Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (27 page)

Running down the boarding ramp, Officer Troyer spotted a man facing the cockpit and holding a gun. He shouted for the flight attendants to flee and then fired his weapon as the door swung shut, his bullets ricocheting off the edge of the door.

Panicked, Byck fired into the cockpit, hitting both pilots in the back and shoulder areas.

Taking the stairs down to the tarmac, Troyer joined other officers who were attempting to shoot out the tires of the plane. But the bullets failed to penetrate the thick rubber and ricocheted, at least one hitting the plane’s wing.

From the eight passengers who had boarded the plane before him, Byck grabbed a woman out of her first-class seat, dragged her to the cockpit, and told her, “Help this man fly this plane.”

Meanwhile, Troyer had returned to the plane’s door and was looking through the porthole. When a passenger signaled Byck’s position behind a partition, Troyer fired multiple times, hitting Byck twice in the chest and stomach.

Unsure if Byck was dead, Troyer went off to find a shotgun. Meanwhile, Byck collapsed onto the floor. He then put his own pistol to his head and fired. When police opened the plane door, they found Byck lying dead on top of his suitcase bomb.

Lofton spent six weeks in the hospital but recovered from his wounds and returned to piloting. President Nixon was in the White House at the time of the hijacking, attempting to limit the damage of the Watergate scandal that would cause him to resign the presidency months later to avoid impeachment.

Fromme grew rebellious in her teenage years, got into fights with her father, and experimented with drugs and alcohol. Eventually, her disciplinarian father kicked her out of the house during her first year at junior college.

Freshly released from a stint in prison, thirty-two-year-old Charles Manson came across a depressed Fromme staring at the ocean at Venice Beach. He immediately charmed her, and Fromme joined a growing number of female followers who treated Manson as a religious guru, lover, and father figure.

In the summer of 1968, the Manson Family, as it came to be known, took up residence with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys and convinced record industry executives to fund a recording session of Manson’s songs, backed up by the Family.

By late 1968, the Family set themselves up on an old movie ranch owned by eighty-year-old George Spahn. At Manson’s direction, Fromme engaged in a sexual relationship with Spahn, and the Family was allowed to stay there rent free.