Jack Gilbert Graham

John "Jack" Gilbert Graham (January 23, 1932 – January 11, 1957) was a mass murderer who killed 44 people by planting a dynamite bomb in his mother's suitcase that was subsequently loaded aboard United Airlines Flight 629.

Flight 629 was utilizing a Douglas DC-6B airliner that took off from Denver, Colorado's Stapleton Airport, bound for Portland, Oregon with continuing service to Seattle, Washington, on the evening of November 1, 1955. The flight had originated at New York City's La Guardia Airport and made a scheduled stop in Chicago before continuing on to Denver. Its pilot was Lee Hall, a World War II veteran. Minutes after the plane's departure from Denver, the DC-6B exploded in flight and the flaming wreckage fell to earth over tracts of farmland and sugar beet fields near Longmont, Colorado. There were no survivors.

Graham's mother, Mrs. Daisie King, was a passenger on board the plane and was traveling to Alaska to visit a daughter. Initially, it was believed that Graham's motive for the bombing was to claim $37,500 worth of life insurance money, from policies Graham had bought in the airport terminal just before the aircraft's departure (flight insurance could be routinely purchased in convenient vending machines at airports back in the 1950s). Graham's true motive was revenge for the way his mother had treated him as a small child.

The sensational trial that followed resulted in Colorado becoming the first state to officially sanction the use of television cameras to broadcast criminal trials.

Jack Gilbert Graham was executed by lethal gas in the Colorado State Penitentiary gas chamber, at Cañon City, Colorado, on January 11, 1957.

In 1959, Graham was portrayed by actor Nick Adams in the Warner Bros. film "The FBI Story", starring James Stewart, Murray Hamilton and Vera Miles.

In 2005, a book about the Graham case was published on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing: "Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629" by Andrew J. Field (Johnson Books, 2005).

ee also

* List of individuals executed in Colorado
* Capital punishment in the United States
* Albert Guay affair

References

* [http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/graham/graham.htm Famous Cases: Jack Gilbert Graham] - FBI
* [http://www.andrewjfield.com "Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629", by Andrew J. Field]
* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/jack_graham/ "Crime Library" Sabotage: The Downing of Flight 629]