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Richard McCoy Jr.

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Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr.
SpouseKaren Burns McCoy (1965-)
ChildrenChanti
Richard
Parent(s)Myrtle McCoy
Richard Floyd McCoy, Sr.
Criminal chargeAircraft piracy
Penalty45 years incarceration

Richard McCoy, Jr. (December 7, 1942 – November 10, 1974) was an American aircraft hijacker.

Life

Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr., 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 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[1] and was awarded the Army's Purple Heart in 1964. He returned to BYU in 1965, where he met Karen Burns. Richard married Karen Burns in August 1965 in Raleigh, North Carolina and fathered two children, Chanti and Richard, with her by 1971.

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.[2] 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

Same modus operandi as D. B. Cooper

McCoy's criminal career began on April 7, 1972, when he 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 Dan Cooper had. McCoy was carrying a novelty grenade and an empty pistol.

File:DBCooper article.jpg
The Salt Lake Tribune's article about the 1972 capture of Richard McCoy

Police began investigating McCoy following a tip from a motorist who picked up a hitch-hiker (in a jumpsuit, carrying a duffel bag) at a fast-food restaurant where he had stopped to get a milkshake. McCoy also had described to a number of people how easy it would be to carry out such a hijacking.[3]

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.[1]

McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted of the hijacking[4] and received a 45-year sentence.[5] 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 who 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.[6] Rinehart also interviewed several officers and FBI agents involved with the case and posted those interviews online as well.[7]

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.[8]

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;[9] he fired at them, and an agent fired back with a shotgun, killing McCoy.[10] Other witnesses dispute this claim.[citation needed]

His Widow

D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, a book positing that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person, was published in 1991. It cited similar methods of hijacking and a tie and Brigham Young medallion with McCoy's initials on the back, left on the plane by Cooper. McCoy's widow filed suit against the book's authors, publisher, and her former attorney Thomas S. Taylor, claiming they misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking and later events from interviews done with Taylor in the 1970s.[11]

The depth of her participation in the hijacking was revealed in the court proceedings, leading her request for an injunction to prohibit further sales of the book to be denied. 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, also was granted.[12] Mrs. McCoy accepted a settlement in 1994[13]

Further reading

  • Rhodes, Bernie (1991). D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 0874803772. OCLC 24173928. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

References

  1. ^ a b "The Real McCoy". Time. 1972-04-24. Retrieved 2007-07-26. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ Associated Press (1972-04-10). "Skydiver Held as Hijacker; $500,000 Is Still Missing". New York Times. p. 1. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ "Famous Cases: Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. - Aircraft Hijacking". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
  4. ^ Associated Press (1972-07-01). "Viet Veteran Convicted Of Colorado Air Piracy". The Washington Post. p. A3. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  5. ^ Associated Press (1972-07-11). "45-Year Term Given Veteran In Hijack of Jet, $500,000". The Washington Post. p. A14. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ^ Steven Rinehart (2006-2-11 cite web). "Questions for Judge Winder". {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Steven Rinehart (2006-3-11 cite web). "Recorded Interviews about McCoy". {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "4 Inmates Escape From Lewisburg". New York Times. 1974-08-11. p. 26. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Hunsberger, Don (2005-12-29). "Detective stories". The Villages Daily Sun. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
  10. ^ Associated Press (1974-11-11). "Hijacker Shot Dead in Va. by FBI". The Washington Post. p. C2. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Associated Press (1992-01-18). "Widow of Man Linked in Book to Skyjacker D.B. Cooper Sues Authors, Provo Attorney". Deseret News. p. B5. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Funk, Marianne (1992-02-21). "McCoy's Widow Admits Helping in '72 Hijacking". Deseret News. p. B4. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ Funk, Marianne (1994-01-19). "Hijacker's Widow to Gain $120,000". Deseret News. p. B2. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links


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