The two-day CAB hearing obtains testimony from eighteen witnesses. Nearly 100 pieces of evidence are presented; multiple theories are bantered back and forth about a probable cause for the crash. But when the proceedings end, all that’s left are more questions and a statement that further investigations will be conducted.
Investigators remain puzzled by the radio silence from the plane as it dove into the ocean. What could have prevented the four-man crew from using the sophisticated and extensive radio equipment and backups to send a distress signal? Pan American flight engineer F. E. Dysinger testifies that only some kind of unknown “incident” in the crew compartment could have knocked out both the primary and emergency communications systems—an idea that no one can fathom, or seems to have any interest in pursuing. The plane had three separate power systems and backup emergency generators—enough power to operate not only the radios but the aircraft itself.
Again, there was a solid angle to pursue, but no one did. The VHF radio on Romance of the Skies had been plagued with problems in the week before the plane’s final flight. At least twice the crew had reported to mechanics in their flight discrepancy reports that the radio was not properly working or not working at all. In both cases, ground crewmen checked the radio out, made minor repairs, and reported that it was fixed.
But on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu on November 3, just five days before the crash, the captain had reported that the radio transmission was extremely weak, and only eighteen miles after takeoff the VHF transmissions could not be received. Maintenance personnel checked the radio and replaced the antenna after the plane landed.
Testimony is introduced about recorded radio transmissions - strange, very weak and garbled - that may have come from Flight 7, but investigators so far have been unable to determine what the messages said or even if they even came from Romance of the Skies.
AIRINC (the radio communication network for airlines) stations in Seattle, Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco routinely recorded all radio transmissions from commercial aircraft.
Another mystery also remains unanswered: How did some passengers (mostly those first-class passengers in the rear of the plane) have time to prepare for a crash before they plunged to their watery graves while others apparently did not? Were people in the front of the plane (and in the cockpit) so incapacitated that they could not don their life jackets?
And finally, why did the crew fly north—away from help, with Ocean Station November only ten minutes off, with a trained lifesaving crew and equipment available to assist? Weather was not a factor.
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that the “possibly disabling” levels of carbon monoxide exposure are discussed at length during the hearing, but the cause is never determined. Not during the hearing. Not during the promised posthearing investigation. Not during the next sixty years.
Newspaper reporters covering the hearing seem to be as confused as CAB officials when they write their stories. A United Press International report states that the hearing determined that “pilot, crew and passengers may have been suffering from the deadly effects of carbon monoxide gas,” which it cites as the “most likely and most plausible theory” to account for the crash. Another newspaper report says a thrown propeller is the likely culprit.
A few days after the hearing ends, CAB Director of Safety Oscar Bakke decides to follow up on an offer that union representative Ice had made before Bakke headed back to Washington, and dispatches investigators Charles S. Collar and A. B. Hallman to San Francisco on a special mission. Ice had told Bakke he would make evidence of Pan American maintenance malpractice at the San Francisco base available to the CAB, and Bakke wants to see that evidence. He instructs the investigators to obtain everything Ice will furnish and “insofar as possible” check the validity of that information with Pan American. He gives them two weeks to complete the assignment.
What they learn validates many of the claims Ice had made at the hearing and in newspaper accounts, plainly suggesting that Pan American maintenance practices were questionable.
In a March 11, 1958, report to his superiors, Bakke outlines what the investigators learned and points out that any possible “company-union contractual controversies are being divorced from the report and its conclusions.” Bakke states that some of Ice’s allegations were without substance, but that “sufficient factual evidence” was obtained to draw the following conclusions:
The maintenance manual had not been followed completely.
Qualified mechanics were not always assigned as specified by Pan American’s Pacific-Alaska Division standards.
Inspection and/or quality control in the engine overhaul was not adequate. Spot inspections revealed repeated rejections of vital parts.
Maintenance practices were questionable.
There had been a policy at PAA-PAD to dispense with inspectors in many areas and in doing so transfer responsibility for the airworthiness of the airplanes and components to supervisory personnel.
“Based on our investigation,” Bakke stated, “we concluded that in dispensing with inspectors the ability to maintain a consistent satisfactory level of airworthiness has been lost. It is believed that many of the responsibilities of the production supervisor preclude the desired degree of personal supervision, checks, and inspections required to ensure that all airplanes departing meet the required level of airworthiness. Also, in arriving at this conclusion, it is recalled that three airplanes operated by PAA-PAD have been lost in the Pacific.”
Bakke recommends the reassessment of Pan American’s Pacific-Alaska Division policies, particularly with respect to maintenance and overhaul inspection, responsibility for day-to-day airworthiness, and adherence to the maintenance manual. He blisters Pan Am for fiscal shortcuts in maintenance and inspections and says the airline is putting airplanes in the air that are unsafe to fly.
That report does not sit well with Pan American executives, who immediately begin to lobby the CAB to keep the information from the public.
Harriet Theiler Payne is about to make a very big change in her forty-three-year-old life, and by 9 a.m. on Friday, June 13, 1958, she is seated on a United Airlines DC-6 Mainliner flying from Medford, Oregon, to San Francisco. There, she will board another flight, to Tijuana, Mexico, where she plans to marry Karim Harry “Mugs” Isaac, the much younger man seated beside her.
The lean, dark-skinned Isaac has been her lover and companion since she ditched Ray Parker a few months ago. Parker had been a suitable mate for the widow Payne for a brief period, but like her presumably dead husband, William, he was too jealous when she looked at other men, so she unceremoniously dumped him. Isaac has been of invaluable help in getting Roxbury Lodge in shape, just in case a potential buyer shows up to take it off her hands. It has been a money-losing drag since she and William bought it, but thanks to the airport vending-machine insurance money, she has paid off the mortgage, and the twice-married widow and mother of three is eager to move on with her life. The handsome, twenty-eight-year-old Isaac suits her just fine, and the thin, good-looking, auburn-haired Harriet has always looked younger than her years.
Whether Harriet is aware that the former Tradeway Chevrolet car salesman and housepainter has a wife and a six-year-old son in Manteca is unknown, and she doesn’t likely care anyway. She’s always been a take-charge, flirtatious woman, and the seven months since Romance of the Skies crashed have seemed like forever as she has worked to get her affairs—all of them—in order. If Isaac is a gold digger, then so be it. Right now, he’s just what she wants.
The soon-to-be bride and Isaac have reserved a $12-a-night room at the fancy Hotel Caesar’s in Tijuana. They are greeted at the airport by swarms of sweaty child beggars looking for a handout, but pay no attention. Charity is not something in either person’s background or character. There are whores along the streets and drunken sailors from nearby San Diego in the alleys, but Tijuana is Tijuana, and it is the perfect place for a quickie wedding and a honeymoon for the
newly wealthy widow and her bigamist gigolo.
They check into the hotel on Revolution Avenue, just a few steps from the Mexico-United States border, and look forward to their little getaway.
While Harriet Theiler Payne Isaac and her new husband are enjoying their honeymoon in Tijuana, a small group is gathered in Scott Bar and enjoying a Saturday evening in the atrium bar area of the two-story, metal-roofed Roxbury Lodge. The liquor is flowing, the Everly Brothers are singing “All I Have to Do Is Dream” on the nickel jukebox, and laughter punctuates the air as the guests mix it up. Harriet’s friends Steve Sherman and his wife tend the bar and wait on the customers.
US Forestry Service employee William H. Zook Jr., his wife, Dorothy, and her mother, Liduina Sargenti, are among the guests drinking and dancing this evening. Shortly before 1 a.m. they decide to call it a night. Sargenti leaves the lodge first, walks outside into the warm summer air, and sits in the car while awaiting her daughter and son-in-law. Moments later something catches the corner of her eye: a flickering light in the attic of the lodge. She immediately rushes inside to warn the others that a fire is breaking out.
“Fire! Fire!” she shouts, and then hears a loud, sucking “poof” sound as the lodge goes up in flames. It is now 1:20 a.m., and there had been no warning, no unusual smell, no hint of an imminent fire. Flames burst through the lodge ceiling as everyone inside flees for their lives, including one guest who had been sleeping in a back room and escapes the burning building in only his underwear.
Zook, who lives in nearby Happy Camp and is familiar with the building, races to the back of the lodge to disconnect the gas lines from the butane tank and notices that the French doors leading to the upstairs area are open. Strange, he thinks: no one has exited the building from that area, and no one should have been in the attic anyway.
Someone alerts the US Forestry Service, but by the time rangers from Fort Jones, Seiad Valley, and Oak Knoll arrive, the main structure is engulfed in raging flames so blistering hot that firefighters have to keep their distance. Among the rangers is a high school senior named Kip Payne, the eldest son of the lodge’s owner.
By sunrise Sunday, the once luxurious Roxbury Lodge, which doubles as the Payne family residence, is nothing but smoldering ruins, a crumpled mess of fire hose-soaked wood, four chimneys, and tangled metal and wires. The honeymooners in Mexico have been notified of the fire, and their holiday ends abruptly. They make plans to return to California on Mexicana Airlines Flight 590 the following day.
On Monday, June 16, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles admits Karim H. Isaac and Harriet Isaac back into the United States. The name “Payne” is struck out and written over with “Isaac” on her document. Both list Roxbury Lodge, Scott Bar, California, as their permanent address. Later that day they board a United Airlines flight for Medford, Oregon, a short drive from Scott Bar, and they arrive at the ruins of Roxbury Lodge after dark.
The lodge is insured for less than its worth, but the 200 acres it sits on is prime real estate, for its mining possibilities if nothing else, and Harriet can now reduce the selling price to something more reasonable and more marketable and establish a new life somewhere else.
By early in the week Scott Bar is buzzing with rumors and speculation not only about the fire, but also about that unexplained plane crash seven months earlier. Harriet and her children have kept a low profile and avoided the public glare since the crash, keeping their grief, if indeed there is any, to themselves. Now, in the wake of the fire at the lodge, locals are more interested than ever before in learning what happened to that Pan American plane the previous November, and whether Harriet might have been involved in that—and in the weekend fire. She senses the community’s suspicions and decides to move back to Manteca before school starts.
She’s had enough of Scott Bar.
Two months later and now freed of her latest husband, Harriet Payne (she’s now back to Payne) is loaded with insurance loot and spins around Manteca in her new Austin-Healey sports car. After lover boy Karim Isaac had tried—and failed—to convince Harriet to buy him a used-car lot in Modesto, it finally struck her that he was more interested in her money than in her. She dumped him and moved on. Isaac has returned to his wife and son, and Harriet has recently purchased a new home for her children and her mother. She has taken Kim, Kitti, and one of their friends on a trip to Disneyland, and she is enjoying a new life with no worries and plenty of money—something she has always dreamed about.
Although Harriet has moved from Scott Bar, the mystery about Roxbury Lodge remains, and two months after the fire lingering questions circulate not only in the community but also in the insurance world. It is unusual, after all, for one family to have been involved in two major tragedies in a seven-month period, and many questions remain about Payne, his widow, and those unexplained “accidents.”
The US Forestry Service determined within a few days of the fire that faulty wiring had caused the blaze, but insurers are unconvinced. In August 1958 the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company in San Francisco asks the National Board of Fire Underwriters in New York to review and possibly investigate the case. The board assigns the case to arson investigator and former FBI agent Earl Guisness of San Francisco, who drives to Siskiyou County within days of getting his assignment. Today, he is methodically examining the ruins of the lodge with Deputy Sheriff James Berrian. However, many weeks have passed since the fire, and the remaining evidence has been picked over by the Payne family and curious neighbors. Nevertheless, Guisness works diligently to determine how a 58-by-65-foot building with eight sleeping rooms, a lounge, a dining room, a kitchen, a dance floor, and a bar went up in flames—even though none of the eleven fire alarm bells sounded until everyone was safely outside.
All that is left standing when he arrives at the scene are four chimneys and some flexible copper tubing that had led to a large oil tank, still full, which had fed fuel to heaters in the lodge. After examining the ruins, Guisness turns his attention to Harriet, her newest ex-husband, and anyone he can locate who was at the lodge on the night of the fire or who might have helpful information about the lodge, the Paynes, or Isaac.
It took me more than forty years to obtain a copy of his “privileged and confidential preliminary” report to the FBI, and it is an eye-opener, confirming much of what Guisness later told a colleague.
“Mrs. Isaac advised that she had no idea what caused the fire in the lodge,” he reported. “She said that she and her husband were trying to decide whether or not to rebuild the lodge. She stated that the only recent work done to the lodge was from May 30 to June 13 at which time she and Isaac had been making repairs on the rear room of the lodge. Both she and Isaac advised that there were fire alarms around all the chimneys.”
Harriet acknowledged that she and her presumably deceased husband, William, had put the lodge up for sale more than a year earlier “and stated that she knew of no one who would have a grudge against her to such an extent as to burn the lodge.”
Isaac told the arson investigator that he was self-employed, “but failed to state just what he was self-employed at, and a few minutes later became unresponsive to questioning.”
Guisness provided some background information on William Payne, then disclosed details about the Payne family’s finances that he learned during a visit to Scott Valley Bank.
“The Paynes’ bank account in March 1957 had a high figure of $50. In June of 1957 the high figure was $450. In September 1957 this account was overdrawn on two occasions. Shortly after September 25, $800 was placed in the account and was immediately drawn upon until $5 remained. In October the account went from a high of $631 down to $18.49. On November 4 two checks were drawn, one in the amount of $437.40 and another in the amount of $175.54. The check for $437.40 was to pay the annual premium on the fire insurance covering Roxbury Lodge. At the time of the payment this premium was two months overdue.”
Not stated, but presumed, is that the check for $1
75.54 went to Pan American for Payne’s mysterious one-way ticket to Honolulu.
The Paynes were broke.
Guisness noted that the Paynes canceled $5,000 of their fire insurance on the lodge a year before the crash “inasmuch as they could not afford the premium.”
The fire insurance investigator wrote about his interview with former lodge owner Charles Brown, who told him that the lodge had been rewired and that all electrical wiring had been brought up to date before he sold it to the Paynes. He added that there was no electrical wiring over the bar and dance-floor area—disputing the Forestry Service’s conclusion that “faulty wiring” had caused the fire.
Brown told Guisness that the Paynes had been “very slow and missed many payments” until Payne got a $15,000 loan from his mother and paid off the Brown mortgage.
“Brown stated that he got rid of the lodge as it was no longer suitable for a hunting and fishing lodge due to the increased population in the area. He stated that probably the only worth in this property was in its mining possibilities,” Guisness stated.
Brown added further to the mystery about why the Paynes had thought they might be able to turn the lodge into a moneymaker when he himself had been unable to do so.
“He advised that when he owned the lodge their average take was probably $1,000 per month,” Guisness wrote.
If Brown had been able to take in only $1,000 a month, how in the world did the inexperienced lodge owners think they could bring in more money? And with a base lodge income averaging only $1,000 a month, there was no way they could possibly have raised their family and paid their personal bills while at the same time stretching that money to maintain the lodge and pay their property taxes, utilities, employees, and mortgage.
What had they been thinking less than two years earlier when they bought the place?
Flight 7 Is Missing Page 18