Helicopter/Heliopolis: AXA, Pan Am, and Snuff

NBC News and other media called what happened, "PTSD from 9/11."

AXA Equitable Center Building

A helicopter crashed into the roof of the AXA Equitable Center building in New York City at 1:43 p.m. on Monday, June 10, 2019. Only a few blocks from Trump Tower, the area is in the post-2016 no-fly-zone.

The hard crash on the roof killed the pilot of the helicopter and caused a fire. Tim McCormack was identified as the pilot. McCormack served as a volunteer fire firefighter with the East Clinton Volunteer Fire Department in Clinton Corners, New York, for more than 25 years, serving as its chief for 10 years. He had two stepdaughters and three grandchildren.

McCormack told workers at the East River helipad he thought he had a clearing in the skies where he could make the flight, according to law enforcement sources. Once he was in the air, he got on the radio saying he might need to return, the sources said.

The helicopter was airborne for about 11 minutes before crashing. The aircraft could be seen flying erratically in the sky, making dramatic dips and turns before vanishing into the clouds. Investigators say there is no indication of terrorism.

The AXA Equitable Center is at 787 Seventh Ave. in Manhattan, between 51st and 52nd streets.

The company now known as AXA Equitable built the 51-story building at 787 Seventh Ave. in 1985.

At that time, AXA Equitable was an arm of AXA S.A. of Paris, and it went by the name AXA Financial. The building on Seventh Avenue was originally known as the Equitable Tower. The tower was known for being the home of the Equitable Center art complex.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) bought the building from AXA for $1.9 billion in 2016.

AXA Equitable now has its headquarters offices a few blocks away from the AXA Equitable Center, at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Two company employees work in an AXA Equitable video studio in the AXA Equitable Center, and those employees are fine, according to an AXA Equitable spokesman.

A number of people who work in the building have reported on Twitter that they felt the building shake when the helicopter hit it.

The aircraft had taken off from the helipad at West 34th Street on the Hudson River and planned to go in the direction of the Statue of Liberty, which is several miles south of there. The AXA building does not have a helipad.

[As a single-person crash ~ whether of an airplane, helicopter, car, or truck ~ suicidology dictates that there is a good statistical basis for investigating whether the cause of the wreck was suicide.]
 

Pan Am Building

The image of the rare souvenir replica of the Pan Am Building is courtesy of InFocusTech (who has re-issued this piece, recently).

During a street news conference at the scene of the incident, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that since the "Pan Am helicopter crash" of a few years ago, helipads had been shut down in mid-town Manhattan. Public helipads in Manhattan, of which there are now three, have been confined to the coasts of the island since the Pan Am crash.

On May 16, 1977, about one minute after a Sikorsky S-61L landed on the Pan Am helipad, and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five 20-foot (6.1 m) blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men were killed instantly and another died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a female pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured. Helicopter service was quickly suspended, and never resumed.

The victims of the Pan Am incident were filmmaker Michael Findlay, NYU student Clay S. Young, lawyer David J. Toomey, Italian tourist Enrico Gnaga, and Bronx native Anne Barnecott.

Findlay, and his wife Roberta, have been called ""the most notorious filmmakers in the annals of sexploitation."

Findlay, 39, had gone to South America in 1973 and made a film called Night of the Blood Eaters. A producer added some footage to his film, and released it with the title Snuff. The fiction film was picketed by feminists and widely criticized because of the violence it portrayed: it ended with the killing of a woman. Findley made several B films, such as Body of a Female that included “blood and guts, sex and violence.”

Michael Findlay is credited as the director of the classic cryptozoological cinema movie, Shriek of the Mutilated (1974). He also played (uncredited) the "Decapitation Onlooker" in this film.

The irony is that the media in 1977 reported "that grindhouse filmmaker Michael Findlay was infamously decapitated" by a rogue helicopter blade in an accident as horrific as his trademark gory on-screen murders. The New York Daily News reported that pieces of bodies were scattered over the Grand Central area; an eyewitness described the scene as "like a butcher shop."

[Five years later, Vic Morrow was decapitated by a helicopter. In 1982, Morrow was cast in a feature role in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in a segment directed by John Landis. (Landis' first directing role was for Schlock, a Bigfoot movie, in 1973.)...In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, Morrow and two child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California, in an area that was known as Indian Dunes, near Santa Clarita. They were performing in a scene for the Vietnam sequence, in which their characters attempt to escape out of a deserted Vietnamese village from a pursuing U.S. Army helicopter. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions reportedly delaminated the rotor blades and caused the helicopter to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Le were decapitated and mutilated by the helicopter rotor blades, while Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut. Morrow's daughter is Jennifer Jason Leigh.]

The Pan Am Building today is the MetLife Building.

Other NYC Crashes

New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed on October 11, 2006, when Lidle’s small plane crashed into a 42-story building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Eighteen people were injured in the crash. (As I wrote in 2006 about this incident: "Don't ignore the fact that this was on 10/11, and many people had a post-traumatic 9/11 reaction.")

Five people died after a helicopter crashed in New York City's East River on Sunday, March 11, 2018.

It was on March 11, 2018, when five people aboard a New Jersey-based sightseeing helicopter were killed after their aircraft crashed into the East River off the coast of Manhattan.

Heliopolis ~ Helicopter

Bennu bird

Writer Goro Adachi observes: "The helicopter that crashed in Manhattan yesterday (a model called AgustaWestland AW109/A109) was made by an Italian company called Leonardo S.p.A. officially named after Leonardo da Vinci! And the crash happened on the exact day highlighted beforehand based on a long-running 'phoenix' pattern heavily involving Leonardo." (See more here.)

What I want to point out is this note: 

"Helicopter" implies "phoenix". Something [Goro Adachi] actually noted just last month:

May 15 "City of the Sun"
“Heliopolis” is the ancient Egyptian “City of the Sun” and the word “helicopter” implies “Egyptian Sun” (since heli = “sun” and copt = “ancient Egyptian”). […] Heliopolis is the “home” of the Benben Stone and the ancient Egyptian phoenix, the Bennu bird. Which is why I mentioned it in the first place.

From Wikipedia:

New Kingdom artwork shows the Bennu as a grey heron with a long beak and a two-feathered crest, sometimes perched on a benben stone (representing Ra) or in a willow tree (representing Osiris). Because of its connection with Osiris, it sometimes wears the atef crown. 

A large species of heron, now extinct, lived on the Arabian Peninsula in comparatively recent times. It may have been the ultimate inspiration for the Bennu. Reflecting this, the species was described as the Bennu heron (Ardea bennuides).

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about Egypt in the fifth century BC, wrote that the people at Heliopolis described the phoenix to him. They said it lived for 500 years before dying, resuscitating, building a funerary egg with myrrh for the paternal corpse, and carrying it to the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. His description of the phoenix likens it to an eagle with red and gold plumage, reminiscent of the sun. The theme of the fire, pyre and ashes of the dying bird developed long after Herodotus. The name of the phoenix could be derived from "Bennu", and its rebirth and connections with the sun resemble those of the Bennu bird, although Egyptian sources do not mention the bird's death.

Anubis holding the mummy of the scribe Ani, with Bennu assisting.

Heliopolis Senusert I Obelisk

Revelus Decapitation

A Milton police officer saw Kerby Revelus (left) beheading his younger sister Bianca, 5.


Samantha Revelus, 17, and her sister, Bianca, 5, were killed at their home in Milton, Massachusetts, on Saturday, March 28, 2009. Police shot the girls' brother, Kerby Revelus, 23, after an officer saw him decapitate the younger girl. A surviving sister, 9-year-old Saraphina, was recovering at a Boston hospital after having surgery.

In September 2004, Kerby Revelus was charged with assault and battery after another sister, Jessica Revelus, then 17, called police and said her brother, then 19, had punched her in the face during an argument over a phone bill. Kerby Revelus admitted he punched his sister, and told police he was upset with her because she owed him some money, according to a Milton police report.

Jessica Revelus declined medical attention and told police she did not want to get a restraining order against her brother. "Ms. Revelus told me that she was not in fear of her brother and had no wish to pursue the matter," the arresting officer wrote in the report.

Jessica Revelus told the Boston Herald that her brother had done two stints in jail.

He was arrested for assault and battery in August 2004 after he was involved in a fight with several other teenagers.

Then in December 2005, he was charged with carrying a firearm without a license after he tried to buy alcohol at a liquor store in Randolph. A store clerk called police when he saw a pistol magazine in Revelus' pocket, and police later found the magazine and a handgun in Revelus' waist band. He was sentenced to serve six months in jail, and was released in September 2008.

Investigators believe Revelus had been agitated since Friday night, March 27th, when he got in a fistfight with a neighbor in this tony suburb that is also home to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

Revelus attacked his siblings with a kitchen knife on Saturday, March 28th, while their grandmother, who neighbors say lives on the first floor, was doing laundry in the basement, investigators said. The children's parents were not home.

Samantha Revelus called authorities, but the dying girl quickly gave the phone to Saraphina, Milton police said.

An officer patrolling the neighborhood arrived less than a minute after the call and heard screaming inside the apartment. He kicked the door in and saw Revelus decapitate his 5-year-old sister.

As other officers arrived, Kerby ran into a bedroom and began to attack Saraphina. Two officers shot him.

"The reasons why it happened, what happened, how it happened is still just a blur to them," the parents' attorney said. "They can't even imagine it."

NY Daily News.

Decapitation, Death and the Damned

On this, the first anniversary of the death of Heath Ledger, news of a decapitation, Mason County deaths, and the movie industry's recognition of The Joker are hitting the media.

Exactly one year ago today, on January 22nd, Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in The Dark Knight, was found dead in his fourth-floor apartment at 421 Broome Street, between Crosby and Lafayette Streets in SoHo, New York City, on the day of the Full Moon.



The link between the Joker and decapitations has already been made on this blog, often.

Last night, the horror of a decapitation merged with a familiar location in school violence history.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009, police reported a woman was slain on the Virginia Tech campus and decapitated, according to wire services including AP and Fox News. Xin Yang, 22, was killed Wednesday night after arriving at the campus from Beijing on Jan. 8 to begin studying accounting, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

The first 911 call came into police around 7:06 p.m., saying a woman was being assaulted inside the Graduate Life Center, just outside the Au Bon Pain cafe.

A police officer who responded to an emergency call has told how she entered the cafe to find the male attacker holding the female victim's head in his hand. Police say the victim was decapitated with a kitchen knife while having coffee at the cafe with the suspect.

Responding officers found the woman had been stabbed to death and beheaded. They arrested the suspect, a 25-year-old Chinese graduate student named Haiyang Zhu. He is a Ph.D. student in agricultural and applied economics. The police also recovered a large kitchen knife they believe was used at the scene.

Haiyang Zhu was charged with first-degree murder and is being held in Montgomery County jail.

[Au Bon Pain-French for "place of good bread"- was founded by Louis Kane as a bakery in Boston's historically significant Faneuil Hall in 1978, known for Samuel Adams' revolutionary speeches and its famous grasshopper weathervane used to tell British spies from Patriots. In 1982 Au Bon Pain debuted a bakery cart at Logan Airport in Boston. Au Bon Pain Inc. (later renamed Panera Bread Company) went public in 1991, and today has 230 units worldwide.]

The Au Bon Pain decapitation was the first violence on campus since April 16, 2007, when Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed two students at West Ambler Johnston Hall, and then two hours later, after walking across campus to Norris Hall, killed 30 others and himself.

Meanwhile, on January 22nd, the Academy Award nominations were rolled out, and as expected, Heath Ledger was named as a candidate for Best Supporting Male Actor for his work in The Dark Knight. (He already has won that award from the Golden Globes.)

Elsewhere, another horizon event is unfolding. For you see, it must be recalled that the movie The Mothman Prophecies began screening this Friday, seven years ago, as one group of the original witnesses, the Mallettes were attending a funeral in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Stephen Mallette, who was one of the first four witnesses, was mourning the passing of his brother, Charlie, due to a brain tumor. Charles Putnam "Charlie" Mallette, 43, of Point Pleasant, died on Thursday, January 22, 2002, at his home. This, of course, is the same date as Heath Ledger’s death date, which occurred six years later.

The last week in January 2002, during that same initial movie release time period, there were five fatalities in and near Point Pleasant, in two crashes involving four automobiles on January 26, and three other fatal wrecks in the next five days. For rural Mason County, the eight road deaths in six days was the most in 40 years, according to the State of West Virginia. In one major crash, two tractor-trailer rigs and a Volvo resulted in the death of truck driver Richard Clement, 61, of Mukwonga, Wisconsin.

Now comes word that two men were killed and a third man remains in a Huntington (West Virginia) hospital following a single-vehicle accident that happened near Point Pleasant late Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

According to a spokesman with the Mason County Detachment of the West Virginia State Police, Benjamin David Norvell, 32, of Point Pleasant, was driving his 1993 GMC Sonoma pickup truck east on Sand Hill Road with two passengers when his truck allegedly went off the right side of the road, causing him to lose control and strike a utility pole.

The accident happened around 10:20 p.m. on Sand Hill Road, near the intersection with Finch Drive (a location with a bird name, please note).

According to the state police, Matthew D. Scott, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, and Ryan Beckner, 32, of Point Pleasant, were pronounced dead at the scene. Norvell was taken to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Huntington by helicopter, where he remains in critical condition, according to Sharon Shaw, spokeswoman for the hospital.

The spokesman for the state police said none of the three men were wearing seat belts. According to investigators, the three men were celebrating Scott’s birthday and were on their way home when the accident happened.

Sand Hill Road was closed for a brief period of time as emergency crews cleaned up the scene. Members of Mason County Emergency Medical Services and the Point Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department responded to the scene as well.

Cpl. C.K. Zerkle and Cpl. K.M. Gilley are continuing their investigation of the cause of the accident, reports the Point Pleasant Daily Register, January 22, 2009.

Humm, Sand Hill Road.



In 1966, when the initial reports of the "Big Bird" (later labeled "Mothman" by an Ohio copyeditor who was a fan of the "Batman" TV series), one debunker said the eyewitnesses had seen nothing strange, only a sandhill crane (Grus canadensis). The "sandhill crane explanation" has become part of the lore of the early days of Mothman.

It is worth pointing out that the great intellectual anomalist Charles Fort, writing of the "Devil's Hoofprints" in his 1919 The Book of the Damned, Chapter 28, records:

"In the Illustrated London News, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from Heidelberg writes, 'upon the authority of a Polish Doctor of Medicine,' that on the Piashowa-gora (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of Galicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow every year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and 'are attributed by the inhabitants to supernatural influences.'



(Thanks to tips from Todd Campbell, Brandon and Misty Tittel, Ben Fairhall, and others.)