• U.S.

The Nation: Return of Dr. Jekyll

4 minute read
TIME

The hijacker boarded the Los Angeles-to-New York airliner with an automatic pistol concealed inside a fake plaster arm cast. Once he had seized control in the cockpit, he started making a wild series of demands over the radiotelephone. He wanted to talk to President Nixon; he wanted the release of Angela Davis; he wanted a ransom payment of exactly $306,800. Eight hours after the hijacker struck, two FBI agents disguised as crew members boarded the plane at John F. Kennedy Airport, shot the hijacker in the hand and captured him.

There was no doubt about his identity. He was Garrett Brock Trapnell, 34, a dark-haired man with piercing eyes and a long record of bank robberies. Trapnell himself did not deny the hijacking, but he claimed it had been done by his wicked alter ego, Gregg Ross. He was a Jekyll-Hyde personality, he said. Appearing in Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court last month, he pleaded not guilty.

If Trapnell was indeed insane, he had a background that provided quite a few explanations. His father was an Annapolis graduate who rose to be a commander in the Navy but whose private life was less than stable. He had five wives, one of whom was a heavy-drinking Boston Brahmin, Trapnell’s mother. They divorced when Trapnell was four, and he moved from home to home, including a stay in Panama, where he says his father, the commander, moonlighted by running a brothel.

Trapnell’s criminal record began when he was 15-an arrest for petty theft. Then came a hitch in the Army (terminated by an early discharge); a reported stint of gunrunning to Fidel Castro; and finally a series of armed robberies in New Mexico, Iowa and

Maryland. After he was caught, he later recalled in an unpublished 1971 interview with Freelance Writer Cy Berlowitz, “A lawyer came to me and said, Trap, you are going to prison for 20 years, or you can go to the state hospital.’ So I went to the state hospital and I dug the whole action. I read more damned books on psychiatry and psychology than probably any psychology student will in any school in the world.”

Trapnell spent a year in a mental hospital and then began a bizarre series of crime and nonpunishment. Throughout the ’60s, he staged robberies whenever he needed money-at one point he and a partner flew to Canada and robbed a bank once a month for seven months (total take: $130,000). Along the way he lived in bank-robber style: a Mercedes-Benz, a private plane, $40-a-day hotel rooms in Miami, a Las Vegas trip with a go-go dancer. Whenever he was caught, he would bring out his insanity defense, get committed to a hospital, then escape. “Psychiatry as a science,” he observed, “is the only science in the world that deals with extreme intangibles. I probably know more about psychiatry than your average resident psychiatrist.”

At his latest trial the interview with Berlowitz was placed in evidence to show that Trapnell was faking. Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Schlam also brought in two psychiatrists to testify that, in their opinion, Trapnell was perfectly sane (he has an IQ of 130). The prosecution had not discovered, however, that one juror, Gertrude Hass, had worked for 30 years as a psychiatric social worker. To Miss Hass’s professional eye, apparently, Trapnell’s account of how he had faked insanity was itself further evidence of his actual insanity.

Last week, after a five-week trial, the jury deliberated the case and found to its dismay that it was divided 11 to 1. The eleven argued with Miss Hass, but she remained adamant; when the arguing grew louder, she sent a message to Federal District Judge George Rosling saying that she was being pressured. At that point, Judge Rosling had to discharge the jury-not without some pressure of his own. “She may expect some visits from Government agencies,” he said, “to find out if this was the performance of her jury function or some other function.”

The threat was instantly challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, and Rosling duly retracted his accusations, setting a new trial for March 5. Trapnell is quite prepared. “I have committed all these crimes and have never gotten a number for any of them,” he had said to his interviewer. “If Gregg Ross commits a crime, then Gary Trapnell is not responsible. It’s the fallacy of your legal system.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com