Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (14 page)

For all the searching, psychics, and waiting, the Block sons were rewarded with nothing. Their parent’s aircraft just could not be found.

The Block’s aircraft was a 1969 Cessna 150j. It was a two-seater plane with tricycle landing gear and only weighed about 1500 pounds, unloaded. It had a wingspan of 33 feet and the fuselage was about 25 feet in length. Its wings were fixed above the cockpit. It’s four cylinder motor would burn approximately five or six gallons an hour and the plane could hold 22.5 gallons of fuel in her fuel tanks, giving the small aircraft an impressive range of somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 miles, or a flying time around 4 hours, at a cruising speed of roughly 120 mile per hour. As planes go, the Cessna 150 is considered one of the smallest and one of the safest planes in the sky.

The Block’s Cessna was only eight years old at the time of its disappearance. John Block Sr. was a half owner and Leo M. Carter was the other half owner of the aircraft.

Leo Carter was a good friend of John Sr. They worked together at the tank base. The friends only had one more payment to make to pay off the Cessna, so after their parents vanished, the brothers pitched in and made the payment and paid the aircraft off. The insurance company actually owns the aircraft now, because they paid off the claim for the loss of the aircraft. The aircraft was valued at $4,750, and the insurance payout was in that amount, which was split between the Carter’s and the Block’s estate.

John Block Jr. and his children, Joshua and Jonathon Block, posing with the missing Cessna.

Carter was a member of the Civil Air Patrol so the Cessna’s wing tips and tail were painted “international orange” and the plane was fitted with an “ELT” unit. The Cessna was approved as a CAP search & rescue aircraft. In a twist of fate, Leo was trying to recruit John Sr. to actually join the CAP, the same group that would ironically search for the missing plane.

In 1978, just one year after the Blocks and their aircraft mysteriously disappeared; Leo Carter suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident. Marguerite Carter, Leo’s wife, later explained to the Block brothers that her husband would never fully recover from his severe head trauma, and he didn’t. Leo Carter died without regaining most of his mental faculties.

At the time, John Jr. was an active detective who learned from his boss, Sheriff Richard Weiler of the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Department that there was a legal “mechanism” which allows in special circumstances that persons can be declared dead without waiting the usual seven years.

Death certificates were issued by a probate court in Macomb County, via coroner’s inquest. After a couple hearings, the judge issued the death certificates and the place of death was said to be Northeast of Mount Clemens.

The missing Blocks did not have a checking account, nor did they have any credit cards; they paid bills in person with money orders or cash. This was partly due to their mistrust of financial institutions caused by their experience of living through the Great Depression.

Because their parents’ disappearance was so sudden and unexpected and they were still suffering heartache, the brothers really weren’t prepared to handle the legal obligations of liquidating their parents’ estate. And how could they give their parents a funeral? What if their bodies were found a week, a month or a year later?

The biggest asset their parents owned, their house, would have been much more difficult to figure out, had Mike not been such a prolific softball player. Mike and John Jr. had still had many childhood friends in the East Detroit area. Mike played in a very competitive adult softball league, on a team sponsored by Merollis Chevrolet, with a group of his high school chums, but when questions arose of his residency, the senior Blocks had a quick claim deed drawn up with their sons name on it, so he could prove his residency and continue playing on the team. Mike approached his parents with this dilemma, and Mike’s attorney drew up the paper work to make this happen.

The probate court accepted the paperwork, and the home was sold for around $30,000. There was a small insurance policy and some sick time pay from work.

When the brothers went to their father’s fire station to empty his locker and retrieve his personal effects, they talked with the assistant fire chief, who had just been promoted to chief to replace their father. He said, “You know, your dad’s been getting kind of forgetful lately. Misplacing things and reports, and we were getting a little worried about him.”

Another warning sign was when prepping for flight, John Sr. developed the attitude that he didn’t need to complete his pre-flight checklist. John Sr. was concerned about animals nesting in the plane’s engine intake, so he put a foam cover in the opening to keep them out. Once, he forgot it was there and started the aircraft. The foam cover was sucked into the engine and John Sr. spent the next hour cleaning shredded foam from the aircraft.

To further complicate matters, John Block Sr. didn’t like using larger airports, because they were too busy for him. He also didn’t like flying over water and he didn’t like using aeronautical charts. He preferred using road maps. It’s assumed that his current log book is still in the Cessna.

Many of the news reports state the Blocks flew out of the Macomb-Berz Airport. This is actually inaccurate; the Blocks actually flew out of the similarly named Macomb County Airport.

John Jr. states eloquently, “and I get down there every once in a while. I’m somewhat reluctant after this many years to hang up flyers and approach people. After a while you feel like a pain in the ass. People think you’re a nutcase after thirty-four years. But just think how those people feel now, those people whose cars were found in that lake. And that was 1970? That’s older than this case, isn’t it?”

“The other possibility that may or may not have been mentioned is, when that storm come through the lower peninsula, that one of the things a pilot is going to do is, and timing wise, would have put him around Saginaw Bay, you can fly in front of the storm, or fly behind the storm, but you don’t want to fly through the storm. If he flew in front of the storm it would have maybe taken him over Saginaw Bay, during that time period, and he wasn’t going to do that. So maybe he decided to find the back of the storm. Now, he didn’t have radar on that aircraft, but that’s a probability too that would add strength back to that idea that perhaps they took off and they saw the storm coming, and said, ‘Awe crap, I’m not going to beat it across Saginaw Bay, so let’s try to go around the back of it’ and that would have also put them in the area of the Charlotte Airport, near Lansing, Michigan.

Other possibilities of what perhaps could have happened to the aircraft was that it was stolen, and then used in drug running or something like that, or just stolen for the aircraft itself, the parts, and they were killed. Other possibilities were is that it was a possibility that it was a suicide, and I had to look at that and two things I haven’t been able to resolve is that he was approaching the maximum age of employment of a civilian employee of the U.S. Army. And he was a workaholic and that was kind of bothering him. He was approaching retirement and he had some health problems. He had high blood pressure and he had diabetes, and it was starting to affect his health. He lost a lot of weight.

“Who knows? Could it have been a suicide? Could it have been just a bad error? Could he have had a heart attack, or more than likely a stroke, due to his high blood pressure? Did he go into a diabetic coma? We’ve never been able to eliminate those obviously, because we didn’t find the plane. But that’s also in the back of your mind, those ‘oddball’ reasons, stolen aircraft, suicide, medical reasons, and so on.”

But John thought those were extremely low probability situations.

“To date, 30 plus years later now, I feel there’s nothing that we overlooked, and so far nothing.”

But actually, the toughest part hasn’t occurred yet, because I don’t know how I’m gonna feel, if they ever find their bodies. It’s the not knowing thing that I now agonize with any other missing person and family. And of course, I was involved with that, I stayed on the police department and I didn’t retire until 2001 so I had another 24 or so years as a detective. I worked a lot of missing person cases, some aircraft accidents, and quite a few drownings where we never recovered the body. It’s tough, it really is. I wouldn’t wish that upon anybody” John Jr. says solemnly.

The brothers dismiss any notion that their parents dropped out of sight on their own. Describing them as “predictable,” the brothers say there was no reason for them to run away. Their home and cars were paid for, and their father was six months from retiring from a job he loved.

This photo of the Block’s Cessna was taken shortly before it vanished.

“Every year during hunting season I think, “This will be the year that somebody will find them,” says Mike. “But after 11 years, hope is diminishing.”

“This thing you hear all the time, the old cliché, ‘Not knowing is the toughest part’ is so true. It is.” John Jr. says poignantly.

Theories abound to what happened to the Blocks and their Cessna. Did they run into a fast moving storm while heading north and get chased out onto Saginaw Bay and crash unnoticed into the vast waters of Lake Huron? Did John Block Sr. get disoriented and head West instead of North, out onto Lake Michigan, another vast body of water? Did John Block Sr. suffer a medical emergency and crash into a dense section of remote forest or unexplored swamp? Did the Blocks meet with foul play, perhaps witnessing illegal activity like drug running, or victims of airplane theft? Or did John & Jean Block decide to end their lives like they lived their lives, together?

While none of these scenarios offer any type of solace, the thought of the Blocks never being found sounds unfathomable. John and Jean Block are out there, somewhere, sitting in their little green and white Cessna, waiting to be found.

CHAPTER THREE

D.B. Cooper

O
n November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a man about six feet in height, weighing about 180 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes and wearing a raincoat and loafers walked out of the airport parking lot and entered the Portland International Airport in Oregon. Shortly before 2:00 p.m. (All times mentioned in this chapter are Pacific Standard Time) he approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines and purchased a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a short flight to Seattle, Washington. All he had with him was a black attaché case, which he carried in his left hand and the clothes on his back. The ticket agent collected his fare, which after taxes was an even twenty dollars. The agent asked the stranger his name for the boarding pass.

The man identified himself as “Cooper, Dan Cooper.” The agent wrote “Dan Cooper” on the boarding pass without asking for ID. Identification, such as a license or birth certificate, was not required to purchase a ticket in 1971, you just needed money, and a name. Not even your real name, just a name.

“Any luggage to check?” asked the agent.

“None,” the stranger responded courteously.

Cooper collected his boarding pass and quietly blended into the multitude of travelers making their way home for the next day’s Thanksgiving feasts with their families. He stood off to the side and took a drag off his cigarette, quietly watching people walking to and fro. It was quite easy for him to fade into the background. He was dressed inconspicuously in a dark, maybe even black, suit with wider lapels, a skinny black tie with a pearl tie clasp, a black lightweight raincoat and loafers. And that black briefcase, what was in it? What was he carrying?

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727, left its point of origin, Washington, DC early that Wednesday morning. It made stops in Minnesota, Montana and Washington. It landed in Portland to pick up a few more passengers before heading to its last stop of the day, Seattle, Washington.

With his boarding pass in hand, the man in a dark suit with a skinny black tie walked through the concourse towards gate 52, unimpeded by the non existent X-ray machines, lines of anxious passengers, and TSA pat-downs that inconvenience today’s travelers. Flight 305’s departure time was scheduled for 2:50 p.m.