from Paris. And a biography of Marlene Dietrich confirms that she and Niven were together on the day before Miller “disappeared” and that she was “rescued” from the German advance and returned to Paris.
Wri
ght’s conclusion was that Niven knew exactly what had happened to Glenn Miller and that whatever it was, it was not a drowning accident off Le Touquet. But if Miller was not on the Norseman when it crashed, where was he? Presumably in Paris, where he was supposed to be – and with Niven and Marlene Dietrich.
Assuming that that was correct, and that Miller flew to Paris – either on Thursday (the 14th) from Bovingdon, or on the following day – then what happened to him in Paris that led to a coverup?
Wright’s lengthy investigation – far too lengthy to describe in detail – led him to study many possible scenarios. He lists these in his book Millergate (1990). Miller’s brother Herb was convinced that Glenn never left England but that he died of cancer. This obviously raises the question of why a cover-up would have been necessary. There is nothing disgraceful about dying of cancer.
Another theory studied by Wright was that Miller’s plane was shot down by German fighters. But the weather over the Continent on 15 December was so bad that all planes were grounded. Moreover, the Luftwaffe records make no mention of a plane being shot down over the Channel. Oddly enough, Wright’s investigations revealed that the weather over Twinwood Airfield was still good and not, as Haynes claimed, appalling. The inference was that Haynes had invented the appalling weather to make his story more convincing.
Another rumor alleged that Miller had been taken prisoner and died in a prisoner-of-war camp. Wright dismisses this theory, pointing out that the Germans would have announced the capture of Glenn Miller to undermine Allied morale.
A more promising lead was connected with Lieutenant-Colonel Normal Baessell, who proved to have an extremely dubious reputation as a drug smuggler. Wright investigated a rumor that Baessell had been smuggling drugs to an airstrip in northern France on that fatal flight, that Glenn Miller had objected, and that Baessell had shot him and concealed the body; on their way back, the plane crashed. Wright’s research revealed that Baessell was certainly a swashbuckling character, macho and aggressive, who would have been perfectly capable of drug smuggling. But there is not the slightest piece of confirmatory evidence that this is what happened.
One of the most interesting stories was told by a man named Dennis Cottam, who had gone to Paris in 1954 to pick up a car. In a place called Fred’s Bar, not far from the Hotel Olympiades in Montmartre, where the Miller band had stayed, Cottam was told by the bartender, “You English think Glenn Miller died in the Channel on 15 December 1944, yet he was drinking in here that same evening”. He told Cottam that if he wanted confirmation of this story, he should go to a blue-painted door on the other side of the street and ask the lady there about Glenn Miller. The door turned out to be that of a brothel, and the Madame there told Cottam that in 1944 her boyfriend had been a Provost Marshall Captain and that he had told her that he saw and identified the body of Glenn Miller. But why was he killed? Cottam wanted to know. “Because he knew too much about the Black Market”.
That was certainly interesting. But would Black Marketeers really kill a famous bandleader who had only been in Paris for twenty-four hours or so – scarcely enough time to learn much about the Black Market?
Interviews with researcher John Edwards also brought some interesting insights. He obtained a tape made by a BBC engineer named Teddy Gower, who claimed that he had flown to Paris (Orly) with Glenn Miller from Bovingdon on Thursday, 14 December, the day Miller had actually wanted to fly. Don Haynes had admitted that Miller wanted to fly to Orly on the 14th, and that he (Haynes) had promised to arrange a flight from Bovingdon, the usual airfield for Continental flights. Yet, according to Haynes, he had changed his mind and accepted Baessell’s offer to give Miller a lift to Paris on the following day, Friday.
But why should Miller prefer a “lift” in a small plane (Miller hated small planes) on Friday to a comfortable trip in a larger Dakota on Thursday? Wright had already found many inconsistencies in Haynes’s story that led him to believe that he was lying. For example, Haynes claimed that he had driven back to Bedford on the Wednesday afternoon in thick fog, when Wright was able to uncover evidence that he and Glenn Miller had spent that evening at the Milroy Club with a group of officers and a girl singer. This, and much other evidence, convinced Wright that Haynes was closely involved in the cover-up. Miller had flown to Paris on the Thursday in a Dakota and had probably been met by David Niven, who was certainly in Paris that day.
John Edwards had another rather odd story to tell Wilbur Wright. Because of the publicity given to his search for Glenn Miller, he had received many letters. One of these was from a World War II veteran who claimed that he had not only known Major Glenn Miller but had been with Miller in a military hospital in Columbus, Ohio, when the bandleader died of head injuries. That sounded so absurd that Edwards had not even followed up the story but had thrown the letter into the wastebasket.
Edwards also told Wright about an American doctor named David Pecora who claimed to have been present at the time Glenn Miller died. With his usual incredible persistence, Wright finally succeeded in tracing Pecora. The result was disappointing – Pecora agreed that he had been in France at the time but said he had no knowledge of Glenn Miller.
Nevertheless, this false lead was to prove productive. Tracking down Pecora had involved much letter writing to New Jersey, the state where Miller had lived before he joined the U.S. Air Force, Wright decided to write to the State Registrar in New Jersey, asking if they had any record of the death of a Major Alton Glenn Miller; he gave all the necessary family details, including place and date of birth. But by accident he gave Miller’s state of birth as Ohio instead of Iowa. He was astonished to receive a letter confirming that Alton Glenn Miller had died in Ohio in December 1944. A telephone call to the registrar in New Jersey confirmed that Alton Glenn Miller, later a resident of New Jersey, had died in Ohio. At this point, Wilbur Wright made a mistake. Instead of asking for further details of where Miller died, he told the woman on the other end of the telephone, “You realize we are talking about the Glenn Miller who vanished in Europe in 1944”? After a long silence, the woman said, “We’ll call you back”. In fact, she called back two days later to say that the typist had made an error. They had sent him Glenn Miller’s place of birth instead of his place of death.
Wright was baffled. How could they confuse a place of birth in 1904 with a place of death in 1944? What’s more, Wright said to the woman, Miller was born in Iowa, not Ohio. “It was a typing error”, the woman insisted. “And anyway, Ohio, Iowa – it’s the same state”. Samuel Goldwyn is known to have confused the two, but it sounded strange coming from an employee of a State Registrar.
There was, Wright discovered, another oddity that needed explaining. In 1949 Helen Miller, who had moved to Pasadena, California, had purchased a six-grave burial plot in nearby Altadena. But the family consisted of only herself and the son and daughter she and Glenn had adopted; there were also her parents, who were, in due course, buried in the plot. Who was the extra grave for? The cemetery authorities were asked to deny that Glenn Miller was buried in the plot; it took them fifteen months to do so. They also sent Wilbur Wright’s “confidential” inquiry to Glenn Miller’s adopted son, Steve, whose response was to write an angry letter to Glenn’s brother, Herb – who had replied to Wright’s inquiries – saying: “Get this guy off our backs”.
Then what did happen to Glenn Miller? By far the most persistent rumor Wright encountered was that Miller had received a fatal blow on the head in a brawl in a brothel in Pigalle, Paris. (Pigalle is known as the prostitute’s area.) In a 1976 newspaper article, John Edwards speculated that Miller was murdered in Paris on the Monday that the band finally arrived. The article summarized, “Mr Edwards believes that Miller, who was a bit of a lad with the ladies, died of a fractured skull”.
Wright was originally skeptical about this story, because he was able to disprove some of the other details given by Edwards – for example, his assertion that a Lieutenant-Colonel Corrigan was able to confirm the “murder�
�. Wright traced Corrigan, who denied it. Edwards also claimed that an American doctor in Paris had signed the death certificate; this was presumably Dr Pecora, who denied all knowledge of Miller’s death. Yet the sheer persistence of the story – which surfaced in Paris as early as 1948 – suggested that it could be true. And it certainly fits in with the rest of the information that Wilbur Wright accumulated.
This, then, is the outline of Wright’s scenario of what happened to Glenn Miller:
Miller decided to go to Paris two days before the band in order to do some “socializing” – which included buying female companionship. He had arranged to meet his old friend David Niven, who would be there on 14 December to arrange Marlene Dietrich’s tour. Niven’s autobiography makes it clear that he was not averse to female companionship either, having been a flatmate of Errol Flynn. Niven probably met Miller off the Dakota that brought him from Bovingdon on Thursday, 15 December. Two days later Niven had to rush off to rescue Marlene Dietrich from becoming a victim of the Battle of the Bulge, but the two of them returned to Paris two days later and may well have joined Miller for a meal.
Miller went to a brothel in Pigalle, became involved in some kind of brawl, and was struck on the head. When Don Haynes arrived at Orly, he was puzzled that Miller wasn’t there to meet him. He claims that he spent two days searching for Miller in Paris, but (as Wright points out) that would not have been necessary. He must have known where Miller was staying and checked there – probably discovering that Miller had been missing all night.
The badly injured Miller was located; it seemed clear that he might die. How could his death by violence be explained without a scandal? The cover-up began. Miller was flown to a military hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, the disappearance of the Norseman provided the perfect opportunity for explaining his nonappearance at the Paris concerts. When the disappearance of the Norseman was announced nine days after it had happened, Glenn Miller was already dead in Ohio. He was probably buried there. His wife, Helen, was informed that he had died in the Norseman, but she did not believe it. And eventually, the military authorities decided to tell her what had happened – presumably before she purchased the six-grave plot in Altadena.