Episode 691: The Bombing of United Air Flight 629

Hey, weirdos.

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did.

I've been listening to it while I walk and I am absolutely loving it.

I love all the different narrators.

I love Audible.

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To you, my darling.

No, to you.

The roses were living the dream.

More champagne for me, peace.

Until it all came crashing down.

You got fired.

Fired.

From the director of Meet the Parents.

You're a failure.

Women don't like that.

If you need a shoulder or an inner thigh to lean on,

on August 29th, I just want the house.

We want everything.

Wow.

Stop.

Yes, go!

And see the roses.

These people.

The roses.

Rated R.

Under 17, 9 Minute Without Parent.

In Theaters Everywhere, August 29th.

Hey, weirdos.

I'm Ash.

And I'm Elena.

And this is Mohed.

This is Moved.

Hi, honey.

How are ya?

I'm good.

This is where we chit-chat a little bit.

Yeah, you better get used to it, okay?

This is where you fast forward if you don't like the banter.

Imagine we just talk like that the entire.

Everybody's like, I actually don't like it anymore.

Even the people who like it are like, go fuck yourselves.

Go fuck yourselves with that.

It's Marbin in the morning.

It is.

And, you know,

we got a stomach bug in the house.

No, no, no.

Don't say that because

if it's a full-blown stomach bug, it's going to blow through everybody.

No, I mean, I'm not saying it's like neurovirus or anything.

Neurovirus will blow through everybody.

It might just be like a little

stomach virus.

That's all.

Yeah, we had a,

my fellow parents will

understand

that nothing is good when the pukin starts.

You hold your breath for a couple of days, especially if you have other people in the house.

We're getting through it.

You know, it was just a tough night.

I didn't really sleep last night.

I'm here almost against my will today yeah she came over to me this morning and i said hello sweet one stay away you're like hi there i said oh stay right

away said oh good to see you

honestly she's like uh she's a real one because she's so funny she just she's it's my youngest and she throws things off like it's nobody's business you gotta say how she came down the stairs yeah she came down because i was just awake all night like that's That's just the way it is.

And so I came downstairs very early and just decided to sit by myself downstairs.

Just needed a minute to return.

She's like, you know what?

I'm just going to sit by myself until everybody wakes up.

And she comes tearing downstairs.

She slept.

She slept like pretty good towards the like morning.

And so she came tearing downstairs and I was like, oh, hey, girlfriend, like, how are you feeling?

And she goes, amazed.

And she just like throws her hands up in the air.

And I was like, great.

So that's wonderful that you feel amazing.

Yeah, she's, she's a a trooper.

I love her.

But we're all tired.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's just one of those things.

I didn't even deal with that.

Luckily, I left just in time yesterday.

I got a text like an hour after I left home.

I knew it was coming.

I felt it in my gut.

Yeah.

Cause I just know her and I know her face and her actions.

I was hanging out with Elena after work and like the kids were off at activities and stuff.

And that's when she didn't, she started feeling like crappy.

And she walked in and she said, I have a headache and my tummy hurts.

And I said, it was so good to see you guys.

You said that.

Elena, bye.

I loved hanging out.

Good luck with this.

I'm at home.

I literally looked at John and I was like, I just know it.

And he was like, no, you're just like an hour later.

She's not showing.

Because at first, she just had a headache.

Oh, that's what it was.

But she didn't look right.

And she just, something about her, her coloring.

And I just know her.

I just know it's, it's like a, it's a mama thing.

You just know.

You know, in your gut.

Just her vibe, too.

I said, I'm getting the fuck out of here.

She was kicked off.

Yeah.

It's, and I'm going to, like, I don't know how like fellow people who take care of other people feel because this can be of any age and any persuasion.

But

like,

one of those things that, like, you fear as when you have kids is like that, you're like, I have to take care of someone else's puke.

Like, that's scary.

If you don't like, if you're not good with that stuff, that's a fear.

You don't like puke?

I mean, no one likes puke, but like, some people are just not phased by it, really, like, which I envy.

Weirdly, I'm not.

That's the thing.

Like, i'm i mean i don't have kids i don't like it like i don't i don't like watching it in a movie i don't like watching it anywhere it immediately makes me feel nauseous yeah and so but then you have kids and you i'm still in that place where like like yesterday as she was not feeling well i was like oh no she's going to like i get very nervous and then like john's the calm one yeah and then as soon as it happens I'm totally fine.

Yeah.

Like I can jump right into like console clean.

It's the anticipation of it that is the worst part for me.

Yeah.

And John can handle that anticipation so well.

So I think it's, it works very well because he's able to chill with the anticipation and I can go like full into while it happens.

Yeah.

I've been here for other ones and usually like there's been times where they're like just with me and like you're doing something and I'm like, oh, they yaked.

Yeah.

You're just like, and I just start cleaning it.

Yeah.

You're like, oh, here we go.

I, I, like,

you know, yakk a lot in my earlier days of partyings and my friends yaked and I helped them.

We were all yakking together.

We were just yakking.

I'm used to yak.

So yeah, that's

yak talking.

That's puking with morbid today.

But everybody stay stay healthy out there because those summer viruses are a killer.

I know.

And yeah, we've gone like a long time without something like that.

And it was bound to happen.

Here you are.

Here we are.

Here you are.

And you have to do what we can.

Yeah, the odds are not in our favor.

So.

But that's why we might be a little kooky today.

Look crazy.

Because I have very limited sleep behind me.

I've been been sleeping like shit this week.

Yeah, we, the sleep has been shitty this week.

I think it might have something to do with like the heat wave that the East Coast got, which was fucking gnarly.

You know what?

I'm ready.

I'm ready for September and October.

Oh, you need to get there with me.

No, I get it.

I was sitting in my office the other day and the AC, like, it was working, but it wasn't.

And we're so lucky to have AC.

Like, I thank my lucky stars all the time.

But when it's so hot like that, I think it broke like 98 or something like that.

Yeah.

When it's so hot hot like that, it just can't catch upstairs.

Oh, we broke 100 last this week.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So I was sitting upstairs and I was just like, oh, fuck, just give me September.

Yeah.

Because I like my house, at least, even when it's like that outside, I like my house to be fucking freezing.

Yeah.

So that I can sit there in my sweatshirt and pretend like it's like it's cozy weather.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll put the fireplace on and everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

But not when the AC is not working.

No, like properly.

I just can't.

There's nothing for me.

I've said it before i'll say it again there's nothing for me i know uh in summer but but we'll get through it you know we're good we we're through june so almost essentially so you're in the future listen yeah you guys are through june right now um so that's good once you get to july 4th summer's halfway over there you go so that's that's all i'm thinking of yeah and we got a lot of stuff planned for the summer that is going to be fun and make it go by fast and once we're done with the summer

i'm serious it's going to be amazing fall is going to be

a thing of fucking beauty.

Fall is going to be so many ways.

Seriously amazing.

Seriously.

It's going to be amazing.

I can't wait.

Can't wait.

So,

yeah, we were watching.

I think we mentioned this again.

I have no idea when episodes come out, but that won't be a thing for too much longer.

We were talking about it on like the spooky episode, the Crescent Hotel episode Ash did.

I think we might have been talking about it before the episode.

I don't know if we talked about it on, um, what were we saying?

Because you just are my, you're just my friends, so I don't know if I tell you like in real life or not.

Uh, but we were talking about ghost hunters because I think um, we were talking about how like taps had gone to some other place.

I think we did it before the episode, yeah.

And um, I was saying how like I was watching ghost hunters for an episode, like to look at this particular place.

And as I was watching it, I was like, all I want to do, I've never felt a stronger urge in my life than to sit in a room that's completely decorated for Halloween and falls.

That's

what's going.

That's the other thing.

Yeah, I want my fucking Halloween decoration

ready.

And I want it to be cool outside.

I want to watch the leaves falling outside my window.

I want to have something that I just fall baked in the oven.

I want to have something delicious.

Oh, and I'm going to be so basic.

I want a fucking pumpkin spice.

I want to be wearing a Halloween sweatshirt.

Yes.

And I want to have a cozy blanket on me.

Halloween themed.

Halloween themed.

And I want to be watching just a marathon of ghost hunters, scariest places on earth.

Pocus Pocus.

Pocus Pocus, Food Network, Halloween baking challenge.

I want to be doing all that.

I was like,

I've never felt a stronger urge in my life.

I'm going to cry is the thing.

I feel it so fucking cry right now.

It's so deep in my soul.

I can't even contain it.

You won't get this, but it's like that Spongebob episode when he's like, I need it.

I mean, that's how I feel.

I get it.

But yeah, we're almost there, everybody.

And if you love summer, then I hope you're having a wonderful summer.

I like summer.

I'm having a fine one, but I'm ready for fall.

I'm ready.

I've had like a month.

Once my birthday passes, which is technically in spring, but in my mind, it's summer.

I'm like, all right, all done.

All done.

All done.

I'm all done.

That's what you can do.

But yeah, oh, and in August, you know, my, the paperback of the butcher game is coming out.

Hey, oh, I just received the copies.

I got mine.

I'm gonna post a, I'll post a picture of them because they're very delicious.

They look like the first, she's thick.

And they look like the

butcher and the wren paperbacks.

So they're gonna, I know that's important.

It's important to me too in a series for them to look nice together on the shelf.

Oh, they're gonna look great.

These look nice together on the shelf.

Oh, I haven't even put mine on the shelf.

Yeah, they look, they have the same kind of like matte material and everything.

So I'm in the market for new bookshelves.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

We're redoing my little like corner room yeah and the shelves that we have are too much right now so i gotta get new ones yeah i love a good bookshelf and i'm gonna put your your books hell yeah on display on display each and every day every day hell yeah well maybe i'll see you guys in august because maybe we'll do um a couple of events for the book oh you know yeah i don't know i do you know i'll tell you later you know i know they just don't know you don't know but we could see you maybe yeah who knows so make sure you're pre-ordering the paperback of the butcher game tiny url.com You can get it anywhere.

You know, you get books.

You can order books.

You know, go, go do it.

I'll love you forever.

I will anyways, but can I ask you something?

It'll be deeper.

Is your book available in this, like, that gigantic print?

I don't know.

I, every time I, this is the, it's my fault.

Every single time,

you know this.

Every single fucking time I order a book on Amazon, I either, I have a new problem now.

So I ordered one book like a couple months ago and it came in like big print meant for like, you know, if you have like some kind of like,

like if you're older or like you have like a vision impairment.

Yeah.

I don't and I don't want that copy.

But I got that copy and I was like, crap.

And then I just got for our book club book, I ordered it and I got this like weird small edition that's like so small that I'm like,

what is wrong with me?

What the hell?

I don't know.

What the hell Eante?

What the hell Eante?

You just got, you got to really read that, that description before you buy it.

Maybe they should make that fucking part bigger.

Yeah, there you go.

That should be a big phone bigger.

It should.

I got this one book and it's in the most giant print I've ever seen.

I kind of made the book look like so much longer.

I was like, what the fuck did I order?

Why is this book 4,000 pages long?

And then the next time it's like this tiny ass book with like fucked up margins.

I was like, it's crazy.

What is going on?

What?

Yeah, that's crazy.

I don't know if mine is available in that, but I guess read descriptions before you buy books.

Yeah, I guess so.

That's a PSA.

That's a PSA.

And you can like, you can pre-order it from anywhere.

Amazon, you can do it from Barnes ⁇ Noble, small bookstores.

We love an indie bookstore.

Oh, and like Unlikely Story.

Unlikely Story.

We love the Unlikely Story.

We love that bookstore.

We love the people that

Unlikely Story is a...

A fucking

treasure chest of humans.

It really is.

Just, we love them.

I love them.

All right.

But that's enough.

That's all like the good stuff.

That's all happy stuff.

Except you know, we're about to get into some shit.

Yeah, you're here.

Because you clicked on this episode and you saw the title.

Yeah.

So you know that we're talking about the bombing of United Air Flight 629.

We are.

You also know I have a fear of flying.

Yeah.

You know what?

I think

everyone in the collective nation has a fear of flying.

I have a fear of flying right now.

Here's the thing.

It's still very safe.

Yeah, totally.

You know, like it's still, you know, we're going through it a little bit.

Am I going to do it?

No.

Am I going to do it anytime?

Am I going to tell you what to do?

No.

And this does just to make it, so you already know going into this trigger warning, we're talking about a plane crash.

Yes.

But it's not a crash in the sense that it just crashed.

It exploded.

Oh.

Because of a bomb.

Obviously, because it's the bombing of.

Yes, yes.

This was also in the 50s, the 1950s, when...

Less protocol.

Less protocol, but it was still very safe consider it was still a very safe form of travel in comparison to everything else so yeah yeah that'll give you a little like i need to tell myself that all the time so i'm just telling you that in case you also are fearing things right now that's fair trying to help me and i'm trying to help you um also again i've said this every time that we've talked about plane crashes and i talk about my fear of flying follow pilots on tick tock

follow them on tick tock they will make you feel better they will explain things about noises and everything else and when a plane plane crash happens,

so many pilots, maybe I'll find some names and I'll give you some, will update you to tell you why that happened so you can feel a little more in the know and why it's rare and why it's rare.

So again, if you have a fear of flying, I'm with you.

I feel you.

So let's start.

Okay.

United Airlines Flight 629 started out in New York on the late morning of November 1st, 1955.

It was stopping briefly in Chicago just for some minor repairs, which, you know, planes need to do.

It was like a propeller part.

And then it was moving on to its scheduled stop in Denver, where it landed a little after 6 p.m.

The plane, which was called the mainline Denver, was a Douglas DC-6B, which is a 105-foot piston-powered passenger and cargo plane that was pretty popular with the U.S.

military, actually, before the end of World War II.

Oh, wow.

And that's when when Douglas started retrofitting them to be part of like commercial airlines, essentially, like compete in the travel market.

The model was typically operated by three to four crew members with an additional one to two flight attendants and could accommodate up to 89 passengers.

That's a small plane.

Yeah.

So in 1955, air travel for just leisure was just starting to outpace train and car travel.

It was really not a big thing before this.

It was becoming a little more affordable than it had previously been.

So people were starting to be able to take planes places.

As a result, many of the passengers on flight 629 were taking their first ride on a plane that day.

Oh, including...

That must be wild.

Especially like everybody takes a first plane ride at some point, obviously.

But you think about...

Taking that first plane ride when plane rides are a new thing.

Yeah.

That's fucking terrifying.

That's terrifying.

Like, that's a whole different.

Because you have, at least when you take your your first plane ride now, you can kind of like know what to expect.

You have a whole history of like safety protocols and technology.

You can watch a video about what, how it fucking happened.

You can hear a pilot tell you how it all works out.

Even the first time I like was cognitive and flew, I thought I was cognitive as a two-year-old, but you know, I had more cognitive ability as a 19-year-old.

Yeah.

No, I was 14.

Anyways, when you start fucking barreling down the runway before you take off, I remember being like, are we supposed to be doing that?

Oh, I still, i've been on how many plane trips and every time i ask are we supposed to be doing that like it's scary and then when it lifts off i say am i supposed to be doing this yeah and then you're just floating in a fucking tube in the sky obviously you're not like floating but no but it's just it's wild the whole time you're like are we supposed to be doing this back to my original point i cannot imagine doing that for the first time with absolutely baseline zero information like that would be a lot yeah um so these passengers included patricia and gerald lipkey who were flying to see patricia's sister in Portland, and also James and Sarah Dory, who were on their way to see their son, who they hadn't seen in nine years.

James Dory had been sick for some time, and the couple decided to take the flight after his doctor warned him, quote, his bad arteries might not last long enough to make the trip by car or train.

So like this was like their last ditch effort.

Others were taking this plane to connect to longer flights, like Helen Fitzpatrick and her one-year-old son, James.

Oh, God.

They were going to visit his father in Japan and Daisy King, who was traveling to Seattle to catch a connecting flight to Alaska, where she was visiting her daughter.

When you really put all that,

that's what always kills me about these like, like plane crashes and these kind of things is like when you start looking into like the actual people on board and watching.

And they're doing such like.

normal things like I'm going to see my daughter.

I'm going to see my dad.

I'm going to see my sister.

Yeah.

Like these kind of things always just like, oh, they tear me

in two.

They really do.

Now, at the time, the flight engineers union were eight days into a strike, protesting United's recent change in regulation that required all future flight engineers hired by the company also to be qualified as pilots.

I feel like that's kind of fair.

It feels right to me, but I don't think that's like

that.

With a significant number of the airlines' flight crew out on strike, the company had to scramble to find a crew that could take the flight.

Finally, they settled on pilot Lee Hall, co-pilot Donald White, and flight engineer Samuel Arthur.

Several passengers on the flight had been booked on other flights that had been canceled because of the strike.

Oh, that always hits so much harder with a story like that.

Yes.

So it was actually a relief to them when they got confirmation they would be flying out of Denver on flight 629.

That always just sends me when they're not even supposed to be on this.

Exactly.

Or the people who just miss it, you know, like those kind of things are just like, oh, those stories always send chills up.

It's very final destination and it like freaks me out.

Now, when the plane arrived in Denver, all but 19 passengers got off, with the remaining going to Seattle.

Right.

After the baggage had been loaded into the cargo hold and the cabin had been readied, the 20 new passengers started boarding, several of them stopping along the way to make a last-minute purchase of life insurance, which I guess was like a common occurrence.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

It was common at during this time period for those traveling by air to purchase short-term life insurance to cover their time in the air.

Oh, wow.

Which interesting.

Which you could purchase easily from a vending machine in the airport.

What?

Yeah.

I never knew.

That's crazy.

I had no idea.

And also that would send me into cardiac arrest.

Yeah.

Having to purchase life insurance for my time in the air.

No, can't do it.

That's crazy.

Can't do it, my friends.

Also, when you think about it, like life insurance is just death insurance.

It's really, it's wild.

Like they really are.

They just can't call it a much better.

They all sat at that table and they said, no, we can't call it that.

Yeah.

They were like, this is marketing genius to call it life insurance.

Damn.

For a vending machine.

Isn't that crazy?

Also just like, I can't imagine pressing A to getting my life insurance and being like, let me happily board this.

Just jump on it.

And it's like the passenger would just purchase the policy, sign sign the copy produced by the vending machine, then drop it in a lockbox to be collected by an agent at the end of the day.

Wow.

In this case, passengers purchase policies from Continental Casualty and Mutual of Omaha at 25 cents for each $6,250 of coverage with a maximum coverage amount of $125,000.

This is wild.

Isn't that like, that blew my mind?

Yeah.

Fascinating.

Yeah, that really is.

Really fascinating.

I wonder when that stopped.

I know.

I wonder wonder that.

You're like, okay, that's not the best idea.

So after being delayed several minutes by a late passenger, flight 629 finally took off from the runway at 6.52 p.m.

Those late fucking passengers get there on time.

Get there.

Four minutes later at 6.56 p.m., Lee Hall radioed the tower and reported they had passed over the Denver Omni station, a radio broadcasting tower several miles northeast of the airport.

Several minutes later, air traffic controllers at Stapleton Airport reported seeing a large flash in the sky, followed by two balls of fire falling towards the earth.

Oh, God.

At the same time, a farmer just outside Longmont, Colorado reported seeing what he described as, quote, a brilliant ball of fire that he said he watched just tear through the sky for nearly two minutes before it crash-landed in a field about eight miles away.

Wow.

It wasn't long before authorities learned what those individuals had witnessed.

It was the explosion mid-air of United Airlines Flight 629 and the immediate death of all 44 passengers on board.

Oh, that's awful.

I'm going to read out the names of all 44 passengers.

Yeah.

So just sit tight.

Jack Ambrose, Samuel Arthur, Broar Brextrom, Irene Brextrom, John Bomelin, Frank Brennan Jr., Clarissa Bunch, Thomas Crouch, Barbara Cruz, Cruz, Carl Deist, John Jardens, James Dory, Sarah Dory, Charles Edwards, Clara Edwards, Helen Fitzpatrick, James Fitzpatrick, Daisy King, Lee Hall, Goldie Herman, Vernal Herman, Elton Hickock, Jacqueline Hines, Marion Hobgood, John Jungles, Gerald Lipke, Helen Lipke, Layla McLean, Frederick Morgan, Suzanne Morgan, Peggy Petticord, James Purvis, Herbert Robertson, Harold Sandsted,

Sally Schofield, Jesse Sizemore, James Earl Strudd, Clarence Todd, Minnie Van Vallen, Ralph Van Vallen, Donald White, and Alma Windsor.

When you read them out like that, it really makes you, yeah.

Like

you grasp how many people.

Just

in the blink.

Yeah.

Like,

it's, oh, it sends chills down my spine.

It does.

And again, the youngest on board and the only real child on board was James Fitzpatrick, who was one years old.

Oh.

Yeah.

And I believe the oldest person on board was Layla McLean, who was 80 years old.

Oh, I know.

To 80.

Yeah.

And that's how you go.

That's awful.

Awful.

All you can hope is that it was so fast.

I hope that nobody felt anything.

I hope nobody even knew.

Yeah.

Which, when you know what happened here, it feels like nobody could have possibly had any idea what was happening.

That's good.

You know what I mean?

That's, that's the only hope here.

Now, again, although they were more common in the past than they are today, airline crashes have always been a pretty uncommon occurrence.

Because again,

and John's always telling me this.

We see them on the news because they're so uncommon.

Right.

They would just feel like.

Yeah, it's like if we saw all the car crashes, you couldn't even have one 24-hour news station covering them all.

It wouldn't even, so I know it's hard to think of it that way.

Sometimes that doesn't comfort me at all, but it might work for some of you.

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But however, Flight 629 was the second plane to crash in the region near the Rocky Mountain Range in less than a month.

Oh, wow.

The previous crash

had occurred about 100 miles away on October 6th after crashing into the mountain side and killing all 66 passengers on board.

The crash of the previous month was the worst airline disaster in the United States until that period.

Oh.

And while the explosion of Flight 629 didn't surpass that disaster in casualty number, it was no less tragic.

Yeah.

Unlike several other crashes, which were relatively well contained to the area where the accident actually occurred, the explosion of 629 created a massive crash site, dropping large pieces of flaming debris, luggage, and rows of seats with passengers still in them into the yards and fields of the rural community of Longmont, Colorado.

Conrad Hopp, a farmer who lived near the primary crash site, remembered hearing a big explosion like a bomb went off.

And he ran outside to see what happened.

And he said, quote, I hollered back to my wife that she'd better call the fire department.

Then I turned around and the plane blew up in the air.

Oh, God.

Which is literally my nightmare.

Yeah.

I have literal nightmares of seeing a plane fall out of the sky.

It's like the worst thing I can possibly imagine seeing.

Do you remember when my mom did?

Yes.

Like actually saw one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Into a parking lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That would, I'd never recover from it.

Yeah.

Now, um, Martha Hopp recalled, I ran outside and I remember all the roads were white with lights.

Everybody was already out on the roads doing the same thing.

And the hops were just two of a ton of local residents who were rushing out to the weld county beat field where the main portion of the plane crashed down hoping there was something they could just do to help um that's when you like see the like the humanity humanity there where people are just rushing to this flaming thing that fell out of the sky just to see if they can help yeah like that's something

but

people people

that is people peopling yeah there's people gonna people and then there's people gonna people yeah this is people peopling but when Longmont Police Chief Keith Cunningham and the other first responders arrived in the field, it was pretty apparent that there was nothing that anybody could do to help.

After just a few minutes of surveying the huge amount of wreckage in the field, a patrolman radioed dispatched to report no ambulances are necessary.

Oh.

Yeah.

It was fall and the sun went down early at that time of year, so it was fully dark by the time a full team of state and local investigators came to the scene.

Despite the lack of any real natural light,

it became very evident early on that there was really going to be no survivors.

Author Andrew Field said that they immediately went in there looking for somebody to help, but it was pretty quickly determined, like there's no way nothing we can do, which is so sad.

Law enforcement and fire officials, along with over 100 volunteers, spread out across the field and surrounding area to look for bodies and potential survivors, because even though there was no survivors in this particular debris field,

they were just hoping.

Yeah, and again, you never know.

Large crash site.

Yeah.

And

the author Fields said, as they would find bodies, they would station a man with a flashlight to indicate where the body was.

So somebody would just stand there with a flashlight next to where a body was so that they could just find them all because they were so scattered.

Yeah.

He said, and pretty soon the entire field was filled with little points of light.

Oh, that's such a horrible visual.

And obviously this experience would weigh very heavily on anyone.

And it really weighed heavily on Conrad Hopp Jr., the farmer who first saw it.

He was just 18 years old at the time.

Oh, God.

His father had seen it first, I should say.

Senior had seen it first.

The junior was 18 years old at the time.

And he said finding a body was fairly simple.

But later on, to try and pick that body up and put it in a body bag, that was the tough part.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That will change you as an individual, no matter what age you are, but 18.

That's, that's a lot.

As the Stapleton air traffic controllers had observed, the plane had essentially broken into two large sections, which tore four feet deep holes into the earth when they, upon impact.

Wow.

And burned for hours after landing in the field.

The nose of the plane, which had avoided catching fire, was badly smashed.

which indicated that it had been the first part to hit the ground.

Inside the cockpit, the bodies of the pilot, co-pilot, and engineer could all be seen still strapped to their seats.

Oh, that's haunting.

It's very upsetting.

Fortunately for investigators, the two main sections of the plane had landed mostly intact.

They were super mangled, really damaged by, you know, the seemingly unstoppable blaze at this point that is just keeps going because it's being...

fed by a steady stream of jet fuel that's leaking from the engines so it's just non-stop fire by 9 p.m the national guard had been been dispatched to the scene to hold back spectators, reporters, and people gonna people, people,

giving firefighters the space, you know, to finally extinguish the flames.

A short time later, electrical rigging had been set up and the entire field was soon brightly illuminated, showing the full extent of the carnage.

Jim Matlack, a publisher of the Longmont Times Call, said there was nothing we could do but cover up the bodies.

There wasn't a sign of life.

Few places in the U.S.

are set up to deal with this kind of disaster, this kind of large-scale disaster.

Least of all rural Longmont.

Like they were just not ready for this.

So the coroner set up a makeshift morgue in the Greeley Armory, which was a former National Guard training center.

And it occasionally served as an event space and they had to use it as a morgue.

The space was inadequate, I would think, to say the least, but it at least provided enough private space for the coroner and local medical providers to try to work on identifying victims, while the local Western Union office worked late into the night contacting the families of those passengers through the manifest.

That's awful.

Yeah.

In addition, managers from the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company sent more than 40 technicians to the crash site with instructions to add as many telephone lines and equipment as were necessary for responders to complete all of their work that they were doing.

Essentially, volunteers and service providers just worked non-stop to build out a literal infrastructure to respond to this tragedy.

They had to literally create the infrastructure as it was happening, which is pretty impressive.

It is.

And you think about like the time, the fact that this was so unexpected.

This is 1935.

Little resources.

Like, that's very impressive.

The following morning, representatives from United Airlines held a press conference to share what little they knew about the explosion and the passengers who died.

The airline confirmed that by 7 a.m., all the bodies had been removed to the armory and technicians had started examining the wreckage for clues of what the fuck happened here.

The representatives declined to comment on what could have caused the explosion, saying that witness reports varied a little bit, some saying it exploded in the air and others saying it exploded when it hit.

ground.

Right.

One representative said, it's difficult for us to say what took place.

That probably will have to be determined by the Civil Aeronautics Board.

Although they were unwilling to identify what the hell happened here, United's President W.A.

Patterson told the press, all evidence now strongly indicates this accident resulted from an explosion in the air.

Now, formed as a federal agency in 1938, the purpose of the CAB, which is the Civil Aeronautics Board, was to regulate commercial air travel in the United States.

But CAB was also responsible for investigating accidents involving air travel, trying to figure out what the fuck happened, and to determine who or what is at fault in these situations.

After receiving the report about the explosion of Flight 629, CAB dispatched a team of investigators to the site, led by veteran investigator Jack Parshall.

Now, the biggest challenge that Jack and his team faced was how fucking huge this crash site was and how spread out it was.

It was spread out for more than a mile and it was like rural land that was an active farm.

So to move quickly, his team employed a new technique where the land was mapped out in a grid and every piece of debris from the wreckage was tagged with a label and marked on a grid map.

That's a smart way to go about that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I thought that was really smart.

It weirdly makes you think of when you're did you ever learn that in art class where you like map out a photo that you want to recreate and then you do it piece by piece by piece.

Yeah.

That's what it made me think of.

I think it's the same idea.

Like literally the same idea.

Yeah.

Now, once everything had been tagged and mapped, the entire wreckage and every piece of debris was transported to a airplane hangar nearby where it was literally recreated exactly as it had been in the beat field.

Laid out completely.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Because they were able to do that with the grid.

So yeah, wow, it really is.

So it's literally recreating.

It's the exact same premise.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's so strange to picture in your mind.

Isn't it?

Now, in his 15 years with the CAB, Jack Parshall had never seen anything like this.

The plane hadn't just crashed into something and, you know, mangled when it hit the ground.

It had been shredded by what looked like a massive blast and it sent the passengers and contents out across a six square mile area as it plummeted to the ground.

As far as Parshall knew, there were a few things that could have caused this kind of thing to happen.

One explanation was that, and he said, it was possible that gas fumes had accumulated in a closed compartment, thus causing an explosion.

But he said it seemed pretty unlikely that there could have been such a substantial buildup of fumes in such a short period of time.

Yeah, because it hadn't been in the air that long at that point.

And another possible explanation was that a structural flaw in the construction had caused the fuselage to break apart mid-air.

But this also seemed pretty unlikely since the contents had been blown out across such a big area, which indicated that there was definitely an explosion happening of some kind.

The third and most reasonable explanation was that a combustible item, quote, negligently put aboard the plane in the cargo area had exploded.

Yeah.

Now, in 1955, the idea that somebody would intentionally

bomb an airliner seemed pretty fucking wild to most Americans.

Like, it was unheard of.

This is not something

because I've gone my whole life

thinking about that every single time I got on a plane.

Yeah.

Which is crazy.

It's not unthinkable in any way, which is so,

it just, it's so wild to think that you would back then, why would they think that you would ever have a time where you wouldn't be thinking of that?

Yeah.

You know, like, I don't remember a time that we weren't thinking about that.

It's so, yeah, that's so weird.

Yeah.

Now, this, again, this is not to say like it had never happened before.

Like in previous years,

a number of flights in other countries had been sabotaged and blown up.

Right.

And in the U.S., there were examples of, you know, suspected sabotage that couldn't be confirmed.

And so they were labeled accidents.

Like, you know, a 1933 United flight out of Chicago that exploded over Indiana.

It killed all four people on board.

But again, the idea that.

somebody would intentionally try to kill so many people, including a toddler

for any reason seemed completely unfathomable to Americans, especially.

So that's why at this point, they were still looking at it as somebody negligently puts something that was combustible.

Combustible, right?

Somebody points at a bomb.

All I keep picturing is dry shampoo, which obviously was not a thing back then, but that's all I can picture.

That's all you can think of.

Now, fortunately, Jack Parshall wasn't most Americans.

Parshall had been in the industry long enough to know an explosion when he saw one.

And to him, the scene looked very much like the 1949 bombing of a Canadian airliner where an explosive device was detonated in the cargo hold.

In that one, it ripped an enormous hole in the side of the plane, killing all 23 people on board.

Most significantly, the explosion on flight 629 had ripped the metal of the plane outward at the cargo hold.

Oh.

Yeah, which suggested that something contained within the luggage section had indeed exploded.

Yeah.

Also, the pieces of the wreckage that came from the cargo section smelled like sulfur.

Oh.

Which forensic chemist Charles Wilson determined to be residue from dynamite.

Yeah.

Andrew Field said a lot of people described it as a firecracker-like smell that they could detect on the metal.

Finally, among the wreckage, CAB investigators took small bits of metal and copper wire that they finally determined to be from a timing device.

So this is a straight-up bomb.

Bombing.

Yeah.

Taken together, these pieces of evidence all but confirm Jack Parcel's belief that the explosion of Flight 629 had indeed been

intentional,

which must be

the last.

I mean, I don't know.

No answer is ever a good answer for why something like this happens.

But then when you think of like, somebody set out to kill all these people, including a toddler.

And why?

And everybody's gone.

How do you investigate?

Exactly.

That's like, that must be so difficult.

Now, a few days after the investigation started, chief of the CAB Investigation Division, James Payton, told reporters, we found some things that appear unusual and are investigating the possibility of sabotage.

And this was all confirmed a few days later.

on November 7th in a report released by United Airlines.

In that, they stated that authorities discovered evidence of a bomb-type explosion in the number four cargo pit, which they believed to be the cause of the disaster.

The report said the side walls of the compartment were pushed out and the floor pulverized, pulverized, and there were gunpowder-type odors on sections of the compartment.

In his statement to the press, Parshall said, we don't know what type of explosive it is.

Frankly, we're going to have to await the results of the laboratory examination.

This is the first mid-air explosion we've encountered in some time, and we're exploring it from every angle.

After finding evidence of sabotage, James Payton, chief investigator of the CAB, brought the FBI in to determine if there had been a violation of a federal statute and to conclusively determine whether the plane had in fact been bombed until that point investigators had been basically proceeding as though the explosion was

not that they didn't want to like they they they kind of knew it was intentional at this point like that's what they were leaning towards but they couldn't definitively say it yeah until they had concrete evidence so they were still proceeding as if it were an accident okay as if something exploded unintentionally in the cargo hole but it's like what

is a firecracker and explosion?

Yeah.

And so they know, but I think it's the safest way to approach it so that you can, because I think it's better to go like

too less than too much because it's easier to add than pull back.

And you need all the information before you incite like mass panic.

Exactly.

But with the introduction of the FBI, people were starting to be like, oh, I'm thinking this might be criminal.

Yeah.

That'll make you scratch your chin.

Yeah.

The first hurdle criminal investigators needed to clear was figuring out why someone would want to blow up this plane in the first place.

The first and most obvious suspects were the striking United Airlines employees,

whose negotiations and rhetoric had become a little hostile in the days leading up to the bombing.

That would be a big escalation.

That'd be fucked up.

In fact, in the days following the explosion, a representative for the Transport Workers Union went so far as to imply that, quote, United might be criminally liable for the deaths and suggested that all evidence be turned over to a grand jury quote for possible manslaughter charges oh fuck which is like bold

uh despite all of that rhetoric uh the union and striking employees cooperated very much with investigators and were very quickly ruled out as potential suspects that's good and They even established a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever did this.

Okay, so we got to make sure.

Different avenue.

We did not do this.

The union's reward prompted United Airlines to establish its own fund for a reward.

And a few days later, they offered an additional $25,000

for a reward for information.

Which is like good.

So everyone did their part here.

Like, it wasn't the striking workers.

Nice.

If the union wasn't behind the bombing, which they were not, the most likely scenario was that whoever bombed this flight had done so to kill one or more of the passengers on board.

Like they had like a target.

Yes.

The passengers on flight 629 were a very varied group in terms of age and background.

But with the exception of a few notable businessmen, they appeared really not to have any reason that a death of any of these people would benefit anyone.

You know, agents went through the like full background investigations on each passenger.

They interviewed family, friends, co-workers.

They went deep to determine, you know, who on the plane might have been a target.

But their interviews turned up absolutely nothing of note, like nothing.

So the theory that someone was killed for like anything really was kind of flying out the window because they even went forward and tried to see, could somebody be killed for the insurance money?

That went nowhere because only two passengers, Stuart and Suzanne Morgan, bought more than the minimum coverage.

Oh.

And they named their teenage daughters as beneficiaries.

Right.

So.

yeah, they were the ones who were getting the money.

So it wasn't.

Now, while several FBI agents interviewed the friends and families of all the passengers, other agents conducted like serious interviews with airline employees at every single stop along the flight.

They went deep.

Wow.

Starting with its origin in New York and then moving on to the Chicago stop and finally the last stop in Denver.

And it was while interviewing the baggage handlers in Chicago that agents got their first break.

Okay.

It turned out that when the luggage was being loaded at the airport in Chicago, one of the baggage handlers lost his keys and was certain he dropped them at the cargo hold.

When the plane landed in Denver a short time later, baggage handlers at Stapleton completely unloaded the number four cargo pit and found the keys.

Okay.

But when they began repacking the cargo hold, only cargo from Denver was loaded into the number four cargo pit.

So this is, they're following this now.

Based on the evidence, investigators knew the explosive device had detonated in the number four cargo pit.

And the testimony from the baggage handlers indicated that particular cargo pit contained only luggage from the passengers boarding in Denver, which meant that the bomb could only have been put on the plane at Stapleton Airport.

Fortunately, when agents checked the registry, they learned that only three passengers on flight 629 had checked their bags.

Oh, shit.

And based on the recorded size and weight of the luggage, only one of the three could have contained an explosive sizable enough to take down the entire plane.

For a second, we just have to really think about the time period where we're investigating this.

Yeah.

That's impressive, detective work.

Like,

that is truly, truly impressive.

1955.

Yeah.

That's like real investigator work, right?

Wow.

Now, this suitcase

belonged to 53-year-old Daisy King.

I did not think this was going to be a woman.

So, in their initial interviews, FBI agents spoke to Daisy's son, Jack Graham.

But that interview yielded really nothing significant.

But now, they believed her to be the one who brought the bomb on the plane.

So, they were like, okay, we have some different questions to ask Jack now.

Yeah.

From Daisy's son, Jack, and daughter Helen, agents learned that life with Daisy had never been particularly easy.

I wouldn't think it would be based off of this information.

Jack and Helen had both been born during the Great Depression and like so many other families at the time, they struggled financially.

Short time after Helen was born in 1923, Daisy's marriage ended in divorce and her husband, Tom Gallagher, left completely.

Abandoned.

Piece of shit.

Her second marriage to William Graham followed soon after her divorce and in January 1932, she gave birth to her son Jack.

Unfortunately, the older Graham died from pneumonia a few months after Jack's birth, leaving them destitute.

Despite the depression, Daisy managed to find work with the local phone company while her mother stayed home to care for Helen and Jack.

But when her mother died in 1938, Daisy found herself again back to being destitute.

Without any child care options and already living on a meager salary, She enrolled her teenage daughter at St.

Scholastica's, I believe it's called, which was a Benedictine prep school located a short distance away.

Six-year-old Jack, on the other hand, was placed in the Clayton College of Denver, also known as the Denver School for Boys, an orphanage established two decades earlier.

Oh, fuck.

In 1941, Daisy married a third time, this time to Earl King, who was a wealthy rancher living in Toppinis, a few miles outside Denver.

Daisy's marriage to King dramatically improved the financial stability of the family, but despite all of this, she chose not to retrieve her son from the Clayton school.

Instead, she and Earl essentially lived as well as a wealthy, childless couple until Earl's death in October 1954.

The fuck?

And at that time, she inherited her husband's entire estate valued at $150,000, which today is about $1.75 million.

Fuck.

According to Helen, Daisy was the kind of person who could never be happy, even when things were going well.

Even with that much money, girl?

Yeah.

Obviously, money doesn't invite happiness, but damn.

She's just a miserable person.

Yeah.

She had struggled with depression and anxiety for most of her life.

She was controlling.

She experienced mood swings regularly.

At one point, she had even unfortunately attempted to end her life by overdosing on pills, but was discovered by a relative and received medical treatment and saved.

That's sad.

Jack

really had the same kind of things to say about, you know, about their mother, adding that she wasn't a warm or motherly person.

In fact, Jack told them she wasn't a person you could call mom.

She wanted you to call her by her Christian name.

The fuck.

You couldn't put your arms around her.

You couldn't show affection like that to her.

Oh, that's really awful.

That's so sad.

And based on their interviews with family and friends, agents put together a profile of Daisy where she was described as, quote, very generous in providing toys and money for her children, but spent very little time with them.

Yeah.

She appeared to have been quick-tempered, somewhat domineering, and not affectionate as a mother.

Not affectionate as a mother.

Yeah, she placed one of her children in an orphanage and then didn't get him when she got the resources.

And never got him back.

Yeah, like what the fuck?

They just lived as a wealthy, childless couple, even though she was a mother.

And she just went and got him back at some point.

Was like, oh, hey, how's the orphanage?

Like, the fuck.

By the time Daisy re-entered Jack's life in 1954, he was 22 years old.

Oh, so he grew up in the orphanage?

She never went and got him back.

Never got him back.

She re-entered.

He was 22 years old, was married.

To a woman named Gloria, and they had an 11-month-old son named Alan, and they were expecting another child in a few months.

That's awful.

Yeah.

That's gross fucking behavior.

No, Jack's little family was happy together, but he was struggling to provide for them because it was a tough time.

Yeah.

Knowing this, Daisy offered to buy Jack's family a house in Denver.

provided they renovate the home to include a basement apartment for her to live in.

No, thanks.

She suggested that by taking the house, Jack wouldn't have to worry about money and could re-enroll in courses at the University of Denver.

Then she's going to go ahead and hold that over your head.

Jack reluctantly agreed to Daisy's proposition because, you know, he's trying to provide for his

kids.

And in December 1954, they all moved into this house in Denver.

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Just a few months later, after Gloria had given birth to their daughter, Suzanne, Daisy approached her son with a second proposal she believed would help support them.

She was willing to use a portion of her inheritance from Earl to invest in roadside and a roadside drive-in diner if Jack was willing to manage the restaurant.

That's a cool idea.

Although neither of them had any experience in running or owning a restaurant, he agreed.

And a month later, Daisy had invested $42,000 and opened the crown of drive-in.

Restaurants are known to be money picked.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure it's one of the hardest things you can do.

I think it very much is.

Yeah.

So from the time the restaurant opened in May 1955 until her death in November, Jack and Daisy spent nearly every day together.

Wow.

In fact, it was Jack who drove his mother to the airport the day of the bombing.

And she just had a bomb in her luggage and he had no idea.

Yeah.

And they asked whether he'd helped Daisy pack her luggage.

Jack insisted his mother was a little quirky and she refused to allow anyone else to pack her bags for her.

Yeah.

I love that that was considered quirky back then.

I'm like, I don't need somebody to pack my bag.

Though he did recall that her bag seemed a little heavy when he carried it to the car,

which Daisy claimed was probably because of the ammunition she had packed in her luggage because she intended on hunting caribou with her daughter in Alaska.

Can you pack ammunition in your fucking luggage?

I guess so.

Was that allowed?

I guess.

When they arrived at Stapleton, Daisy asked Jack to get three life insurance policies for her from the kiosk.

One for Helen, one for Jack, and the third for her sister, each for the minimum coverage, which agents later confirmed with the insurance company.

Damn, she only needed the minimum coverage knowing what she was going to go do on that plane.

Based on what they'd learned from Helen and Jack, investigators were beginning to put together a theory about Daisy and a possible explanation for the bombing.

They knew she had a history of mental health issues and had even attempted suicide before.

And they knew she had recently reappeared in her children's lives, bringing gifts of money and property that not only could be an attempt to make up for her past with them, but also secure their future.

Yeah, set them up.

I think she was trying to,

I don't want to say make amends, but like she was trying to

make it a little better what she had done before she did what she was going to do.

Yeah.

Given all of that, it was starting to seem possible that Daisy could have used the flight as an opportunity to end her life.

And in doing so, further provide for her family financially.

But why are you taking

you took 40 other people?

43 other people

who had no intent, who were going to see their families

in a lot of cases.

That's

but if that were the case, again,

and it's exactly what you just stated, why would she choose the absolute lowest amount of coverage?

Yeah.

That's, and was it realistic to assume that essentially like what she was described in as by everybody else, a former housewife in her early 50s, would she really know how to make a bomb effective enough to destroy an airplane?

Because like, that's what I've done.

Where did the bomb come from?

Yeah.

We can talk about motive all day, but like, where the fuck did she get a bomb?

She's just tinkering in the basement.

Yeah.

So around the time agents were interviewing Helen and Jack, FBI agents in the Denver office received a call from Bishop Richard Hansen from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Denver.

The Mormons are back out of the city.

And I was like, that call must have been like, what's up now?

Now, according to Bishop Hansen, one of his parishioners thought he might have some information relevant to the bombing case, but he wasn't sure whether he should take it to the authorities.

Always.

You should always take information about the bombing case to the authorities.

So Hansen actually helped coordinate a meeting a few days later where agents sat down to interview his parishioner, Lou Masservi.

In mid-1955 Masservy was working as a potato chip salesman in Denver whose route included the Crown A drive-in,

which is her restaurant.

According to Masservy, Daisy King was quote a fine person but her son Jack was quote a little odd.

Masservi told the agents a few months earlier in September there was a gas explosion at the Crown A that caused considerable damage to the restaurant.

And although he couldn't be certain, he was fairly sure Jack Graham had caused the explosion in order to collect on the insurance.

Hello?

Ms.

Servia had no way of knowing it, but this wasn't the first time agents had heard the story of the explosion at the restaurant.

Just one day before that, Richard Conley, a former coworker of Jack's from the General Adjustment Bureau, an agency, an insurance agency where Jack worked as an office

assistant at one point.

He had contacted FBI agents in Denver to let them know of the explosion at the restaurant.

Conley had been assigned to the case when it came in that September, and he strongly suspected Jack was responsible for the gas explosion at the restaurant.

But without any proof, he had no choice but to pay out the $1,200 claim.

Okay.

One day after they interviewed Lou Masservi, they received another call about Jack Graham, this time from Charles McEhran, a director of United Airlines legal department.

According to McEhron, Samuel Morris, a United Airlines flight kitchen employee who also owned a diner in downtown Denver, had conveyed his suspicions about Jack Graham to the legal department, but didn't want to speak directly with the FBI.

Morris had sold some pieces of kitchen equipment to Graham just before the diner opened, and when he heard about the explosion at the restaurant, he immediately thought it was an insurance fraud thing perpetrated by Graham.

The statements about Jack's possible involvement in insurance fraud were very circumstantial, but agents decided to speak with local officials to determine what exactly happened at the the Crown A diner in September.

So according to Assistant Fire Chief, by the time firefighters got to the restaurant, the fire suppression system had extinguished the flames.

And they could clearly see that, quote, someone had forced open the back door of the restaurant and disconnected

a copper gas line near the chicken roaster.

I would go ahead and say that was intentional.

So when the gas leak reached the pilot light on the hot water heater, it ignited and set fire to a portion of the kitchen.

That's pretty simple.

The arson investigator concluded the gas line couldn't have been disconnected without a wrench meaning it was intentional but he was unable to determine whether it was done with malice or fraud in mind when he was interviewed about the restaurant by local authorities jack claimed he had no idea who could have done such a thing but many of his former employees had been given keys so it could have been any of them in the end fire investigators and the insurance company really couldn't do anything but label the explosion an accident And nearly everyone suspected Jack was behind it, though.

That's rough.

With all they had learned about Jack Graham in the days following their interview with Helen and Jack, agents were beginning to reconsider their theory about Daisy and instead shifted their focus to Jack.

On a hunch, FBI lead investigator Roy Moore sent several agents to Stapleton Airfield, where the crash scene had been reconstructed and asked them to go through whatever belongings of Daisy's had been recovered from the crash.

Among the things found near Daisy's body in the field was her purse.

It contained several personal items and an old tattered newspaper article from 1951 that identified Jack Gilbert Graham as one of Denver's most wanted fugitives.

You buried the lead.

What?

According to the article, Jack had been working for a car company in Denver in 1951, when he was discovered to have forged nearly $5,000 in company checks.

He used the money to finance a road trip that took him all over the Midwest until he was caught in Lubbock, Texas after refusing to pull over, crashing through a police roadblock.

What the fuck?

You made me feel bad for this boy.

I know.

When they say, and again, feel bad for the kid.

Yeah.

Feel bad for the adult.

I felt bad for him.

I was like, damn, his mom moves out

and, you know, not having a great time together.

Exactly.

Damn.

And that's the thing.

When they were going through this, they initially, they thought, holy shit, Daisy, this 50-year-old Daisy

did this.

I did.

But then as you said, Daisy, I was like, what?

I said, what?

Well, after he crashed through the police roadblock, they searched the car and police discovered that Jack had been transporting bootleg whiskey in his trunk.

He's just like...

He's got so many things going on.

He served 60 days for evading police in Texas and was extradited back to Denver, where he was tried and convicted for the check forgery.

forgery.

In his pre-sentencing report, the probation officer wrote that Jack, quote, shows very little concern over his present, the present offense.

For the last couple of days, he led a wild life, spending most of his money on drinking parties and women.

What the fuck?

At his sentencing, Daisy pleaded with the judge on behalf of her son.

Oh,

begging for leniency and claiming he had learned an important lesson from the entire situation.

Never smuggle whiskey across state lines.

Don't crash into police brigades and don't steal money from your job.

Yeah.

Valuable lessons.

Yeah, valuable lessons.

She also offered to pay the restitution on Jack's behalf.

Oh, wow.

Moved by Daisy's intervention, the judge sentenced Jack to five years' probation and ordered him to pay the full restitution.

That's crazy.

So he managed to avoid jail time.

The more investigators got into Jack Graham's past, the more they were like.

Huh, maybe I'm not going to be able to do that.

They had assumed that the small insurance payout couldn't possibly have been enough to motivate someone to kill 44 people but the more they learned about jack the more they started to wonder whether that could have been true just on a different on the different side in the course of their investigation agents learned that jack and daisy had always had a difficult relationship obviously yeah which had become more so in the months leading up to the death right

Beginning in the late summer, the Crown A was having serious financial difficulties, obviously, which Daisy blamed on her son's bad management.

And she was considering closing the restaurant.

If that happened, Jack would have lost his job and all the money would have gone to Daisy.

But if Daisy were dead and the restaurant were sold, the money would go to Jack.

Agents went back to Jack's house to ask some more questions about the day he drove his mother to the airport.

And he told the same story he had already told.

Daisy had packed her own luggage, had been in a rush to get to the airport.

She asked him to purchase the three life insurance policies, totaling $12,000.

Then she checked the baggage and went to her gate.

After Daisy boarded the plane, Jack and his son Alan watched the plane depart and stayed on the second floor observation deck until the plane had vanished from their sight and they returned home.

I'm stuck on the part where he took his son to go fucking watch the plane take off.

Yeah.

That's diabolical.

Yeah.

Bye, Nana.

What the fuck?

Bye, Nana.

Yeah.

Like, that's so fucked up.

That is fucked up.

Yeah.

Holy shit, dude.

This story is wild.

Yeah, I did not think, I didn't know what happened at all, but I didn't think it was this.

Right.

Holy balls.

So while FBI agent Roy Mishke spoke with Jack outside and his partner went inside and spoke to Gloria Graham, his wife, under the guise of needing a drink of water,

they casually chatted.

And Gloria corroborated Jack's story, including the part about Daisy's quirky packing habits.

But there was one thing she remembered that she'd forgotten to tell them a few days earlier.

According to Gloria, just before they were planning to leave for the airport, she'd seen Jack carrying a box about 18 inches in length, which had been wrapped in Christmas paper.

Huh.

A few weeks earlier.

Here's November.

It's early November.

Yeah.

A few weeks earlier,

Jack had talked about getting his mother a set of X-Acto knives she could use to carve jewelry.

So Gloria assumed Jack had bought those.

Although she couldn't confirm whether Jack had actually given the box to Daisy, Gloria assumed he had put them in in her luggage so she would discover them once she got to Alaska.

She said, my husband's just a sweetie pie.

Yeah, this is a nice gift.

At that time, there were only two shops in Denver that sold X-Acto knives, and neither had a record of selling one in the previous month.

Earlier in their investigation, FBI agents learned that the bag was significantly over the weight limit for checked baggage, and she was required to pay the $27.

fee.

I've been there, girl.

Or remove some of the items.

That happens to me every time I go to the airport.

yeah the baggage clerk remembered their interaction with daisy and she recalled jack insisting that they just pay the additional baggage fee rather than unpack everything in the airport oh

if their evolving theory was right that jack was responsible for this his having put the box in her luggage would have accounted for the additional weight

also their theory would have accounted for his insistence of just paying for the fee rather than taking out the stuff and having daisy discover the box that they believed contained the dynamite.

Wow.

Yeah.

Andrew Field said if Daisy had been a little cheaper or a little more inquisitive, this never would have happened because they came very close to opening the suitcase.

Oh, that's awful.

Based on the evidence and everything they'd learned, investigators obtained a warrant to search Jack and Gloria's home, where they discovered, among other things, copper wire very similar to that which they found in the wreckage and believed to have been part of the explosive device.

Also found in their home, taped against the back of a heavy bureau that was flush with the wall, was an additional insurance policy taken out the day of the flight with a payout of $37,000, which today would be $434,000.

Wow.

And Jack was listed as the beneficiary.

Damn.

Taped it

behind a bureau.

He's like a criminal mastermind.

The agents trace the copper wire back to the store it was sold in in Denver, where the owner identified Jack Graham as the purchase, the customer who purchased it a few weeks earlier.

The way you set this up, I really didn't think that's where we were going.

Until that point in the investigation, the FBI had little more than circumstantial evidence and hearsay connecting Jack Graham to the bombing.

While the discovery of the additional insurance policy and the copper wire were not,

you know, they weren't the smoking gun, but they weren't like in, you know, it was pretty good.

Yeah, that's good.

It was definitely enough to convince the district attorney to issue a warrant.

Yeah.

And on November 14th, two weeks after the bombing, Jack Graham was arrested on suspicion of mass murder it's also crazy that crazy that it only took them two weeks to get this all together yeah they went yeah they went hard and just to think that they went out there initially to talk to him and they're really following this lead of daisy and then you look back and you think they were sitting on that house and the copper wire was sitting somewhere policy was

taped to the back of the dresser yes and he knew full well yeah but was sending them down the trailer totally different path like that must, as an investigator, and it probably happens so often, just the amount of times you, once a case is solved, sit there and think, and I was sitting in that house and that thing was right over there.

And he was right there.

Like, that's crazy.

And I, yeah, sitting down, looking at the guy who did it.

It's very much only going to find out like a week or two later.

It's very much like the Clary Starling Buffalo Bill moment of like you're just sitting there talking to him in the house and then you see the moth land on the thing.

Yep.

It's like, what the fuck?

I'm just standing here with this person.

Yeah.

Now, at first, Jack stuck to his story.

Just as Gloria had said, he had bought the X-Acto knives for his mother, and that's what his wife saw him carrying.

He said, yeah, there's no fucking record of that, my guy.

And the copper wire they'd found in his shirt pocket at the house, that was something they commonly used at the restaurant.

And the insurance policy, he didn't remember getting that one for a higher amount of coverage, but things were chaotic.

And he also didn't remember taping it to the back of his fucking dresser.

Are you kidding me?

He literally said things were pretty chaotic as I was trying to get Daisy on the plane, so maybe I made a mistake.

And taped this document to the back of my fucking dresser.

He had a dumbass answer for every question until one of the agents left the room and returned with several boxes of ammunition Daisy had supposedly packed for her trip.

In response, Jack told them he must have been mistaken about how much ammunition his mother had packed for the trip, and she'd left some behind.

So he just had a dumbass answer after dumbass answer.

The interrogation went back and forth

this way for hours until finally, just before midnight, lead investigator Roy Moore flat out accused him of lying, at which point he just gave it up.

That's always so interesting to me what it takes.

That's the thing, exactly, what it takes and how long are you willing to go for before you just give it all up?

What's the moment that like, he literally is just like, you're a fucking liar.

And Jack literally said, okay.

And then he took a sip of water and said, where do you want me to start?

It's always that.

It's always that.

Where do you want me to start?

At the beginning, maybe that would be great.

The point you decided to commit a fucking mass murder.

You killed 44 people, including your own mother.

Not only that, like that, very much that.

Yeah.

You watched that plane take off with your child.

That is

disturbed on a whole different level.

You made your son complicit in this whole thing.

Like,

now, according to Graham, it had all started about six months earlier when his mother had pinned the blame for the failing restaurant on his poor management.

But it actually stemmed from something much older than their business affairs.

Jack admitted he hated Daisy for sending him to an orphanage.

Which is fair.

That part, that hatred is fair.

And he said, and this part, you think of the child and you say, wow, that's sad.

Because he said when she got married to Earl King, he naturally assumed she would come and get him.

That's heartbreaking.

And her decision to leave her son in the orphanage for what he considered to be selfish reasons was just something he could never forgive her for.

And here's the thing.

Don't.

You don't ever have to forgive me.

No, there's plenty of people, though, that get abandoned and don't reconnect and send their mom on a plane with a fucking bomb committing a mask.

To not only kill her, but kill innocent people.

Exactly.

And also, like, was your mom a good mom?

No.

Was she super shitty for your whole life?

Absolutely.

Does she deserve to die?

No.

No.

Absolutely.

That's not the answer.

And it's not for you to decide.

Exactly.

And it's not for you to decide that those other people have to die too.

Like what the fuck?

You move on with your life, dude.

Like you can, you can compartmentalize the fact that you can say, yeah, that's fucked up.

That you were put in an orphanage.

And then when she got financially stable, she just fucking left you there.

Yeah, she's a piece of shit.

She's fucked up.

And yeah, I agree with you.

You never should have forgiven her for it if you didn't feel the need to.

But also, so you go your separate ways.

You're a grown man.

Yeah.

You're married and you have two children.

So why would you not do better for them?

Exactly.

Now their dad's a murderer.

A mass murderer.

Yeah.

And you made that choice.

Exactly.

Like, that's the thing.

So, but still, he said he moved on with his life.

He left his mother in the past.

Apparently, he got married.

He had children and was doing his best to be a decent father.

And then Daisy came back in his life.

But

okay, then you let her leave her, which again,

I know this is a complicated situation on like a familial level.

It is, but.

But then you take it to the level it got taken to and you say, nothing leads to that.

Here's I can understand it being chaotic and feeling like your life is a little in turmoil when she comes back.

But you deal with that and you figure it out.

You either cut her out or you learn to, you figure out a way to deal with the present.

Exactly.

But you do not take it to this level.

There's no validation for taking it to no justification for doing what you did.

There's just not.

Your story is sad.

It does not lead to this.

So many people have sad stories.

I have personal experience being abandoned by multiple people who were supposed to take care of me.

Never have I ever thought of sending them on a plane with a bomb to kill other people.

You can see that

I can say that his life story, sad, super, sad as fuck.

No justification for this whatsoever.

And if anything, do better.

Do better.

Do better.

All I want in my life is to do better.

Yeah.

And prove to everybody that ever like fucked me over that I'm better than them.

Yeah.

Do that.

Because see, as far as Jack was concerned, his mother's return and then her generous offer to buy the house, invest in a business with him, all that was just another selfish act, a seemingly benevolent gift that was really just an attempt to basically soothe her own guilt for being a bad parent.

Which I can understand.

Which I get why he thought that.

Yep.

And maybe that was it.

And maybe it wasn't.

Yeah, you don't know.

Maybe Daisy went into this.

I'm just saying, like, maybe people evolve.

I'm not saying you have to forgive people even when they do evolve.

Well, and especially the older people get and the closer they get to the.

Maybe she started thinking about her life.

Yeah.

And she said, and maybe it wasn't for purely selfish reasons.

Maybe she just said, I just want to do better.

And it could be both.

And again, I'm not saying that you have to accept that and that you have to be forgiving and that you have to allow that person back in your life.

But if that's the case, if you don't feel you can do that, one, you're perfectly, oh, you can do that.

Somebody's hurt you to that extent.

Just because they have become a better person doesn't mean you have to accept that.

I've got to figure out for a long, long time.

You know what that's called?

Protecting your peace.

See, and that's okay.

Protect your peace.

But you let that person go.

Yep.

Or you choose to work forward with them.

Those are your two choices.

You can't cause mass fucking tragedy and take other people from people they love because you are upset.

This is clearly not a well-man.

No.

This is.

beyond.

So he figured this was just trying to soothe her own guilt.

In fact, it quickly occurred to Jack that the gifts his mother offered weren't the nice, generous acts, but just another way of just controlling him.

That's how he felt.

Jack and his family may have occupied the majority of the house, but it was still Daisy who owned it.

And he may have managed the crown A diner or drive-in, but it was Daisy who owned the business and she could do with it as she pleased.

So he felt controlled.

When they started having financial troubles at the restaurant, Daisy announced to Jack that she was planning on selling it and he started to panic.

If he sold the business, she would recoup the investment and maybe even make a profit.

But all Jack would end up with was unemployment and an uncertain future for his family.

So it's exactly what the investigators thought.

Yeah.

But if he got rid of Daisy and made it look like an accident, Jack would end up with a significant portion of Daisy's estate and the life insurance payout.

And the rest of it.

He started coming up with a plan to kill Daisy and make it look like an accident, which is so fucking scary.

It is.

He explained that he'd constructed the bomb from several sticks of dynamite, a six-volt battery, and electric caps.

Just before they left the airport, he affixed a simple 90-minute kitchen timer to the explosives and wrapped it in the box Gloria saw him carrying, which he packed into his mother's luggage after removing the ammunition that she had packed.

Wow.

He wrapped it in fucking Christmas paper.

We've covered a case like that before.

It was something that happened on a subway.

And remember, it was the camera that was an explosive and it was also wrapped in

Christmas paper.

It's so chilling.

That adds a whole different layer.

It really does.

Mentally, I mean.

Now, although he had made it seem like poor time management in the moment, it was because of the one-hour timer that they left for the airport at the last minute.

He wanted to make sure the device didn't detonate until after the plane had taken off.

The plan was almost completely undone at the baggage counter when his mother was like, I don't really want to pay this overweight baggage fee, but Jack was able to convince her to pay the $27 and got her on the plane.

Damn.

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When the investigation started weeks earlier, it seemed completely unthinkable that the explosion of Flight 629 had been anything other than an accident.

But now Jack's confession proved that very thing that no one really wanted to believe.

He had killed 44 innocent strangers to benefit from the death of his mother, Daisy King.

That's

an unthinkable thing to wrap your fucking brain around.

Yeah, no, it is.

I don't want to wrap my brain around that.

Jack's confession to the murder of the 44 passengers on aboard Flight 629 seemed to bring the case to a simple and very sad close.

The problem, according to the U.S.

Attorney Donald Kelly, was that, quote, at the moment, it doesn't look like the federal penalty is sufficient to justify prosecution.

In simple terms, at the time, there was no law specifically prohibiting the bombing of an airliner.

We've got to make one real quick.

So any attempt to find Graham responsible for all 44 deaths would have fallen well short of the actual crime he'd committed,

which is mind-boggling.

At best, the FBI could charge him with peacetime sabotage.

What?

A somewhat dated charge that carried a maximum of 10 years in prison.

For killing four.

And a fine of $10,000.

Hardly an appropriate punishment.

So what do they do?

So in light of the federal statutes, the Denver District Attorney's Office worked fast.

And the day after Graham confessed, the DA's office filed a charge of murder against Jack for the death of his mother.

They were like, we can at least do this.

In a statement to the press, Denver District Attorney Burt Keating told reporters, this does not mean that the government will drop its charges, but merely defer to the more serious charges in state court.

Also, if convicted on the murder charge, Graham faced a potential death sentence, which the prosecutor intended to pursue.

Jack Graham waived his right to a hearing on the peacetime sabotage charge and was placed in jail on a $100,000 bond while waiting to be arraigned on the murder charge, which had been scheduled for november 17th but when he was brought before the judge on the 17th he asked for a 30-day continuance in order to quote obtain adequate counsel okay

in response the judge granted graham a week to find counsel and suggested jack use his time in jail to quote obtain services of attorneys and be prepared to enter a plea in this case yeah

Instead of using his time to find an appropriate lawyer, he immediately started strategizing for his defense.

In a jailhouse interview on the 18th, Jack denied planting the bomb on the plane and claimed that while he had signed the confession, he had only done so under duress.

He said, yes, I signed the statement, but it's not true.

They told me they were going to put my wife in jail and I'd better get it straightened out myself.

Then, somewhat suspiciously, he pivoted mid-statement to claim that he actually had no money, memory of signing the confession at all.

Come on.

He said, if I did, they had something, they had something Gloria signed, but declined to elaborate on what that could mean.

I love that now he's blaming his wife.

Yeah.

He's like, actually, Gloria signed it.

Maybe she did it.

When he was asked about what, if any, tactics the FBI agents had used to cause his duress, Jack said, well, they started about noon that Sunday and didn't stop until I signed a confession about 4 a.m.

the next morning.

Though he was quick to add that the agents had taken several breaks, including one which they, quote, took me out for dinner and gave me drinks of water and such.

What?

While he talked endlessly with the press about his innocence, the DA's office worked to build their case against him, now anticipating a plea of not guilty.

A few days after his interview with the press, Keating's office brought Lyman Brown, owner of Brown Brothers Supermarket, in to make a formal statement.

FBI agents had traced the dynamite used to the bombing back to Brown Brothers Supermarket and had hoped Brown could make a positive ID on the man who'd purchased it several days earlier.

The fact

that you could buy dynamite at the motherfucking supermarket is

quite a concept.

It's so 1955.

I'm just going to go pick up the milk, the eggs, and the dynamite.

Anything else you need, huh?

Yeah.

Like the fuck?

So apparently Brown was shown a lineup of seven men and he immediately picked

Graham out of the group as the man who'd purchased the dynamite.

You're going to remember the guy that purchases the dynamite at the supermarket.

I can't imagine they sold a shit ton of it.

He knows.

He knows every person who walked in and sold dynamite and bought dynamite.

You got a list.

He looked right at the the DA and said, that's him, all right.

It turned out that Brown had actually known Jack Graham years earlier when they both lived in Creming, a town just outside of Denver.

He told a reporter, it never dawned on me that this was the man I sold the dynamite to.

In fact, Brown only remembered Graham's purchase because Jack had specifically requested electric caps, which he described as a type that are discharged by a timer wired to batteries.

The dynamite and blasting caps were commonly used in the area by miners and construction crews needing to blow away their large sections of rock.

So the sale didn't seem strange at the time.

That's so crazy.

Now, the case against Jack got stronger when investigators interviewed one of Graham's recent employers, Damon Ward.

A little over a month before the bombing, Jack had taken a job at Ward Electric Company, which only lasted six days, which lasted only six days before he quit.

Ward said, I thought it peculiar that Graham should want to work in the place, since Jack owned a restaurant and was already fully employed.

So Ward pointed out that Jack claimed that electrical equipment in his restaurant occasionally needed repairing, so he thought it would be good to learn about electrical work.

Or you could just hire an electrician.

Yeah, exactly.

That, though, did not explain why Graham had asked Ward many questions about buying a timing device from him, though he ultimately purchased the timing device from Ryle Electrical Supply in Denver.

After more delays, Jack finally went before a judge for his arraignment on December 9th.

When asked for his plea, he said, I am certainly not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity before, during, and after the alleged commission of the crime.

Wait, what?

The prosecutor, Burt Keating, immediately objected to the plea, insisting it was improper, but the judge accepted Graham's plea and asked the defense and prosecution for written motions as to whether the plea was proper.

Okay.

Also, the judge ordered that Graham be committed to the Colorado Psychopathic Hospital, that's what it was called, for 30 days in order to be evaluated and asked the two psychiatrists be assigned to the case.

Okay.

The prosecution objected to this, saying, Graham appears no different from any other person except to the wholesale slaughter he committed.

The case was continued until the end of the evaluation period on January 9th.

Jesus.

When he first was arrested, Jack confessed to the bombing.

Then, when he was in front of reporters, he claimed he was innocent.

and his confession was obtained under duress.

Now, facing a judge, he claimed he was insane at the time the crime was committed.

Before, during, and after.

Yeah.

It was becoming increasingly clear that Jack was tailoring his defense to counter whatever the prosecution learned about him, and it wasn't going well.

In fact, Jack's evaluation period lasted longer than anyone had expected and appeared to have taken a serious toll on him.

Really?

On the evening of February 10th, guards found Jack unconscious in his cell.

two black socks tied around his neck in an attempt to end his own life.

Oh, that's dark.

The guards began CPR and he was revived, but according to his lawyer, John Gibbons, the suicide attempt had forever changed Jack.

He said, I asked him if he remembered trying to, and he said, trying to commit suicide.

He just had a blank look.

He looked at me and said, no, he didn't remember anything about it.

He isn't the same person I knew last week.

The man is gone.

Wow.

In the days after that, Jack did everything he could to convince the psychiatrist that he was indeed insane.

But like many criminals who try to get that unwarranted insanity defense, and most Americans at the time for that matter, Jack didn't really know what the symptoms of a psychiatric or psychotic disorder looked like.

So his performance of insanity, quote unquote, appeared to psychiatrists to be exactly that, a performance.

Yeah.

They said,

he walked very slowly and stared straight ahead with a vacant expression on his face.

When he was asked questions, he would respond with bizarre, nonsensical answers, likely under the erroneous belief that people experiencing psychosis were incapable of rational thought and lacked the ability to respond appropriately.

Ultimately, the psychiatrist concluded that his, quote, patchy amnesia, intermittent disorientation, and absurd as well as correct answers to arithmetic problems were indicative of what they termed, quote, simulated insanity.

Yeah.

In simple terms, he was fucking faking it.

After a few days of performing insanity for the evaluating psychiatrist, he dropped the act and returned to outright confessing.

Oh my god.

On February 15th, he again again confessed to planting the bomb on the plane after his attempts to stop his mother from traveling to Alaska failed.

He said, I tried to tell her how I felt.

She just wouldn't stay.

She wouldn't give me any reason at all, no reason why she didn't want to stay.

I thought it was the last time she was going to run off and leave me.

I just wanted to do things with her, to sit down and talk to her, just like everybody else's mother would do.

That's sad.

And it's like, but really?

But like, are you?

I don't think so.

From the moment agents found evidence of of an explosive device in the wreckage of United Flight 629, everyone had assumed the motive for the sabotage was financial gain.

And maybe at least in part it was.

But in his final confession to psychiatrists, Jack revealed an even deeper motive, one that maybe he didn't even recognize in the moment.

Daisy King, you know, you know, in the beginning, she had abandoned, avoided, and manipulated her children.

when they were children.

But when she reappeared in her son's life a year earlier, he thought, or at least hoped, this was finally his chance to have a real relationship with his mother.

When she threatened to sell the business, then made plans for the long trip to Alaska.

He felt like she was abandoning him again.

And for Jack, that trauma took over and he wasn't willing to endure it a second time.

So he made sure she could never leave him again.

And he made the ultimate, awful, sadistic, and evil choice he could.

Yeah.

Which again is unjustified.

Yeah.

And in a way, you're killing her.

So she is leaving, I guess.

She's going to leave you for good now.

Like that does, I don't.

Not only that, you've, you have these abandonment issues, which 100% I understand.

That, like, he, I get it.

Like, he was justified in having abandonment issues.

Absolutely.

But now you're also taking people away from other people.

Like, you're, you're causing a whole host of other issues.

Oh, just selfish

Across the

thing.

You know what I mean?

Like it's like you just, you're not even thinking

of that.

He didn't think of anybody else but his own.

No.

Which is

interesting.

Yes.

It's awful, but it's also interesting when you think about it because.

Was that little kid in him making that decision?

And that's why it was so incredibly selfish.

Yeah.

You know, it's a very selfish decision.

No matter what, wrong, like immensely fucked up.

But when you look at it a little deeper,

psychiatric point of view, your fully psychiatric point of view.

I think at least partially the child in him was making that decision.

Yeah, it does feel that way because it's a very

short-sighted

decision as well.

Also, he was 22.

I don't even think his brain was fully developed.

Yeah, I don't even know.

So, and that's interesting because your whole frontal lobe isn't developed at all.

Well, he was a couple of years older than that.

Oh, was it he was 22 and they connected?

He was 22 and they reconnected.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Anyway, it's just interesting.

It's a fascinating, it's a fascinating mindset.

The psychology of it is fascinating to think about.

Because even if it's like, even if he was making this plan to kill just his mother for this, it's like, you're not justified to do that.

You can't take another person's life because they hurt you.

I understand

the frustration.

I understand.

I can't personally understand or appreciate to the fullest extent those kind of abandoned issues.

I just can't because I did their stuff.

They're tough.

And that's the thing.

So I'm, I'm standing here from a point of view where I can't understand that deep kind of trauma.

Yeah.

But I know that no matter what it is, you can't kill someone.

We just can't live in that kind of society where you are allowed to murder people for

the trauma they cause you.

You know what I mean?

It's like a weird form of like vigilante justice.

Even though like in ways you sit there and you say like, yeah, like I understand trauma can make you upset and make you feel certain things but the thing is especially a whole plane of people that's where innocent people that's where it's like you lose me completely and even if he had just killed his mother he would have lost me completely yeah because you're because we can't you could just can't kill people obviously but

this is the thing he very well absolutely had abandonment issues for sure but there's got to be something else within him for sure that was like capable to do this abandonment issues or not because some people can deal with them right or or grieve through them.

You know what I mean?

Like not fully dealing with them.

Well, honestly, that is dealing with them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's grieving grieving through them.

And it's like, and they don't kill people.

And the thing is, part of grieving through them is recognizing that you were a child when those things happen and that like the child part of you is still sad, but you are an adult now and you have to make the choice and you have to make the steps to move on from that in whatever way is right for you.

Because the child didn't deserve that.

Without killing anybody.

Like the child did not deserve that.

No.

And that's probably part of healing is realizing that your childhood self did not deserve that or 100%.

Do anything to warrant.

Because abandonment issues make you think that something's wrong with you.

Of course.

Inherently.

So yeah, absolutely.

That's part of that.

So of course that part of it is sad.

But this was never the answer.

No.

Ever.

No.

In any lifetime, was this the this was never the answer.

It's so sad that therapy is just now becoming a mainstream back then.

It was

even and helped for that.

No, it's wild.

So

Jack's trial began April 16th, 1956, just months after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that cameras could be allowed in the courtroom to document the trial.

Oh, wow.

That meant that Jack Graham's case was going to be the first time Americans outside of a courtroom would get to see the workings of the court during an active criminal trial.

Oh, wow.

In his opening statement, Burt Keating explained to the jury that Jack had, quote, coldly, carefully, and deliberately planned his, quote, diabolical scheme of destruction and death, which is true.

Yeah.

And as a result, Daisy King had fallen nearly 6,000 feet to her death.

And everybody else did.

He had done this, Keating insisted, for financial gain and because of the lifetime of animosity he'd felt towards his mother.

Also, Keating assured the jury the state would prove as much.

And when it came to sentencing, there was only one possible penalty, and that is death.

Because remember, this trial can only be for the murder of Daisy.

In the days that followed,

the prosecution called a long list of witnesses from airline technicians, specialists, psychiatrists, accused, you know, accused family members, all of whom presented damning and compelling testimony to support the prosecution's theory.

The defense, on the other hand, appeared to be relying on

theater.

in flat-out denial of guilt.

That's never good.

At one point, when Burt Keating brought in a table full of airplane parts, Jack's defense attorney, Charles Vigil, vehemently objected and began throwing the parts on the floor in a surprising and very inappropriate outburst.

Tantrum.

Until he was loudly admonished by the judge and threatened with contempt.

Like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

Vigil began his defense several days later after the state rested what was a very strong case.

And for their part, the defense stuck to the previous statement that Graham was innocent and played no part in the sabotage of Flight 629.

But little was said of his supposed mental illness.

This was likely due to the fact that Jack refused to testify on his own behalf and wouldn't allow his lawyers to call his wife or any of the evaluating psychiatrists to testify.

In fact, the defense called only eight witnesses to the stand, none of whom provided evidence or statements that did anything to contradict the prosecution's case.

Yikes.

So if Charles Vigil presented a poor defense of his client at trial, it's because Jack Graham gave him few other options as well.

On May 3rd, the jury filed into the courtroom, expecting to hear more testimony on behalf of the defense, and were surprised when Vigil announced that the defense had rested.

They had nothing else to say.

In fact, the defense wasn't just resting their case.

They also submitted motions demanding a ruling on the matter of his client's sanity and a motion for dismissal.

Given that six of the state's psychiatrists had already testified that Jack Graham did not meet the criteria for insanity, the first motion was ba-boom denied pretty quick.

Like, what the hell?

The judge also denied the second motion, as it wasn't supported by literally any evidence or facts.

Instead, the case was sent to the jury for verdict.

It's about time.

On May 5th, Deputy District Attorney Greg Mueller gave his closing statements, in which he reminded the jury, quote, under the laws of Colorado and the laws of God, there's a place where a person who has planned a crime can turn back.

It has a Latin name.

Or the place of repentance.

It was available to Graham.

He could have turned back at any point.

The death he decreed for his mother when he sent her aloft to be hurtled out of the air and have her body ripped open and driven into the ground is the same death his murderer deserves.

And I said, whoa.

I said, I don't know how you recreate that.

The jurors were led out of the courtroom for deliberation at 9.49 p.m.

And they came back by 10.58 p.m.

for a verdict.

When asked to present the verdict, the foreman rose from his seat, handed the note over to Judge McDonald, and he read, we the jury find the defendant John Gilbert Gilbert Graham guilty of murder in the first degree and find he acted with premeditation and a specific intent to take life as charged in the information herein and fix the penalty at death.

Yeah.

When the verdict was read, Jack showed no emotion.

The verdict was devastating to Gloria Graham.

Yeah, who's two children?

Yeah, and Jack's sister, Helen.

Right.

But everyone else in the courtroom seemed pretty resigned to Graham's fate, if not pretty pleased with the outcome.

Later that afternoon, Charles Vigil insisted they would appeal it, citing at least 39 errors in the conduct of Judge Joseph McDonald's.

But even Graham was overheard telling his lawyer, I don't want to appeal.

I don't want a damned thing.

Oh, wow.

I think he's just like a broken human.

I think so, too.

In all ways, which is sad to be broken.

Like, it's fucked up what he did, but this case is sad through and through.

It's sad all the way to the end.

It's a tragedy, and his life was a tragedy.

Now, whether he wanted it or not, an appeal was filed on Graham's behalf, citing a number of errors, mostly related to the frequency with which the defense was overruled by the judge.

In their summary statement, the Supreme Court wrote, although the defendant, as indicated by the record, has stated that he desires to waive his appeal, if the Supreme Court

of Colorado feels that a defendant can waive such an appeal, then of course there is nothing further to argue, since the matter can be determined on that issue alone.

But there are many points that could justify reversal in the

case.

The justices may have believed in the strength of Jack's appeal in theory, but in the end, they upheld the lower court's ruling and ordered the sentence of death to be carried out during the week ending January 12th, 1957.

And was it because he didn't want the appeal?

I think it was just they looked into it and were like, no.

Okay.

They upheld it.

So it was on January 11th, 1957 that Jack Graham was sealed in the gas chamber at the Colorado State Penitentiary at 7.57 p.m.

And 10 minutes later, the prison physician pronounced that John Gilbert Graham was dead at the age of 24.

That's chilling.

The next day, he was cremated, and his ashes were buried next to his mother's in Denver's Fairmount Cemetery.

Oh,

in an interview many years later, one of Graham's evaluating psychiatrists, Dr.

James McDonald, said, I've never seen anyone since who killed so many people.

It was an extremely unusual crime.

He didn't give a damn, but that's because he was a psychopath.

He didn't care.

Yeah, there was something absolutely off about him.

Like, absolutely mentally off about him.

Very scary.

Just the lack of compassion and the lack of empathy.

And, and what that lawyer said, what the prosecutor said, at any point, he could have gone back.

This was a days-long, at least potentially weeks-long process of him deciding this.

And

following through with the plan.

And especially to kill that many innocent people when you just hate it.

No thought came into your mind.

What the fuck am I doing?

Even as, like, obviously you can't stop it then, but even when you watch that plane take off.

Yeah.

And it's like, did you watch people get on that plane?

He had to.

You watched all those people get on that.

You watched that baby get on that plane?

And then you think of all the times he could have stopped it, like I just said, but that final moment.

where they were checking her baggage.

That should have been your message from the universe.

Like, turn back.

Turn back.

I don't don't need to do this.

And he forged forward.

And that's so sad that it was that close to being the plan being completely foiled.

And that's telling.

And those lives being saved.

Yeah.

It kills me.

And that's the bombing of United Air Flight 629.

What a tragic story

through and through.

From beginning to end.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Truly.

Wow.

That's a, that's a heavy one.

And.

I just really feel for all those people's families who like also really didn't ever get justice because obviously like he he got the death penalty in the end, but he was never held responsible for doing what he did to any of those people, like those other passengers.

Because they didn't even have a law in the books.

And it's like, in that they all lost people because of one man's vendetta.

Yes.

Against one person.

Yeah.

On that plane and their loved ones happened to get on the same plane.

as Daisy.

And then just the fact, obviously they had a crazy relationship and a really volatile relationship, it sounds like.

But the fact that he was okay and planning to let his mom take the rap for that.

Yeah.

What if he had never been discovered?

He was just going to, like his whole plan had never been unfolded.

He was just going to live the rest of his life with his mom having that turn.

And he would have been happy with it.

Because to him, I think that would have been his best.

He was deeply.

angry and he had such deep-seated hate and rage for her yeah and such deep-seated issues from the abandonment and the treatment which was not okay treatment in any way no by him like by her, but that had the outcome.

But I think he would have looked at that as he

won in the scenario, which

points to

even more

how evil

some part of him was

to do this.

To pull this off, you have to be

to put that many people, to kill that many innocent people because you are mad at one person, you have to be fully evil.

Yeah.

The way he went about this is just unbelievable.

There's a level of...

There's something broken.

There's a level of emotion.

Yeah.

A lack of emotion there that is just.

Because then you just watched it.

You watched the people get announced in that press conference.

You watched all the, you probably saw pictures of them, you know, in the paper.

Yeah.

And their family members.

And you were just going to go on knowing you did it.

I think the worst part of all, and I've said it a couple of times, but the worst part of all for me is the fact that he let his son stand there next to him and watch that plane take off, knowing full well what was going to happen.

happen that gets me that's dark that's it again a level of just like

i'm not armchair diagnosing but like that's just a level of psychopathy that's weird yeah that's a level of like you're not a human that exactly you're a monster yeah yeah i hope that his wife and his kids did okay afterwards i feel awful so sad i really do feel awful for them wow yeah i had never and helen

And his sister, I know.

Because she lost her whole family.

Yeah, and she was living in Alaska.

And thinking your mother was going going to go visit her, right?

And they're trying to, you know, she's probably trying to rebuild a relationship as well.

And everybody deals with that differently.

And that opportunity got taken away from her.

And then she also lost her brother.

Yeah, and she's gone through, she went through the same kind of bullshit.

You know what I mean?

That he went through.

She was abandoned by her.

Obviously, she got put in an orphanage.

So that's a whole different set of trauma.

Yes.

But she also went through a shit ton of trauma.

And you can't compare who's traumatized.

No, you can't.

You can't be like, this one's worse.

Trauma's different.

It was ultra.

It's just different.

Yeah.

Like, it's just a different kind of trauma.

And that just sucks.

It's just sad.

It really does.

I just feel awful.

I hope that like her and Gloria somehow were able to connect.

Connect and that

the kids got to know Helen.

You know, like, you know, I just hope there was some happiness or

that came out of, you know, away from this.

Exactly.

Yeah.

What a, yeah, what a tragic tale.

It's a rough one.

Well, we did a spooky episode before this.

So if you haven't listened to that for some reason, and you need need a palate cleanser,

have at it.

Because that one we're joking, we're laughing, it's a fun one.

Yeah.

So that'll get you a little more on the.

Yeah, we're not super serious on that one.

So with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

We're not so weird that you let a years-long vendetta allow you to kill a bunch of innocent people.

Yeah.

That's wild.

You don't want to do that.

You really don't.

And just love each other and take care of each other, please.

That part.

You know, and take care of yourself.

Yeah.

Because like like ru paul says if you can't love yourself how entirely gonna love somebody else can i get an amen amen

If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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