Disasters: The Way Out

Five thousand feet high and 40 miles out of San Francisco, a Pacific Air Lines turboprop F-27 checked in with the approach control tower at nearby Oakland. The radio conversation was routine until the last transmission from the plane, which was garbled. Control called: “Say again.” But at that very moment the F-27 was screaming toward the earth to crash in an explosion of flame.

Pilot Ernest Clark, his copilot, stewardess and all 41 passengers were killed. Many of the passengers were returning from the gaming tables at Reno.

A task force of investigators began probing for the cause of the crash. Over and over again they played back a tape-recording of the last radio transmission to Oakland Control. The only clue, they felt, lay in the garbled call from the plane. Finally, with special playback equipment, the garble began to make sense. It was the voice of the pilot or copilot. He had shouted, “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot! Oh God! Help!” There was nothing else.

At the crash site searchers found a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum with six empty shells in its chambers. In the first hours of study, there was no way to tell whether both the pilot and copilot had been shot, or just one of the men, or whether it was bullet damage that had destroyed the mechanism operating the plane’s control surfaces.

In a matter of hours, investigators traced the revolver to Passenger Frank Gonzales, 27, a member of the Philippine yachting team in the 1960 Olympics, who later moved to San Francisco. He had bought more than $50,000 in flight insurance, had named his estranged wife as beneficiary. Gonzales had a penchant for gambling, leading to the suspicion that he had lost heavily in Reno and had chosen a weird and horrible way out of his problems.