Henderson sat in during the morning sessions, but during the lunch break he led me to a file room behind his office and showed me an entrance near where I was interviewing the girls. He handed me a key to the door. “There’s very rarely anyone on duty here, since our student records system is completely computerized,” he said. “So you’ll need this key. Now, I’ve pulled the files of all the applicants and put them aside on this desk here, in case you want to study the record of a particular girl. This way, you can operate pretty much on your own, although we’ll be available to help you if you feel you need help, of course.”

I was intrigued with the record-keeping system and Henderson obligingly showed me how the system worked before taking me to lunch as his guest.

I finished with the first ten applicants early in the afternoon and the following morning met the second batch of candidates. I gave them the same spiel, and like the first ten, they were equally amenable to my terms. The last girls, too, were exposed to the same con, and by the afternoon of the third day I had narrowed the field to twelve candidates.

I spent a couple of hours studying the files of the twelve on an individual basis, recalling my own interviews with them and my impressions of them, before settling on eight. I was leaving the records room when I was seized with an amusing whim, one that took me less than thirty minutes to satisfy. When I left the room, Frank Abagnale, Jr., a native of Bronxville, had transcripts in the files showing him to have earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in social work.

The next morning I delivered my “thesis” to my eight finalists, since they were the lambs who had made possible my whimsical sheepskins.

The girls were excited when I assembled them, in the perfect mood for the con I put down. “Calm down, please, calm down,” I implored them. “You haven’t been hired as stewardesses. I think you ought to know that now.”

The words achieved the desired multiple shock. And momentary total silence. Then I grinned and laid it on them. “That’s because you’re all juniors and we want you to finish your education before joining Pan Am,” I said.

“I think I mentioned before that the company likes to assist approved stewardess candidates during their last year in school, and I’ve been authorized to make you eight girls an offer I think you’ll find interesting.

“I have been informed that the company intends to hire a number of girls as summer interns for the coming year, and these girls will be sent to Europe in different groups to act as advertising representatives and public relations people. That is, they’ll be used as models for photographs for Pan Am ads in various world publications-I’m sure you’ve all seen the kind I’m talking about-and some will be used as speakers at schools, civic group meetings, business seminars and that sort of thing. It’s a show-the-com-pany-flag type of tour and usually we use real stewardesses or professional models dressed up in flight-attendant uniforms.

“But this coming summer, we’re going to use girls who’ve applied for stewardess positions and it will serve as sort of a pretraining period for them. I personally think it’s a good idea for several reasons. One, it will allow our ad people to use pictures of our own personnel, depicted in cities we serve, and secondly, we won’t have to pull actual stewardesses off the flight line when a photo situation calls for an actual stewardess. That’s always made it tougher on the other stewardesses in the past, because summer months are our peak passenger months, and when we have to pull attendants off flight duty, other girls have to do their work.

“Now, if any or all of you would like to take part in the program this summer, I’m authorized to hire you. You’ll have an expense-paid tour of Europe. You’ll be paid the same salary as a starting stewardess, and you’ll dress as stewardesses, but you won’t be stewardesses. We’ll supply your uniforms. Also, you’ll be given a letter of employment, which is very important in this instance. It means that those of you who do decide to become stewardesses after graduation will be applying as former Pan Am employees, and you’ll be given priority over all other applicants.

“Do I have any takers among you?”

They all volunteered. “Okay,” I said, smiling. “Now, you’ll all need passports. That’s your responsibility. I’ll also need your addresses so the company can keep in touch with you. I’m sure you’ll have your letters of employment within a month. That’s it, ladies. I’ve certainly enjoyed meeting you all, and I hope that if and when you become stewardesses, some of you will be assigned to my crew.”

I informed Henderson of the offer I’d made the girls, and he was as delighted as they had been. In fact, Henderson, his wife and the eight girls all hosted me that night at a delightful dinner party around the pool in the Hendersons ’ back yard.

I flew back to New York and rented a box with mail-answering service that had offices in the Pan Am Building. It was the perfect cover, since it allowed me to use Pan Am’s own address in subsequent correspondence I had with the girls, but all their replies would be directed to my box with the mail-service firm.

After a week or so, I sent a “letter of employment” to each of them, along with a covering letter signed by myself (as Frank Williams) informing each of them that-surprise! surprise!-I had been assigned by the company to head up the European operation involving them, so they were to be my “crew” after all. I also enclosed a phony little form I’d made up, requesting all their measurements for purposes of having their uniforms made up. I directed each of them to address any future questions or information directly to me, in care of my box number.

Then I turned to getting ready for the tour myself. The passport I had was only a temporary one, and in my real name. I decided I needed a regular passport that I could use as Frank Williams and decided to take a chance that the passport office in New York was too busy for its employees to play cop.

I walked into the office one morning, turned in my temporary passport and ten days later was issued a regular passport. I was pleased to have the document, but it was, after all, issued to Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. It was not a passport that would serve “Pan Am First Officer Frank W. Williams,” should the need ever arise. I started looking around and found what I needed in the hall of records of a large East Coast city. It was the death notice of Francis W. Williams, age twenty months, who had died at that young age on November 22,1939. The archives disclosed the infant had been born on March 12, 1938, in a local hospital. I obtained a certified copy of the birth certificate for $3.00 by presenting myself to one of the clerks as the same Francis W. Williams. It seemed logical to me, and I’m sure it would make sense to anyone else, that anyone named “Francis” would prefer to be called “Frank.”

I took the copy of the birth certificate to the passport office in Philadelphia, together with the necessary photos, and two weeks later had a second passport, one that matched my Pan Am uniform. I was now ready to “command” my crew, if nothing occurred in the next several months to upset my Arizona apple cart.

I spent those months knocking around the country, keeping a low profile in the main, but occasionally dropping a few phony Pan Am checks or counterfeit cashier’s checks.

At one point I ended up in Miami, staying in the penthouse suite of a Miami Beach hotel, the Fontainebleau, under the guise of a California stock broker, complete with a briefcase full of $20s, $50s and $100s, and a rented Rolls-Royce, which I had leased in Los Angeles and driven to Florida.

It was all part of a grand scam I had in mind, which was to drop some really big counterfeit cashier’s checks on some of the Miami banks and some of its more elite hotels after establishing a reputable front. I earned the reputable front in large part sheerly by accident. I had made it a point to acquaint myself with some of the hotel’s top management people, and one of them stopped me in the lobby one afternoon and introduced me to a Florida broker, one whose financial genius was known even to me.