Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  Guisness reported about his interview with a woman he identified only as “Dorothea Moroney” who told him Payne had a jealous streak and that after his death Moroney “gathered the idea that [Mrs. Payne] would probably marry Ray Parker of Seiad as he was always in her company.”

  He then detailed what he had learned about the lodge building itself, including its electrical wiring, and concluded that although there seemed to be no motive for arson because the building was insured for less than its value, “this fire was not electrical in origin.”

  “However, no evidence was developed indicating the exact nature of the ignition. The fire was apparently started well away from any alarm system, which area would be above the bar where, according to the former owner, there was no electrical wiring. Entry to the attic area could easily have been gained through the French doors at the rear of the lodge.”

  Guisness made it clear that in his opinion, someone had intentionally started the fire. Arson, plain but not so simple.

  “In spite of this, it is not felt that sufficient corpus delicti could be established to successfully prosecute anyone for arson, nor is there sufficient evidence to attempt recovery of payment on this loss.

  “It is evident that William Payne had made every provision possible for having his estate in order upon his death. What this would indicate is not known at this time. This matter will again be discussed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Bottom line: the fire likely was caused by arson, but there was not enough evidence to prove it. That was a strikingly familiar set of words, because no probable cause had been established for the crash of Romance of the Skies either, primarily due to a lack of evidence.

  This is yet another provocative investigative file passed along to the FBI, and nothing will ever become of it.

  Forty-seven-year-old San Francisco Examiner investigative reporter Ed Montgomery is already a legend, not only in journalism circles but also among those in the highest levels of law enforcement and the lowest levels of crime.

  He has a national reputation for being a patient, determined reporter who has a special ability to get solid information from both good guys and bad guys, and nothing deters him once he digs into a story. Young reporters in the Examiner newsroom admire his energy as well as his careful, methodical reporting and strong, detail-filled writing.

  He never forgets a name or a face, and he is respected by readers for his honesty. Colleagues say his integrity is unquestioned and his curiosity unequaled. He has sources in both the underworld and the FBI. When he grants confidentiality to a source his word is his bond.

  He has worn a hearing aid for most of his life, but his ability to listen closely when a source says something important is part of what makes him extraordinary. Around the newsroom they that say everyone from convicts and con men to doctors and diplomats are among his trusted sources.

  In short, Ed Montgomery is a reporter’s reporter. He’s not only an exemplary investigative reporter, but also a crime solver, and when a story carries Montgomery’s byline it leads to even bigger headlines.

  For the past couple of weeks Montgomery has been working his sources for information on an attention-grabbing story that is copyrighted on front page of the Tuesday, December 16, 1958, Examiner. It will be picked up by the national news services and read coast-to-coast, but more importantly it will be eagerly read by information-hungry family members and friends of those who perished on Flight 7. It also will be read by residents of Scott Bar who have been wondering about their former neighbors, the widow Payne and her children, who had quietly moved away less than two months ago.

  The headline shouts:

  BLAST PLOT HINTED IN MID-PACIFIC AIR CRASH

  Sabotage Hinted In ’57 Pacific Air Crash Fatal to 44;

  Firm Refuses to Pay Off $20,000 Policy

  This story is the first time that anyone in the public has a clue that former Navy frogman and miner/lodge owner William Harrison Payne is a suspect in the crash of the Pan Am Stratocruiser.

  Montgomery reports that Western Life Insurance Company is refusing to pay Payne’s widow on an unsolicited $20,000 policy he purchased just weeks before the crash.

  Three days earlier Mrs. Payne had received a copy of the policy along with a letter from Western Life stating that it was taking advantage of a clause in the policy that allowed it not to pay in the absence of a corpse or a legal declaration of the policyholder’s death. Payne’s body was not among the nineteen recovered.

  Montgomery’s story quotes a skeptical Western Life president, R.B. Richardson, who defends his company’s action:

  “There is evidence Payne was on the plane but there is no definite proof. There were many strange circumstances connected with that flight. We have the right to wait seven years before making payment and we intend to do so.”

  The Examiner’s story states that Western Life assistant secretary and chief investigator Russell L. Stiles spent months looking into the claim and interviewed more than 165 people before writing a report that company executives want to release publicly but are being strongly encouraged by their legal team not to.

  “The whole thing makes you wonder,” Richardson says of Payne’s “unusual” purchase of the insurance policy.

  “He came into an office and applied for a policy shortly before the trip. He did not even know the agent. Agents usually motivate a man to action in buying insurance,” Richardson states. “New facts may come up to change our minds but as of now we feel that Mrs. Payne’s claim is definitely not proven.”

  The story says that the widow Payne, who now lives with her three children in Manteca, has hired San Francisco attorney Elliott Seymour to file suit against Western Life sometime this week. She already has been paid $125,000 in benefits for the policies Payne bought at the airport vending machine and has a $300,000 damage suit pending against Pan American. There is no mention of her now-forgotten marriage to Karim. Presumably, the reporter doesn’t know about that.

  Montgomery reports that Payne had been deeply in debt and that the reason he gave for the purpose of the trip—to collect some money he claimed someone owed him—did not justify the cost of the ticket.

  He also states that Payne was an expert in explosives and just three weeks before the flight had been ordered by a Siskiyou County Superior Court judge to pay the county $500 in damages for blowing up and bulldozing a 1.5-mile section of a county road between his lodge and Scott Bar.

  In the newspaper story, Payne’s widow dismisses all the allegations against her former husband and laughs off the idea that he is still alive.

  “Two or three of my real friends let me know that they’d been asked a lot of questions. What does this insurance company think? That my husband swam to some little island in the Pacific? How ridiculous can you get?”

  She points out that her husband’s mother and stepfather accompanied him to the airport and saw him get on the plane. She also says that Payne bought the large amounts of life insurance out of a deep feeling for his family and wanted enough coverage to clear them from any outstanding debts and to be able to live comfortably if anything happened to him.

  The story also states that the Civil Aeronautics Board has received a copy of the Western Life Insurance Company report and is preparing to release its “probable cause” report.

  When the public report is released weeks later, the CAB discounts the possibility that the crash was caused by sabotage or an explosion.

  Privately, however, an internal CAB memo isn’t so clear:

  “It is confidentially felt by Pan American officials that the investigation concerning the individual passengers has not been adequate on the part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Civil Aeronautics Board. . . .

  The FBI has made a flat statement that they cannot become involved in every aviation accident. . . . They have flatly told the Pan American Airways system that any information which may develop should be turned over to them, but no further investigation is goin
g to be done until something other than circumstantial evidence can be produced. Pan American definitely feels that there has not been sufficient investigation. As the investigation progressed [by insurance company investigator Stiles], it became evident that no one had investigated Mr. Payne as a possible suspect in the loss of the plane.”

  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover has been alerted about the Examiner story and is reading with keen interest the teletype from Webb W. Burke, the agency’s special agent in charge in San Francisco, and the blockbuster newspaper story. Burke outlines the circumstances that point to Payne as a saboteur, then gives the director circumstances that suggest he had nothing to do with the crash.

  Burke details the last-minute insurance policies, the one-way ticket with no return reservation, and the fact that no valid reason has so far developed for Payne to make a trip to Honolulu. He confirms that Payne was in financial distress and facing foreclosure on the lodge, and that he had been trained in demolitions while in the Navy. Payne also “had been heard to say” that he could build a delayed-action detonator by using two flashlight batteries.

  Burke also provides information to Hoover suggesting that Payne had nothing to do with the crash including the fact that his name was on the passenger manifest, “though it should be noted he could have disembarked before the plane left San Francisco.” Burke tells Hoover that no evidence has surfaced to indicate an explosion preceding the plane crash, and there is some evidence that the plane was ditched after a warning of an impending crash because fifteen of the nineteen recovered bodies were wearing life vests.

  Finally, there are the unexplained circumstances of Harriet Payne’s quickie marriage in Mexico, the burning of the Roxbury Lodge while she was on her honeymoon, and two strange phone calls: one allegedly from Payne the morning of the flight asking if it could be delayed because he was running late, and another from an anonymous man asking Pan Am if Payne was on the missing plane. When informed he was, the caller replied, “it couldn’t happen to anyone more deserving.”

  Hoover is especially pleased when he reads the final sentence from San Francisco: “Since there has been no definite allegation of sabotage or willful destruction, it is recommended that no investigation be undertaken at this time.”

  By this time, every FBI employee from San Francisco to Washington knows that Hoover wants no part in investigating a crash that may never be solved.

  Nine months after the hearing in San Francisco, investigators in Washington are still mystified by the cause of the crash, and members of the Civil Aeronautics Board are becoming increasingly frustrated with the agency’s failure to determine a probable cause. It’s not that investigators have quit working on the case, it’s just that the time-consuming research has been inconclusive.

  CAB Bureau of Safety Director Bakke is keenly aware of the pressure his superiors are facing, and he prepares a memo for the board explaining the delays and recommending what to do and say next. He says the unusual delay has been caused by the investigation into two crucial questions: 1) Did the aircraft attempt to send a distress signal? and 2) Was the crew incapacitated by carbon monoxide poisoning?

  Bakke states in a Friday, October 31, 1958, memo that possible tape recordings from the plane were “subjected to extensive laboratory analyses using the techniques of several different institutions specializing in electronic research.” He tells the board that every available technique has been employed in an unsuccessful seven-month attempt to determine if the crew sent a distress signal and, if it did, what the contents of that message were. Investigators conclude that no emergency message was sent from N90944.

  He also tells the board that three organizations—the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the School of Aviation Medicine, and the Directorate of Flight Safety Research—have conducted considerable research into the unexplained carbon monoxide, but the issue is still unresolved.

  He states that in September the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology “advised us that it was firmly of the view that excessive concentrations of carbon monoxide must have been present prior to impact.”

  This means that the crew and passengers ingested the deadly poison while the plane was still in the air. Something mechanical or man-made had caused the fire and smoke inside the airplane, either accidentally or deliberately.

  Bakke says his team had been preparing a report for the CAB with that important finding when, on October 16, the institute advised that a recent Navy accident had “disclosed information that again cast doubt on the validity of the Institute’s conclusions.”

  Back to square one.

  Bakke tells his superiors that although the institute is continuing its research, he believes that “further delay cannot be tolerated,” due to the “unusually large number of requests for the report from the public, next of kin, and from Members of Congress.” He advises the board to adopt the latest revised draft of its probable-cause report—a document that is, to this day, inconclusive and unfinished.

  Tuesday, January 20, 1959

  “WASHINGTON (UPI)—The Civil Aeronautics Board said today that the crash of a Pan American Airways plane in the Pacific Ocean on Nov. 9, 1957, probably will remain a mystery.

  The board said it had too little evidence to determine the probable cause of the tragedy which took 44 lives. The most plausible theory, the report said, was that a propeller or propeller blade tore loose and ripped into the fuselage.”

  Among its conclusions the board found that:

  The flight was normal and routine until shortly after the last routine report when an emergency of undetermined nature occurred.

  The plane descended from 10,000 feet and sent no emergency message.

  Some preparation for ditching occurred.

  The aircraft broke up on impact and a surface fire then occurred.

  Exposure of the crew to carbon monoxide was indicated but incapacitation could not definitely be established.

  No evidence of foul play or sabotage was found.

  Irregularities of maintenance practices and/or procedures discovered during the investigation could not be linked to the accident.

  The report was carefully crafted to state that the presence of a bomb “within the cabin fuselage” was not evident. That, of course, left open the possibility of a bomb or some type of explosive device having been detonated in a wheel well, for example, or in some other part of the aircraft not recovered.

  The board determined that it had “insufficient tangible evidence at this time to determine the cause of the accident,” but further research and investigation “is in process concerning the significance of evidence of carbon monoxide in body tissues of the aircraft occupants.”

  No further investigation is ever conducted by the CAB.

  The January 1959 report becomes the incomplete, inconclusive, and last official word on what happened to Romance of the Skies. The CAB has decided that it is more important to bow to public and political pressure and to release a report than to finish the investigation.

  ***

  The showplace of the Sonora Pass “Vacationland” sits eleven miles east of Sonora along Highway 108 in the California high country. The luxurious Twain Harte Lodge with its 6,000-square-foot main building and twenty-four poolside apartments is reopening on Saturday, April 30, 1960, under new ownership and management.

  Harriet Avah Hunter Theiler Payne Isaac Payne and her business partner, Thomas O. McCarthy, a South Dakota native and most recently a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, have paid $225,000 for the lodge and are investing in numerous improvements.

  Ironically, the lodge had burned to the ground shortly after midnight on Thursday, October 22, 1953, in a spectacular fire that was first noticed by a cook. The fire quickly spread through the kitchen into the restaurant and upstairs into the bedrooms before California Division of Forestry crews extinguished it shortly after dawn. It was a total loss.

  The Mother Lode Dining Room will feature a gourmet menu prepared by Russell Barrett, former che
f of the Los Gatos Country Club, and beginning tonight there will be dancing, a piano bar, a fancy new cocktail lounge, and a coffee shop for guests.

  The widow Mrs. Payne has another new life.

  US District Courthouse, San Francisco

  Inside the US District Courthouse in San Francisco, Chief US District Court Judge Louis Earl Goodman peers over his thick black glasses as attorney Robert M. Jones presses Harriet Payne for information about her claim that his client, Western Life Insurance Company, owes her $20,000 for her former husband’s death. It is obvious to courtroom observers that the sixty-six-year-old senior judge is not impressed.

  Goodman is one of the most high-profile federal jurists in the nation and is an all-business, cut-to-the-chase kind of fellow. Eight years earlier he had made headlines when he restored the citizenship of 2,700 Japanese-Americans who had been interned in Army detention camps after war had been declared against Japan. While this case is certainly not of that magnitude, he pays close attention, but seems to have little patience for what could turn into a long, drawn-out legal proceeding if he doesn’t keep both sides focused.

  Moments earlier Jones had called the widow Payne to the stand as an adverse witness in an attempt to prove that her husband had either sabotaged Romance of the Skies with a time bomb or had snuck off the plane before it departed from San Francisco International Airport.

  He questions her about her husband’s experience with explosives, but she deflects his attempts to paint him as a saboteur. She admits that he was familiar with explosives and testifies that he used them in his mining operations. She denies the attorney’s claim that the Paynes were deeply in debt at the time of the crash and that that may have been a motive for insurance fraud.

  “Have you seen your husband since he left for San Francisco?” Jones asks.

  “No, I haven’t,” the widow Payne replies softly.

  Jones tells the judge that the insurance company should not be required to pay the claim because Payne’s body was not recovered and there is no proof that he died from “wounds and contusions,” as the widow claims.