Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. ( December 7 , 1942 – November 10 , 1974 ) was an American aircraft hijacker.
McCoy hijacked a United Airliner passenger jet for ransom in 1972. Due to a similar modus operandi , law enforcement officials named McCoy as a suspect for the still-unidentified "D. B. Cooper," who committed his unsolved crime four months before McCoy.
Biography
Early life
McCoy was born December 7 , 1942 , in the town of Kinston, North Carolina, and grew up in nearby Cove City.
McCoy moved to Provo, Utah in 1962 and enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) before dropping out to serve a two-year tour of duty in the United States Army. He served in Vietnam as a demolition expert and pilot and was awarded the Army's Purple Heart in 1964. McCoy returned to BYU in 1965, where he met Karen Burns. They married in August, 1965 in Raleigh, North Carolina. By 1971, they had two children, Chanti and Richard.
He served another term in the Army on the condition he go to Vietnam, where he was awarded both the Army Commendation Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross. Back in Utah, he served as a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and was an avid skydiver. McCoy taught Mormon Sunday school and studied law enforcement at Brigham Young University. His purported dream was to become a United States FBI or CIA agent.
Criminal career
On April 7 , 1972 , McCoy boarded United Airlines flight 855 during a stopover in Denver, Colorado. The aircraft was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs (the same equipment used in the D. B. Cooper incident), which McCoy used to escape after giving the crew similar instructions as Cooper had. McCoy obtained a large cash ransom, and carried a novelty grenade and an empty pistol.
Police began investigating McCoy following a tip from a motorist. The driver had picked up McCoy hitch-hiking at a fast-food restaurant, where McCoy was wearing a jumpsuit and carrying a duffel bag. McCoy also had described to an acquaintance how easy it would be to carry out such a hijacking.
Following a fingerprint and handwriting match, McCoy was arrested two days after the hijacking. Ironically, McCoy was on National Guard duty flying one of the helicopters involved in the search for the hijacker. Inside his house, FBI agents found a jumpsuit and a duffel bag filled with cash totaling $499,970.
McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted of the hijacking and received a 45-year sentence. The Public Defender assigned to represent McCoy was David Winder, who was later appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be a District Court judge in Salt Lake City and continues to sit on the bench to this day. Thirty years after McCoy was sentenced, an attorney and talk-radio host in Salt Lake City named Rinehart proposed a detailed list of written questions to Judge Winder about the McCoy case and posted them online with Winder's response. Rinehart also interviewed several officers and FBI agents involved with the case and posted those interviews online as well.
Once incarcerated at the Federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, McCoy used his access to the prison's dental office in order to fashion a fake handgun out of dental paste. He and a crew of convicts escaped on August 10 , 1974 by commandeering a garbage truck and crashing it through the prison's main gate.
The FBI located McCoy in Virginia Beach, Virginia, three months later. News reports stated that on November 9 , 1974 , McCoy walked into his Virginia home and was met by FBI agents; he fired at them, and an agent fired back with a shotgun, killing McCoy.
Lawsuits over Cooper Allegations
1991 saw the publication of D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy , by FBI agents Bernie Rhodes and Russell P. Calame. Both authors investigated McCoy's skyjacking case, and their book posits that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person. They cited similar methods of hijacking, and a tie and Brigham Young University medallion with McCoy's initials on the back, left on the plane by Cooper.
After the book's publication, McCoy's widow filed suit against the book's authors, publisher, and her former attorney Thomas S. Taylor. She claimed they misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking for which McCoy was convicted, and also misrepresented later events from interviews done with Taylor in the 1970s. She sought an injunction against publication and distribution of the book.
During court proceedings, it was revealed that McCoy's widow was deeply involved in the hijacking. Her request for an injunction to prohibit further sales of the book was denied. However, an injunction to prohibit the sale of movie rights to the book—conditional upon the movie including references to four specific allegations that she protested in the book—was granted.
Mrs. McCoy accepted a settlement in 1994.
Further reading
- Rhodes, Bernie; Russell P. Calame (1991). D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy . Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 0874803772. OCLC 24173928.
References
- ^ a b "The Real McCoy". Time . 1972-04-24 . http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943370-1,00.html . Retrieved 2007-07-26 .
- ^ Associated Press (1972-04-10). "Skydiver Held as Hijacker; $500,000 Is Still Missing". New York Times : p. 1.
- ^ "Famous Cases: Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. - Aircraft Hijacking". Federal Bureau of Investigation . http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/mccoy/mccoy.htm . Retrieved 2007-07-26 .
- ^ Associated Press (1972-07-01). "Viet Veteran Convicted Of Colorado Air Piracy". The Washington Post : p. A3.
- ^ Associated Press (1972-07-11). "45-Year Term Given Veteran In Hijack of Jet, $500,000". The Washington Post : p. A14.
- ^ Steven Rinehart (2006-02-11). "Questions for Judge Winder" . http://www.stevenrinehart.com/uploads/JudgeWinderLetter.htm .
- ^ Steven Rinehart (2006-03-11). "Recorded Interviews about McCoy" . http://www.stevenrinehart.com/pages/?section=2&page=9 . ...
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