Biggest Mass Murder in American History at the Time
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Below is an excerpt from my book, “Crimes Seen: A Collection of True Life Murder Stories.” In the book, the chapter is titled, “Man’s Plan to Murder Mother Kills 43 Others.” You can order “Crimes Seen: A Collection of True Life Murder Mysteries” on Kindle or in paperback by going to Amazon or by sending $12.99 ($9 plus $3.99 shipping and handling) for a signed copy to Jacob Bembry, P.O. Box 9334, Lee, FL 32059.
There was a man who had a plan to kill his mother == and he succeeded. Not only did he kill her, he killed forty-three other people along with her.
As a four-engine United Air Lines jet left the airport in Denver, Colorado the evening of November 1, 1955, a fifty-five-year-old woman named Daisie E. King boarded the airplane. She did not know that a time bomb, made of twenty-five sticks of dynamite was in her luggage. The bomb had been placed there by her son, John Gilbert Graham, who had purchased flight insurance on her before she left on her trip to Anchorage, Alaska.
About ten minutes after the DC6 jet taxied down the runway and took off, it exploded in the airs over Longmont, Colorado, killing all forty-four passengers aboard. The passengers included men, women and children who hailed from fourteen different states.
Witnesses told of hearing two loud explosions from the airliner. Jake Heil, an area farmer, said that he and Mrs. Heil had thought the airplane was going to hit their house.
A man in Platteville, Colorado said he heard “sort of an explosion” and had seen a “big bright light.”
When the plane fell in a sugar beet field, thirty-two miles north of Denver, it broke into pieces. Two of the pieces cut holes four feet deep in the ground and had burned. The nose of the plane was found seven hundred feet north of the other debris from the plane. It was smashed but had not burned.
The bodies of the victims lay strewn on the ground. Rescue personnel who had shown up were not able to save anyone. They could only cover the scattered bodies with tarpaulin.
In addition to Daisie King, passengers on the ill-fated flight included:
*Lee H. Hall, who was serving as the pilot for the flight. Married to a stewardess and living in Seattle, Washington, Mr. Hall had been employed by United Air Lines for fifteen years.
*Jacqueline Hinds. The senior stewardess for the flight had boarded the airplane in Denver, Colorado. She had worked for United Air Lines for over four years and lived in Eugene, Oregon.
*Peggy Ann Petticord, the second stewardess on the flight. She had joined United Air Lines right out of college. She had only been working for the airline for ten months.
*Donald A. White. Serving as co-pilot for the flight, the twenty-sixyear-old had been flying for ten years and had worked at United Air Lines for four years. He was married and lived in Seattle, Washington.
*Samuel F. Arthur. The flight engineer for Flight 629, he lived in Seattle, Washington, where his wife Jane and his two children were waiting for him to return.
*Lela McClain. The oldest passenger on the plane, Mrs. McClain was returning from Glastonbury, Connecticut, where she had visited a step-son, to her home in Portland, Oregon.
*Jesse Sizemore. Serving in the United States Air Force as an airman second class, Sizemore was returning from leave in his hometown of Jenifer, Alabama. His destination was to an Air Force Base in Alaska.
*Jack and Sarah Dorey. Mr. Dorey was a factory inspector who was taking his wife on the first flight either had ever taken so they could visit a married son in Portland, Oregon.
*Herbert G. Robinson. Working as a marine engineer for Gibbs & Cox of New York, he was scheduled to inspect the repair of a ship in Portland, Oregon.
*James W. Purvis. A contractor from Tacoma, Washington, Purvis was returning from a meeting in Denver, Colorado.
*Harold B. Sanstead. Dr. Sanstead, a nutrition expert with the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington, D.C., he was flying to speak at Oregon State College in Corvallis, Oregon.
*Gurney Edwards. An attorney from Providence, Rhode Island, and trustee at Brown University, he was on a vacation with his wife.
*Elizabeth Edwards. With her husband, Gurney, she planned to visit her sister, who lived in Seattle, Washington. Later, they would go visit their son, who was on duty with the Navy at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
*Virgil Herman. The operator of a used-oil reclaiming service in Vancouver, Washington, Mr. Herman was returning from a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, which he had taken with his wife.
*Goldie Herman. Mrs. Herman had flown with her husband on the first vacation they had taken in years. She had gone to St. Louis, Missouri to visit her sister on the first flight she and her husband had ever taken.
*Elton B. Hickok. Mr. Hickok was the president of the Seattle, Washington chapter of Associated General Contractors. He was returning from an AGC meeting he had attended in Denver, Colorado.
*Helen Fitzpatrick and son, James Fitzpatrick II. The mother and her fourteen-month-old son were flying to join her husband, an Army officer who had been shipped to Okinawa the day after young James had been born.
*Bror H. Beckstrom. The owner of three electrical contracting firms in Seattle, Washington and Fairbanks, Alaska, Mr. Beckstrom was returning home with his wife after a trip to New Mexico.
*Irene Beckstrom. Mrs. Beckstrom and her husband were returning to Seattle, Washington, after visiting their son, Howard, who was stationed with the Army in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
*John P. Bomelyn. The supervisor of the county’s human society in Seattle, Washington, Mr. Bomelyn was returing home after a national convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
*Frank M. Brennan. A builder from Seattle, Washington and an officer with Associated General Contractors, Mr. Brennan was returing from an AGC convention in Denver, Colorado.
*Barbara J. Cruse. A vacationing United Air Lines stewardess. She boarded the plane in Denver, Colorado, where she was stationed. She planned to travel to Seattle, Washington to spend some time at her home there.
*Sally Ann Scofield. A vacationing United Air Lines stewardess who was to travel to Seattle, Washington to visit with fellow stewardess, Barbara J. Cruse. Miss Scofield was to be married in November to a United Air Lines pilot.
*F.E. “Jack” Ambrose. A sales agent for United Air Lines, Mr. Ambrose was returning home to Seattle, Washington after having investigated a job that the airline had offered him in Denver, Colorado.
*Stewart and Anne Morgan. The Chicago, Illinois couple was headed on a business trip for Mr. Morgan, a consulting engineer. in Vancouver, Washington.
*Alma Winsor. Mrs. Winsor, a housewife from Newfoundland, was bound for Tacoma, Washington, where she was to visit her daughter whose husband had contracted polio.
*Carl F. Deist. Mr. Deist was a regional Oldsmobile sales manager from Burlingame, California. He was traveling from a meeting in Denver, Colorado to another meeting in Portland, Oregon.
*James. E. Straud. An assistant general sales manager for Oldsmobile, Mr. Straud was from Okemos, Michigan. He was headed to Portland, Oregon, along with Carl F. Deist.
*Clarence Todd. Mr. Todd served as manager for the Associated General Contractors chapter in Tacoma, Washington. He was headed back from an AGC meeting in Denver, Colorado.
*Ralph W. Van Valin. Dr. Van Valin, a retired dentist from Newburg, Oregon, had been on a visit to his birthplace, Unionville, Pennsylvania.
*Minnie Van Valin. Mrs. Van Valin, a genealogist, had traveled to Uniondale, Pennsylvania with her husband. During the trip, she had taken a side triip to Washington, D.C. to check some records.
*Louise Bunch. The widow of a minister, Mrs. Bunch was returning to her home in Forest Grove, Oregon after she attended a church convention in Colorado.
*Thomas L. Crouch. The Wichita, Kansas carpenter’s apprentice was headed to Seattle, Washington to take a job with a construction firm.
*John P. Des Jardins. Mr. Des Jardins was on an inspection trip for a chain of department store beauty shops he served as general manager. He lived in Overland Park, Kansas.
*Brad and Carol Bynum. The Bynums were returning from a trip to Amarillo, Texas, where they had visited Brad’s parents to share with her the joy of Carol Bynum being pregnant.
*Marion B. Hobgood. An electrical engineer for Philco, Mr. Hobgood was en route from his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Portland, Oregon, where he was scheduled to oversee an installation.
*J.W. Jungels. The heating engineer from Aurora, Illinois was headed to Portland, Oregon to inspect a heating system his company had installed.
*Gerald G. Lipke. The division sales manager from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was flying with his wife to Portland, Oregon.
*Patricia Lipke. The wife of Gerald Lipke was flying for the first time in her life. The trip to Portland, Oregon was to visit her sister. The three Lipke children had stayed at home.
On November 13, 1955, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested and accused twenty-three-year-old John Gilbert Graham, a father of two small children, of sabotaging the plane his mother was a passenger on.
Newspaper accounts of the arrest said that Graham’s last known job was working at a drive-in his mother ran in Denver. They also noted that he had worked with dynamite while employed as a construction worker.
Graham, his wife and children, had been living in his mother’s house to help pay off over four thousand dollars ($4,000) for forty-two forged checks that he had written. He had been convicted on the forgery charges in November 1951. His mother had paid $2,500 in restitution for him. He was making monthly payments for the rest of the amount. At the time of his arrest for the bombing, he only owed $105 in restitution.
Graham would fight with his mother in public and there was a belief that he had been stealing money from the business.
In addition to the $37,500 flight insurance Graham had bought from an airport vending machine on his mother, he would inherit a fourth of his mother’s estate, estimated to be worth $150,000.
Seeing that Graham, who was also known as Jack Graham and Jack King, had signed his name as the beneficiary on flight insurance for his mother, the FBI called him in for questioning.
Graham seeemed eager to help authorities find the cause of the explosion that killed his mother and all others aboard. He did admit that he had a criminal past. When asked about Daisie’s luggage, he described it but maintained that she always packed for herself when she went on a trip. This trip would be to Alaska to see a married daughter.
FBI agents later interviewed Graham’s wife, Gloria. Gloria told them that her husband had bought a Christmas present for his mother, which he wrapped himself. She assumed that he had given the gift to his mother just before she had left on the trip. She told agents that she thought the gift was a set of hand tools. Gloria said that she had last seen the wrapped present on November 1.
When questioned by the FBI about the Christmas present, he said that he had never bought it because he could not find the tools he wanted to give her.
Graham gave the FBI permission to search the house and car. During the search, they found strands of wire matching wire found at the crash site. The search also yielded more insurance policies on the life of Daisie King. The policies listed John Gilbert Graham as the sole beneficiary. Unbeknownst to Graham, the policies were worthless because they had not been signed by his mother.
On November 13, 1955, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced that the charge against Graham would be for sabotage of a national defense facility or materials. Commercial airliners were supposed to be covered under the code for the law. Airliners may have been covered under this since they transported the U.S. mail. There was no specific crime on the books at the time making it against the law to blow up an airplane.
John Gilbert Graham signed a confession that he had planted the bomb in Daisy King’s luggage.
At the arraignment on November 14, 1955, he stood with his head bowed and could barely be heard when he answered the judge’s questions.
November 15, 1955 found John Gilbert Graham facing murder charges in the biggest mass murder in United States history at that time.
In an interview from his jail cell on November 17, 1955, “Jack” Graham said he had no memory of signing a confession to the bombing.
“I respect other people’s lives as much as my own,” he claimed.
On December 9, 1955, Graham was arraigned for the murder of the forty-four passengers on board Flight 629.
Graham immediately denied the confession that he had made to authorities. He said that he had only made the confession under duress because he had been bullied by the FBI into believing that his wife would be charged if he did not confess.
On April 16, 1956, jury selection began in the trial of Jack Graham for first degree murder. Cameras were allowed in the courtroom and the court had granted local TV stations the privilege of filming during the day for broadcast on later newscasts. A request to allow live coverage of the trial had been denied. If the request had been granted, it would have been the first federal murder case to be broadcast on live television. Graham, who had lost forty pounds during his incarceration, looked calm and relaxed as he sat chewing gum.
During the trial, the FBI brought dozens of expert witnesses, including those familiar with explosives and bomb making, crash analysts, scientists and law officers. Jack Graham’s attorneys could not put up much of a defense. Graham, himself, refused to testify in his own defense. The defense’s case only lasted two hours before they rested.
When the case was sent to the jury, they returned a verdict in the short span of one hour and twelve minutes. Graham appeared passive as the verdict was read. He still maintained his innocence after the reading.
The verdict carried with it an automatic death sentence.
Graham’s attorneys vowed to fight for an appeal. Graham said that he did not want an appeal but instead wanted to die.
On January 12, 1957, Jack Graham was set for execution in Colorado’s gas chamber. His twenty-two-year-old wife, Gloria, had visited him once during the week before both had decided the visits were too hard on each of them.
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