John "Jack" Gilbert Graham (January 23, 1932 – January 11, 1957) was an American
mass murderer
Mass murder is the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. The United States Congress defines mass killings as the killings of three or more p ...
who, on November 1, 1955, killed 44 people aboard
United Airlines Flight 629
United Air Lines Flight 629, registration N37559, was a Douglas DC-6B aircraft also known as "Mainliner Denver", that was blown up on November 1, 1955, by a dynamite bomb placed in the checked luggage. The explosion occurred over Longmont, Colo ...
near
Longmont, Colorado, using a
dynamite time bomb
A time bomb (or a timebomb, time-bomb) is a bomb whose detonation is triggered by a timer. The use (or attempted use) of time bombs has been for various purposes including insurance fraud, terrorism, assassination, sabotage and warfare. They are ...
. Graham planted the bomb in his mother's suitcase in an apparent move to murder her and claim $37,500 () worth of
life insurance money from policies he purchased in the airport terminal just before the flight departure. Graham was charged with and convicted of the murder of his mother. He was sentenced to
death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
and was
executed
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
by the state of
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
in January 1957.
Background
John Gilbert Graham was born on January 23, 1932, in
Denver, Colorado
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
, the child of Daisie Graham and her second husband. Nicknamed "Jack," Graham was Daisie's second child, as she already had a daughter from her first marriage. Graham was born during the height of the
Great Depression, and, in 1937, his father died from
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...
, causing Daisie to send the young Jack to an
orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution, total institution or group home, devoted to the care of orphans and children who, for various reasons, cannot be cared for by their biological families. The parents may be deceased, absent, or ab ...
due to their poverty. In 1941, Daisie was married for the third time to Earl King, who died shortly after their marriage. Using her inheritance from King's death, Daisie became a successful businesswoman, but despite her newfound wealth, Daisie did not collect Graham from the orphanage. The two remained
estranged until 1954, when Graham was 22 years old, and Daisie King was running a successful restaurant. After their reunion, King and Graham had a poor relationship, and were often witnessed arguing.
In 1955, shortly before the aircraft bombing, King's restaurant was destroyed in a suspicious gas explosion, believed to have been deliberately caused by Graham. Graham had insured the restaurant and collected on the
property insurance
Property insurance provides protection against most risks to property, such as fire, theft and some weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance, or ...
following the explosion.
Bombing
United Airlines Flight 629
United Air Lines Flight 629, registration N37559, was a Douglas DC-6B aircraft also known as "Mainliner Denver", that was blown up on November 1, 1955, by a dynamite bomb placed in the checked luggage. The explosion occurred over Longmont, Colo ...
was using a
Douglas DC-6B
The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with ...
airliner (named "Mainliner Denver") piloted by
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
veteran Lee Hall on the evening of November 1, 1955. The flight had originated at
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
's
LaGuardia Airport
LaGuardia Airport is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City. Covering , the facility was established in 1929 and began operating as a public airport in 1939. It is named after former New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia ...
, making a stop in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, coordinates =
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before continuing to Denver; it then took off from
Denver, Colorado
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
's
Stapleton Airfield, bound for
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
, with continuing service to
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
. Minutes after the plane's departure from Denver, the DC-6B exploded 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 had been a passenger on Flight 629, and was traveling to
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...
to visit her daughter, Graham's half-sister. At the time, flight insurance could be routinely purchased in vending machines at airports, until changes to the system in the 1980s.
[Justice Story: Son plants bomb in mom's suitcase, killing her and 43 others during flight](_blank)
from NY Daily News
Graham's apparent motive for the bombing was to claim $37,500 () worth of life insurance money from policies he had purchased in the airport terminal just moments before the aircraft's departure.
Arrest and conviction
Investigators discovered that Graham had a
criminal record
A criminal record, police record, or colloquially RAP sheet (Record of Arrests and Prosecutions) is a record of a person's criminal history. The information included in a criminal record and the existence of a criminal record varies between coun ...
for
embezzlement by
check forgery, and
illegal transport of whiskey for which he had served 60 days in a
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
prison.
They also determined that King's restaurant had been severely damaged by "a suspicious explosion" earlier that year, and that Graham had received the insurance settlement.
Locals also suspected Graham of deliberately causing his new pick-up truck to be struck by a train that year, in order to collect the insurance.
The FBI obtained use of a nearby barn where they re-assembled the fragments of the airplane collected from the site. They were able to determine that explosives were used, and that they had come from certain items of luggage in the baggage compartment. Based on that evidence as well as interviews, contradictory statements, physical evidence found at Graham's house, and finally a confession, Graham was arrested and charged with sabotage.
The charge was later changed to murder.
![Jack gilbert graham courtroom trial](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Jack_gilbert_graham_courtroom_trial.jpg)
After Graham's arrest, Denver radio station KDEN owner Gene Amole and ''Rocky Mountain News'' photographer Morey Engle arranged to sneak a camera into the old Denver County Jail on West Colfax Avenue for an interview of Graham during a reunion with his wife Gloria.
"I loved my mother very much", Graham told Amole. "She meant a lot to me. It's very hard for me to tell exactly how I feel. She left so much of herself behind." When Amole asked him why he had signed a confession, he said the FBI had threatened to point out inconsistencies in statements made by his wife Gloria when she was interviewed by the authorities. "I was not about to let them touch her in any way, shape or form", he said. None of the Denver TV stations would agree to air the film, however. Amole said he believed it was because they feared it "might engender pretrial sympathy" for Graham.
The FBI, United Airlines and the district attorney wanted Graham tried, found guilty, and executed promptly as a "deterrent to others who might plan copycat murders", Amole wrote in a 1995 column in the ''Rocky Mountain News''.
Decades later, the footage was eventually aired on one of Denver's local PBS stations in a documentary called "Murder in Midair", produced by Don Kinney. However, Graham also confirmed on a number of occasions that he had made and set the bomb. When he described the bomb, he gave details that later were confirmed by investigators. Graham also told prison doctors that he "realized that there were about 50 or 60 people carried on a DC6, but the number of people to be killed made no difference to me; it could have been a thousand. When their time comes, there is nothing they can do about it."
The trial that followed resulted in
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
becoming the first state to officially sanction the use of television cameras to broadcast criminal trials. There was no
federal statute
In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America (variously abbreviated to Code of Laws of the United States, United States Code, U.S. Code, U.S.C., or USC) is the official compilation and codification of the ...
on the books at the time (1955) that made it a crime to blow up an airplane. Therefore, on the day after Graham's confession, the Colorado district attorney moved swiftly to prosecute Graham via the simplest possible route: premeditated murder of a single victim – his mother, Daisie King. Thus, despite the number of victims killed on Flight 629 along with Mrs King, Graham was charged with only one count of
first-degree murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...
. As the case progressed, Graham quickly recanted his confession, but at his 1956 trial his defense was unable to counter the massive amount of evidence presented by the prosecution. In February 1956, he
attempted suicide in his cell, and was thereafter put under 24-hour surveillance.
On May 5, 1956, Graham was convicted of the murder of his mother, Daisie King, and was sentenced to
death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
.
Execution
Graham was
executed
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
in the
Colorado State Penitentiary
Colorado State Penitentiary (commonly abbreviated CSP) is a Level V maximum security prison in the U.S. state of Colorado. The facility is part of the state's East Cañon Complex, together with six other state correctional facilities of various ...
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
History
...
on January 11, 1957.
Fictional portrayals
Graham was portrayed by
Nick Adams in the 1959 motion picture ''
The FBI Story
''The FBI Story'' is a 1959 American drama film starring James Stewart, and produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Richard L. Breen and John Twist is based on a book by Don Whitehead.
Plot
John Michael ("Chip") Hardesty ( Jam ...
'' starring
James Stewart and
Vera Miles
Vera June Miles ( née Ralston, born August 23, 1929) is an American retired actress who worked closely with Alfred Hitchcock, most notably as Lila Crane in the classic 1960 film '' Psycho'', reprising the role in the 1983 sequel '' Psycho II ...
.
The case was the basis for the 1960 "Fire in the Sky" episode of ''
M Squad
''M Squad'' is an American crime drama television series that ran from 1957 to 1960 on NBC. It was produced by Lee Marvin's Latimer Productions and Revue Studios. Its main sponsor was the Pall Mall cigarette brand; Lee Marvin, the program's ...
''.
The case was the basis for the 1959 "Flight 169--Mass Murder" episode of ''
Deadline (1959 TV series)
''Deadline'' is a 1959–61 American television drama series that re-enacted famous newspaper stories from the past. Hosted and narrated by Paul Stewart, the syndicated series was produced by Arnold Perl. Guest stars included Peter Falk, Will Kul ...
''.
The book ''Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629'' by Andrew J. Field (Johnson Books, 2005) was published on the 50th anniversary of the bombing.
The case is the subject of the episode titled "Time Bomb" of the 2013
Investigation Discovery
Investigation Discovery (stylized and branded on-air as ID since 2008) is an American multinational pay television network dedicated to true crime documentaries owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. As of February 2015, approximately 86 million Amer ...
miniseries ''
A Crime to Remember''.
Music
Macabre
In works of art, the adjective macabre ( or ; ) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in natu ...
, a grindcore metal band from Chicago, wrote a song about Graham called "There Was a Young Man Who Blew Up a Plane", on their ''
Sinister Slaughter
''Sinister Slaughter'' is the second full-length album by American death metal band Macabre and was released in 1993 by Nuclear Blast Records. The cover artwork is a parody on the Beatles album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' featuring ...
'' album.
See also
*
Albert Guay
*
Capital punishment in Colorado
Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished. All valid death sentences as of 2020 have since been commuted to life sentences by governor Jared Polis.
It was reinstated in 197 ...
References
External links
''Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629''by Andrew J. Field (Johnson Books, 2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graham, Jack Gilbert
American male criminals
American mass murderers
American murderers of children
American people convicted of murder
Bombers (people)
Criminals from Colorado
Executed American people
Executed mass murderers
Matricides
Murderers for life insurance money
People convicted of murder by Colorado
People executed by gas chamber
Prisoners sentenced to death by Colorado
1932 births
1957 deaths
20th-century American criminals
20th-century executions by Colorado
20th-century executions of American people
People from Denver