Anatomy of a Skyjacker

AS much of the world knows by now, a 20-year-old U.S. Marine lance corporal four weeks ago commandeered at gunpoint a TWA plane that had taken off from Los Angeles International Airport and skyjacked it to Rome, where he was captured and jailed (TIME, Nov. 7). Behind that senseless and dramatic odyssey lay another one that helps to explain Raffaele Minichiello's bizarre action. Raff, as his family calls him, retraced that first, formative journey for U.S. Lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, who flew to Rome to organize Minichiello's defense. As the young Marine talked in his cell in Regina Coeli prison, Attorney Mitchelson recorded parts of it in Raff's own hesitant English. TIME here presents Minichiello's troubled story.

Raff grew up in the southern Italian village of Melito Irpino, one of those timeless, unchanging communities that hide behind hills all over Europe. Even there, he was something of an outsider: a U.S. citizen by virtue of his father's naturalization years before in America. The 30-year disparity in his parents' ages did not contribute to a settled home life. Papa Minichiello, a stern disciplinarian, confined his son at home nights. The one time Raff defied this parental decree he was soundly beaten.

In 1963, when Raff was 13, Papa Minichiello moved his family back to the U.S. and settled on a farm outside Seattle, where the old man had relatives. The abrupt transition was traumatic for Raff. He could neither speak nor read English. Classes at Foster High School became a routine torture; he fell hopelessly behind and, without his father's knowledge, regularly played hooky.

Even the one activity that interested him presented emotional problems that, in their way, contributed to the climactic act of his life.

I went out for wrestling at Foster High, and I was good. But I didn't know if I wanted to win or lose. If I won, I felt sorry for the other guy. And if I lose, I think, that's not good, I didn't try, I should of won. And I would get mad.

At 16, Raff dropped out of school for good. A young man who had never dated a girl, he found a job polishing and arranging fruit in a Seattle supermarket and took some satisfaction in it. But his failure in school, tugging remorselessly at his conscience, drove him to the Seattle public library. For hours on end, unable to fathom the printed mysteries of its stacks, he pored over the illustrations. In a way that he still does not understand, pictures of airplanes and weapons of war fascinated him. And his thoughts slowly turned to the other culture of modern society where men gather in the strong solidarity of uniforms, guns and combat. In May 1967, just 17, Raff signed up for a four-year hitch in the Marines.

After Camp Pendleton, where helpful Marine buddies polished some of the rough edges off his English, Raff was sent to Viet Nam in December 1967.

Almost immediately he launched a private war of his own. Cast in with veterans who sang the praises of pot and the hippie life, Raff voiced his objections to these values. When the other Marines responded by jeering at his English and his ancestry, Raff chose one of them and savagely attacked.

I even bit two chunks out of him. They had to take him to the hospital. I didn't even know him, and I'm sorry now that I did that. I got a bad temper sometimes, and I don't know when it's going to come out.

The assault, and Raff's contrition afterward, paralleled his combat experience. He fought bravely, and won a promotion to lance corporal. But his early conviction that the Viet Nam War was justified began to waver. So did his faith. Brought up in the Roman Catholic Church and a dutiful Mass-goer as a boy, Raff began to challenge a God who would permit a war that no longer made sense. Fear, boredom and misgivings assailed him. At length, during battle lulls, he joined the majority of Marines in smoking pot and swallowing Darvon--pain-killing capsules that, for him, were equally effective in quelling the thoughts that now disturbed him.

One day we'd take a hill, and the next day we'd give it up without a fight. And all those guys killed. I thought, what about their mamas and their papas and their brothers and sisters? It was a waste of all these people.

Back at Pendleton after his combat tour ended, Raff wanted only to get out. It was this decision that led to that fateful action aboard the airliner. He signed up for another tour in Viet Nam because this would reduce his hitch by a year. And he asked for the $800 that he had saved out of his pay during 1968. The paymaster disagreed. Minichiello had only $600 coming, and that was the sum he got. Raff succumbed to resentment and rage. In his view, he had been cheated of $200, and he resolved to get it back.

One night last May I was supposed to meet this guy at Pendleton and have a couple of beers at the canteen. But he never showed up. I must of had seven or eight beers. I got pretty drunk, and the drunker I got the madder I got. So I busted into the PX and I took some wristwatches and radios.

That was, he thought, the way the people in Melito Irpino had settled disputes. They had no need of courts. With an exquisite sense of justice, Raff took what he thought was exactly $200 worth. Then, overpowered by all the beer, he passed out in a recreation center near the PX. That was where the Military Police found him.

Booked in San Diego for theft of Government property, Raff was released without trial and returned to duty. For months, nothing further happened. Then, in August, he was abruptly informed that he would be court-martialed on the same charge. The date of his trial: Oct. 31. Before this event, a Marine lawyer appointed to defend Raff advised his client to plead guilty and accept the probable sentence of 30 days. A not-guilty plea, said the attorney, entailed the risk of a six-month sentence and a bad-conduct discharge. Both alternatives stunned and infuriated Raff.

I can't plead guilty when I am not guilty. They stole $200 from me and I stole $200 from them.

Brooding in his barracks, Raff reached a decision. He would not stand trial. On the morning of the court-martial, he withdrew everything he had in his service bank account--$460. Somehow, he would get back to Italy, find some friendly paisa and friendly hills and hide. In Oceanside, he paid $185 for an M-l carbine, 250 rounds of ammunition, a radio, provisions and a field pack. After a bus ride to Los Angeles, where he saw two movies, Raff went to Los Angeles International Airport and boarded Flight 85 to San Francisco.

When I went on that plane, I thought I was going to die. Maybe I wanted to die. But it was better to die than to do something that was not honorable.

Thus Raff's carbine symbolized a curious determination and an even stranger rationale. In retrospect, it seems likely that the weapon was meant not for interferers but for himself. After takeoff, and after ordering and drinking two whiskies and water, Raff assembled and loaded his gun, approached the stewardess and informed her that he wanted to take the plane to New York. "Are you crazy?" she asked. "No," he said, "I'm not crazy, and you'd better take me to the pilot." As Raff later told Attorney Mitchelson, he had no intention of killing the pilot. But what if the pilot had refused to divert the flight?

I'd of killed myself, I guess. I would of given the FBI or any Government guy a hard time, but I wouldn't of hurt him. I wasn't mad at anybody on that plane. One stewardess, a colored girl, she and I sat and talked and had a couple of drinks and she said she kind of understood what I was doing. She listened to me.

The skyjacking proceeded with only one minor incident. At New York's Kennedy Airport, alarmed at the approach of FBI agents--in bulletproof vests Raff fired a shot that glanced off an oxygen bottle in the cockpit. It was accidental, he said. As the plane left Bangor, Raff felt a moment of real regret.

I thought, Raff, that's the last time you'll ever see America. And I thought, it's the best country in the world. It's a good life there, and a good job for everybody, and a lot to look forward to. But now I want to give up my citizenship because I feel I'm ousted forever. They did wrong to me, and I guess I did them wrong.

The rest of Raff's story is that of a desperately tired, frightened and cornered boy. At Rome he ordered the airport's police chief to board the plane alone. The chief, without hesitation, obeyed Raff's command to drive him out of the city. When Raff heard his own name on the police radio, he told the police chief to stop and took to his heels. After dumping everything but the radio, he hitched a ride with a couple who dropped him off at a church.

I hid inside the church. I was too scared to pray. I wanted to stay inside forever, because all the trouble was outside. But I had to go outside. And there were police and squad cars and guns all over the place and choppers up in the sky real low. They asked for my I.D. card and they put cuffs on me. And I said, "Countrymen, why are you arresting me? What have I done?"

What Raffaele Minichiello did, if he is found guilty, could get him 30 years to life in an Italian prison. If Italy chooses to surrender him to the U.S., which is not likely, he could be put to death: in this country, skyjacking is a capital offense. Before trial however, Attorney Mitchelson plans to ask for a psychiatric examination to probe the roots of his client's wild transatlantic flight. Raff knows all this. He still smiles, but for the same reason that he has always smiled: not because he is happy but because he is sad. "I smile," he told his attorney, "because I can't speak good English, but I want people to understand me, to like me." Behind the smile, he waits patiently for authorities to decide fit punishment for a boy who, in Los Angeles, embarked in search of a meaning that has eluded him for all his 20 years.

I always wanted to fly. I thought, it must be beautiful up there. You're free. The whole world's down there and you're up in the sky, and you're free.

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