The Sabotoge of Flight 629

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

So Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate. How are you?

Doing just fine. It is fall, which is my favorite time of the year. We are heading to New England in a couple of weeks, which is my favorite spot to be in because the girls have to start thinking about colleges. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to think about it. They do think they want to be in the Northeast. And I went to Boston University and I said, Let's go check out the Northeast and see what you think. You know, and I know you've got two kids in college and stuff, but are your kids close? Do they talk to you? You have a boy and a girl on the younger set, boy and a girl. Do they talk a lot when they're in college now?

You know, they will communicate. I mean, even though it's a boy and a girl, they're quite close. And so when they're together, they spend a lot of time talking. They're both big, big musicians, you know, classical music, the orchestral stuff. And so they have a lot of common grounds. But, you know, one kid is in Omaha, Nebraska. The other kid is near Chicago for college. You know, so, of course, they're focused on their studies. You know, I'm interested, you know, the northeast, you know, obviously there's some amazing universities and colleges up there. But those winters, do your kids know what the winters are going to be like?

No, they don't. I didn't know either. We're going at mid-October. It's going to be gorgeous. They're going to fall in love with it. I'm not going to tell them about, you know, the like nine feet of snow we got one year when I was in Boston University and I had to walk through it and all of this stuff. But, you know, you make, I think if you have the right gear, you just, you make it through. My biggest concern is with my kids is they are very, very close and they're twins, you know, and they have been very far apart for a long time, but the last year they've really, really gotten close. Like one of them slept in the other one's bedroom last night. It sounds like they're going to keep doing that. And I said

to the person helping us, I said, you know, I need you to figure out from them how physically close do they want to be? Because that will actually dictate, they don't want to go to the same school, but that will dictate how far away they're going to be. Like you have to think about if somebody is in a crisis and probably people think I'm overblowing all of this, but I think if the two of them are close, physically close, because they love each other so much, they both have a shot at staying in a situation where they might feel a little uncomfortable being fish out of water, but to have each other not six hours away, I think, I think will actually help, but I don't know.

Yeah, well, when you say, you know, they don't want to go to the same school, but let's say you go and tour schools and both of them go, I want to go here and it's the same school.

They might, you know, and actually then one of them said, oh, I want to live with her. And I thought, yeah, I don't know if that's a good idea. But New England, you know, there's definitely this kind of schools that they want are pretty different schools. And they can definitely be close enough where they can drive. But, you know, then...

One of them was like, well, maybe Virginia. And I was going, okay, well, that's completely different. So let's figure out. So I said, that is the number one goal with the person helping us. We've got to figure out, do they want to be physically close? Because I have quite a few students at UT who tell me that they are currently in the process of trying to get their sibling to transfer to UT, even if they're 30 minutes away.

Because they said, we just didn't really know what it was going to be like. especially twins, we didn't know what it was going to be like until we were separated, and you already kind of feel a little lonely. So I'm just trying to get them to think about it. And so they're both, you know, turning it over in their heads.

Yeah, you know, I'm thinking, you know, I went to UC Davis, and my brother, who was two grades behind me, also went to UC Davis. So I had the life experience of living... in the dorms, you know, and then when he, when he came up to UC Davis, we ended up sharing an apartment. He never lived in the dorms.

And then we moved back into my parents' house as they, my dad was Air Force and he got transferred. So we're kind of, you know, maintaining the family homestead, if you will, while we were still, for me, I was finishing out school. And even though my brother and I were at the, you know, UC Davis, it's a, you know, it's a large campus. It's a large school. I don't know how it compares to like University of Texas, Austin, or any of the schools your girls are going to be looking at, but I never saw him, you know?

And we weren't like, like I imagine twins, there's definitely a connection that just general siblings don't have. My brother and I, I would say are close, would come help each other if in need, but we didn't hang out, you know, we did our own thing.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think, I don't know if they're unusual, but they're at a small high school together. They have friends that cross over for sure. Now they're both playing volleyball. So they're used to being in their same peer group. There was a birthday party yesterday on a boat. They both went because it's a mutual friend. You know, they're just in each other's circle. It would be like, and actually one of them said the other day, I said, oh, you know, this person's your best friend. And she was like, well, but, you know, my sister is actually, sisters are different. They are elevated above friends. the best friends. So I was actually thinking, you know, they would rather be closer to each other and in another state than be separated, but

one be with us, you know, in Texas, they're close. So I, they don't really want to think about college. They're so close to us and they don't want to deal with the, you know, well, they have to leave or they, what do they want to stay? Or I'm so open with whatever they want to do, but it is like, it's a thing. It's a factor. They have to figure that out because, and they can always transfer, but it, it, if they want to be close, then they're going to have to collaborate a little bit on where we're going. So I just said, we're going to Massachusetts.

There you go. You at least gave them a starting point. You know, I'm looking at it, okay, if I were in your shoes as a parent and I had, you know, these two daughters that are obviously very, very close, is there a world in which, well, you know what, they need to live separately from each other and gain a level of independence versus having each other be so close and not necessarily, you know, developing maybe a social skill set of that independence from their other twin. I don't know what the answer would be. That's just what I'm thinking through my head. Well, what would I do? I don't know.

They definitely, when put in a bigger environment, they definitely take the opportunity to make separate friends. They have different personalities and stuff, but, you know, ultimately they feel at home when they're With each other. And I don't think they want to live together. I don't think they want to be at the same school. I don't even think they care if they're in the same city. I do think they want to be able to get to each other if there is some awful thing that's happening, you know, like someone in our family dies or something, a grandparent or something. And they want to be. I don't think they realize it yet. But, well, anyway, enough about my children in the Northeast. Let's talk about your state because

that's where we're going to be today with this story.

Really?

Yep.

We're going to be in Colorado. Okay, let's set the scene. I will say straight away that for somebody who's scared of flying, I do an awful lot of airplane stories. And because this is a true crime podcast, you know that what's going to happen is not a simple accident. But I think this is a really, really interesting case and personality dynamics and stuff like that. I just am always fascinated about why people make the decisions that they make, you know? So we're in Stapleton Airfield on the eastern edge of Denver, Colorado.

It's 1955.

It's November 1st. So this is a story about an airplane and what happens aboard and then the aftermath of all of this. Flight conditions are good. It's cold. It's November in Colorado. The flight is United Flight number 629. So it takes off at 6.52 p.m. There are 44 people on board, including the crew. So this is what, would this be considered like a passenger plane, I guess?

Oh, yeah. Forty four people. Sure. You know, and, you know, just right off the bat, as you mentioned, it's in my state in Colorado. Well, I've never flown in and out of Stapleton Airport because it no longer exists. Right. It's now Denver International. I'm at Denver International Airport all the time and I fly United Airlines all the time.

So this is starting to hit a little home.

I know. It's a little close. I just booked a flight out of the United.

I know.

But, you know, this is stuff that happened. So it's, you know, but I understand.

But oftentimes out of, you know, I can't speak for 1955, but today, you know, like with United Airlines, there's a lot of the smaller planes, especially because I hop up from Colorado Springs to Denver. You know, that's... generally what I do before I fly to, let's say, Atlanta or San Francisco or wherever I'm going. So when you start talking about 44 souls on board, that's the size of plane that I'm typically on. So I have a very good feel for what these passengers are about to experience, I'm afraid.

Okay, well, let's get into it. So 13 minutes later after takeoff, the air traffic controllers at Stapleton observed two white flashes of light. in the north-northwest sky, which is about eight miles east of Longmont, 29 miles north of Denver. So they've got these two white flashes of light. One is slightly brighter than the other. The lights appear for 30 to 45 seconds. At first, they are at an altitude of 10,800 feet above sea level, which is almost 6,000 feet above the terrain. And then the lights plummet to the ground. There is a blinding explosion. that illuminates the clouds up to 10,000 feet. In Weld County, so you know all of these places, in Weld County, six miles northeast of Longmont, Harold and Dorothy Heil hear a

tremendous boom. They look in their sugar beet field, and it's exploded into flames. And it is the wreckage from the Douglas DC-6B plane. The mainliner Denver is what it's called, and it's burning in their yard. And as much as you complain about a lack of photos, you probably have more photos than you could ever want on this story.

So let's start with photo number one.

Yeah, so aerial photograph. I'm looking at agricultural land. You can see the various plots of land laid out for the types of crops. I couldn't tell you what kind of crops. It's a black and white photo. Looks like it's taken at an altitude of 500 feet. I mean, it's not, they're not very high up. And what I'm seeing is I can see what appears to be wreckage just because of, I can see what in this particular field, sort of what I'm assuming is the main part of the airplane fuselage and the debris around it. There appears to be some secondary impact sites in a different crop area just further into the photograph from this angle, and then probably on the order of 30 response vehicles that have lined up as they are processing this crash.

So this is a bad crash. And what I observed from that photo, the aerial photo, is, man, there's nothing there. It is all agricultural land with tiny dots of buildings, could be houses, could be grain silos, little spots, but it is so vast.

Well, I think a lot of people who have never been to this area don't really realize that once you get outside of Denver going east, it's nothing but plateau. It's just flat land going all the way out to Kansas. And part of the joke, like I mentioned, I'm at the Denver International Airport all the time, which is awesome.

miles east of where Stapleton Airport was, which was really kind of more downtown Denver. And so when they built the Denver International Airport, the locals were calling it the Kansas International Airport because it's so far east. But everything from the front range, from the Rockies, like I live on the side of Cheyenne Mountain. I'm on a mountain right now. But when I drive down the mountain, everything east...

As far as the eye can see is nothing but flat land like what you are seeing in this photograph.

Yeah, it was vast. I was expecting mountains, not massive amounts of agricultural land. But thank goodness it didn't land in a major city or anything. It lands in the middle of nowhere, except for Dorothy and Harold, whose beet field is on fire, sugar beet fields on fire. So Dorothy stays with the couple's baby. Harold runs towards the explosion.

He's looking for survivors. There are none. It's not long before the neighbors and reporters and police and everybody else arrives. And there is someone from the fire department, Longmont Fire Department, and he's a chief. And he sends a long pumper truck into the field to try to extinguish a burning woman.

So several hundred yards to the south, they extinguish fires radiating from the nose section of the plane. It's been badly damaged by the crash. There's a historian named Andrew Field who wrote a good book about this. He says that the aluminum side panels splayed from the ground at awkward angles and inside there are three more dead bodies in different parts. So they're looking at all these different parts of the plane and there are dead bodies inside, outside.

Firefighters find the smoldering midsection of the plane several hundred feet further south. It's been flattened by the impact. Bodies are scattered among the cabin area. It takes three days to put out the fires, which at this point have spread over 100 acres. So now you get to look at the other photos. So two, three, and four shows you the tail in the field, the wreckage in the hole, and the wreckage in the warehouse where they put the plane back together.

Yeah, so photo two is, as you said, the United tail. It's showing that. It doesn't appear to have been subjected to any fires. It appears to have been broken off from the main fuselage, and it's just sitting upright as if it were still attached to the plane, but it's not. Then photo three is a photo taken of an impact site.

It's basically a crater in the middle of one of these, you know, agricultural fields. I think you said this is sugar beets. I wouldn't be able to tell you if it's sugar beets or not. And inside this crater is just a mangled mess of airplane components. Not recognizable to my eyes. I have no expertise, nor have I ever responded out to an airplane crash in my career. And then photo four is... appears to be the wrecked plane inside a hangar.

Look at the part in the back. I mean, if you look at the very back of that, there's a guy standing on top of it.

So there it's, you know, obviously you've got parts of varying sizes from large parts of the plane inside here to individual components. You know, I know that the way that NTSB investigators and engineers that, you know, when they recover this type of crash material, they will often lay it out in its anatomic position relative to the plane, if you will. I'm not sure that that's been done at this point. Obviously, this plane, as in any type of plane crash in which a plane is coming down from 10,000 feet, the plane is just completely broken up.

It must have been terrifying because they see these flashes of What did they say? It was like 6,000 feet from the terrain in the air. And then, I mean, that's incredible. So we've got the Longmont National Guard that comes to the scene. They're about two hours later. So now we're at 10 o'clock, dark outside. And the United Airlines recovery team is on site. And, you know, there's like an operations manager there. There's a medical director that comes.

People are coming all night, essentially. So 629 originated in New York. And it made a scheduled stop in Chicago where its malfunctioning propeller de-icer was repaired. So it had a bad propeller de-icer and they repaired it. And at 6.44 p.m., four minutes before its scheduled departure time, it left the Denver terminal for Portland. And then it was going to go to Portland and then it was going to go to Seattle. And that was its ultimate destination.

Five crew members left. 39 passengers, and they ranged from age 13 to 81.

No, any time there's, you know, passenger aircraft that's gone down, it's just such a tragedy.

This is something I did not know, and I don't know if you've heard this or if you're old enough to remember this. I myself am not old enough to remember this.

What are you?

So, I don't know if you, I should ask my mom if she remembers this.

Okay. Okay.

So you could go to the airport, at many airports across the United States, in the 50s, and many airports, they would have these coin-operated kiosks where you could buy life insurance for your flight.

Well, thankfully, I am not old enough to remember that. I don't know if anyone.

Realistically didn't start flying into... I think the first time I ever flew was a military plane, a C-5, to go out to Hawaii with my family and I was 15 years old. So we're talking 1983. I figured you weren't old enough.

So I thought this was really interesting and, of course, shows the fear that people felt about flying in the 50s. So you could go and get a policy for $ 2. 50. You pay it in quarters before you get on the flight. And you could get somewhere between $ 6, 000 and $ 62, 000, $ 63, 000 worth of life insurance before you get on this plane.

And my understanding is it was a one-way thing. So you get life insurance for that one trip. So $ 6, 000 to $ 62, 000 today is somewhere between $ 76, 000 and $ 765, 000 worth of life insurance for a trip from Denver to Seattle or whatever.

There's no way in hell I'd be buying life insurance from a kiosk right before I boarded a plane because it seems like that's going to jinx me.

It was very popular. So when investigators look at this, they find out that the total amount of life insurance on this flight was $ 655, 000 worth, which is $ 8 million today, more than $ 8 million. So that plane was $ 8 million worth of life insurance flying on it.

Okay, so I'm gathering that... Instead of this being some sort of terrorist act, that this was a financially motivated crime.

I don't know. I mean, I think so far this is just an explosion. And I don't know how much life insurance plays into it.

Okay. Well, it's just an interesting fact. That's all.

It is so far. I know you don't believe me. So the flight took off at 6.52. And at 6.56, Captain Hall, who's on the plane, made a routine call to the tower. He reported that the plane was in passing over the Denver Omni, which is a broadcasting radio station beacon used for navigation, which is several miles to the northeast. And that's the last anybody heard from the cockpit.

Seven minutes later, they crashed. So then you're thinking, is this outside forces? Is this the captain doing something wrong? We know it's probably not a mechanical failure, although the de-icing thing was a little weird. And so, you know, it's interesting to think based on the evidence that we have as we move along, what the different possibilities are.

So you have those two flashes that were seen, and then the captain goes radio silent. So he's not reporting anything weird happening. But if he were going to do something weird, which has happened, you know, he wouldn't have reported it.

Well, I think, you know, at least at this point with what you said, we can't rule out a mechanical failure.

Right.

Um, and then, you know, is there an intentional act, you know, to cause this plane to go down such as, you know, was there an explosive put on board as we've seen with other types of planes that have, have been blown out of the sky?

Yep.

Or do you have a situation to where somebody on board, uh, such as a pilot has decided to take this plane out in some, some capacity? Um, You know, but that's where this, you know, you get your experts out there and they're now evaluating, well, what brought this plane down? Is there something mechanical? The explosive side is usually pretty obvious to these experts, you know, or, you know, do you have a pilot? Whether it be through human error or an intentional act, did the pilot go nose down and drive this plane into the ground?

I mean, one thing also about the experts who are pretty impressive as far as I'm concerned is how many crashes of this magnitude by 1955 have they actually dealt with? I mean, we know people now have dealt with all kinds of crashes, but in 1955, this was not normal at all.

The little bit of airline history that I'm aware of is it really was in the 1950s in which passenger airlines were... you know, being routinely used. And even though, you know, planes do go down, it's a relatively rare event. You know, I would say that at this point, any of these investigators that had any experience are probably out of the military. Okay.

Well, let me tell you about these investigators. One is a civil aeronautics board chief investigator. One is they call a regional investigator. I don't know what that means. And the other one These are the three main guys, is the general manager of engineering. And they all three oversee this investigation. And I'm assuming, you know, the federal government is also, the feds are there and everything.

Sure. Okay.

So the civil aeronautic board chief investigator says this is a really unusual crash because they're looking at malfunction first. And he says when a plane usually malfunctions and crashes, it hits the ground in one piece. And he said in the rare case that a mechanical issue causes a plane to explode in the air, the debris is still recovered nearby. But this crash is six square miles around.

The debris is spread over 12 square miles. And so he's, you know, I think immediately they say this is not so much a crash as an explosion. A few days later, the FBI, who's involved, discovers two emergency parachute flares deployed to illuminate the ground before explosion. and emergency landing. Okay, so it sounds like the pilots would release those. Is that what you would think?

That's what I'm guessing, yeah.

And they think they're in trouble. They release them so they can see where to go or where to land. I don't know. I had never heard of that before.

No, I hadn't either.

Emergency parachute flares deployed to eliminate the ground. So now there are a lot of theories happening amongst the investigators, too.

Okay.

So the civil aeronautics guy... thinks that a combustible piece of cargo or luggage was put on board either by mistake, okay, well, it wouldn't be in our show if it was a mistake, or to sabotage the flight.

You're spoiling it.

I mean, our audience is smarter than that. Although they had never been a confirmed case of sabotage in U.S. commercial aviation. The sabotage of a plane outside of Montreal in 1949 was well-known. And the investigators are all over it because you and I have talked about that story. Do you remember? Extramarital affair.

Oh, yeah.

His wife gets on the plane. I think she has life insurance. Maybe she got into that kiosk. They should get rid of those kiosks. And he blows up the whole plane and it crashes and kills everybody on board. So this is fresh in their minds because this is only six years later. So that explosion killed 23 people.

Well, and this is where, you know, you've got these investigators that predominantly have engineering backgrounds, you know, and they're going to be smart enough. They're going to recognize that, oh, damage with some of these parts, you know, is unrecognizable as many of these parts are. To them, they recognize what those parts are and what they should look like and the forces that these parts were subjected to if this was just a crash. They're going to see certain parts.

They're going to see certain characteristics in some of these parts where they're going to go, oh, there was an explosive force applied here. So that's going to start to give them an indication where on the plane, you know, this explosive force originated from. And then when they look at where that is, is it somehow related to the fuel system, right? Where you have potentially something that could cause an explosive type of force. Or I think you mentioned they're going, well, it's in the cargo area. There should be nothing in the cargo area that would cause this.

So it sounds like there may have been a bomb on board.

So they do exactly what you said. They go to the cargo area. And there is a strong smell of gunpowder or an exploding firecracker. God, you would think if there was a bomb in there, it would have been a much stronger smell than that. But they say it's the smells in the bay and the plane's stringers, I don't know what that is, are bent outward, indicating there was an internal blast from inside that bay.

Yeah.

Well, if it's something akin to gunpowder, then I start thinking, you know, something like a pipe bomb. which is something that I do have some experience with during the course of my career. And to bring down a plane, you don't need something large. This is where you just need something that's going to breach that fuselage, and there's a good chance at that plane, especially if it's near where the fuel tanks are and the wings and stuff.

Now, what would two flashes be? Wouldn't it just be one flash, or do you think it would be an explosion and then the fuel— exploding also? And they said one's bigger than the other.

Yeah, you know, maybe. I don't think I have any great insight as to, you know, why two flashes. And even, you know, you think about, let's say there is a small bomb that's been put in the cargo area. When that detonates, that's not necessarily going to cause a flash that witnesses on the ground are going to see, but there could be a domino effect of other aspects of the plane that are now flashing, you know, from they're erupting, you know, whatever it is. I mean, that again, this is where there are experts that handle this type of thing.

And they're probably going, oh, two flashes. Well, that's the left ring and the right wing, right, where a lot of the fuel is at.

So the FBI is on the scene. This might give you some more information about what you were just talking about. FBI is on the scene and they find five metal fragments at the crash site that don't match any part of the plane. And they said they are covered in a film of gray soot. One of the fragments is red with the letters H.O. written in blue. They figure out pretty quickly it's part of a six volt hot shot battery. That doesn't belong on that plane.

Yeah, well, this is now, I can't say this is a pipe bomb, but this is a, whether it be a pipe form or it's another type of, another shape, this is now where you have a source from the battery in order to detonate the charge to light up the gunpowder. And it's likely contained within a hard metal container of some sort. which when you light that gunpowder that's inside this enclosed chamber, it over-pressurizes rapidly. And technically gunpowder is not an explosive. But when you contain it, like with guns, that's the same thing. It combusts. It produces a tremendous amount of heat. That heat expands inside this enclosed container. And that container blows apart. And now you have shrapnel. that is flying everywhere. And that's what

is causing, you have the explosive effect, of course, but the shrapnel itself is also going to be breaching all sorts of things inside this plane that's going to be very damaging.

Well, I know we're going to have more information about what exactly happened. Right now, they're trying to figure out if a passenger had been targeted since it seemed like This started in the cargo bay. So the FBI has an interesting finding. There's a local hunter who flags him and says, here is a baggage claim ticket that he found in a bush 15 miles from the crash site.

And the ticket indicated that one of the passengers' itineraries belonged to a woman named Daisy King. She was going from Denver to Portland and then to Seattle and then eventually to Alaska.

Hmm.

And she had paid $ 330 worth today money for a 37-pound overweight bag. So she paid for a really heavy, heavy bag, which was unusual.

Okay.

So, you know, the thing that they will find out is that Daisy's luggage is totally shredded, and it's the luggage that's closest to the crash site. So... They think that this heavy bag that Daisy knowingly paid money for and brought on this plane was the bag that did it. And Daisy's dead, obviously.

Well, you said the luggage, Daisy's luggage is the closest to the crash site. Do you mean that it was closest to the origin of the explosion inside the cargo hold?

So let's see. They say that it was closest to the explosion. So you're right. And they said, you know, contrasting her luggage to everybody else's, Her bag is shredded, but she has a purse filled with personal stuff that they can still recover. And I guess that was probably on her. So the luggage got destroyed, but her stuff didn't.

They find letters, a checkbook, $ 1, 000 in traveler's checks, an address list, safety deposit box keys. Everything that would have been valuable to this woman was in this purse, and it survived.

Yeah, so if it's actually Daisy that's checking her baggage and voluntarily paying for this overweight bag, and this is the source of the explosion. Sounds like Daisy is likely involved in bringing this plane down.

And taking her own life?

Yeah, this is suicide to collect life insurance for her family, for whatever reason, or her loved one, or who knows.

Have you heard of anything like that before? I mean, I've definitely heard of people taking their own lives in hope of getting insurance money for their family, but this is pretty to kill other people.

I can't think of a case that I've heard about. I mean, this isn't a case that I would be involved with if something like this had happened in my jurisdiction. I'm not aware of any cases. I know the real infamous case out there is that MH, the Malaysian Airlines MH370. And I actually was a host of a show that covered that case. And I know with the details that I saw, I'm going, one of the pilots did this.

And for me, it was like he was willing to take out this huge airplane with hundreds of people on board to commit suicide. And that's just me kind of going, well, that's my opinion. I'm not saying that that's what happened. I'm just going, God, I kind of think that's what's going on there. I would not be surprised if you have somebody that is, for one reason or another, is willing to take out other innocent lives to kill themselves.

That would not surprise me at all. It's like a mass shooter, right?

Yes, I think you're right. I didn't have a bunch of information about Daisy. So she is 54, and she's a mother, and she's on this flight, like I said, heading to Alaska, carrying every... thing that is possibly close to her, the documents that she needs in this purse. They look around more in the purse. As I told you before, there's personal letters, checkbook, traveler's checks, address list, two safety deposit box keys. So I don't know if she was going to Alaska to retrieve something from a safety deposit box. I don't know. But they said that investigators find there are a Because she has a 23-year-old son named Jack Graham, and he is up to no good.

And these newspaper articles document his criminal activity, and she kept them in her purse. So they home in on Jack Graham pretty quickly.

Yeah, what kind of criminal activity is Jack involved with?

Well, let me tell you. Four years earlier, he's 19. He was charged with check forgery and he was put on the Denver County most wanted list for check forgery. Before that, he was caught bootlegging whiskey in 55 the same year. He had been working at a drive-in restaurant that Daisy had bought him to operate. She had money.

So her second husband was a wealthy rancher. So she ended up having this way. He died, I think. And, you know, she ended up with all of this money. So this restaurant, this drive-in restaurant on September 5th, exploded. And Jack was working there. At the time, he said it was a disconnected gas line, but he pocketed the insurance check, didn't give it to his mom. And then a few months later, his Chevrolet pickup truck stalled, with quote marks, on a railroad track. And then the train hit the truck, and he got the insurance money. So you see there's a trend here with Jack.

Yeah. And so now, you know, my question is, did Jack go with Daisy, you know, to the airport? And was she, you know, maybe transporting, you know, stuff that Jack said, hey, you know, take this up to Alaska for me, right? And it's the overweight stuff. Well, no, you know, I'm now just kind of going, well, with the history that Jack is demonstrating, And his mom is worth a lot of money. She's not going to bat an eye about paying extra for this overweight bag. So that's probably isn't going to clue her in that something's wrong.

But Jack is likely going to have an inheritance. There's possibly life insurance. Maybe he's, you know, she stopped at a kiosk at the Denver Airport and got life insurance and Jack would be the beneficiary. But Jack's the one that put the bomb in her luggage. And maybe Daisy didn't know about that.

Well, I would say to the list of financial gains that you just rattled off, yes, to all of them. All of that happened. She stopped at this weird kiosk and bought a hefty life insurance policy. She already had life insurance policy. So she did this the day of the flight. So Jack worked in construction in Colorado and Alaska.

And at these jobs, he used dynamite. And, you know, they start smartly suspecting that Jack had done this to cash in on her life insurance policy. And there is an inheritance also. But Jack is a little more complicated than that. And so now we switch from a crash investigation because we know this was intentional to I'm pretty sure Daisy didn't know about it, to what is happening with Jack, because I don't think it's just about money.

And also, I come back to, this is the second or third time that we've accused somebody on this show of planting a bomb on a plane and killing all these people just to get to one person i don't understand that mindset i still don't understand that mindset and i don't know if that's the you know like in las vegas that this the person who kills a lot of people You know, I don't know what category that's under, but it just seems needlessly complicated, frankly, in a way, this plane crash stuff, you know?

Yeah, well, like I mentioned, you know, the mass shooter who goes and kills a bunch of people in a shooting and then kills themselves.

Yeah.

You know, there's a certain psychology. And, you know, I think you made a statement that's important is, well, what is going on in Jack's life? And I think you said Daisy has no involvement because I would go, well, it's Daisy dying of cancer. And this is a scheme that she cooks up to, you know, help set her son up and take her out of the pain and suffering that she has from cancer. But let's say Daisy's not involved at all. So Jack is the one that is kind of going, oh, I can take advantage of my mom flying out to Alaska. And is it purely financial?

He's pocketing a bunch of money, maybe. But is there something else going on in Jack's life? Maybe he owes a lot of money to somebody. Then now this is how he's coming up with a way for self-preservation. You know, who I owe money to is possibly going to kill me unless I pay them. And now he comes up with a scheme, in essence, to kill 44 people so he can benefit and maybe pay somebody that's going to cause him harm.

Well, let's see, because we're about to hear from Jack. The FBI plan to interview him. So this is November 10th and the crash happened November 1st. So we're talking about nine days later. And of course this is exploding in the, so to speak, in the news. And it's a huge story and it scares people to death. So when they talk to Jack, they find some things interesting about him. Number one, he never calls Daisy mom or mother.

He calls her Daisy. And they find out that when Daisy was married the first time to Jack's father, They were much poorer than when she was married to the second husband. They couldn't afford or she couldn't afford after her husband died to take care of Jack. So she left him at an orphanage when he was six. So then, you know, you have to think, I don't know when she remarried, but her luck has certainly changed with the second husband because she's now worth millions of dollars. And so they think money is a motive, but they think there is some deeper resentment. And I know it doesn't particularly matter because if he did it, he did it.

But it's interesting. You know, this happened when he was six. There's a little bit more information because she trusts him with a lot of things. So I don't think that she is suspecting that he has this deep resentment of her that he does have, apparently.

Yeah, well, that sounds... I mean, it sounds like there's going to be an interesting dynamic as Jack gets older, you know, and, you know, his criminality is coming out. He's relying on skill sets that he utilizes at construction sites with the dynamite, you know, in order to be able to financially benefit from these insurance frauds, you know, schemes that he's doing. And then this one is probably, I would say, the ultimate. You know, he's able to get back at mom for... not only the abandonment at the orphanage, but probably other lifelong issues that he's got and financially benefit tremendously from the inheritance and the insurances.

So this may be the ultimate scheme that Jack has thought of, and he's willing to take out a lot of innocent lives.

It's an interesting interview. He says that he took his mom to the airport, that he... bought these life insurance policies because there was more than one at these kiosks on her behalf, meaning I don't think she knew.

Well, she's at the gate, and he's sitting there at the kiosk playing it like a slot machine.

I mean, that kiosk becomes very controversial, as you can imagine. So Jack's married to a woman named Gloria. I don't know if Gloria knows that this was going to happen. So they say... what did Jack, did Jack give his mom anything to carry on board? Or was this all Daisy's idea, you know, to bring this piece of heavy luggage?

And she says, Jack surprised his mother with an early Christmas present. And the package was 18 inches long, 14 inches wide and three inches deep. And he told both his wife and his mom that it contained an exacto toolkit for doing art. So that was her birthday gift. And she puts it in this bag and pays the money because it's overweight. And then, you know, takes off on it. So if this really is about a grudge, she does seem to legitimately have no idea that he has harbored this against her. I mean, he's taking her to the airport. He's buying her Christmas gifts. Nobody, you know, is looking askance at any of this. Do you think it's more money?

Well, I lean that way, you know, because... Being abandoned at six in the orphanage seems so distant in the past, unless there was something more recent in which he wants to take mom out. He probably could have done that in a different way versus this. And there is some risk that Jack is taking by carrying out this type of crime. And you always have to ask, why is the offender willing to take this risk? And so somehow Jack feels that he will benefit more from committing this type of insurance fraud or however you want to put it versus doing something else that is more just focused on mom. So there's something going on there.

Well, the FBI calls Jack and his wife into the field office and they say, we've done all this testing and it looks like there is dynamite in your mom's bag. And I'm pretty sure she's not the one who put it there. And so they take him into custody. Not Gloria, though. I don't think she knew anything. When he's in custody, they search the house. They find boxes of rifle bullets, shotgun shells. There is also a small roll of copper wire wrapped in yellow plastic in one of Jack's shirt pockets.

There is a $ 37, 500 insurance policy on Daisy, which is about almost a half a million today. and it's hidden in a cedar chest. And then when they called the insurance company, they learned that Daisy had also taken out more policies, totaling about $ 153, 000 today. And they named, however, Jack's sister and the aunt as beneficiaries. So not Jack. So, you know, I was kind of saying something snide there, but Daisy actually was the one who took those out.

But Daisy put them in her daughter's name and her sister's name.

No, well, it's kind of telling, right? It is. Daisy's, she's not trusting Jack with the money in the case of her death. You know, this is showing that there is a divide between Daisy and Jack. And maybe Jack finds out about that, you know, and this is where now he's recognizing for me to get the inheritance or whatever.

You know, he's doing all of these fraudulent insurance policies that I'm sure the FBI is probably going to be discovering as they continue their investigation.

Yeah.

And listen, I don't know anything about what happened to Jack after he was in the orphanage. I didn't read that he was reunited with Daisy and she raised him after that. But if you think about these numbers, Paul, so he's going to get 25% of her estate. 25% of her estate is today valued at $ 1. 8 million. So you can imagine as a kid being left in an orphanage, told by your mom or somebody told you that she was so poor she couldn't take care of you after your dad died. And I don't know what happened after that, but now your mom is worth like, what, $ 8 million today?

And that seems like a lot of resentment. I mean, that would be hard to get over. It's one thing if she stayed in poverty, then he wouldn't have to blame her. But then all of a sudden, it's like she gets remarried at some point in his life, and all the fortunes change. I don't know. I mean, I know he wanted the money, but still, Lord, that's mean.

But we also have to consider Jack's criminal past. And he is committing multiple cases of insurance fraud. So I can't say that there's some external pressure for Jack to get this money. He may just have internal motivations. And this is the way that he's decided he's going to benefit is by defrauding the insurance companies. So this is where with Daisy, you know, Her dying as a result of this plane crash, he's benefiting financially. Maybe there's an emotional aspect to that, you know, taking her out, but maybe not. He may just be going, I can make a lot of money. I don't care if she dies.

I don't care if these other people die. I'm going to make a lot of money. Some people are just geared that way.

Now, why? the note that the FBI agents make of he never calls her mom? And you would think if you're trying to cover your tracks, you would feel sorry. He doesn't call her mom or mother. He calls her Daisy. There's a disconnect there.

Well, and she doesn't list him as a beneficiary to the life insurance policies that appear legit that she took out. So there's definitely a disconnect there, but is that Jack's, I mean, is he truly taking her out because he's just upset with mom? Mom is not part of his past criminality. He's financially motivated for sure. Now it's just a matter of, well, Am I going to kill mom because I hate her? Or am I going to kill mom because I'm going to make a lot of money?

I have a feeling it might be the second option there.

And it doesn't matter.

It's a twofer.

I mean, it happens either way, right, for him. Yep. Okay, so he, after hearing about the positive testing for the dynamite, he confesses. And this is what he says he did, which I thought was pretty interesting. He built a time bomb. 25 sticks of dynamite, two electric primer caps and a six volt battery. He set the bomb to explode after 90 minutes. So he set this bomb before they even left the ground. He hid it in the suitcase. He delivered the luggage to the United Airlines agents. They put it on the plane. And then he says, when they say, what about the other people? You know, you could have killed your mother some other way. And he said, the number of people to be killed made no difference to me.

It could have been a thousand when their time comes, there's nothing they can do about it.

Yeah.

Well, playing God there, I guess.

Yeah. But you know, there's a sociopathic mindset. Yeah. You know, it's, he's willing to do whatever he wants for his own benefit at the expense of others, including taking their lives. It doesn't matter to him. There's a lack of empathy there. You know, I, I, guarantee, you know, he's most certainly antisocial sociopath. He may even, you know, be border, borderline psychopathic, uh, you know, by, by his willingness to do this. Um, you know, so at starting at age 19, you know, he's blowing up a restaurant, he's, he's doing things, you know, there's a good chance this, this guy is probably a bonafide psychopath.

And how awful for Daisy, she bought him a restaurant to manage. You know, it seemed like she was trying. I don't know everything about the dynamics of their relationship. Obviously, I'm sure she bought him that truck that he put on the railroad tracks. And so I don't know if she's trying to make up for things that happened, but it's obviously not working with him. And psychopathic sounds right to me.

Well, he's, yeah, he's, Daisy is mothering, you know, but like buying him a restaurant, obviously that seems like an extreme thing, right? That's only what the wealthy can do. But he's the manager of that restaurant. He has to work. So she's actually, in some ways, trying to get him to be a functional member of society.

Right.

And he is resisting that. He's going, and again, I'm speculating, but just knowing, you know, this sort of the criminality aspect, I'm going, he's not liking the fact that he has to go into work at 4 a.m. in the morning and work, you know, 12 hour shifts. And he's going, man, I can get $ 100, 000 by blowing up the restaurant, you know, through an insurance fraud. And parking the truck on the railroad tracks. So that's his mindset. He's looking for the easy way out. And he's willing to take that easy way out at the expense of others, including his mom and their lives.

Well, so he's arrested. He's charged. He's supposed to go on trial in April of 56. In February, he is found on the floor of his county jail in He had tried to strangle himself with a pair of socks, which didn't happen.

No.

It was an attempt. He survives.

Yeah.

This is, Paul, Holes, the first televised trial in U.S.

History.

Jack Graham on TV.

Really?

Yep. The first one in 1956. And it is a parade. It's unbelievable. The evidence, of course, is overwhelming. They have huge pictures of the explosion in the plane and all of the people and their lives that were lost. There are 80 witnesses that testify against him. And the defense puts up eight. And those eight can't even, I mean, there's no defense. There's no defense. 174 exhibits introduced. So this is a spectacle because, of course, because it's televised, but also because You know, it was so upsetting to people who were really flying a lot.

And you're right.

I mean, people were starting to pick up the and it was so scary to begin with. I still think driving a car was scary also. So this was a big deal. And he is crushed, crushed by the prosecution. And of course, you know, he's found guilty after 60 minutes.

Yeah. Was this was this was he prosecuted at the federal level or the state level?

He is at, eventually, the Colorado State Penitentiary, and he is executed with the gas chamber. So I don't see, would that be at the federal level? I mean, it would have to be federal, wouldn't it?

This is more curiosity in terms of determining jurisdiction, because the bomb is put on the plane at Stapleton Airport in Denver, which is Arapahoe County. but then the plane explodes, I believe, over Weld County. You know, where do authorities determine the actual homicides occurred at? And it sounds like even though the FBI, as well as, I don't know if NTSB existed in 1955, but there is federal involvement in this case, but they decided they did not have the jurisdiction to prosecute. So it was remanded over to the local authorities. I'm just wondering, was it where... the plane took off at or was it where the plane exploded?

So he was charged with sabotage. So that's what he went on trial for. It was prosecuted by, who turned out to be a well-known DA named Bert M Keating. And he was Denver's DA.

Okay. It's, it's interesting. He's, he's been, you know, you say it's, it's sabotage. However, you have 44 homicides, right?

Yeah.

That's the weight of the case is you killed 44 people. Um, So it sounds like they decided that those homicides and probably the resources, the case was best tried at Arapahoe County. Weld County is tiny, you know, and they probably don't have the resources to prosecute a case like this. So I bet there is an agreement. I don't know what the jurisdictional– aspects would have been, but if there was some sort of jurisdictional aspect, I bet the Weld County DA said, hey, Denver DA, this is yours.

Take it. It's all yours, buddy.

I'm checking out at this point.

Well, he's found guilty, as I said. He is executed at the Colorado State Penitentiary gas chamber in 57. That happened pretty quick. The trial was in April. Yeah, the trial was on April 16th, and he was executed nine months later, something like that. So in response to this bombing, they changed some laws and added some airline safety. So it became illegal to sell life insurance, good idea, policies at airport vending machines. They were so popular. July 14th in 56, the president, who was Eisenhower, signs Public Law 709, which is legislation that makes the destruction of a commercial aircraft a federal offense. There you go. And it's punishable by death. And in 1960, J. Edgar Hoover, who was

the director, of course, of the FBI, proposed, let's X-ray all the luggage. What do you think about that, guys? Let's X-ray the luggage from now on to make sure there's not dynamite and a live battery in your luggage. And there is a memorial, Paul, that you can go see. It's at the base of the historic Flight Co. Tower, which was the former Stapleton International Tower in Denver, Colorado.

You know, so, yeah, I'm looking at Google Earth and Everything about that airport is gone. It's a residential area. There's a central park that's been made out of this land. But it appears that there is still a lone facility, lone building where this memorial must be in.

And it was dedicated November of 2025. Yeah. So, you know, plane crashes are terrifying to people and they're so rare. But, you know, it's still so scary to, But this was not to me like a plane crash investigation. It was a little bit more like, like the mass shootings, that mindset. I just, I'll never understand it. And so every time we tell one of these stories where it's so risky, but so detached and, you know, and, and then hurting all of these people and, you know, what's the motivation?

Money or is it, you know, anger or does it matter at this point? And sort of the brazenness of this 23-year-old who's ruined his life and his wife's life probably. I think all of those things come into play that are, it just makes it a very human story. So Jack didn't have to put a thing on a plane. He could have taken a gun and done this somewhere else.

He could have done a million different things. You know, it's still about to me about what people will do when they are so greedy, so angry. I mean, something went on with this guy that flipped a switch where he's been doing bad things, you know, for a long time involving his mom's property and it just keeps escalating and escalating.

Wow.

You know, in many ways, you know, the state convicting Jack and taking him off the street. I mean, that's obviously a public safety win. You know, Jack probably was going to do a lot more harm to people. You know, and this it does come back to, you know, this. Well, was Jack born this way or was this a result of his mom abandoning him? You know, it's that nature versus nurture. And I'm a believer that it typically is a combination of both. Yeah. But Jack was going, he's a bad seed. And in all light, if he was willing to do this type of crime and take all those innocent lives out, you know, think what he would have done if he had stayed out there on the streets.

I think, Paul, I'm going to attempt to not do an airline story for a long time. Maybe I could commit to a year of no airports exploding planes on purpose stories or accidental frankly because I don't like to fly I know you find it relaxing but I don't so.

Well you know I fly out of Denver all the time on United Airlines and you purposefully chose to do a case of flying out of Denver.

On United Airlines I know the last one was Montreal which you know I think was pretty far flung for you but this is right at home sorry I'll think about that next time you can you suggest murders in Austin Texas next time if you want if that'll even the score Oh.

That would be good. Oh, I like that. We have a lone female who's in her cabin.

In a cottage in the woods.

With podcast equipment in front of her.

That is safely enclosed in a fence. Nobody's getting in, but I do keep a knife out here just in case anybody's curious.

You can do better than that.

Oh, come on. I know I'm in Texas, but. All right. So next week, no airline crashes and hopefully a story, you know, another one where we get the person and it's not like an unsolved case at this point, you know.

All right. We're looking forward to it as always.

I'll see you.

All right. Bye.

This has been an Exactly Right production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi.

Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now.

And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.

Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin