Woman is captured, actor keeps order after 6-hour hijack

Monday, January 29, 1979

New York NY -- NEW YORK (AP) - A woman who allegedly commandeered a jumbo jet with 131 people aboard was jailed yesterday after being overpowered by an FBI agent as actor Theodore Bikel sang to calm his fellow passengers.

It wasn't entertainment, it was therapy, said Mr. Bikel, who played the guitar and sang during the 6 1/2 hours the jet was parked at Kennedy International Airport after arriving from Los Angeles. The FBI said Irene McKinney, a 49-year-old divorced mother of two described as distraught about her family and the Roman Catholic Church, commandeered the plane because she wanted to pre-empt network television. Mr. Bikel, actor Sam Jaffe, agent Sue Mengers, and singer Dino Martin, son of Dean Martin, were among those on board the hijacked plane. It carried 119 passengers and a crew of 12. For a time, Mr. Martin helped Mr. Bikel entertain the passengers, who snapped their fingers instead of applauding to avoid disrupting the FBI's negotiations with Mrs. McKinney in the rear of the plane. No one was injured during the 11-hour ordeal in which the woman threatened to blow up the plane with nitroglycerin unless Charlton Heston, Jack Lemmon or Lindsay Wagner read an unspecified note over the air. Mr. Heston spent five hours at the airport in Los Angeles and said afterwards, I was prepared to do whatever I had to. Authorities said Mrs. McKinney hijacked the plane over Prescott, Ariz., after passing a note to the pilot, Thomas Cook, claiming that she had nitroglycerin, a highly explosive chemical, in her flight bag. It was later discovered that the bag contained a bottle of perfume, a plane ticket and personal items, but no explosives. FBI agent Quentin Ertel described Mrs. McKinney as a fallen away Catholic, ambivalent about developments in the Church and distraught about her family situation. She was divorced from her husband and subsequently lost custody of her two children.