When the Lone Star Flyer pulled into the station in late November, 1971 the gentleman disembarking the Pullman car looked no different than most any other passenger passing through Fort Stockton. Nobody took much notice of him. He seemed a little disheveled from the trip, but the long ride from the Pacific Northwest took its toll on most passengers.

He had two bags with him, a new American Tourister and an old knapsack looking like it’d seen better days. Stopping at the payphone at the north end of the old stone station, the stranger called a cab to take him over to the Cattle Baron Hotel. “Sorry, I haven’t made a reservation,” he explained to Shirley at the desk, “I hope there’s a room available.” Shirley just chuckled. The hotel hadn’t been full since the end of the war. She turned around to grab the key to Room 207, across the hall from her own. Turning back towards her new guest, a fifty dollar bill lay atop the register, ‘D.B. Smith’ written in tight cursive.

“How many nights will you be in town?” she asked.

“Guessing three,” he replied, grabbing the key and heading for the staircase dominating the lobby. “We’ll see.”

That would have been that, under normal circumstances. But the next morning he headed to the Grounds for Divorce for breakfast and then walked the block and a half to Frontier Ford, “Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal”, and bought the black and silver Mustang Mach I right off the showroom floor. It was the last ‘71 left in inventory, being priced near Thunderbird territory with the 429 Cobra Jet V8 and just about every option.

This is where the story gets interesting.

Mac McMaster, the salesman, was ready to work a pretty good deal, but didn’t want to make it too obvious. The Sales Manager had put a hundred dollar bonus on the Mach I to clear the lot of ’71 models. When he got out his sales pad and asked about a trade-in, the stranger nodded his head in the negative, laying 46 crisp $100 bills on the pad.

It wasn’t unusual for a customer to pay in full, but Mac couldn’t recall anyone actually paying with actual cash. Mac scooped up the stack of bills, locking them in his desk drawer, lest the stranger change his mind. “I’ll have the Mach I ready to pick up Monday, ‘bout noon.”

“I’ll take it with me now,” the stranger told him in a pleasant but firm voice.

“Make Ready doesn’t work Saturdays. Plus, you get a free tank of gas. It’s on empty right now,” Mac explained.

“Looks good to me,” the stranger said as he grabbed both sets of keys off the desk and headed over to the Mustang. “Open that big door for me if you would, please.”

That night, the Mach I was parked over at the Lucky Lady, the stranger nursing a Cutty Sark while fighting off the advances of Larryalice Ludlow who’d sniffed out the new guy in town like a hungry shark sniffing blood in the water. Just as Larryalice was about to clinch the deal, Rusty pointed up to the black & white TV at the end of the bar where David Brinkley was detailing the hijacking of a Northwest Orient Flight from Portland.  An FBI poster of the suspect, D.B. Cooper, who’d jumped from the plane, was on the screen behind him.

The stranger talked over the TV, ordering drinks for the house and causing a roar from the crowd to drown out the TV. Paid cash, with a healthy tip for Hank who was tending bar. He excused himself to the men’s room before the drinks even came. Larryalice noticed Mustang taillights getting smaller and smaller down Houston Street while she waited for him to come out of the bathroom.

Turns out the big door on the dealership might not have been the only door the stranger had opened.

Whomever David Brinkley had been talking about on the black and white TV at the Lucky Lady apparently knew his way around airplanes.  The hijacker of the plane from Portland had instructed the crew to fly at a specific altitude of 10,000 feet.  “Keep the landing gear down and locked in place,” he told them.  “Keep the flaps locked at fifteen degrees.  Keep the speed steady at one hundred knots.  And keep the plane unpressurized.”

Turns out those instructions were very specific for a reason.  The man must have known quite a bit about the workings of a Boeing 727-100.  The  details were important.  Extremely slow speed, the height and the lift combined to form a sweet spot for exactly what he planned to do next.

The hijacker told the only flight attendant onboard to open the airstrair at the back of the plane so he could jump.  Afraid of being sucked out of the aircraft when the door opened, she said she’d only do it if she could go to the cockpit and retrieve a rope and tie herself to a seat, just in case.  He didn’t seem to have much patience for her argument, probably because he knew it to be a completely invalid fear based on the instructions he’d given the pilots for how the plane was to be flown.

“Never mind,” he told her.  “Just go to first class, and take a seat.  Make sure you close the curtains behind you before you buckle up.”  She did as she was told.

Soon after she sat down, the hijacker opened the airstair himself and jumped out of the plane with the duffle bag full of cash.  The pilots immediately  received a warning in the cockpit that the airstair had been opened, causing the plane to pitch, and the pilots to activate trim to successfully counter the pitch.  The Boeing 727-100 eventually landed with the airstair at the rear of the plane still open.

For years. folks around Fort Stockton speculated and tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that made some sense.  “I wonder just how much cash he had in that bag,” Mac McMaster used to say back at the Ford dealership.  “Bet I coulda got him to spring for the Full Interior Scotch Guard Protection Package if he hadn’t been in such a hurry.  Woulda been an extra fifty in my pocket.”

Rusty over at the hardware store observed, “The sumbitch must have known his way around an airplane, knowing just how to make it fly so he could jump out the arse end of the damn thing without killing himself and everyone on baord.”

Larryalice mused, “He was only twenty minutes away from having a damn good reason to stay in Fort Stockton for a while. Wouldn’t have even had to share the bag of cash he brought with him. But for a Mustang Mach I of my own would, he’d have had a better time than jumping out of the backend of a jet in the dark.”