Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances by Ross Richardson
Authors: Ross Richardson
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psychic—have so far been unable to locate the Block’s green and white two-seater Cessna 150.
The younger Block is seeking the aid of upstate residents, plus recreational pilots, campers and other sportsmen who spend time in Michigan’s backwoods.
“Being practical, I think they’re gone,” said Block, a 35-year-old insurance salesman.
“But it’s hard to rest until you find out. We’d like to know a lot of answers, like whether they suffered. I suppose it’s possible they could have survived somehow, but we realize how unlikely that is.”
The “we” he refers to includes a brother in Traverse City, two uncles and numerous friends from the Tank Arsenal, where for seven years John Block had been chief of the fire fighting unit he joined in 1945.
Together they have compiled, printed and are distributing a flyer describing the elder Blocks, their plane and the general search area.
Block’s Parents took off about 11 a.m. July 4 from the Macomb County Airport, a small strip near New Haven. They were to fly north to Luzerne and meet Michael, who was visiting his in-laws there, then fly on to Traverse City, where another son, John, 30, is a sheriff’s deputy.
The official Civil Air Patrol search initially concentrated on an area just south of their destination, in Ogemaw County.
The Coast Guard came in two days later to search Saginaw Bay and Civil Air Patrol planes combed an area south of Bay City.
Block had been flying for more than 30 years. But his son described him as “a fairweather, weekend pilot,” who normally flew visually, following major highways on his rare long-distance flights.
The younger Block said his father had flown to Luzerne before, normally following I-75.
But weather on the Fourth of July was hazy, with visibility less than two miles and his father apparently ended up near Lansing by mistaking I-69 for I-75 in the Flint area.
A week after the disappearance, the Civil Air Patrol, with volunteers from Indiana and Illinois, launched a massive search along US-27, north from Lansing to Grayling, then east along M-72 to Luzerne.
A Civil Air Patrol practice mission this weekend will concentrate on two key search areas, said Capt. Russell Smith of the Bay City post.
Smith said the first is the Mio-Roscommon area and the second is north of Lansing, in the Mt. Pleasant-Alma area.
Smith said Block had been flying almost two hours before he talked with the other pilot at Charlotte. But the 400-mile range of the Cessna 150 may have permitted him to reach Luzerne, Smith said.
Smith added that because of the dense foliage in north-central Michigan, failing to find plane wreckage for several months is not unusual.
Last year, he said, a Saginaw pilot crashed near Gladwin in mid-June, but the plane wasn’t found until October by hunters on foot.
With fall at hand the younger Block is hopeful the wreckage will be found. And he places more hope in help from upstate residents and sportsmen in the upcoming hunting season than from a woman psychic, who was brought into the hunt through a friend of Block’s father last month.
The psychic visualized that the Blocks were still alive then, but injured, near the crash site—in dense woods two miles north of “a large swamp” near Pleasant Valley, east of Mt. Pleasant.
Smith said the Civil Air Patrol—which won’t send in searchers on foot until after an aerial sighting of wreckage-flew several sorties over that area but found nothing.
Anyone who would like to help Block with the search may reach him at 979-6142.
On September 9, 1977, John Block Jr. received an intriguing handwritten letter from a vacationer, a Mrs. Joyce Holappa, who was in the Cadillac area of Northern Michigan on July 4. What makes the letter even more credible and interesting is the fact that the area she describes would be close to the flight path the Blocks would have taken if they had stopped in the airport in Charlotte, and headed to Luzerne from there. It read:
The more I think
The younger Block is seeking the aid of upstate residents, plus recreational pilots, campers and other sportsmen who spend time in Michigan’s backwoods.
“Being practical, I think they’re gone,” said Block, a 35-year-old insurance salesman.
“But it’s hard to rest until you find out. We’d like to know a lot of answers, like whether they suffered. I suppose it’s possible they could have survived somehow, but we realize how unlikely that is.”
The “we” he refers to includes a brother in Traverse City, two uncles and numerous friends from the Tank Arsenal, where for seven years John Block had been chief of the fire fighting unit he joined in 1945.
Together they have compiled, printed and are distributing a flyer describing the elder Blocks, their plane and the general search area.
Block’s Parents took off about 11 a.m. July 4 from the Macomb County Airport, a small strip near New Haven. They were to fly north to Luzerne and meet Michael, who was visiting his in-laws there, then fly on to Traverse City, where another son, John, 30, is a sheriff’s deputy.
The official Civil Air Patrol search initially concentrated on an area just south of their destination, in Ogemaw County.
The Coast Guard came in two days later to search Saginaw Bay and Civil Air Patrol planes combed an area south of Bay City.
Block had been flying for more than 30 years. But his son described him as “a fairweather, weekend pilot,” who normally flew visually, following major highways on his rare long-distance flights.
The younger Block said his father had flown to Luzerne before, normally following I-75.
But weather on the Fourth of July was hazy, with visibility less than two miles and his father apparently ended up near Lansing by mistaking I-69 for I-75 in the Flint area.
A week after the disappearance, the Civil Air Patrol, with volunteers from Indiana and Illinois, launched a massive search along US-27, north from Lansing to Grayling, then east along M-72 to Luzerne.
A Civil Air Patrol practice mission this weekend will concentrate on two key search areas, said Capt. Russell Smith of the Bay City post.
Smith said the first is the Mio-Roscommon area and the second is north of Lansing, in the Mt. Pleasant-Alma area.
Smith said Block had been flying almost two hours before he talked with the other pilot at Charlotte. But the 400-mile range of the Cessna 150 may have permitted him to reach Luzerne, Smith said.
Smith added that because of the dense foliage in north-central Michigan, failing to find plane wreckage for several months is not unusual.
Last year, he said, a Saginaw pilot crashed near Gladwin in mid-June, but the plane wasn’t found until October by hunters on foot.
With fall at hand the younger Block is hopeful the wreckage will be found. And he places more hope in help from upstate residents and sportsmen in the upcoming hunting season than from a woman psychic, who was brought into the hunt through a friend of Block’s father last month.
The psychic visualized that the Blocks were still alive then, but injured, near the crash site—in dense woods two miles north of “a large swamp” near Pleasant Valley, east of Mt. Pleasant.
Smith said the Civil Air Patrol—which won’t send in searchers on foot until after an aerial sighting of wreckage-flew several sorties over that area but found nothing.
Anyone who would like to help Block with the search may reach him at 979-6142.
On September 9, 1977, John Block Jr. received an intriguing handwritten letter from a vacationer, a Mrs. Joyce Holappa, who was in the Cadillac area of Northern Michigan on July 4. What makes the letter even more credible and interesting is the fact that the area she describes would be close to the flight path the Blocks would have taken if they had stopped in the airport in Charlotte, and headed to Luzerne from there. It read:
The more I think
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