Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  “During the time that the applicant [Payne] operated this business [the lodge], he became interested in the mining of chrome and later became involved in a chrome mining venture with a Mr. John D. Sherman, whose address is 21 East Scott Street, Chicago, Illinois. This partnership was dissolved before Mr. Payne’s death occurred,” Stiles wrote. “Mr. Sherman is reported in some way to be associated with the publication of Playboy magazine [a connection I could never verify]. Mr. Sherman was somewhat interested in mining and entered into a partnership with Mr. Payne in the mining of chrome.”

  Who was this John D. Sherman? How did he meet Payne and get involved in mining chrome with him? Why would Payne take on a sideline of mining chrome when he had his hands more than full with the lodge? And was Sherman in some way connected with the crash?

  I learned that John David “Buddy” Sherman was a wealthy, twenty-nine-year-old adventuresome fellow when he traveled to Roxbury Lodge as a guest in 1956. The gregarious Sherman, whose permanent address was in Chicago, also spent time on California’s coast, where his widowed mother, Marjory Kanrich, lived, in Cathedral City. He traveled extensively and was known to enjoy heated political conversations, a good cup of coffee, peasant Greek wine, and brandy.

  His father, Harry Wilson Sherman, was a pioneer in the manufacture and sale of wash-and-wear cotton garments, primarily dresses for women, and the creator of the retail chain store concept. His particular chain, The Sherman Shop, included dozens of stores from coast to coast, and all the merchandise was manufactured in his Sherman Wash Wear and Mount Vernon Garment Company factories.

  As a child, Buddy Sherman had become accustomed to wealth and its privileges. He lived with his parents in an elegant twelve-room stone home on North State Street in Chicago and graduated from the prestigious Francis W. Parker High School. Two full-time live-in servants—a maid and a cook—took care of the family’s needs, and Buddy developed a taste for the finer things in life. By his late teens he was itching to go out on his own and travel the world.

  In short, he was bored and rich.

  Shortly after high school graduation he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, but was released early from service because of the untimely death of his father in December 1945. He briefly attended Northwestern University, but with his financial future secure, he left college and became deeply involved in running the family business. As the founder’s only son, Buddy took on a major role in the company, and by all accounts he and his mother continued to develop it as a retail giant, adding to its value—and their fortunes. In 1948, he married Jean Marie Fergus in Chicago, but the relationship was rocky from the start, and they separated numerous times.

  In October 1955, he and his mother sold the company to the Mode O’Day Corporation, and both walked away with enviable fortunes.

  Still bored and still rich, the twenty-eight-year-old Buddy began a life of travel and adventure—without his wife—that ultimately took him on a fishing trip to Scott Bar and Roxbury Lodge, where he and Payne hit it off and decided to start mining.

  For Payne, it was an easy decision. His business was going downhill fast, and he knew that others in the area were making money by mining chrome, so why couldn’t he? When Buddy Sherman entered the picture, Payne found a potential partner with both money and a smooth way of talking that convinced “Chrome Queen” Moroney to short-term lease them a portion of the once world-class McGuffy Creek chrome mine near the lodge.

  Payne, given his knowledge of explosives, was convinced they would get rich quick. Sherman, on the other hand, didn’t need the money; he craved adventure. Sherman rented a trailer from Payne behind the lodge, and Payne walked away from his responsibilities at the lodge, leaving Harriet to mind the store. Neither man had any knowledge of chrome or mining, and had they done some research they might have learned that their specific leased area of the McGuffy Creek deposit was considered by experts to be high cost and low yield in recent years. But Payne, like he had with the lodge two years earlier, thought mining would make him a rich man.

  He was wrong again.

  “It was felt by some business associates of Mr. Payne that he neglected his lodge operation in order to conduct a mining venture,” investigator Stiles reported. “While the lodge was never felt to have been a lucrative business, it probably would have been more so had Mr. Payne devoted his entire time to it.”

  It’s unclear whether Payne and Sherman were actual financial partners or if Payne just rented equipment to Sherman and worked alongside him in the venture. It is known, however, that Payne’s stepfather, Lawrence Hansen, drove up from Manteca and worked with them for a short time in the summer of 1956, a period during which, the Chrome Queen told investigator Stiles, a “great deal of chrome” was mined and shipped from the site.

  A lot of chrome might have been mined and shipped, but at what cost?

  Moroney told Stiles that Sherman never paid her for the lease or her share of the mined chrome. Others in the community told Stiles that Payne and Sherman lost several thousands of dollars in the venture, but the Chrome Queen said that if Payne lost any money it was likely only from equipment he had rented to Sherman that was never paid for.

  For whatever reasons, the Payne-Sherman deal fell apart, and within a few months Buddy Sherman was back in Chicago looking for another adventure, this time a little closer to home.

  Stiles had a commercial reporting company contact Sherman after the crash of Romance of the Skies in an attempt to learn more about Payne, the mining venture, and their relationship, but for some unknown reason Sherman refused to talk.

  “The results of that contact is part of our file [that portion has never been made public], and it is obvious that Mr. Sherman was very guarded in any information which he was willing to give. The information obtained from him was practically worthless. He made the flat statement that ‘I know what this is all about. I know what you are looking for.’ It is felt that the person representing the commercial reporting company probably was not too tactful in the approach and, consequently, was not able to effect cooperation by Mr. Sherman.”

  Why would Sherman not want to talk about Payne? What did he think the insurance company was looking for? If he knew “what this is all about,” what in the world was it?

  Sherman later ran unsuccessfully for alderman in Chicago, and he and his first wife, with whom he had five children, went through a nasty and expensive divorce in 1966 after moving to Vermont. He married Anne Ulen about a year later and became an avid collector of rare antiques and vintage cars, trucks, and motorcycles. He traveled the world and owned and operated bars and restaurants in New England, as well as the Newporter newspaper in Rhode Island, and became known locally as Lord Budwell of Crudwell.

  Sherman died in 2008 in Jamestown, Rhode Island.

  “He was mostly attracted to traditional working-class food, drink, art and politics, especially in the company of intelligent, spirited, attractive women of that same ilk,” his obituary stated. “He left behind many friends and a few enemies, too.

  “His Lordship lived for the open road.”

  That “open road” had led once to remote Scott Bar, California, but we will never know what really happened there and why he refused to talk about that summer in 1956, when the rich young playboy rolled up his sleeves and became a chrome miner.

  I dove back into the insurance company report and finally found what I had been most interested in: Stiles’s findings relative to the “explosive” side of Mr. Payne, what the former frogman did in the days prior to the plane crash, and how he might have been involved in bringing it down, killing everyone aboard.

  Stiles had shown that financial difficulties might have motivated Payne to sabotage the plane in a suicide-for-insurance plot, but his report so far had not tied circumstances together. Another angle, which he had not yet addressed, was the possibility that Payne and his wife had conspired to blow the plane up and split the proceeds, each going his or her separate way. That was something he had hinted to me abo
ut years earlier, when mentioning that the postmistress in Scott Bar told him the widow Payne had begun receiving mail from out of the country shortly after the crash.

  “This entire investigation has been conducted with the theory in mind that the applicant for insurance had a definite motive for suicide and the technical knowledge to have sabotaged the Pan American Airways plane N90944.”

  Stiles then detailed Payne’s knowledge of explosives and the ease with which he was able to obtain them.

  “It was common knowledge that Mr. Payne had access to explosives in practically any amount that he desired. He is known to have used explosives in his mining venture, since one individual who had occasion to inspect the venture definitely noticed that the rock which was considered as being chrome ore had portions where holes had been drilled for explosive charges.”

  Stiles stated that he had interviewed a man who sold mining supplies and told him that Payne “on occasion had helped himself to his supply of dynamite.”

  The man also mentioned that former lodge owner Charles Brown had told him Payne routinely used dynamite in his mining operations, and also to close off mine shafts that might have posed a safety risk for the Payne children and their friends. Brown also told him that Payne had said many times that he had been a frogman while in the Navy.

  “The term ‘frogman’ is a term used by the Navy referring to underwater demolition teams,” Stiles stated. “These men, we are advised, are highly trained in the use of explosives of all kinds, also in the use of delayed-action detonating devices. Later, in a direct statement from Mrs. Payne, the fact that Mr. Payne had been a ‘frogman’ in the Navy was confirmed.”

  Stiles said many people who knew Payne in the Scott Bar area described him as “man who liked to talk about the use of explosives.” Upon further questioning of these sources, Stiles learned that Payne had the “technical knowledge to use explosives of almost any kind and probably had the technical ability and knowledge to build a delayed-action detonating device.”

  Stiles reported that one man he had interviewed claimed Payne once bragged that he could build a delayed-action explosive detonator by using two flashlight batteries. Others told the investigator that Payne was extremely good at metal work, one of the skills he had learned while in the Navy.

  Still, would Payne actually have committed suicide by blowing up the plane while he was on board. Nothing seemed to indicate that, but the fact that he had taken shots at people with a high-powered rifle and was considered by some to be a mean-spirited hothead did raise the possibility that he had blown up the plane without ever having actually boarded, or by placing a “seat occupied” sign in his seat, then exiting before departure?

  In November 1957 there was little security provided for airliners parked away from the busy terminal at San Francisco International Airport, and anyone could easily have planted a time bomb in the wheel well of Romance of the Skies the night before takeoff. Because passenger and luggage screening were nonexistent in those days, a time bomb also could easily have been placed inside someone’s luggage on the day of the flight, even that of a person who may never have boarded the plane that day.

  Stiles raised the possibility with Pan American that Payne wasn’t on the plane when it left San Francisco. A Pan Am official told him that it was “conceivably possible” that he was not on the plane when it departed, but that a system of precautions had been in place to prevent that. However, the official also told him that the system was not foolproof.

  When Stiles asked if the flight crew would notify Pan Am by radio once they noticed that a passenger was not aboard, he was told no, not necessarily, but the passenger’s luggage would be returned to San Francisco on the next flight from Honolulu. The Pan Am source told Stiles that getting a plane ready for an overseas flight required a lot of detailed work by both ground and air crews, and that once airborne “radio contact back to San Francisco may not have advised that a passenger was missing.”

  “He might not have been missed until the plane was well underway, and there is no requirement which would have necessitated their reporting of the absence of a passenger. The plane definitely would not be called back to its home base to unload any baggage,” Stiles reported.

  “It does appear to be conceivably possible that this man could have boarded the plane and through some pretext left the plane and never returned; or it is possible that his baggage could have been checked and have gone with the plane and he never boarded the plane at all,” Stiles stated.

  Yes, all of that was “conceivably possible,” but it didn’t seem likely considering that Payne’s mother and stepfather had claimed to authorities that they saw him board. Could they have been lying? Could they have been providing an alibi or cover for Payne? Could they have seen someone else they thought was Payne?

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hansen were questioned carefully concerning the incidents leading up to the boarding of the plane and its departure,” Stiles reported. “The interview with Mrs. Hansen would have to be considered unsatisfactory, since she was in a state of near hysteria even discussing the matter. She constantly wrung her hands and repeated over and over again: ‘Why did God have to take my son?’ She would answer questions and then when the same questions were put to her a second time, she would contradict the first answer. It was felt that her answers were not dependable.”

  Their story about the days before the flight and the morning of departure was this: Payne and his ten-month-old daughter, Kitti Ruth, left Roxbury Lodge by car for the Hansen home in Stockton, about 350 miles away. Payne was extremely fond of his daughter and insisted that she accompany him to Stockton while Harriet took care of business at the lodge. The Hansens, Payne, and his baby daughter went straight to the airport on the morning of Friday, November 8, and did not stop anywhere along the way. The Hansens saw him board the plane and did not see him get off at any time. There was nothing unusual about the plane’s departure.

  Several things about their story didn’t add up, which surely crossed the investigator’s mind. Why would Payne insist that his infant daughter—still in diapers—accompany him on the daylong drive to Stockton? Why would he leave the baby with his mother while he flew to San Francisco on a one-way ticket with no planned return date? Why didn’t the Hansens mention that the flight had been delayed, an engine stopped, and baggage removed? Surely that was unusual and worth mentioning. Perhaps they hadn’t actually seen Payne board the plane at all, or watch it depart. Maybe they had walked away before the engines were stopped.

  Stiles didn’t believe Ruth Hansen’s account of the departure, and he remained troubled by lingering questions about the reason Payne was supposedly going to Honolulu. Who was he going to meet there? Who owed him money?

  “A great deal of effort was concentrated on this point throughout the investigation, and it is interesting to note that his mother and his stepfather knew nothing regarding his preparations to go to Honolulu, who he intended to see, and the possibility of his collecting money from people in Honolulu,” Stiles conceded.

  This meant the Hansens wanted Stiles to believe that Payne had left his beloved infant daughter in his mother’s care and flown off to Honolulu to see an unknown someone to collect money for an unknown debt, and would return at an unknown date.

  Stiles didn’t have any more luck in learning about the reason for the trip from Payne’s widow, a person he states was “questioned very closely” about it.

  “She states that she knew the name of no one in Honolulu that Mr. Payne might have been going to see. Neither the mother, the stepfather nor the wife were able to furnish any information concerning persons in Honolulu who owed Mr. Payne any money. She made a statement to a commercial reporting company indicating that there were IOUs or personal promissory notes, and this investigator attempted to determine from the wife, his mother and his stepfather just where the notes or IOUs are or where they might be. The mother and the stepfather said they knew nothing of any IOUs or notes, and my mention of this poi
nt to them was the first they had heard of it.”

  Payne’s widow had a different take on that: she told Stiles it was her understanding that the IOUs were among Payne’s personal effects in the possession of his mother. His mother, however, denied that she had any of his personal effects. None.

  Someone was lying. Maybe everyone. But why?

  “Obviously, in the investigation, it was learned that the feeling between the mother and the wife was not one which was congenial,” Stiles stated. Others who knew the Paynes had said the same thing: Harriet and her mother-in-law did not get along.

  Stiles also questioned family and acquaintances of Payne about a claim he had made to someone that he owned a ranch in Nevada that “was taken from him by two men now in Honolulu.”

  Stiles believed that to be another lie, perhaps to provide cover for a scheme of some sort that Payne was concocting—insurance fraud, perhaps?

  “After investigation it was felt that this statement was not accurate. At least, if it was, the wife, the mother and the stepfather denied that Mr. Payne ever owned any property in Nevada and [said] that no one to their knowledge had ever taken any property from him,” Stiles stated.

  Stiles then questioned all of them about a phone call Payne claimed to acquaintances to have made to Honolulu to arrange for the collection of his money. The Hansens “stated indignantly that their son would not make a telephone call from their phone and allow them to pay the bill. They state that no telephone calls to Honolulu ever appeared on their bill.”

  Harriet also claimed to know nothing about a phone call to Honolulu, and denied that a call had been made from their home or lodge. Others, including Payne’s sons, also said they were unaware of any call.

  Stiles then concluded with a statement that went to the heart of the case against Payne as a sabotage suspect: “Information concerning the identification or actual existence of persons in Honolulu owing this man money is completely lacking, and it is the opinion of this investigator that no such person exists, and no telephone call was made.”