Frank Corder was a self-employed trucker bedeviled by drugs and alcohol who dreamed of notoriety and, according to one report, told his brother that crashing a plane into the White House would be a good way to commit suicide.
With his marriage crumbling, his father's death last year still a tender wound and a jail sentence possibly looming for a probation violation, Corder stole into an unguarded rural airport early Monday and took off in a single-engine Cessna trainer.With no pilot's license, no flight plan and little experience behind the controls, Corder managed an incredible breach of security, penetrating restricted air space and crashing on the White House lawn.
Corder, 38, a self-employed freight truck driver at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, was killed, leaving authorities to decipher whether he was the victim of a disastrous joyride or suicide.
The Washington Post in Tuesday's editions quoted Corder's brother, John, as saying his brother had spoken in a phone call a year ago of a desire to crash a plane into the White House. "He said, `If I'm going to check out, that's the way I'm going to do it. I'm going to crash a plane into the White House.' We thought it was a joke," the Post quoted John Corder as saying.
The brother refused to confirm the Post report, but an administration official who had been briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press that family members had reported that Frank Corder talked of suicide and had expressed interest in gaining notoriety. The official, insisting on anonymity, said he did not know whether Corder had talked specifically about crashing into the White House.
Secret Service spokesman Carl Meyer said Corder may have been trying to land the plane, not crash it. John Corder recalled that his brother had been intrigued by Mathias Rust, who was 19 when he landed a plane on Moscow's Red Square in 1987.
"One time he mentioned about the guy that landed in Red Square and how that guy made a big thing for himself and everything," the brother said.
Corder's relatives agreed that the crash had nothing to do with politics.
"He had nothing against the president or anyone," said his aunt, Edith Dishman. "I would love to talk to the president and tell him that myself.
"It was the drugs. It was just like the devil will get ahold of you and won't let go."
She believes Corder was trying to kill himself "because he had been so depressed when his dad died."
Dishman isn't sure but said Corder may have been living out of his truck after the separation from his wife, Lydia, three weeks ago. The couple had been married 10 years and had no children.
Lydia Corder told her husband's probation agent Sept. 6 that she was planning to file charges against him for passing bad checks on their joint checking account, according to Leonard Sipes, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Safety and Corrections.
Corder had previous convictions for marijuana possession and drunken driving.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Fact or fiction?
Fact or fiction? To some, Monday's airplane crash at the White House may seem similar to the climactic episode from Tom Clancy's latest novel, "Debt of Honor," in which a pilot attempts to penetrate Washington's restricted air space and crash a jetliner into the Capitol.