Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  Bellhop Gene was twenty-one years old when he found Thelma Mae Owens, the first love of his life, and they were married on October 20, 1931. They began homemaking on Needham Avenue in Modesto, and five years later he landed a job in transportation, a field he would work in for the rest of his life. Gene went to work for Matson Navigation Company in Frisco and for three years worked as a room steward on the Frisco-to-Australia run, primarily on the luxury ocean liner SS Mariposa. Although Gene supported her financially, Thelma Mae was left alone for weeks, sometimes months, at a time, raising their daughter, Billie JoAnn, while Gene sailed the seas.

  By 1939, a fledgling American airline company founded by Juan Trippe—Pan American World Airways—caught his eye with its famed “flying boats,” the mammoth Boeing 314s. Pan American was hopscotching the Pacific from San Francisco to Hawaii, from Guam to the Philippines and on to Hong Kong, and after years on the high seas, Gene was itching for a change, and flying in the skies in a Pan Am Clipper was just the kind of new adventure he was seeking. He also was deathly afraid that war with Japan was imminent, and the last place he wanted to be was on a sinking ship filled with holes. Pan American hired him on July 8, 1940, as a probationary flight steward on the Pacific route, and his seventeen-year career with Pan Am was underway.

  Unfortunately, strained by long separations and Gene’s inherited wanderlust, his marriage continued to fall apart, and he and Thelma Mae went their separate ways. Like his migratory father before him, Gene left his life in California behind and transferred to Shanghai, China, where he went to work for the Chinese National Aviation Corporation, a partnership between Pan Am and the Chinese government. Gene was a devoted employee and worked as a ground steward and liaison between CNAC and the US military throughout the war. He immersed himself by learning everything he could about the Chinese people, their customs, their politics, their traditions.

  He drank hard. He played cards. He chased the ladies.

  With Gene in China and Thelma Mae back in the United States, their marriage continued to deteriorate, and they formally separated on June 10, 1944. Thelma filed for divorce and accused Gene of extreme cruelty that caused mental suffering. The Crosthwaites signed a divorce agreement a month later. Thelma Mae got custody of Billie JoAnn and the titles to their house and two lots in Belmont. Gene got their 1938 Oldsmobile. He agreed to pay $25 a month in child support and another $25 a month in alimony.

  When World War II ended, Gene remained in China and was brought back into the Pan American family as a senior port steward. He mixed it up with the locals. He continued to drink heavily, gambled at cards, and on at least one occasion nearly got into a fight in a bar before a colleague with more common sense intervened.

  “He had a tendency to be spring-loaded in a negative position,” one pilot recalled.

  He also fell behind in his alimony payments, and in December 1946 a San Mateo County judge ordered Pan American to begin deducting more than $100 a month from his paycheck until he caught up, which was fourteen months later.

  On October 20, 1948, he was promoted to flight purser, and he was back in the air. It was in Shanghai that he met and married Julia Pavlichenko, a Manchurian-born Russian widow with a child, Tatiana, from a previous marriage. In 1949 Gene formally adopted the nine-year-old, and her new name became Tania Eugene Crosthwaite.

  Ultimately Gene was sent back to California and worked the Pacific route for Pan American. Off duty he worked tirelessly and successfully to unravel the immigration bureaucracy so that he could bring Tania and Julia’s widowed mother, Katherina, to the United States, and by the midfifties Gene was feeling on top of the world. He had a young and stunningly beautiful Russian-born wife and a well-paying job that allowed him to travel the world, and was building a new house in Felton, known as “the little town in the Redwoods.” His home was constructed in large part with assistance from his skilled stepfather-in-law, Peter Stub, and financial help from his mother-in-law, who peeled vegetables at Birds Eye to help the family.

  The good life ended on September 22, 1955, when Crosthwaite was diagnosed with tuberculosis, grounded from flying with Pan Am, and hospitalized for what would be six months of treatment.

  He would never be the same.

  July 1992

  The bureaucratic negligence and cold indifference of federal authorities in Washington who had put the unfinished CAB report in a file and forgotten about it three decades earlier continued to nag at me, and on June 21, 1992, I wrote a letter to National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Susan Coughlin, seeking her help, particularly on resolving the unanswered questions about the carbon monoxide. The CAB no longer existed by this time, having morphed into the NTSB. Coughlin promptly forwarded my letter to Ronald L. Schleede, chief of major investigations in the agency’s Office of Aviation Safety.

  Finally, I had someone’s attention.

  Schleede and I had a conversation a few weeks later, and what he said took my breath away.

  He quickly dismissed the decades-old story that elevated levels of carbon monoxide in the plane victims may have been caused by the decomposition of their bodies in the ocean.

  “That is baloney,” Schleede declared. “Carbon monoxide doesn’t do that. . . . It joins the blood through the lungs. The victims have to be breathing.”

  Learning that the possibility of a link between carbon monoxide and body decomposition had been dismissed years earlier further deepened my frustration and suspicions about how the case had been mishandled.

  Schleede, who had previously worked in the agency’s Human Factors Division, said he was “appalled” when he had read the CAB report the previous week.

  “I couldn’t believe [the case] was left hanging,” he told me. “It’s amazing. I just can’t understand why the case was not pursued.”

  Neither could I.

  Schleede assured me that the NTSB would research the circumstances of the crash and get back to me. I was elated and felt that having him on my side to open doors in the federal government was the most positive development in the search for my father’s killer in many years.

  That positive soon turned into a negative.

  On July 31, 1992, he sent me a letter in which he stated that Dr. Merritt Birky, the NTSB’s fire scientist and toxicologist, was assisting him in handling my request but “he has been unable to find any toxicology records at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and there appear to be no records at the NTSB other than the adopted report.”

  Schleede said the agency would continue to search for more information about the crash investigation, but told me to “please be patient” because the agency had limited time available due to a heavy accident-investigation workload.

  That sounded to me like a bureaucrat who was setting the stage to do nothing, but he concluded his letter with the statement that he “finds this case very interesting and will attempt to get more answers for you.”

  I was patient, for three months, but when he failed to get back to me I sent him a letter asking for an update. He did not respond. I called his office. He did not respond. I sent him emails. He did not respond.

  I was patient for another seven years, and on February 18, 1999, I sent a letter to NTSB Chairman Jim Hall briefly outlining the case and expressing my frustration with Schleede. Less than an hour later Schleede sent me an email:

  “I think we lost some email during a network problem,” he stated. “I have not done anything more about that accident. I am not sure I can be of more assistance.—Ron.”

  Unsatisfied with that response, I tried him again two months later. This time he was more direct:

  “I have retrieved the report of the subject accident and have reviewed it again,” he stated in an April 11, 1999, email. “As I mentioned before, I don’t see any reasonable means to assist you further. I can’t find any practical means to resolve the questions regarding the source of the CO found during post-mortem testing, As the report reflects, the limited wreckage recovered revealed no evidenc
e of an in-flight fire; however, there was a fire on the surface of the water . . . and a possibility exists that the reported CO levels were absorbed during the surface fire. However, it does not seem possible to prove such a theory.”

  I accepted his answer, but still couldn’t accept the fact that the investigation had been stopped stone-cold in 1958.

  January 1999

  Russell Lawrence Stiles was not a flamboyant fellow, not even close. Like my father, he was one of those conservative, steady, down-to-earth veterans of World War II who returned home from the service, settled down, and raised a family. They didn’t make headlines or make waves, but they made a difference.

  He was born on February 28, 1913, in Newton, Kansas, to James and Emma Stiles, but the family moved early in his childhood to Colorado, where his father worked as a train conductor. Stiles was an outstanding student and served twice as business manager of Skyline Flashes, the Cañon City High School newspaper. He was a studious fellow, who after graduation studied at the University of Colorado and later worked as an insurance inspector for the American Service Bureau in Denver. In 1943 he enlisted in the Army for the duration of the war and was sent with his wife of four years, Maxcy Jane Watson, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he became a military policeman and detective.

  After the war, he and Maxcy moved to Helena, Montana, where he rose through the ranks of Western Life Insurance. Dependable and trusted by senior executives, he was assistant secretary and chief investigator in 1957 when the company president dispatched him to California on a very important mission: investigate the claim of the widow Payne.

  That assignment turned out to be a life-changing event for him, and I was disappointed that I had been unable to find out why. In early 1999 I made yet another attempt to persuade him to talk with me and to share what he knew about the crash forty-two years earlier. The search for my father’s killer had of late been going nowhere, and I felt the only way forward was through Stiles.

  “Dear Mr. Stiles:

  “You may recall that we communicated many years ago about the crash of Pan American N90944 as I was researching a book on the project. You had expressed concerns about discussing the matter, and although I certainly respected your judgment, I desperately wanted to learn what you knew.

  “I still do, Mr. Stiles. As you know, it has been my life’s passion to learn why my father and everyone aboard Romance of the Skies died. Frankly, I have just about hit a dead end with this, and after more than 30 years of pursuing answers, I am writing now in hopes that you might be willing to share the information you learned while investigating the crash.

  “Please reconsider your decision of more than 20 years ago and allow me the opportunity to learn what you know about this crash.”

  I knew that time was running out, given his age, and as it turned out, the letter struck a nerve. He responded on March 9. Although it was his normal courteous but curt response, it did give me hope that after all these years his conscience was finally beginning to overwhelm his fear and concern:

  “This will be brief for now, but I will communicate with you later. I have just reached the age of 86 and my family is grown. I retired in 1979. I come close to being an invalid. I still drive an automobile and I can walk only short distances. I tell you this because at my age I feel that anything could happen.

  “I make no promises as to what I can do about your request. I wish I could say, sure, here it is, take it, do with it what you will. It’s not that easy. I know it is hard for you to understand and I am very sympathetic with your position. I know how I would feel under similar circumstances. Please feel free to communicate if you wish.”

  That was that. No new revelations. No promises of any new disclosures. Nothing but an opening door, and I could not let it close again. Stiles was getting very old, very feeble, and I did not want him to leave this world without giving me something that might jumpstart my investigation. I sent him a follow-up note the next day, urging him again to share whatever he felt he could. Anything, I pleaded. Anything.

  A few days later he responded. Again, not with much information, but I was pleased that something was going on in his head and that he was finally opening up. He shared with me some thoughts about the 1958 lawsuit that Harriet Payne had filed against the insurance company when it refused to pay her, and he lamented the way the case had been handled when it went to trial.

  “I am struggling with my psyche to determine just what I can give you without destroying the well-being of my wife and myself. What I must avoid is a lawsuit. Twenty years ago, there would have been more than that.

  “In 1957 I was employed by Western Life Insurance Company. It was a very fine insurance firm. I was employed by this firm after leaving the service. In the service I was with a military police group doing mostly investigative work. Before the service I had done investigating for insurance companies, bonding companies and about any kind of business needing information on people. Most all of my associates with Western are dead now or in rest homes. I was hired by the president of this company and he backed me on nearly everything. He told me he talked to you on one occasion. You then called me; I believe.

  “When the case in question was presented to us, I was sent to work on it and told to report on it only to the president. The legal counsel was unable to accept being bypassed and he sabotaged the case. I was horrified when I began to see the law firm hired by us had not opened the file which we had furnished. They knew nothing about the matter and made no effort to learn any of the details. They were unprepared to try the case, so it was open and shut. The claim was paid as I knew it would be, but we had hoped something would come of it.

  “The judge sat staring at me, ready to jump for contempt like a sheep dog at his sheep. There was no chance for us to present any kind of defense. It was probably the shortest trial on record.”

  Again, I was pleased we were communicating and grateful to have the information, but his gripes about how the lawsuit had been handled were of no real concern to me. What I wanted, what I needed, was the information in his files and in his head about his investigation into passenger-lodge owner William Harrison Payne. I responded to his letter with information of my own, including tidbits about the autopsies of the nineteen bodies recovered and questions that were troubling me about what the coroner had discovered.

  In the back of my mind I was thinking he might find the information interesting, but even more importantly that it might take him mentally back to those days when he drove all over California and Oregon working so diligently to solve the case. More than two decades earlier he had confided that he still had sleepless nights over the case, and I hoped that now, as he neared his final years, the gentleman would want closure just as much as I did.

  Something was finally clicking. He responded a few days later:

  “Today, I’ll respond to your question on the autopsies. We were running out of time. I explained to you before that Western Life was merging with a Minnesota company and our legal counsel was to take over the presidency in Minnesota. Richardson, with whom you have talked, would lose his grip on Western Life and that would be the end for me and the investigation. So, I hastened to do what I could in the time that was left. I felt the autopsy records were no support to our position so did not try to review them. Ordinarily I would have if there had been time.

  “I left Western Life in 1961. I had hoped Richardson would finance the continuation of the investigation. I did not have the money needed to go on. I thought once he was going to do it, but he didn’t do it. He did not go with the company to Minnesota and he became physically impaired so that he was confined to his home. This man did a great many things for me.”

  “Come on. Come on, man,” I muttered to myself as I read more about Western Life, Richardson, and how wonderful he had been to Stiles. “Give me something decent to work with.”

  And then the letter took a surprisingly strong turn:

  “I was of the opinion that we were so close to a solution
and he was inclined to believe it, too, I thought.

  “From the postmistress of Scott Bar, I learned that the subject’s wife was receiving mail from out of the country which had never happened before. I am sure she was convinced the mail was from the subject. She was terrified that she would lose her job if she told me anymore.

  “I begged and pleaded with her, but she was terrified at the possibility of losing her job or prosecution. One day she said if I would take her to the sheriff —a friend of hers—she would ask him if she should divulge any of the information. I knew this would be bad and it was, for he assured her that she should give me no information. Then he wanted detailed information from me which I would not give him. He could smell a great opportunity for a law enforcement officer in this area.”

  Bingo! Payne’s widow had begun receiving mail from out of the country after the crash? The postmistress was terrified? Finally, something to sink my teeth into. Did Payne and his wife conspire to blow the plane up for insurance purposes?

  “. . . You may or may not have this information, but you speak of the expertise of the subject. He was a US Navy frogman. This was a very risky branch of the service. The members of this group are highly trained in underwater activity and the use of high explosives. This man had the knowledge of how to detonate an explosive with a delayed device. The details of how he did it, he guarded very closely. The part of it that was known was that he would use flashlight batteries, and no one knew anything about how he did it otherwise. The delay was for 6 hours.