To Expectant First-Time Fathers... by Richard Daub

Above the Glamour

Chapter 1: The Hijacking

"Ken, this is Jean," I said into the phone as calmly as I could, but my voice was quivering and my hands were shaking. "The prisoner has a gun to my head. He wants you to come back here. He says we're going to Havana. Ken, this is no joke—this is for real!"
      Even as I spoke these words, I couldn't believe it was really happening.
      "Jean, we don't have enough fuel to go to Cuba," the captain responded. He was already aware that we were being hijacked, having been informed by one of the other flight attendants moments before I called the cockpit. I put my hand over the receiver and repeated to the hijacker what the captain had just told me.
      "I don't care if we don't have enough fuel to go to Cuba!" he yelled. "I don't care if I take this plane down! I'm serving eight consecutive life sentences, and if I go, you'll go with me! You tell him if I don't see this plane turning, you're a dead woman!"
      "Ken, you have to turn this plane towards Cuba now!" I yelled into the phone. "If you don't do it now, he will shoot me! Turn the plane now!"
      "Okay, Jean, calm down. Tell him to look out the left window and he'll see that we're turning."
      I told him to look out the window and he did.
      "Tell him I want to speak to him," the captain said.
      "He wants to speak to you," I said to the hijacker, and he grabbed the phone from me.
      "I'm Ishmael Ali LaBeet!" he said loudly into the receiver. "Do you know who I am? I'm the Fountain Valley Murderer!"
      "I know who you are," the captain said. "Mr. LaBeet, we're a little short of fuel and I really don't feel that we have enough to make Havana."
      "Don't be shitting me, man!" He was yelling again. "You have enough!"
      "Mr. LaBeet, would it be alright if we stopped for additional fuel?"
      "Don't give me that low-on-fuel shit! We're not landing anywhere but Havana—or the sea!"

I had started the day in a good mood. It was New Year's Eve, 1984, and my husband Doug and I had plans to attend a party later that evening back home on Long Island. I was really excited because it was going to be the first time since having our daughters Kirsten and Kelly, ages four and two, that we would be going out on New Year's Eve. I had lucked out getting this trip because I had been flying night trips all month, but flight 626 from St. Croix to JFK was a day trip due in at 5:30 PM, which was early enough to allow me to go out later that night.
      For this flight I was assigned to be the 'number one' flight attendant, also known as the 'purser.' The purser is basically in charge of the flight and is the one who makes the announcements, fills out the paperwork, acts as the liaison between the cockpit and the rest of the crew, handles problems with passengers if the other crew members can't, and so forth. Also, if there's ever a problem during a flight, the purser is the one called into the supervisor's office later to explain what happened.
      During boarding in St. Croix, I was informed by the agent that there would be three U.S. Marshals on the flight. The passengers and crew alike were in a festive mood, and everyone was looking forward to getting to New York to begin their New Year's celebrations. Our only real concern was that there was a winter weather advisory back home that might cause us to be delayed or diverted. Otherwise, everything seemed fine and we took off right on schedule.
      We had been in the air for about an hour when the number six flight attendant called me. I was working the first class section at the front of the aircraft while she was working the second section of coach in the back.
      "Do you know who the prisoner is?" she asked me.
      "What prisoner?"
      "The prisoner—you know, the one the marshals brought on board."
      "I was never informed that we were transporting a prisoner!"
      "He's the 'Fountain Valley Murderer'!"
      "Oh—Well, I don't know who that is."
      His name was Ishmael Ali LaBeet, a native of St. Thomas and a former soldier with the U.S. Army who had fought in Vietnam. In 1972 he was the ringleader of what became known as 'The Fountain Valley Massacre' when he and four other men shot eight people to death at the Fountain Valley Country Club, a ritzy resort in St. Croix that had been popular with wealthy foreigners. After robbing everyone in sight, LaBeet for no apparent reason opened fire and the others followed suit with guns that had been stolen from the property room of a nearby police station. They initially got away and fled into the hills, but they were caught several days later after the largest manhunt in the history of the Virgin Islands. Despite being cold-blooded killers, these five black men would later become symbols of racial injustice when they claimed that they had been tortured into giving confessions by white police officers after being taken into custody. They also became heroes to some native islanders who felt oppressed by a local government that catered to the wealthy foreigners.
      The following year they went on trial and prominent civil rights lawyer William Kunstler volunteered to represent one of the defendants. His association with the case turned the trial into an international media circus, and the Black Power movement used the spotlight to promote their cause despite the men having long criminal histories and that three of the people they murdered at Fountain Valley were black (two of them were employees of the country club and the other was an electrician's helper on a job assignment there). The five defendants were eventually found guilty, and each was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison.
      LaBeet was sent to Lewisburg penitentiary in Pennsylvania and had been serving his time there, but he had recently been in St. Thomas to testify in a civil court case related to the abuses he and his accomplices allegedly suffered while in custody after the shootings. Unfortunately for me and the rest of the crew, American Airlines flew him from St. Thomas to St. Croix, which is where he boarded flight 626 with the marshals. I did see LaBeet board the plane at around the same time, but since nobody said anything about him, I didn't realize that he was their prisoner. He was wearing a sport shirt and slacks just like many of the other people who had been down there on vacation.
      "Well, that's interesting," I said after she gave me the lowdown. I had never heard of this guy before or 'The Fountain Valley Massacre,' and while what he had done sounded horrific, it happened such a long time ago that it didn't seem real to me so I didn't worry about it. Besides, he was in the custody of three marshals—he was their problem, not mine. I had more important things to worry about like getting home to Doug and the girls and then going out later that night. I didn't have time to worry about murderers.
      A little while later the number six flight attendant called me again to tell me that the prisoner kept getting up to go to the bathroom, and then the marshals would go in and check the lavatory after he had already been in there. Looking back now, it is clear to me that they should have been checking the lavatory before he went in, but at the time I figured they knew what they were doing. This was obviously long before September 11, and there was some rule back then that guards transporting a prisoner had to remove the prisoner's handcuffs before takeoff so that his hands wouldn't be encumbered in the event of a crash—but these guards took it a step further removed his cuffs before he even got on the plane! So, during the flight he basically had free reign to get up and go to the bathroom unescorted whenever he wanted, but the thinking was, Where's he gonna go?He can't escape while we're up in the air! For all I knew, I thought maybe he kept going to the bathroom because of something he ate. Prison food probably wasn't that great, so it wouldn't have surprised me if this guy's digestive system was all out of whack. It didn't occur to me at all that he might actually be searching for a gun that had been planted in one of the two lavatories at the back of the plane but that he wasn't sure which one and was having difficulty finding it.
      About an hour outside of New York, Bonnie Dotter, one of the other flight attendants, came up front and said that the marshals wanted me to page for a doctor because the prisoner wasn't feeling well.
      "You gotta be kidding me," I said. By now I was tired of hearing about this guy, and if I paged for a doctor, that would mean I would later have to fill out an incident report and do all this extra paperwork because I was the number one flight attendant. I just wanted to get home. I didn't want to stay a second longer than we had to after landing at JFK.
      "What's his complaint?" I asked.
      "He's complaining of stomach pains."
      As a mother, I knew there wasn't a whole lot you can do about a tummy ache.
      "I'm not paging a doctor for a stomach ache," I said. "He probably just has gas or something. I'll go check it out myself."
      The aircraft was a DC-10 and the seats were divided into three sections: first class in the front of the aircraft and two sections of coach in the middle and rear. The prisoner and the marshals were sitting in the last couple of rows in the rear section of coach, and since it was such a big plane, it took me a little while to get back there. When I got to the second section of coach, a passenger sitting in the front row stopped me.
      "Go away!" he whispered anxiously. "The man has a gun!"
      In the back of the section I saw this man ordering the marshals to get on the floor. He appeared very nervous and agitated, and you could hear a pin drop in the cabin. Before I had a chance to do anything, he turned and saw me.
      "You!" he yelled, pointing his gun in my direction. "Get over here!"
      Coach seating in a DC-10 was set up in a 2-5-2 configuration, which meant that each row had two seats on either side of the plane and five seats in the middle. The last row of the section was up against a wall, and behind the wall there were two lavatories and exit doors. There were two aisles that led to the back, and facing the rear of the aircraft I was standing in the one to the right while the hijacker was in the back left. There was a walkway in front of the first row of seats where I was standing, so I could have just walked directly over to the left aisle and then headed straight to him in the back, but for some reason I decided to walk to the back via the right aisle to the area behind the wall where the lavatories were and then cross over. To this day I'm not sure why I did this—I guess at that point my mind had not fully comprehended the situation and needed a little extra time to figure out what was happening, and I knew that he wouldn't be able to see me when I was behind the wall. Fortunately the hijacker didn't seem to notice that I was taking the long way, and when I got to the back I stopped, leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and said to myself, I can't believe this is happening...
      I had been trained for situations like this, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would ever really happen. It was surreal. I don't know how long I stood there, probably not very long because I knew that he'd come looking for me if I didn't appear after a while, but at some point I eventually took a deep breath and said to myself, Okay, let's just do it.
      As soon as I got there, he pointed the gun at my head and said, "You're mine for the night. I want you to take me to the cockpit."
      "Well," I said, "if you let me—"
      "I want to go to Cuba and I need to go to the cockpit now!"
      "It'll be a lot quicker if you just let me call them!"
      In the meantime, Bonnie had followed me to the second section of coach a short time after telling me about the prisoner's stomach ache, but fortunately the hijacker didn't notice her because he was too busy pointing his gun at me while I was making my way to the back of the aircraft. When she saw what was happening, she immediately turned around and hurried to the cockpit to inform the captain. So, when I called up there and told them that the prisoner had a gun to my head, the captain was already aware that there was a situation in the back.