Anyone planning to hijack a commercial airline has little shot at success without the following tools of the trade: a stint in training camp, a well-rehearsed strategy, back-up plans tailored to any contingency, and some sort of deadly weapon. But back in 1972, at the height of the skyjacking epidemic, Cathy Kerkow and Roger Holder were equipped with none of these essentials and still managed to commandeer a Seattle-bound jet, convince the airline to fly them to Algeria, and collect more than half a million dollars in ransom. This couple of amateur criminals, who form the heart of Brendan I. Koerner’s The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, then fumbled their way into the epicenter of the Black Power movement and onto a protected perch atop Paris’ cultural intelligentsia.

Koerner, a Wired columnist and the author of the 2009 nonfiction book, Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier’s Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of WWII, dedicated four years to piecing together this narrative about two aimless potheads who pulled off an audacious crime and became a cause célèbre around the world. In the process of sifting through piles of FBI files and research on that time period, Koerner became fascinated with the evolution of skyjacking, which had become rampant by the early 1970s, when Holder and Kerkow carried out their caper.

Koerner deftly interweaves strands of this under-examined period in our social history into the stranger-than-fiction romantic adventure of a pair of half-baked rebels who fumbled and bumbled their way into a legacy as the Bonnie and Clyde-like figures among the era's motley crew of skyjackers. Biographile sat down with Koerner to learn more about how he unraveled the many mysteries embedded throughout this complex tale of romance among the runways and radicals of the 1970s.

BIOGRAPHILE: How did you come across the story?

BRENDAN KOERNER: In October of 2009, I read a really brief NYT Metro piece about this guy who hijacked a plane to Cuba as part of the revolutionary movement and ended up spending forty-one years there. But all of a sudden he decided to come back voluntarily and was arrested as soon as he walked off the plane and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The biggest thing for me was: Why would he come back if he knew he would go to prison? It made me wonder who else from that era is still a fugitive. So I pulled together a rudimentary list and pretty much everyone that’s still on the run are people in Cuba. And pretty much all men. But then I found this one woman and her name was Cathy Kerkow and I was intrigued because she was from a small town in Oregon and didn’t seem to have any obvious political cause. So I was intrigued by her story. And the deeper I dug, there was layer upon layer of amazement. And the point I knew it was going to be a book was when I was trolling through old newspaper stories and I saw one that said Roger Holder -- who she did this hijacking with -- had lived in Coos Bay, where she was from, as a child. I was like, wow, that’s some coincidence. I was really interested in this couple at the heart of the book. Their love affair and what drew them together and what drew them apart eventually. I’m interested in themes of reinvention -- it’s this American ideal -- and how hard it is to attain that. They were both looking for some kind of personal reinvention to varying degrees of success.

BIOG: They were such bunglers. I wonder if it was hard for you as a writer to frame your story around two characters who don’t have many redeeming qualities.

BK: Absolutely. That’s what makes them complex characters. They were not master criminals.

BIOG: They were just big stoners.

BK: Yes. And he was not totally mentally there after being in the war, but they managed to pull off this spectacular thing: The longest distance a plane had ever been hijacked, from Seattle to Algeria. There was something zany and bizarre and spectacular about their crime. They had no weapon. He had a briefcase with a copy of an astrology book and an empty shave kit. Then they became these Zelig-like characters, who were hanging out with Eldridge Cleaver and then hanging out with Jean Paul Sartre in the movie world in France. And she ends up with these aristocrats in France. They’re antiheroes, which I’m very attracted to. They were a little messed up and found their way into the headlines of the world. That was the zeitgeist of the time. That’s why all these people were doing this. People felt powerless and put upon. This was a radical solution to these people’s problems. That was a crazy time.

BIOG: I was amazed by the gullibility of the people in charge. Roger Holder made no sense as he made his demands during the hijacking.

BK: I spoke to the pilots and they said they didn’t really think he had a bomb. They were skeptical. But at the same time, you don’t risk the lives of passengers and the $10 million airplane on a hunch. It was a zany situation that embodies all the craziness of the skyjacking epidemic. It was emblematic for me. Obviously this would never happen today. You’d probably be killed pretty quickly. I thought it was a fantastic, epic yarn and it was one of those stories where I never reached the point where I felt I had learned everything there was to learn about this story. So I had to force myself to sit down and write, because I felt like I could report this thing out forever. I worked on this for almost four years. Just finding him was a whole reportorial enterprise.

BIOG: At what point did you find him?

BK: I started talking to him on the phone in the spring of 2011. I have all his original papers and letters. He passed away while I was working on the book. There’s surveillance reports and a copy of his unpublished memoirs. His memories were vivid about some things and less so about others. It was really valuable to me because it added a richness to the book I couldn’t have gotten any other way.

BIOG: You brought yourself into the narrative near the end of the book when you describe your first meeting with Roger Holder. Were you ever thinking about structuring this around your search for these two mysterious characters?

BK: I had to be cajoled into putting first person in the book. I generally shy away from first person. I don’t know why. I’m not particularly good at it. I want to be a storyteller and if you put yourself in the story it often detracts from the central narrative. And this wasn’t my story.

BIOG: Tell me about your search for Cathy.

BK: I genuinely tried to find her. If I had more time and unlimited funds, do I genuinely believe I could have done something more? Maybe. I have some inkling of what happened to her. There were limits on what I could place in the book that were sourced to my satisfaction. We know she got a whole new identity in 1978. It’s something you probably couldn’t do easily today but back then it was relatively simple. She had a wealthy French benefactor from the movie business. Then the trail goes cold. The FBI and Interpol haven’t found her either. To me, she’s the heart of the book. She’s what drew me into the book and to me she’s the most fascinating character. Part of it is in that mystery. And my interest is in reinvention -- and it looks like she achieved that. At first she was this naive girl who fell under the spell of this charismatic man, who was likeable, smart, and good looking. She obviously had a rebellious streak in her. Then by the time they get to Paris, he’s in a worsening mental health and she’s matured and grown up on the run. And then she’s hobnobbing with the gliteratti. She becomes the dominant one in the relationship and leaves him behind.

BIOG: What was it about her that so attracted those French intellectuals.

BK: I think part of it was her narrative. The French have a soft spot for radicals. And she was very beautiful. And I think she played that role really well. There were a lot of revolutionaries based in Paris at that time and she fit into that world very well. It was a very high-profile case and if Jean Paul Sartre comes out in favor of you, it’s a pretty big deal.

BIOG: What did Roger say about her?

BK: I put it in the book. He said she was the "hottest piece of ass he’d ever seen."

BIOG: How did you piece together the blow-by-blow of the hijacking?

BK: I did so many interviews and I had the whole FBI report, which was 4,000 pages with all the interviews with the passengers. And the pilot gave me all the dispatch reports. I interviewed a lot of stewardesses.

BIOG: Are you worried about blowback from people who could have prevented these hijackings with increased security?

BK: Not really. Then like now, the airlines were a very powerful lobby in Washington and nobody wanted to upset the airlines. The pilots were really incensed by what was going on and they ended up being the real heroes. I wanted it to be a study in organizational failure. And all of a sudden, once they bring in metal detectors and baggage screening, the hijacking ends. The thing they resisted for all those years solved the problem. The problem is that they compromised by allowing airlines to outsource the security and that led to the security holes the 9/11 hijackers exploited. Because you’ve got these underpaid, undertrained screeners.

BIOG: This book is very cinematic. Have you had any interest in adapting it?

BK: There are a few people interested. We’ll see what happens. My last book was optioned by Spike Lee and I ended up working with him and writing the screenplay. It was an amazing experience and I learned so much about storytelling that I brought to my approach to this project.

BIOG: Like what?

BK: I ended up storyboarding the whole book on my iPad. I have images compiled here for the entire book in the order in which they appear. Some of them are stand-ins but a lot of them are original documents or public domain pictures. It helped me make it a tighter and more well-structured story. It really changed the way I approached it. But it was still painful to write.

BIOG: You’re so meticulous about your reporting. Was it freeing and fun to invent dialogue?

BK: Obviously I could make stuff up, which was great. I really enjoy screenwriting. The dialogue is really fun and challenging. I ended up locking myself in a room and acting out the whole movie.