Word: leon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Chillingly Familiar. The two hijackers had hardly been noticed when they boarded the plane in Phoenix, an hour earlier, One was Leon Bearden, 38, an unemployed auto salesman from Coolidge, Ariz. The other was his tousle-haired son, Cody, 16. The elder Bearden had a 20-year criminal record, had served prison terms for robbery, forgery and grand theft. In 1955 he spent a month in a Phoenix mental hospital. A chronic malcontent, Leon Bearden nursed a large grudge against the U.S. He and his son, he said, just wanted to go to Cuba and renounce their American citizenship. Lacking...
...play for time. With the responsibility for the lives of 73 persons aboard the plane, it was a perilous game. Rickards blandly told the gunmen that the 707 did not have sufficient fuel to reach Havana and that he would have to make a refueling stop in El Paso. Leon Bearden readily agreed to make the landing, and moments later the El Paso tower got its first inkling of the drama in the skies, when Rickards radioed a terse message: "We want gas to go to Cuba...
...Leon Bearden's orders, no ramps were rolled up to the silent plane. A fuel truck drove under its huge wing, and the ground crew hooked up a fuel line. "It was strange," recalls Second Officer Norman Simmons. "A routine landing in every way, except that we didn't unload passengers or baggage." Aboard the jet the passengers sat in shocked silence as a hostess instructed them to stay in their seats: "We may be flying on to Havana." Cody Bearden lounged in the doorway of the cabin, casually swinging his .45 revolver and keeping a sullen...
...Kennedy was kept informed about the situation. He gave a flat no to the proposed exchange of planes, ordered that any other action be left to the discretion of the lawmen on the scene. Through the long hours, the embattled hijackers argued with their captives. At last, getting nowhere, Leon Bearden said that he intended to take off in the 707, come what may. And to emphasize his determination, he fired a bullet between Second Officer Simmons' feet. "Things are getting desperate on this plane," Rickards told the tower. "We've got to have fuel." The purposefully dawdling...
...Leon C. Gonzales, a graduate student at the Summer School, has won the Name the Newsmakers contest sponsored by Time, Inc. Gonzales, a native of Manila, Philippines, is studying counseling for background as a guidance counselor...