Friendship of Marines stands the test of time

For the last 44 years, Robbie Roberson of Creston has had one thing on his mind — righting what he saw as a wrong done to a young Marine under his command.

In 1969 Roberson, a sergeant major in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., lost touch with Cpl. Raffaele Minichiello. It wasn’t until a chance encounter in 2005 that the two reconnected.

“I’ve had a knot in my stomach for a long time now, and that knot never left my stomach, because I didn’t know where he was or how to help him,” Roberson said. “Now that I’ve found him and taken up this quest, my knot has gone away.”

That quest is to get Minichiello’s discharge upgraded from “other than honorable” to a general discharge. It has been an uphill fight all the way, and one with no end in sight.

Officially, Minichiello was discharged for being absent without leave. But the events leading up to that absence in May 1969 are the real reason for the difficulty.

Minichiello could not report for duty as required because he was in an Italian prison awaiting trial for the skyjacking of TWA Flight 85 from Los Angeles to San Francisco — with a few unscheduled stops in between.

It all began when a 19-year-old Minichiello returned to Camp Pendleton from a tour in Vietnam and checked his bank balance. Expecting to see $800, he was upset to find only $600 in the account.

“I knew I had put that money in there, but when I went up the chain of command, but I couldn’t get any satisfaction and I felt like I was being treated not well,” Minichiello said. “So I decided I just wanted to get away from Pendleton, and I applied for an embassy guard position in Rome, but they said I didn’t speak good enough English. The other guards didn’t speak a word of Italian, though, and I’m from Italy; I speak it fluently. Things just started to add up and that’s where my problems started. I did my duty, but my attitude wasn’t great.”

When things “added up” too much, Minichiello drank some beer and climbed the fence surrounding the Base Exchange. He broke in and took goods worth exactly $200, in an effort, as he says, to “get what was owed him.”  But rather than making a clean getaway, he passed out inside the store and was found in the morning by returning workers.

Because the incident took place on federal property, he was taken to federal court in San Diego. After two days in jail, the judge released him back to the military, and as far as Minichiello knew, that was the end of the incident. He attended jump school in Fort Benning, Ga., in June and applied for another embassy position, which was also denied.

“I really just wanted to get away and start in a new place,” Minichiello said. “But they said the only way I could move was if I signed up for another tour in Vietnam, and I didn’t want to do that.”

When he returned from jump school, a military lawyer was waiting to talk to him and he was transferred into Roberson’s unit, pending court-martial.

“I didn’t know anything about a court-martial,” Minichiello said. “But when I got back from jump school they told me, and the first time I heard about it was when a lawyer asked me how he should defend me. I didn’t want a court-martial. I thought I had always done my duty the best way I could. But the lawyer told me I had to say I was guilty and I would be fine. But I didn’t feel I had really done anything wrong, and I couldn’t say I was guilty.”

When Minichiello was transferred to the holding unit, Roberson asked him what he had done. Getting the story and observing that Minichiello was a quiet and hard-working Marine, Roberson decided to plead his case to the chain of command.

“He didn’t deserve a court-martial, and when I went to my commander, he agreed,” Roberson said. “He told me that Raffaele would not be found guilty, but I couldn’t tell Raffaele that; he still had to go through it. If I had told him, I think things would have turned out a lot different.”

Terrified at the thought of going to jail, Minichiello decided to act. The day before his court-martial, he cleaned out his bank account, bought a small rifle and took a bus to Los Angeles, where he spent the night. 

The next morning he bought a ticket on TWA Flight 85 and boarded the plane.

“I wanted the last flight of the day because there would be less people at night,” Minichiello said. 

“When I got on the plane, I didn’t say I was going to kill anyone. I just said I was going to take control of the airplane,” Minichiello explained. “I was in the last seat on the plane, and I called the stewardess and she took me to the cockpit and I said I was taking control. I had the gun, but I didn’t do anything against people. For me it was just like a military action.”

The flight was diverted to Denver, where all the passengers were released before continuing on with crew members to New York; Bangor, Maine; Shannon, Ireland; and eventually Rome.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Minichiello said. “I didn’t have a plan, I just had to get away. I was talking to the pilot for a while when we were both sitting in first class. He asked me why I was doing it and I told him about Vietnam and everything. After a while I said I had to go to the bathroom, and I left the gun on the seat next to him. I wanted to show that I didn’t want to kill anybody. I didn’t have another gun, just a T-shirt and jeans on, and you could see there was nothing else. I knew from talking to him he had been in the military, so he knew how to use it, and if he wanted he could take it and kill me. 

“When I came back from the bathroom I thought he was going to shoot me. He was still sitting there, smoking a cigarette. I really thought he was going to shoot me, but I saw the gun was right where I left it. I said, ‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ and he said, ‘I’m not a killer.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t meet you before you hijacked the plane, but I can’t do anything for you now.’”

When the plane landed in Rome, Minichiello took the chief of airport security hostage and led law enforcement on a brief car chase before he was captured.

The skyjacking is still the longest in history at 6,900 miles and is widely regarded as ushering in a new era of international skyjackings.

Reports differ as to whether Minichiello was ever indicted in the United States, but Italy refused to extradite him to stand trial because at the time, skyjacking was a capital crime and potentially carried the death penalty. 

He was tried and convicted of skyjacking and kidnapping in Italy and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to three-and-a-half years. Italian president Giuseppe Saragat then declared a general amnesty, knocking two years off all prison sentences and Minichiello was released on May 1, 1971.

After his release from prison, Raffaele built a life for himself in Italy, marrying, having a child and opening a business. In all that time though, thoughts of his time in the Marines and his discharge haunted him.

“I don’t want to get [an upgraded discharge] for the benefits,” Minichiello said. “I want to still be able to call myself a Marine, and I don’t feel like I can do that right now. The first time I went to visit my old unit in 2008, we’d walk along the street and people would say, ‘Thank you for your service’ and that made me feel ashamed, because I don’t have an honorable discharge. It makes me feel in some way not right.”

Although Minichiello said he understands that people might view his actions as inexcusable, he said he hopes people will understand, and hopefully even forgive.

“I was only 19 when it happened,” Minichiello said. “I had just come back from Vietnam, and I made some mistakes. But I love this country, and I served this country, and I tried to do my best in Vietnam.”

Over the years Minichiello tried several times to get his discharge upgraded, but to no avail, and he said he felt like America had forgotten him. But not all of America had forgotten him — not Robbie Roberson.

“It was decades since I had heard from him,” Minichiello said of Roberson. “One morning I got a phone call from a woman saying that my sergeant major was searching for me. It was one of the best things that’s happened to me. It meant he had nothing against me, and it meant something good was going to happen.”

“I lost track of Raffaele, but I had a knot in my stomach for years and years thinking about him,” Roberson said. “I thought of him often and what a dirty deal he had received in the Marine Corps and every time I’d run across an Italian person, I’d ask if they knew a Raffaele Minichiello.”

That tactic eventually worked, and Roberson and Minichiello spoke on the phone for the first time in decades on Dec. 12, 2005.

“It was great to talk to him again, and was such a weight off, to hear from him and when he asked me to take up his cause, I couldn’t say no,” Roberson said. “I really don’t think he would have done what he did if he wasn’t facing that court-martial, and I really don’t think he should have had a court-martial in the first place. He didn’t actually take anything, and it should have all been handled at the company level. An Article 15 or Office Hours [non-judicial punishment] would have been more appropriate.”

Since that first phone call, Roberson has been acting as Minichiello’s unofficial representative in the United States, writing letters to anyone who might have even the slightest influence on the case. Roberson has especially been focusing on convincing the Council for Review Boards, because ultimately that group has the final authority when it comes to upgrading the discharge. 

It’s not just Roberson who is backing Minichiello, either. He has letters of endorsement from his former commanders, platoon members, and even some of the pilots and stewardess involved in the skyjacking.

In every case, those letters say Minichiello was an outstanding Marine who always did his job without complaint and went above and beyond the call of duty to help his fellows.

 “I think there’s someone at the Board for Corrections who just doesn’t want to deal with me, and when they see anything with my name on it, they just send it back,” Minichiello said. “But we’re going to keep trying.”

After reuniting with Roberson, Minichiello was privately evaluated and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from his service in Vietnam. The evaluating physician and Roberson both believe that Minichiello’s experiences in Vietnam and the lack of treatment afterwards contributed to the actions that led to the discharge.

“Nobody considers his combat record at all,” Roberson said. “No one has condoned anything Raffaele did. It should never have happened, but it did. But I don’t think he would have been in that position if things had been handled differently from the beginning.”

Although the board has repeatedly denied Minichiello’s petitions for upgrade, neither he nor Roberson have given up hope.

“Yes, I do think there’s still hope,” Roberson said. “As long as I have breath I will try to get Raffaele’s discharge upgraded.”

Reporter Melissa Walther may be reached at 758-4474 or by email at mwalther@dailyinterlake.com.