A Skyjacker’s Regrets

AT 28, HE PARACHUTED FROM A 727 WITH $500,000. NOW OUT OF PRISON, MCNALLY REMEMBERS HIS ‘INSANE’ CRIME AS THE COUNTRY WAS PLAGUED BY HIJACKINGS

- JOHNNY DODD

Sunrise was still hours away on the June 1972 morning when Martin McNally finally summoned the nerve to jump out of the back of the Boeing 727 he’d hijacked as it roared over central Indiana at 300 mph. The then-28-year-old Navy veteran had never worn a parachute before and, seconds later, found himself tumbling uncontrollably through the sky. A bag stuffed with $502,000 was tied to his waist. When McNally’s reserve chute—supplied by an FBI agent as part of McNally’s demands—opened, it slammed into his head, bloodying and bruising his face. Even worse for him, the cash ripped from his waist and disappeared into the darkness. “I couldn’t believe it,” he now recalls. “I was screaming and hollering, ‘The money’s gone!’ It’s the first and only time I ever thought about suicide.”

Things got worse from there for McNally, whose high-altitude caper came during the so-called “Golden Age” of skyjacking. From 1968 to 1972 more than 300 jets were commandeered in the U.S., forcing officials to enhance security measures at airports across the nation (see sidebar).

McNally was handed two life sentences for air piracy and spent nearly four decades in prison before being paroled in 2010. In his years behind bars, the 81-year-old became reflective and remorseful, though no less colorful. “It was insane. I was stupid,” says McNally, whose life is chronicled in the documentary