June Month of Poetry Days #17-23

So the whole "a poem every day" idea hasn't really happened, but I am still enjoying doing these when I can. It looks like I will end up with at least 15 poems for the month if the current pace is maintained, which is pretty good!

Today is another pair of poems to represent days 17-23, on two similar-ish mysteries of contemporary history that have fascinated not just me but many professional and amateur sleuths over the years. One of them is much better known than the other, which is in itself somewhat interesting. These are the cases of Alfred Loewenstein and DB (Dan) Cooper.

Alfred Loewenstein (11 March 1877 – 4 July 1928) was a Belgian businessman. At his peak in the 1920s, Loewenstein was worth around £12 million in the currency of the time (equivalent to £913.25 million in 2023), making him the third-richest person in the world at the time. 

On the evening of 4 July 1928, Loewenstein left from Croydon Airport to fly to Brussels on his private aircraft along with six other people. According to those on board, while the aircraft was crossing the English Channel at an altitude of 4,000 ft (1,200 m), Loewenstein went to the rear of the aircraft to use the loo. The plane had a door at the rear of the main passenger cabin opening on to a short passage with two doors: the one on the right led to the toilet, while the one on the left was the aircraft's entrance door.

When Loewenstein had not reappeared after some time, his secretary went in search of him and discovered that the lavatory was empty, while the aircraft's entrance door was open and flapping in the slipstream. His body was discovered by fishermen almost 2 weeks later. The autopsy concluded he had been alive when he struck the water.

The mystery around Loewenstein's death boils down to, effectively, did he fall or was he pushed? Tests on the aircraft suggested it would have been impossible for someone to accidentally open the door and fall out. As a result, people have suspected a criminal conspiracy in which his employees murdered him. Some alternatively suggest that corrupt business practices were about to be exposed and that Loewenstein, therefore, committed suicide. Crime writers Robert and Carol Bridgestock speculated that Loewenstein faked his own death and disappeared because of the financial irregularities in his businesses. This theory is supported by the facts that the body was buried in an unmarked grave, and that his wife did not attend the funeral. None of these theories were ever proven.

DB Cooper may be the most famous of all the "disappeared from a plane" fraternity - most people know at least the outlines of this story. Also known as Dan Cooper, he was an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 on November 24, 1971. During the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, Cooper told a flight attendant he had a bomb, and demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,600,000 in 2025) and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle. After releasing the passengers in Seattle, Cooper instructed the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and begin a second flight to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. About thirty minutes after taking off from Seattle, Cooper opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted into the night over southwestern Washington. Cooper's true identity and whereabouts have never been determined conclusively.

In 1980, some but not much of the ransom money was found along the riverbanks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The discovery of the money renewed public interest in the mystery but yielded no additional information about Cooper's identity or fate, and the remaining money was never recovered. The crime remains the only documented unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation. A lot of people think Cooper did not survive his jump, but there are plenty who think the opposite ... and theorise about it, as well as about his identity.

The DB Cooper poem is a nonet, just to contain the form a bit.

A seagull watches the plane in question

rich men falling from the sky; well
that's not something you see every day, is it
when you're lazing about on a warm little slipstream
turning cartwheels in the summery sky
half-eyeing off the water below for a fish to be a bit stupid, all the while
the buzzing of propellers high above itching at your ears
til you see, all the way up there:

the little back door of a valiant little craft flapping around like a broken wing on a kestrel
and a big old body tumbling through
the sweet-salt air swallowing up whatever he might have tried to say
(or scream)
goodbye cruel world or the copilot did it or oh god I think I'm falling or where the fuck is the toilet 
or arggghhhhhh

falling harder and faster than a stone, down down down to the glittering sea
his black tail coat ballooning out behind him
a parabolic descent to being crushed against the blue waves
harder than concrete, from that height

a rich man, but just as dead, all the same
while the little plane chunters on its merry way
without him
floating like a dead porpoise on the face of the water

a bit of a novelty, anyway
a nine-day wonder
til the tides moved the body on, and the sea
returned to being empty as the sky
of rich men and their silenced tongues
of falling, without flying.

DB

who on earth you were and where you went
when you opened the door and jumped
money strapped tight to your chest
diving into the sky
never seen again
well, not for sure:
vanishing
into
myth