Hijacking And Aftermath
At gunpoint, Minichiello ordered the captain to fly to New York. The plane landed in Denver, where he released the passengers, before continuing on to the Big Apple. As the plane refueled in Denver, Minichiello told the captain and crew that NYC was not his final destination, and that he planned to go all the way to Italy. There, he felt, people would understand why getting screwed over $200 was such a grave insult to his honor, that it justified the drastic steps he was taking by way of redress.
At John F. Kennedy Airport in NYC, FBI agents in bulletproof vests surrounded the aircraft. Whether they sought to intimidate Minichiello, or were preparing for an assault to take out the hijacker and end the drama, it did not work. To demonstrate that he meant business, Minichiello fired a bullet into the roof of the fuselage, which startled the FBI into backing off. The 707 then proceeded to Bangor, Maine, thence across the Atlantic to Shannon, Ireland, and finally, to Rome. All in all, Raffaele Minichiello had pulled off what was the longest hijacking in the history of civil aviation, which lasted more than 19 hours in the air from Los Angeles to Rome, and covered nearly 7000 miles.
In Rome, Minichiello avoided arrest by taking a cop hostage at the airport, and stealing his police car. He sped off to a rural church, where he sought sanctuary, and where he was tracked down and arrested on November 2nd, 1969. As he was dragged off by Italian police, he wailed “Paisà, perchè m’arresti?” (“countryman, why are you arresting me?”) – a phrase that went viral, as many Italians rallied to his cause. It helped that Minichiello was easy on the eyes, and women swooned over his movie star good looks. He became an instant sensation and folk hero in Italy.
With that kind of head start in the battle for public sympathy, Minichiello’s legal team had a relatively easy time in framing his crime as resulting from trauma he had experienced in Vietnam while earning a Purple Heart. That elicited great sympathy from an Italian public that was growing increasingly appalled by America’s conduct in Vietnam, and public pressure got the authorities to go easy on him. At his subsequent trial, Minichiello was acquitted of all charges, except for weapons possession.
Sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, Minichiello spent only eighteen months behind bars, before he was set free. Upon his release, he signed a contract to star in Spaghetti Western movies. The movie career did not pan out, however, and Minichiello ended up working as a waiter back in his birthplace of Melito Irpino. Today, he spends much of his free time maintaining a YouTube channel, dedicated mainly to accordion music.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
BBC News, July 11th, 2013 – Hijacking Epidemic in America: 1961 – 1972
Koerner, Brendan I. – The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (2013)
Leominster Enterprise, October 31st, 1969 – Jetliner Seized Over California
New Yorker, February 17th, 2014 – A Throwback to an Earlier Age of Hijacking
New York Times, June 13th, 2013 – Bonnie and Clyde, the Aerial Version
New York Times, November 6th, 1970 – US Hijacker Goes on Trial in Rome
Slate, June 21st, 2013 – Raffaele Minichiello Hijacked a Plane to Italy and Became a Folk Hero