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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Cop killer’s half brother killed 8, hijacked jetliner to Cuba

Cop killer's half brother killed 8, hijacked jetliner to Cuba
Posted: 12:00 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, 2013

Ishmael and Shawn Labeet were half brothers in a brood of 19 fathered by
the same man in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
They're nearly 30 years apart — but they had two things in common: They
killed with machine guns, and they made daring escapes from police,
according to news reports.
In September 1972, Ishmael Labeet led four masked men wearing fatigues
out of the bushes surrounding the Rockefeller-owned Fountain Valley
country club in La Croix. They sprayed a dining patio with gunfire, then
rounded up a group of people, telling eight to kneel while they executed
them.
Two were Eastern Airlines workers, who had just finished a round of
golf, on vacation with their spouses, who also were shot
execution-style. Four worked at the country club.
Labeet had fired at police months earlier as they attempted to arrest
him on assault charges, instead fleeing into the hills, according to the
Virgin Islands Daily News.
The five men were convicted of murder and given life sentences in 1973.
Labeet was sent to some of the toughest prisons on the mainland in
Marion, Ill., and Atlanta. At one, he spent 90 days in solitary and
filed suit protesting his treatment. He returned to the island for the
trial in 1984 and won $12,000 in damages.
After his court victory, on New Year's Eve, three armed guards were
escorting him back to the mainland and prison aboard an American
Airlines jet with 198 passengers on board. Labeet feigned illness to
retrieve a gun planted in the bathroom and ordered the pilot to Cuba.
It's not known who planted the gun.
After Cuban authorities met Labeet on the tarmac, passengers flew to New
York. They were scared but uninjured. They described Labeet as calm and
polite during the hijacking.
"He was real nice about everything," Travis Wright, a 17-year-old high
school student told The Miami Herald in 1985. "At one point he knew we
must be getting tired of holding our arms over our heads, so he asked a
stewardess to announce that it was OK to drop our arms, relax a bit and
watch the in-flight movie."
Ishmael Labeet hasn't been seen since.

Source: "Cop killer's half brother killed 8, hijacked jetliner to Cuba |
www.palmbeachpost.com" -
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/cop-killers-half-brother-killed-8-hijacked-jetline/nZw6X/

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