Crime: The Skywayman

It was 1:50 a.m. over the Gila River Valley, and the big Boeing 707 jetliner was just 16 minutes out of El Paso on a routine Continental Airlines run from Los Angeles to Houston. In the darkened cabin, most of the passengers dozed in their seats. “I was about half asleep,” recalls Air Force Recruit Robert Byington, “when I saw one of the stewardesses being pushed up the aisle by a young guy about 17.” Byington did not see the revolver pressed against the girl. “She didn’t look like she was scared, and I thought this fellow was just fooling around.” But in the cockpit. Captain Byron Rickards got the message instantly, as the plane’s two stewardesses edged through the door followed closely by two gunmen. The elder of the two pistol toters, a wiry, balding man, held his .38 against the head of Stewardess Lois Carnagey and announced to the pilot: “We are going to take this plane to Cuba. Alter your course 45° to the south.”

Chillingly Familiar. The two hijackers had hardly been noticed when they boarded the plane in Phoenix, an hour earlier, One was Leon Bearden, 38, an unemployed auto salesman from Coolidge, Ariz. The other was his tousle-haired son, Cody, 16. The elder Bearden had a 20-year criminal record, had served prison terms for robbery, forgery and grand theft. In 1955 he spent a month in a Phoenix mental hospital. A chronic malcontent, Leon Bearden nursed a large grudge against the U.S. He and his son, he said, just wanted to go to Cuba and renounce their American citizenship. Lacking the air fare, they had decided to commandeer the $5,400,000 jet. But, he insisted, they had no connection with Fidel Castro or any of his Cuban skywaymen.

For Pilot Rickards, a leathery South Dakota-born veteran of 33 years with the airlines, the experience was chillingly familiar: in 1931, as a young Panagra pilot, he and his plane were captured and held for several days in Arequipa, Peru, during an uprising. Rickards began to play for time. With the responsibility for the lives of 73 persons aboard the plane, it was a perilous game. Rickards blandly told the gunmen that the 707 did not have sufficient fuel to reach Havana and that he would have to make a refueling stop in El Paso. Leon Bearden readily agreed to make the landing, and moments later the El Paso tower got its first inkling of the drama in the skies, when Rickards radioed a terse message: “We want gas to go to Cuba.”

“On to Havana.” By the time the big plane eased down on the runway, word had flashed across the U.S. that another U.S. airliner had been captured by Cubans. In El Paso, police, FBI agents and border patrolmen scrambled out of their beds and hurried to International Airport. From Denver, Continental Airlines President Robert Six issued an order: “Stall in any way, as long as possible.” Two Air National Guard F-100 fighters whooshed out of Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base, headed for El Paso.

On Leon Bearden’s orders, no ramps were rolled up to the silent plane. A fuel truck drove under its huge wing, and the ground crew hooked up a fuel line. “It was strange,” recalls Second Officer Norman Simmons. “A routine landing in every way, except that we didn’t unload passengers or baggage.” Aboard the jet the passengers sat in shocked silence as a hostess instructed them to stay in their seats: “We may be flying on to Havana.” Cody Bearden lounged in the doorway of the cabin, casually swinging his .45 revolver and keeping a sullen eye on the frightened passengers. Then a pregnant female passenger seemed to be approaching hysteria about her plight, and Leon Bearden apparently thought he could see an uncontrollable situation in the making. He recruited four passengers to remain as voluntary hostages, and allowed the other passengers to leave. One among the four was a lanky, laconic fellow named Leonard Gilman, who happened to be an off-duty U.S. border patrol officer.

“We’ve Got to Have Fuel.” Dawn seeped over the mountains around the airport as Pilot Rickards, in communication with Continental officials in the tower, continued to stall for time. Rickards told the increasingly nervous gunmen that Havana’s José Marti Airport would not accommodate the huge jetliner, offered instead to substitute a smaller DC-7 already en route to El Paso for the flight. By this time, the El Paso drama had become an affair of state; if, as was automatically assumed, the hijackers were indeed Castro henchmen, drastic U.S. steps might have been required. In Washington, President Kennedy was kept informed about the situation. He gave a flat no to the proposed exchange of planes, ordered that any other action be left to the discretion of the lawmen on the scene. Through the long hours, the embattled hijackers argued with their captives. At last, getting nowhere, Leon Bearden said that he intended to take off in the 707, come what may. And to emphasize his determination, he fired a bullet between Second Officer Simmons’ feet. “Things are getting desperate on this plane,” Rickards told the tower. “We’ve got to have fuel.” The purposefully dawdling ground crew quickly filled the tanks, unhooked the line. As the big engines screamed and the plane taxied toward a takeoff, a motorcade of lawmen suddenly raced out of their hiding places and poured a fusillade of machine-gun and rifle bullets into the undercarriage. The 707 jerked to a stop, its eight tires flattened (see cut) and the No. 2 engine knocked out.

The Beardens sat in stunned silence. Their wild scheme had obviously failed, and the captive Gilman, could see their desperation increasing. FBI Agent Francis Crosby boarded the plane to negotiate. Becoming hysterical, Bearden said that he would commit suicide before he would let himself be killed or captured. Seeing an opening, the Border Patrol’s Gilman shot out his fist, dropped the older hijacker with an uppercut so powerful that it fractured his own fist. The FBI man and Simmons sprang on young Cody Bearden and, after ten grueling hours, it was all over. The Beardens, handcuffed, were led off to face life sentences on charges of kidnaping and transporting a stolen plane. Their trip to Cuba would have to wait.