Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (13 page)

With the long winter fading in the rear view mirror, the snow began melting throughout Michigan. The Block brothers kept themselves busy over the winter continuing their desperate search for their parents. They also had to deal with painful chores of going through the legal process of liquidating some their parent’s assets, such as tools and guns, and planning some sort of memorial service for their missing mother and father.

In the spring, an article was printed in the
Detroit News
giving insight into the growing desperation of the two orphaned brothers. Though neither really believed in the occult or supernatural, they thought at this point, it couldn’t hurt to involve more psychics:

‘PSYCHICS’ OFFER HOPE TO SONS
OF 2 IN CRASH

BY ROBERT E. ROACH, NEWS STAFF WRITER

A dim ray of hope has helped offset the sorrow of memorial services being planned by relatives of an East Detroit couple whose small plane vanished en route to northern Michigan last July 4.

Michael Block, one of the couple’s two sons, said last week a group of anonymous outstate “psychics” has offered to help find the bodies of his mother, Jean, 53, and father, John, 56-year-old fire chief at the Warren Tank Arsenal.

The younger Block and his brother, John Jr., already had planned a June 24 requiem mass at Warren’s St. Leonard Catholic Church.

At their son’s request, the Blocks were ruled dead in March by a Macomb probate judge. “But we can’t feel this is over until they are found,” said Michael, who sells insurance in Warren.

Although others claiming to possess psychic powers have offered to help twice previously, the son said, “I have a bit more faith in this (Latest offer) for two reasons:

“First, we’ve exhausted all normal means at our disposal, and second, I’m impressed with the luck they had locating Larry Wyckoff.”

(Some searchers credited a sketch by a self-described “psychic” with helping find the remains of that teen-age Warren hunter May 8 near Kalkaska, Mich. He had been missing since last November.)

Larry Wyckoff was a 15-year-old hunter from Warren, Michigan who was lost in a freak snow storm that November. He entered dense woods about 20 miles southeast of Kalkaska on November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, tracking a wounded deer. Temperatures the day he disappeared plunged to around zero.

Despite a thorough search of 10 plus square miles with more than 200 volunteers, his body was not found until 6 months later, less than a mile from where he entered the woods. An autopsy showed he died of exposure.

The four psychics mentioned in this article described details of the area where they thought Wyckoff’s body was located. The details included a beaver damn, a creek and a power line. Steve Linn, a Kalkaska County Sheriff’s Deputy took the information to an experienced and knowledgeable local trapper by the name of Charles Stuck, who recognized the place, and led officials there almost immediately.

The article continued:

Since searches for the Blocks have been futile, Michael Block said, “We can’t refuse anyone who offers to help.”

The couple was en route to Mio in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula to visit relatives. A massive aerial hunt by the Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol last summer failed to find a trace of their green and white two-seat Cessna 150 plane.

They left Macomb Airport near Mt. Clemens about 11 a.m. last July 4. When bad weather swept over the Lower Peninsula soon after their departure, authorities speculated, the elder Block lost his bearings near Flint and mistakenly followed I-69 to the Lansing area-instead of I-75.

Federal Aviation officials say the disappearance—now nearly 11 months old—is the longest on record for missing Michigan fliers.

Officials have abandoned the search, primarily because they have no idea where to look.

Woody Staman of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Willow Run office said Block didn’t file a flight plan. “That’s what makes it so hard.”

“We don’t know where to start looking. It’s like a needle in a haystack, particularly in the densely wooded areas. The wreckage could be concealed for years, until some hunter or hiker comes across it.

“My own opinion is that they went down over water, and that means they will never be found.” If wreckage is found, the federal aviation agency will reopen its investigation into the cause of the crash, he added.

The younger Block said relatives are not disillusioned by two prior encounters with purported “psychics.”

Last August, he said, a Port Huron woman had “visions” in which she reportedly saw his parents—still alive, but badly hurt—in a swampy area near Pleasant Valley.

Civil Air Patrol planes searched the area, east of Mt. Pleasant and 75 miles south of Luzerne, but found nothing. Neither did relatives and friends who scoured the area on foot, said the son.

He added that a second “psychic” last fall suggested looking near Rose City, not far from the Mio-Roscommon area covered by air in the initial search.

“My wife and brother and I tried to get into that area last winter,” Block said. “But we couldn’t get off the roads much because of the foliage and we didn’t have the right kind of vehicles.”

Although the two earlier professed “psychics” chose areas 65 miles apart, Block said they both came up with three common landmarks.

Those clues indicate the wreckage is in a swampy area, near the junction of two rivers or streams and not far from a water tower, fire lookout station or other tall structure, he said.

With help from the Kalkaska “psychics,” the time may come when volunteer searchers will be sought; he said but only if they can “pinpoint the area fairly well.”

On June 21, 1978, an article was published in a column in a local Detroit newspaper giving the date of the Block’s memorial service. The service would be highly unusual, since it was held nearly a year after the Block’s unfortunate passing. Added to that was the fact that the sons still didn’t know where their parents were. As a matter of fact, nobody had a clue to where they were:

“RIPPLINGS”
BY RUSS FULLER

REQUIEM FOR A FIRE CHIEF

One of TACOM’S and Michigan’s most baffling mysteries will have a sad semi-official end on Saturday, June 24, in St. Leonard’s Church on Nine Mile between Schoenerr and Gratiot in Warren.

At 4 p.m. on that day memorial services will start for John Block and his wife Jean, who vanished on July 4, 1977, while on what was to have been a routine flight to a small airport near Luzerne, southeast of Grayling, Michigan. Block was the Arsenal fire chief at the time he and his wife disappeared.

For months, thousands of persons searched a wide area by air, motor vehicle and on foot. But never a trace was found of the missing plane. As late as a month ago, thousands of Morel Mushroom pickers kept an eye out for wreckage.

The most plausible theory now seems to be that the Blocks were blown way off course by a series of line squalls which swept across Central Michigan after the Blocks took off from a Macomb County airport en route to visit relatives and that they went down in Lake Huron or Michigan

Maurice Holman, the new Arsenal Fire Chief and who was Block’s assistant, said the Blocks have been declared officially dead by a Macomb County Circuit Judge.

Despite the fact that the Blocks have been declared legally dead and despite the memorial services the real answer to what happened to the Blocks and their plane may never be known.

After the memorial services coffee and cake will be served to those attending.

The case remains one of the most puzzling in Michigan aviation history.

John said: That was probably the toughest decision I ever made in my life, probably my brother too. We needed to bring some closure to it. At this point we thought we needed to do something for family and friends. My whole family used to work for a funeral home named Shultz Funeral Home in East Detroit.

After discussing the situation with the funeral home, it was decided to have a memorial service. They went to St. Leonard Church in Warren, Michigan. My mother played the organ there and was involved in the altar society. We had a memorial funeral mass for them and a little luncheon after that. Shortly after that, the probate court case was concluded and death certificates were issued.

We had an actual funeral mass for them, as if a body were present. The priest was a WWII Army Air Corp Vet. We did not involve the military at that time hoping and thinking that we’ll have this memorial service now, because it’s time, it’s been more than six months. And surely, within maybe the next day, they would find the aircraft, and at that time, we would have a proper committal burial with military honors. The family had extra plots in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit, which we still have to this day, of course.”

The next day, the Block brothers ran an obituary for their parents in the
Detroit Free Press
. Dated Thursday, June 22, 1978, the notice gave the date and location of the missing couple’s memorial service:

JOHN, JEAN BLOCK,
PLANE VICTIMS

A memorial service for John and Jean Block, an East Detroit couple who disappeared in their single-engine plane last July 4, will be at 4 p.m. Saturday at St. Leonard’s Catholic Church, Nine Mile and Wellington, Warren.

Extensive air and ground searches have found no trace of the couple since they left Macomb County Airport on July 4, 1977, and failed to reach their destination, Luzerne, in Oscoda County in the northern Lower Peninsula.

Surviving are two sons, Michael and John: five grandchildren: and two brothers, Donald and Joseph Block.

Sensing an interesting story,
The Detroit News
published an article about the baffling mystery on June 22, 1978, giving more insight and details:

SONS TO RESUME HUNT FOR PARENTS MISSING IN PLANE

By Michael Wowk, News Staff Writer

The search for an East Detroit couple, who vanished in their light plane nearly a year ago, is set to resume in the swamps of Northern Michigan’s Roscommon County, their sons said yesterday.

Fresh information from two “psychics,” plus newly corroborated reports from the St. Helen area of a crash last July 4, have spurred the search for the bodies of Jean and John Block Sr.

“I think we’ve pretty well eliminated any other area in which the plane might have come down” Said John Block Jr., one of the sons.

“This seems to confirm my own opinion that the plane is submerged in a swamp around there. That’s why the air and foot search last summer found nothing, and neither did the deer hunters in the fall.”

John Block Jr., a Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Department detective, and his brother Michael, a Warren insurance salesman, have scheduled a memorial mass Saturday for their parents. It begins at 4 p.m. in Warren’s St. Leonard’s Catholic Church.

Federal Aviation officials said the elder Blocks’ disappearance—now nearly a year old—is the longest on record for Michigan fliers.

“We wanted to hold off on the services until our parents’ bodies were found,” Michael Block said yesterday, “but we can’t wait forever.”

Last July 4, the couple flew out of the Macomb Airport near Mt. Clemens in their single-engine plane to visit relatives at Luzerne in Oscoda County.

They never arrived, and a massive air search by the Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol over a broad area proved futile. The official hunt ended Oct. 3.

Mrs. Block was 53 and her husband was 56.

The Block brothers and other relatives conducted their own futile searches on foot and by car in several areas.

A few weeks ago John Jr.’s in-laws in Connecticut enlisted the aid of a self-described “psychic.” Shown a state highway map, the man pointed to the intersection of M-55 and county road F-97 southwest of St. Helen in Roscommon County, Block said.

Later, a second so called “psychic” in St. Louis, Mich., told Block in a letter that the plane may be in the backwaters of a small dam on a tributary of the Muskegon River a few miles west of Houghton Lake, also in Roscommon County.

“Of the two psychics, I’m inclined to go with the first one, “Block said. “We now have information from several eye witnesses around St. Helen who said they either saw a plane in trouble flying overhead that afternoon or heard a crash.

“One is a local police chief and another is a deputy sheriff. We have another person in St. Helen who said he saw a plane fly over this house with a dead propeller at about the right time.”

The St. Helen area is in a direct flight path from Macomb County to Luzerne, he added.

“That area has a lot of remote swamps which could easily hide a small plane. I know from my own police experience that what you really need to find it is a helicopter.”

Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol searchers used only fixed-wing aircraft.

“I don’t blame the Coast Guard or State Police for being reluctant to send a helicopter over the area just because of a couple psychics,” Block said.

The memorial service was a blur. Seeing family and family friends and reminiscing of the good time with their parents was somewhat cathartic for the brothers. It was also painful to have the loss that consumed their lives for nearly a year now, the center of everyone’s focus.