Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (11 page)

By Charles Thomas

Macomb Daily Staff Writer

MOUNT CLEMENS-A Macomb County psychic known only as MaryJo says she has received mental images of the approximate location of the small aircraft, which disappeared July 4, carrying John and Jean Block, of East Detroit.

The psychic, who says she used extrasensory perception to locate the downed aircraft, added that the couple is still alive, although badly injured.

Sons of the couple, Michael Block, of Warren, and John Block, Jr., of Traverse City, came into contact with the psychic through a friend of their father.

MaryJo, who refuses to disclose the nature or the method of her ESP experiences publicly, said the plane is in a densely wooded area in Pleasant Valley, near Mount Pleasant.

Pleasant Valley is located directly east of Shepherd on the southwest corner of Midland County.

“There is a large swamp,” she told the brothers. “The plane is two miles north of the swamp. They are not in the plane and they are still alive.”

She also told them that the “orange tip of the plane is broken” and the “tail is in the mud.” She apparently received the images after seeing maps of Michigan. The couple, flying a green and white Cessna 150, left Macomb Airport in Ray Township at about 11 a.m. July 4 for Luzerne in Oscoda County. They were last seen at Beach Airport in Charlotte, near Lansing, by a pilot who reported that the Blocks had told him they were lost.

Block, fire chief at the U.S. Army Tank Arsenal in Warren, had been flying for nearly 40 years.

The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and more than 100 volunteers suspended the search for the Blocks nine days after it started because they ran out of leads and the weather was poor.

“My parents were flying to Luzerne to spend the day with me and my family,” said Michael Block. “Then they were going to Traverse City to visit John and his family.”

Michael Block, who still has hopes that his mother and father are alive, said the psychic’s reports of the whereabouts of the aircraft coincide with recent reports from Pleasant Valley residents of an aircraft in trouble on July 4.

“I don’t know that much about psychic phenomena, but I will believe anything at this point,” said Block. “She (MaryJo) described the area where Air Force officials believe the plane went down. “He hopes residents of Pleasant Valley who know of a densely wooded area near a large swamp will renew the search for his parents and their aircraft.

CAP Captain Russell Smith, who is based in Bay City and led the search for the Blocks, said it is not unusual for psychics to join in searches for lost pilots or boaters.

“Well, it has been done before,” said Smith. “Quite often when we are working on an extended search mission, we will get a psychic who will volunteer services or they will attempt to work with the family.”

Although Smith could not comment on the success rate of psychics used in search missions, he said he would not discount a tip from a psychic nor would he refuse to check it out.

“A plane was located by a psychic in California after it had disappeared,” he said. “I don’t know of any instances in Michigan where a psychic has been successful.”

He said that a psychic was used to help find a missing boater by a family in Bay County.

“They usually can’t pinpoint an exact location,” said Smith. “They just tell us about the terrain.”

A psychic may describe to searchers a tower, river or a swamp and let them try to fit the puzzle together.

“I don’t discount the use of psychics at all,” said Smith. “When you are running a search mission, all types of information are utilized.”

Searchers combed the areas between Ray Township and Luzerne. The search was then broadened to include Charlotte to Luzerne.

“They were 100 miles off course and visibility was extremely poor,” said Smith.

“We were told Block liked to follow highways and with visibility at one and one-half miles, he probably followed I-96 instead of I-75, winding up near Lansing instead of Mio.”

The 1969 Cessna 150 had 1,000 hours of flight time on it and a cruising speed of 100 mph. The flight line was not over water.

Block had been a firefighter at the tank arsenal since 1945. He was promoted to chief of the 13-member department in 1970. He served as a firefighter for the U.S. Air Corps during World War II.

September rolled around, and still no plane, still no Blocks. The sunsets were getting earlier and the evenings were cooling off. The Block brothers were beside themselves. How could the plane not be found by now? Were there even any areas in the Lower Peninsula that were remote enough to hide something the size of a crashed aircraft?

Their frustration grew, and they took help any way they could find it. Another article was published in The Detroit News about that time:

PARENTS’ PLANE LOST 2 MONTHS
AGO-SON WON’T DROP SEARCH

BY ROBERT E ROACH, NEWS STAFF WRITER

A Warren man continues to search for his parents whose light plane disappeared on the Fourth of July and presumably went down in an isolated area of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula.

Michael Block said yesterday that the two months since his parents disappeared have stripped away any illusions that his mother, Jean, 53, and father, John, the 56-year-old fire chief at the Warren Tank Arsenal-are still alive.

Friends, relatives, Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol pilots—and even a psychic—have so far been unable to locate the Block’s green and white two-seater Cessna 150.

The younger Block is seeking the aid of upstate residents, plus recreational pilots, campers and other sportsmen who spend time in Michigan’s backwoods.

“Being practical, I think they’re gone,” said Block, a 35-year-old insurance salesman.

“But it’s hard to rest until you find out. We’d like to know a lot of answers, like whether they suffered. I suppose it’s possible they could have survived somehow, but we realize how unlikely that is.”

The “we” he refers to includes a brother in Traverse City, two uncles and numerous friends from the Tank Arsenal, where for seven years John Block had been chief of the fire fighting unit he joined in 1945.

Together they have compiled, printed and are distributing a flyer describing the elder Blocks, their plane and the general search area.

Block’s Parents took off about 11 a.m. July 4 from the Macomb County Airport, a small strip near New Haven. They were to fly north to Luzerne and meet Michael, who was visiting his in-laws there, then fly on to Traverse City, where another son, John, 30, is a sheriff’s deputy.

The official Civil Air Patrol search initially concentrated on an area just south of their destination, in Ogemaw County.

The Coast Guard came in two days later to search Saginaw Bay and Civil Air Patrol planes combed an area south of Bay City.

Block had been flying for more than 30 years. But his son described him as “a fairweather, weekend pilot,” who normally flew visually, following major highways on his rare long-distance flights.

The younger Block said his father had flown to Luzerne before, normally following I-75.

But weather on the Fourth of July was hazy, with visibility less than two miles and his father apparently ended up near Lansing by mistaking I-69 for I-75 in the Flint area.

A week after the disappearance, the Civil Air Patrol, with volunteers from Indiana and Illinois, launched a massive search along US-27, north from Lansing to Grayling, then east along M-72 to Luzerne.

A Civil Air Patrol practice mission this weekend will concentrate on two key search areas, said Capt. Russell Smith of the Bay City post.

Smith said the first is the Mio-Roscommon area and the second is north of Lansing, in the Mt. Pleasant-Alma area.

Smith said Block had been flying almost two hours before he talked with the other pilot at Charlotte. But the 400-mile range of the Cessna 150 may have permitted him to reach Luzerne, Smith said.

Smith added that because of the dense foliage in north-central Michigan, failing to find plane wreckage for several months is not unusual.

Last year, he said, a Saginaw pilot crashed near Gladwin in mid-June, but the plane wasn’t found until October by hunters on foot.

With fall at hand the younger Block is hopeful the wreckage will be found. And he places more hope in help from upstate residents and sportsmen in the upcoming hunting season than from a woman psychic, who was brought into the hunt through a friend of Block’s father last month.

The psychic visualized that the Blocks were still alive then, but injured, near the crash site—in dense woods two miles north of “a large swamp” near Pleasant Valley, east of Mt. Pleasant.

Smith said the Civil Air Patrol—which won’t send in searchers on foot until after an aerial sighting of wreckage-flew several sorties over that area but found nothing.

Anyone who would like to help Block with the search may reach him at 979-6142.

On September 9, 1977, John Block Jr. received an intriguing handwritten letter from a vacationer, a Mrs. Joyce Holappa, who was in the Cadillac area of Northern Michigan on July 4. What makes the letter even more credible and interesting is the fact that the area she describes would be close to the flight path the Blocks would have taken if they had stopped in the airport in Charlotte, and headed to Luzerne from there. It read:

The more I think about it, the more I believe it was your father’s plane.

Mr. John Block,

For what it’s worth, I will give you an accounting of what I saw July 4, 1977, in Northern Michigan.

We went up to our place for the weekend—East Rose Lake Forrest in Osceola County, about 15 miles South East of Cadillac, Michigan. On the morning of July 4, my husband and I were sitting in the front of our lot, in the shade.

We were listening to the radio, and they were telling people of the different celebrations that were planned for the 4th in and around the area.

We were contemplating going to the parade in Lake City that morning. But it was so hot and muggy; it must have been 120 degrees in our lot, because we had several trees removed earlier in June, so we could have our well put in.

We have a mobile home and the sun was beating down in the center of our lot in front of our home. So that was why we were sitting up front in the shade. The forests were so dry from lack of rain that there were fire warnings.

We decided against going to Lake City, because it was so hot and we heard on the radio that some members of the parade were falling over because of the heat. It must have been about 1 p.m. My husband took my daughter down to the beach that belongs to the property owners in that part of Rose Lake Forrest.

I went down in front of our home, there was a narrow strip of shade by then, so I sat on our porch, I was watching some woodpeckers in the tops of the trees, when this plane came right over, he made like 2 circles low over the forest. In the meantime, my husband came back from the beach. I told him to look at that plane circling. He must be lost. He said, “It must be the conservation checking the forests. So we forgot about it.

Then a little later we went for a ride through the forest, then a sudden thunder squall came up and it poured so hard you couldn’t see the drive. But it was brief. We came home the next day and I read in the paper about a plane missing. I told my husband, I wonder if that was the plane we saw. Something drew our attention away from the subject and we forgot about it, till I read the paper this morning, giving a re-accounting of it and also the color, green and white. That was the color of the plane we saw. My husband associated the color with the Cons. Dept. at the time for some reason!

If your father was following the x-way he could of gotten confused in that area because 131 was under const. at the time heading North from LeRoy Michigan Road towards Cadillac and if he hit that storm, he could have gone down in that area and the dense forests of the Pine River and Manistee because the last circle he made put him in that direction from where you are. For what it’s worth, I certainly hope it helps in the search for your parents.

Sincerely, Mrs. Joyce Holappa

P.S. If that plane was your father’s then they are concentrating on the wrong area, in my opinion. I really hope this helps.

Another letter the Block brothers received was a report from Lt. Colonel Eldridge of the United States Air Force Search and Rescue Coordination Center, explaining the reasoning behind the official suspension of the Block search effort by the Air Force:

Dear Mr. Block:

The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center conducted a search for Cessna 150, N50935, from 5 July 1977 thru 15 July 1977. The search was reopened from 26 July thru 27 July.

Aircraft and occupants, John B. Block, pilot, and Jean Block, wife, departed Macomb, MI, on 4 Jul at approx. 4-4:10 p.m. for a three-hour flight to Lost Creek Sky Ranch.

Michigan Civil Air Patrol aircraft assisted by aircraft and crews from Ill, Ind, Ohio and the Coast Guard, conducted the search over the entire route. Two hundred flights were flown on the search for a total of 571.9 flying hours.