00:00On a Sunday evening in 1987, millions of Americans sat down to watch football.
00:05But in Chicago, the screen went black, and when the picture returned,
00:09something impossible was staring back.
00:11It was November 22, 1987, at 9 o'clock at night,
00:15during a Chicago Bears game on WGN television.
00:18The broadcast suddenly cut out.
00:20For about 25 seconds, a figure in a Max Headroom mask appeared,
00:24a rubbery, sneering character from a science fiction television show,
00:28swaying in front of a spinning sheet of corrugated metal.
00:31Engineers killed the transmission before he could speak.
00:34Two hours later, it happened again, this time on WTTW, during the show Doctor Who.
00:40And this time, he was ready.
00:42For 94 seconds, the hijacker spoke.
00:46He mocked the sports announcers.
00:48He hummed an old cartoon theme.
00:50Then, in a voice distorted by static, he taunted the audience,
00:54before a woman struck him with a flyswatter, and then he was gone.
00:58The station managed to record the entire hijacking on tape.
01:02In the final seconds, as the picture broke apart, the hijacker could be heard laughing.
01:07That laugh was studded by audio experts for years.
01:10It led them nowhere.
01:12Here is what makes this truly chilling.
01:15Hijacking a television signal is not a prank.
01:18It is an engineering feat.
01:20The hijacker had to overpower a broadcast tower with a stronger signal,
01:25from somewhere in the Chicago area, using expensive microwave equipment worth thousands of dollars.
01:31Over the decades, amateur detectives have proposed their own theories.
01:35Some say it was an inside job by a disgruntled station employee.
01:38Others believe it was a college prank taken too far.
01:41One researcher even claimed the hijacker passed away in the 90s, taking the secret to his grave.
01:46The FCC launched an investigation.
01:48The station engineers studied the tape frame by frame.
01:52And yet, no one was ever caught.
01:55No suspects were ever named.
01:57In almost 40 years, no one has come forward to claim it.
02:01Was it a bored engineer with access to the right equipment?
02:04A crew of clever college hackers?
02:06Or someone testing a system for a darker purpose?
02:09The Max Headroom pirate vanished into the static he came from.
02:13And the question remains.
02:15Who was behind the mask?
