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The Southwest executive who wasn't
Marriage in two months
Penny Rogers was divorced, raising two kids, and working at her parents' funeral home in rural Texas when Skalnik came in for a funeral in the spring of 1977. He was 27, six years younger than she was, and he wore beautiful three-piece suits and jewelry. He sent flowers, gave her jewelry, and told her he was a high-up executive at Southwest Airlines, then the cool airline with stewardesses in go-go boots. Within two months they were married in Las Vegas.
Skalnik moved into Penny's condo with her and her two children. Every evening he came home loosening his tie and made himself a drink, and on weekends he took the family to the finest hotels in Dallas and Austin, ordering champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries up to the room.
Small things noticed
Penny's daughter Lisa, then about 14, noticed small things. He stole robes from the fancy hotels, saved the purple velvet bag every time he drank Crown Royal, and carried a handgun everywhere, stashing it under the seat when they drove.
His real history
He had been an Austin police officer in the early 1970s until he was quietly shown the door for writing small bad checks, and he had lived off them ever since, starting with a $50 check at a grocery store. One bounced for a microwave he bought Penny for Christmas. In Florida he had taken pre-orders for Scandinavian furniture that did not exist. After a month away from home in the spring of 1978, he phoned an old military school friend at the Harris County DA's office from the county jail and asked him to come get him.
Why did early Southwest dress crews in go-go boots?
Southwest began flying in 1971 as a small Texas airline up against much larger carriers, and it built its brand on playfulness. Its flight attendants wore hot pants and white boots, and its marketing leaned on a love theme, down to drinks called love potions. Its stock ticker, LUV, comes from Love Field, its home airport in Dallas.
How did bad checks work before electronic verification?
A check is a promise to pay, and in the 1970s a store accepted it on the strength of a driver's license and a clerk's judgment. The paper then traveled through the banking system for days, a delay known as float, before anyone learned the account was empty. By then the writer had often moved on to the next store. Check-verification databases that flag accounts with returned checks became common in the following decades.
Why do invented job titles make people trust strangers?
Psychologist Robert Cialdini lists authority among the main shortcuts people use to decide whom to believe, in his 1984 book Influence. Titles, uniforms, and expensive clothing all signal authority before a person has said anything that can be checked. A 1974 field experiment by psychologist Leonard Bickman found that passersby were more likely to follow a street instruction from a man in a guard's uniform than from the same man in ordinary clothes.
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