Dan's Papers - July 27, 2007

Bruno Schreck makes his living taking aerial photographs here on the East End. A fine photographer with all the latest equipment, he is also a pilot with his own airplane.

"When I was a boy growing up on Long Island," he told me, "I would sneak over on my bike to Zahn's Airport in Franklin Square. There were lots of private planes there. And I'd climb into the cockpit of one or another of them -- nobody locked their airplanes in those days -- and I'd pretend to be flying. The Montauk Highway goes right by Zahn's. But I figured, correctly, that anybody seeing me in the cockpit would just figure I was the son of the owner of the plane and had just stopped down to sit in it. Nobody ever stopped me."

After going to a flying school at Teterboro Airport, he got his license, bought an airplane and moved out here to Springs. This was about twenty years ago. Since then, he's done aerial photography. He owns a Cessna Cutless 172 RG, a single-engine aircraft that he keeps at the East Hampton Airport. Most of the photographs he takes are for real estate brokerage firms and builders both here and in Connecticut. But sometimes he is asked to take aerial shots for other reasons.

Last weekend, he was hired by the promoter of a rock concert to photograph the lacrosse field at the Ross School in East Hampton, where the Prince concert was to take place. The concert took place on Saturday night. The promoter wanted to show how the place looked beforehand. Schreck did flybys on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. The field was filled with tents and pennants, platforms and deck chairs, a stage and lights, some of it so complex and colorful that it lit up the seating area as well. The photos would be used by the promoter, Bulldog Enterprises, to document their work for future prospective clients.

Returning to East Hampton Airport around noon on Saturday, he eased his Cessna over to the parking area, tied it down and was walking with his camera equipment toward his car when he overheard somebody say that a twin-engine private jet had just landed and was taxiing over to the terminal and that Prince himself was on board.

Bruno stopped where he was and waited. And when the door opened and the boarding stairs unfolded to let the passengers off, he was ready to take pictures. Soon, Prince, apparently the only person on the plane other than the pilot, came down the stairs and stopped and looked one way and the other, clearly looking to link up with whoever it was that was going to meet him. And at that moment, Bruno got a series of shots of him. Prince appeared to be almost floating on air in the picture. What caused him to look that way were thick-soled platform flip-flops. It was quite a shot.

After taking this picture, actually a series of these pictures, Bruno hopped into his car and drove the few miles back to his house on Lila Lane in Springs, where he sat at a desk and transferred some of the images to his computer. He didn't think about the Prince photographs at that time. What he did think about were the aerial shots that he had taken. On Monday morning, he knew he would send the shots by email over to the promoter, as he had been hired to do.

The concert was a triumphant success. Bruno did not attend. But the stories in the media about it, many of them accompanied by pictures, were all over the place. Attending were Leonardo di Caprio, Kelly Ripa, Christie Brinkley, Kid Rock, Russell Simmons, Anjelica Houston and Edie Falco, among many others.

On Monday morning, Bruno was on his computer transferring the aerial photos and, as he did so, came across the shots of Prince getting off the airplane. Maybe, he thought, with all this hoopla, somebody would be interested in them. So he put them up on the screen. And then he called the New York Post, a client of his that sometimes bought his work.

He had an interesting shot, he told them. They said send it over in a low-resolution version. If they liked it, they would pay him for it and perhaps use it in their Tuesday edition.

"Out of curiosity," I asked Bruno as he was telling me this story several days later, "how much do they pay?"

The photo appeared in the Tuesday, July 17 edition of the New York Post on page 25. Prince is looking to his left.

The headline is PRINCE AIRY. The caption reads, "His plane may have landed, but Prince hasn't. Carried by a pair of sky-high platform flip-flops over his socks, the 5-foot-2 rock star floats -- OK, hops -- off a private jet at East Hampton Airport. He was on his way to play an outdoor concert at East Hampton's private Ross School. For more on Prince's gig, see "Page Six" on Page 10."

But what happened on Monday, as Bruno was preparing to transmit the photograph of Prince to the Post, was that he saw something on the computer that disturbed him. He was making adjustments in the picture at the time and was about to send a test photo to himself, something that he always did when he wanted to get a picture gets sold. He pressed SEND. Then he looked at his new mail. Then he downloaded the picture he'd sent to himself. And this time he took a close look at it.

Behind Prince, on the upper left corner of the bulkhead doorframe of the aircraft, there was a crack in the fuselage of this airplane. Cracks are not a good thing on the fuselages of airplanes.

"I've read a great deal on the history of aviation," Bruno told me. "What came to mind at that moment were the cracks found along the bulkhead windows and doors aboard the first commercial jet airliners ever built. These were four engine de Havilland Comet airplanes, the predecessor to the Boeing 707s. It was in the early 1950s and they traveled faster and farther than any that had come before and were thought to be state of the art. They were in service with airlines around the world and in a space of just six months, four of them crashed, killing everybody on board. It was horrible. The whole fleet was grounded. Tests were done. What was found was that the fuselages of these planes were not built strongly enough to withstand the stresses put on them. Cracks had appeared by the bulkheads and windows. And so, after a time, the planes came apart in the sky and crashed. These de Havillands never flew again."

Bruno completed sending the photograph to the Post. And then he enlarged the part of the aircraft behind Prince to have a close look at the crack. There were two cracks, forming a T, each about a foot long.

"I felt I was onto something. I'm a pilot. When you see something like this, you have to do something about it. Lives are at stake. This had to be looked into right away. I wanted to alert the owners immediately."

There were other pictures. He found a wide-angle picture of this aircraft he had taken and on that picture, on the tail, there was the N registration number of it. He might be able to find out where this plane was from. Of course, he had no idea whether the plane was owned by Prince or not. But he did know, or at least surmised, that the plane waited for Prince until after the concert and then had taken him away.

But to where? Wherever it was, since there was nothing in the news, there had not been a plane crash.

Writing down the N registration number, Bruno went online to find out where this aircraft was. He knew it was a Cessna Citation just from looking at it. Now he learned it had been built in 1986 and was owned by a corporation, probably a corporation created for the exclusive purpose of owning this plane -- for insurance liability purposes -- with an address Marshall, Minnesota.

Bruno went to Google Earth and punched in Marshall, Minnesota.

Prince is from Minneapolis, Bruno thought to himself. And then there it was. Marshall, Minnesota was about 155 miles away from Minneapolis.

Using the Google Earth controls, Bruno looked for an airport anywhere near Marshall, Minnesota. He found the Marshall Municipal - Ryan Field just three miles away from the town. The field had two big hangers. There were, apparently, two private jets housed there.

Bruno dialed the number for the airport.

"Hello?" It was a woman's voice.

"I need to speak to the maintenance manager of the private jets there," Bruno said. "There's a problem."

"He's not here right now. He went out to lunch."

"Then I need to speak to the Airport Manager."

"He's busy just now, out on the runway."

"This is important," Bruno said. He explained the urgency and asked if he could wait on line to speak to the Airport Manager just as soon as he got back from the runway.

"I have a walkie talkie," the woman said. "I can radio him."

Pretty soon, Bruno was talking to the airport manager and from there, in just five minutes, to the director of maintenance at the airport, a man named Sam Drown. They immediately determined from the N number which of the two aircrafts this was -- both were in their hangers -- and Sam asked Bruno if he could please email him about what he had seen. He wanted to have a record of it to show to the owner. Of course, Bruno said. Coming right up.

Here is the email correspondence.

"Dear Sam, Attached is a link to photos of Prince arriving for his performance at the Social fundraiser at the Ross school in East Hampton. You will note that Prince is SO COOL that he literally floats on air, while wearing his elevator thong slippers (see photos). Here's a link to view the photo I took on Saturday with the close-ups of the crack area. I couldn't let it pass without letting someone check into it. I'd appreciate a follow up as to the outcome."

"Bruno - thanks for the heads up. I've got a crew checking into it right now. I will let you know what they find."

An hour later, the final email came.

"The crack appears to be just a paint / Bondo crack. (Aerodynamic filler.) Thanks for the heads up."

Bruno made a final reply.

"Sam - thanks for the follow up. Hope I haven't caused excessive alarm. - Bruno."

And he has not heard from them again. But he feels a strange uneasiness about this situation.

Bondo? For the rock star formerly, but not now, known as Prince, who is Prince again?

He looked it up. Bondo is a two-part putty for the cosmetic repair of dents in cars, created by Bondo Corporation. It is commonly used in the U.S. to refer to all auto-repair putties or so-called plastic body fillers. The user can apply the mixed Bondo to the dented panel, sand it to the proper shape and prime and paint it like the metal around it.

"So that is that," Bruno told me on Tuesday night. "I think. Hopefully the Bondo will hold up."

Bruno told me that the whole thing reminded him of a long-ago but famous movie called Blow-Up. In it, a professional photographer takes a photo from far away of a woman standing in front of a beautiful historic building. He takes four shots in quick succession. Now the woman is gone. Later, in his darkroom, he finds that he has just photographed a murder.