When they met Roger was a disgruntled veteran of four tours in Vietnam where he had been seen as just another black 'grunt'. Cathy was working in a massage parlour.
Roger's anger found it's focus in the trial of radical Angela Davis, a plan formed in his head. Cathy was rootless and looking for fun.
The rabbit hole took shape.
Roger drew up a plan, they would hijack a plane, demand half a million dollars and the release of Davis. They would fly to Vietnam together then move to an idyllic life in Australia.
Mechanical reality got in the way, the plane they hi-jacked, as the pilot patiently explained, could not reach Vietnam.
Fate and asylum landed them in Algeria where they soon became the darlings of the Black Panthers in exile and icons for radical Europeans.
Algerian left wing President Houari Boumediene was intrigued by the pair and met them, took one look, decided they were fakers. They were forced to move to France where they were feted by the radical left, but it turned sour, big time. A rift developed. Roger returned to the US and narrowly escaped time in prison.
In his book Brendan Koerner holds our hands and takes us down the rabbit that was the golden age of hijacking.
It is a strange world, nobody from the hijackers to the airline companies to the FBI to the press saw straight so wildly spinning was the rabbit hole.
The spinning slows when Koerner relates meeting Roger Holder decades after the events took place. Now we have fisrt-hand perspective on a strange, strange time in American history.
And Cathy? After they moved to France she....disappeared. The FBI would still like to say 'hi Cathy!'...
Brendan Koerner spins an engrossing tale which distils the US of the sixties and seventies in the book and talks about it here.. but for the full experience of this rabbit hole you need to read the book, as usual scribble down the ISBN 9780307886118 and take it your local bookshop, it's on the shelf in mine;)
Another rabbit hole soon..
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