I know this is an old post. But I signed up just to talk about this. I knew Mike and I just learned of his death yesterday. I have quite a bit of information about him. I am actually relieved that he is dead. He was a dangerous guy. I wasn't afraid of him in a violent guy just that he was capable of anything. I was a friend of his for a good couple years until I realized how dangerous he was. It was difficult to separate him from my life as I wanted to go down a straight and narrow life path. He was going down some paths I didn't want to be a part of. I would hear of his endeavors but never who or anything like that but I know what he has done in his past.
The only reason we were friends was because both were interested in flight simulators and he was one of only a handful of people that could say that were I lived. So we spent a lot of time flying online and head to head. He also took me up to fly many times. We used to hit bars and he would get drunk and tell me all sorts of things he wanted to do. When I heard about him robbing a bank years later I was not surprised.
The worst part of this story is that I WARNED the Windsor Flying Club about this. I was getting my pilots license too at the time but never finished as I changed careers and went back to school. I called the head of the club back then Bill Jarvis and told him how nuts the guy was. Bill said he knew but his record was spotless he never did anything wrong. They had considered reprimanding him many times but Bill left to be an air traffic controller so when Mike came back to the club they had no idea really who he was. The couldn't have known.
I also warned the POLICE about him including face to face interviews with officers about him. This was all before the bank robberies etc.
I have so many things to say.. I almost want to contact the NTSB but really its a closed case at this point. Nobody was hurt except the person that deserved it the most. So its really just a life story of the guy and what I'm pretty sure happened. 100% alcohol had nothing to do with this story. There really is no pertinent information I could give them other than it was a long time coming and may not have been the first time he did this. Its just the first time he crashed.
When I read this story. I know exactly what he was doing down to 2 possibilities. I don't have any details of his life in the last 10 years but I know what he had talked about doing many many times. We used to go out drinking at bars and he discussed doing this very thing. In fact low visibility landings was his all time favorite Microsoft Flight Simulator scenario. He would practice it over and over and over again. He'd set up these scenarios in his simulator setup at home and let me try and handle landing.
I'm positive he was circling waiting for someone to contact him over the radio. He had a hand held he used.
He went there specifically because he knew the weather would be foggy.
Yes he practiced evading radar many times. (I was in the plane once when he was testing it - another story) He would ask for a flight following even though we were in uncontrolled airspace and would fly really low and watch the light on the transponder and test to see how far he had to go before they'd lose contact with him even with the transponder on. There was a green light that indicated (it seemed) when we were getting hit by radar and he'd watch when that light would go off. I could be wrong on that. But I was curious too because of our flight simulation air combat sort of hobby. He'd just tell them our transponder is acting funny et.
Ultimately he was angry at people. the government, society in general because he wanted to be an Air force pilot. He went to school to be a pilot he aced all his classes and even aced all the CAF exams and tests. He wanted to fly CF18s. They rejected him and he said he had scored the highest they ever had. He was a perfectionist in this regard. But I had a feeling that they didn't like him as a "person". Once that part of his life was over and they wouldn't let him in - he became the villain he ended up being.
The Taylor Swift thing is a joke. He would sign things like that all the time trying to be clever.
Anyway .. I don't want to get into too many details. I myself was never part of any of his wrongdoings but I certainly heard about them. When I saw the news last night.. I was shocked. I had no idea who to talk to about this.
I hope some of you are willing to still discuss this old story. This is just the tip of the iceberg on this guy.