As a literary criminologist for more than thirty years, I have studied and written about many of the most infamous crimes and criminals in U.S. history. One that has always remained with me is a pre 9/11  era bombing of an airliner in flight over Denver, killing all aboard. Though this is stunning and tragic enough, the circumstances and motivation of the mass murderer are even more shocking.

In this true crime short, I revisit this frightening case of mass murder in the skies as part of our dark history and a forerunner for similar type acts of terrorism in modern times.

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Jack Gilbert Graham has a unique place in American aviation history. He was not a pilot. Nor was he a passenger on that fateful day in the fall of 1955. Graham's impact was that of a mass murderer. He planted a dynamite bomb in luggage belonging to his mother, who was taking a flight from Denver, Colorado en route to Portland, Oregon. with her ultimate destination being Alaska to visit a daughter.

Graham's mother never made it to her destination. Nor did any of the other forty-four passengers and crew, as the plane exploded while airborne, killing those aboard instantly. And so began one of our nation's most shocking acts of terrorism.

Jack Graham's motivation was apparently to collect insurance on his mother's death, though some believe it was a difficult relationship between Graham and his mother that led to the tragedy. Either way, the massive explosion not only cost many others their lives, but has played on the collective psyches of Americans ever since.

Graham's mass murder did not go unpunished as he received the same fate as his mother and the other passengers aboard the ill-fated airliner, executed in Colorado's gas chamber less than two years later.

Now the chilling story of Jack Graham and his date with infamy...

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The evening of November 1, 1955 must have seemed pretty routine initially for those making their way through Denver, Colorado's Stapleton Airfield that later became Stapleton Airport. This was likely just as true for the thirty-nine people who boarded Flight 629 bound for Portland, Oregon, as the five crew members. After all, there was nothing particularly unusual that would have tipped their hand that this was anything but an ordinary flight, much less, one for which no one would arrive safe and sound at the destination.

Flight 629 was, in fact, a United Air Lines four-engine prop Douglas DC-6B airliner. Originating from New York City's LaGuardia Airport, it had made a stop in Chicago before flying to Denver without incident. Piloting the plane was World War II  veteran and experienced in the cockpit, Lee Hall.

At 6:52 p.m., Flight 629 took off smoothly toward nothing but blue skies for the 1,029 mile trip to Portland, nicknamed the Rose City. It took only minutes before the plan was cruising at 4,000 feet under good visibility. The crew, which included Hall, a copilot, and three stewardesses, went about their respective duties in anticipation for a nice, routine flight that would take them and their passengers over Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho.

The passengers, taking note of the signs that gave them the green light to unbuckle their seatbelts and smoke, if they so desired, likely took advantage of these opportunities  and were ready to relax, receive refreshments, and otherwise enjoy the rest of the journey.

It was a journey that was supposed to take around three hours to complete. With the weather clear and wind calm, there seemed to be no cause for concern as the aircraft passed over Longmont, a city in Northern Colorado, thirty-one miles from Denver and only thirty till reaching Wyoming.

Then disaster struck as eleven minutes into the flight, the plane exploded, sending flaming wreckage  hurling down onto fields of sugar beets and  farmland near Longmont.

Everyone aboard United Air Lines Flight 629 were killed instantly, including an infant, traveling with his mother to visit the child's father, who was in the military and assigned to a post in the South Pacific; and passenger named Daisie King, who had hoped to visit her daughter in Alaska but never made it for reasons that would shock the nation.1

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John "Jack" Gilbert Graham was born in Denver, Colorado on January 23, 1932. He was only three years of age when his father, William Graham, passed away without warning. Graham ended up in an orphanage as his mother, Daisie, was not able to adequately care for him. He was in a series of foster homes till age thirteen, when it appeared as though his life was changing for the better.

It was then that Daisie, who had married a man she met named John Earl King in 1941, took Jack out of the orphanage and they moved to a nice sized ranch in northeastern Colorado. However, life was anything but easy for the family as financial difficulties plagued them, forcing King to sell off his land, a little at a time till the entire ranch was sold by 1950.

The family relocated to Yampa, a tiny town some hundred miles from Denver. Daisie King proved to be a shrewd businesswoman, finding success in real estate and a drive-in restaurant on 581 South Federal Boulevard in Denver, among other ventures. In the following years, relations between Graham and his mother would grow strained with money, or lack of, often at its core. Pent up animosities and greed would later play a role in an unthinkable disaster in the skies.

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According to an article titled, "Sabotage: The Downing of Flight," Captain Lee Hall's initial indication that something was very wrong was the sound of a loud noise that appeared to come from underneath the airplane. After feeling the plane shake violently for less than a second, Hall's seat became unhinged and slammed in the cockpit's metal ceiling. Beneath the pilot, the airliner, moving at "several hundred miles per hour... erupted into one gigantic blast[, ripping] the fuselage apart into a thousand pieces [and] sending debris, luggage and passengers tumbling into space. Both engines separated from the wings and the propellers continued turn[ing] as they began their long, spinning descent to the ground below." 2

Wreckage stretched far and wide, covering more than two miles of Weld County's flat ground. The whole tail section of the plane had broken apart from the main fuselage, with huge sharp pieces spread across farmlands as if to illustrate the magnitude of the deafening explosion.

The locals were horrified in disbelief, not unexpectedly. According to farmer Conrad Hopp, who was working his fields just outside of Longmont, "It sounded like a bomb went off....I turned around and it blew up in the air!"3

Twenty-two year old Kenneth Hopp, who was the first person on the scene, said he "ran out of the house and saw the burning plane.... nosing toward the ground all on fire, with sparks trailing!" 4

Another witness, Bud Lang, told the Denver Post, it "looked like a shooting star; " while farmer Arlo Boda, noted that pieces of the plane were "all over these farms." He recalled later digging up "part of the engine manifold." 5

Under such violent and instantaneous circumstances, survival for any of the forty-four passengers and crew would have been all but impossible. Which, it turned out, was the intended purpose of the bombing, though targeting one person, in particular.

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