Frank Abagnale - Catch Me If You Can

“Of course, you should know that police of your own country will be waiting to arrest you when you debark from the aircraft. You are a wanted criminal in your own country, too, sir, and I felt it only proper that they be notified of my actions. The FBI has been informed of your flight number and the time of your arrival.

“I’m sure you will be tried in your own country. But at least, young man, you will be among your own people and I’m sure your family will be present to support you and to visit you in prison, if you are convicted. However, in case you aren’t aware, once you have served your term in America, none of these other countries can extradite you. The law in the United States prohibits a foreign nation from extraditing you from the land of your birth.

“I have taken this action, young man, because I feel it is in the best interests of all concerned, especially yourself. I think, when you have settled your obligations in your own country, that you can have a fruitful and happy life… I am gambling my personal integrity on that, Mr. Abagnale. I hope you don’t prove me wrong.”

I wanted to hug and kiss him. Instead I wrung his hand and tearfully promised him that I would make something worthwhile of my future. It was a promise I was to break within eighteen hours.

The officers drove me to the airport, where, to my delight, Jan was waiting to take charge of me. She had a large envelope containing my passport, my other papers and the money I had earned in the prison parachute factory. She gave me a $20 bill for pocket money before handing over the envelope to the pilot. “This man is being deported,” she told the plane commander. “Officers of the United States will meet the plane in New York and will take him into custody. You will turn over this property to them.”

She turned to me and took my hand. “Good-bye, Frank, and good luck. I hope your future will be a happy one,” she said gravely.

I kissed her, to the astonishment of the pilot and a watching stewardess. It was the first overture I had made toward Jan, and it was a gesture of sincere admiration. “I will never forget you,” I said. And I never have. Jan Lundstrom will always be a fine and gracious person, a lovely and helpful friend, in my thoughts.

It was a nonstop flight to New York. I was seated up front, near the cockpit, where the crew could keep an eye on me, but otherwise I was treated as just another passenger. In flight I had the freedom of the passenger sections.

I do not know when I began thinking of eluding the waiting officers, or why I felt compelled to betray the judge’s trust in me. Perhaps it was when I started thinking of my short sojourn in the Boston jail, with its sordid tanks and cells. Certainly it was luxurious when compared to Perpignan ’s prison, but if American prisons were comparable, I didn’t want to do time in one. My six months in the Klippan jail and the ward had spoiled me.

The jet was a VC- 10, a British Viscount, an aircraft with which I was very familiar. A BOAC pilot had once given me a detailed tour of a VC-10, explaining its every structural specification, even to construction of the Johns.

From past flight experiences, I knew the jet would land on Kennedy’s Runway 13 and that it would require approximately ten minutes for the aircraft to taxi to the terminal.

Ten minutes before the pilot was to make his landing approach, I rose and strolled back to one of the lavatories and locked myself inside. I reached down and felt for the snap-out knobs I knew were located at the base of the toilet, pulled them out, twisted them and lifted out the entire toilet apparatus, a self-contained plumbing unit, to disclose the two-foot-square hatch cover for the vacuum hose used to service the aircraft on the ground.

I waited. The plane touched down with a jolt and then slowed as the pilot reversed his engines and used his flaps as brakes. At the end of the runway, I knew, he would come to almost a complete stop as he turned the jet onto the taxi strip leading to the terminal. When I judged he was almost at that point, I squeezed down into the toilet compartment, opened the hatch and wriggled through, hanging from the hatch combing by my fingers, dangling ten feet above the tarmac. I knew when I opened the hatch that an alarm beeper would sound in the cockpit, but I also knew from past flights that the hatch was often jarred open slightly by the impact of landing and that the pilot, since he was already on the ground, usually just shut off the beeper as the hatch being ajar posed no hazard.

I really didn’t care whether this pilot was of that school or not. We had landed at night. When the huge jet slowed almost to a stop, I released my hold on the combing and lit running.

I fled straight across the runway in the darkness, later learning that I had escaped unnoticed, the method of my escape unknown until an irate O’Riley and other FBI agents searched the plane and found the lifted-out toilet.

On the Van Wyck Expressway side of the airport, I scaled a cyclone fence and hailed a passing cab. “Grand Central Station,” I said. On arrival at the station, I paid the cabbie out of the $20 bill I had and took a train to the Bronx.

I didn’t go home. I felt both my mother’s apartment and my father’s home would be under surveillance, but I did call Mom and then Dad. It was the first time in more than five years that I had heard their voices, and in each instance, both Mom and I and Dad and I ended up blubbering with tears. I resisted their entreaties to come to one of their homes and surrender myself to officers. Although I felt ashamed of myself for breaking my promise to the Malmo judge, I felt I’d had enough of prison life.

Actually, I went to the Bronx to see a girl with whom I’d stashed some money and some clothing, one suit of which contained a set of keys to a Montreal bank safe-deposit box. She was surprised to see me. “Good lord, Frank!” she exclaimed. “I thought you had disappeared for good. A few more days and I was going to spend your money and give your clothes to the Salvation Army.”

I did not stop to dally. I wasn’t sure how many of my girl friends and acquaintances the FBI had been able to identify, or which ones, but I knew some had been ferreted out. I grabbed my clothes, gave her all but $50 of the money and grabbed a train for Montreal.

I had $20,000 stashed in a Montreal safe-deposit box. It was my intention to pick up the money and take the soonest flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I intended to go to earth. You pick up some interesting information in prison, and in the ward I had learned that Brazil and the United States had no extradition treaty. Since I hadn’t committed any crimes in Brazil, I felt I would be safe there and that Brazilian authorities would refuse extradition even if I were caught in that country.

I picked up the money. I never made the flight. I was waiting in line at the Montreal airport to purchase a ticket when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to face a tall, muscular man with pleasant features, in the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“Frank Abagnale, I am Constable James Hastings, and you are under arrest,” said the Mountie with a friendly smile.

The next day I was driven to the New York-Canada border and handed over to the U.S. Border Patrol, who turned me over to FBI agents, who took me to New York City and lodged me in the federal detention facility there.

I was arraigned before a U.S. commissioner who bound me over for trial under a $250,000 bond and remanded me to the detention house pending a decision on the part of prosecutors as to where to bring me to trial.

Two months later the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia prevailed, and U.S. marshals took me to the Fulton County, Georgia, jail to await my trial.