THE SORDID STORY OF JACK GRAHAM

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Back in the days of my youth, commercial air travel was a rare and exciting adventure, and usually the experience of getting there was more fun than the destination itself. Unlike today, security issues were virtually non-existent, and passengers were not funneled through chutes and long lines like cattle at a stockyard.

Such was the case on November 1, 1955, at the Stapleton Airport in Denver, Colorado, where Daisy E. King excitedly boarded United Airlines Flight 629 to Portland, Oregon as the first leg to her hunting vacation in Alaska. Crammed in her luggage, quite legally at the time, was ammunition to use on her pursuit of caribou. Clutched in the hands of her son, Jack Graham, who had driven her to the airport, was a policy for $37,500 which Graham had purchased out of a vending machine insuring the life of his mother. This by itself was not at all unusual, as the selling of life insurance out of airport vending machines was a ubiquitous practice at that time. Also crammed in Daisy's luggage, but unknown to her, was a deadly combination of a dry cell battery, blasting caps, dynamite, and a timer.

Eleven minutes after takeoff, the DC-6 exploded and killed Daisy, 39 other passengers, and five crew members. The FBI was called on the scene and, after a thorough investigation, as detailed here, concluded that Graham had blown up the plane containing his mother for financial gain. The FBI obtained a federal warrant for sabotage in his part in destroying an aircraft which could serve as a "national-defense utility" (there were no federal statutes at the time which directly stated that blowing up planes for money was a federal crime). Ultimately, the feds were quite happy to have the State of Colorado use the evidence uncovered by the FBI to try Graham on the straight-forward charge of murdering his mother--an offense which carried an automatic death penalty.

Graham was a highly unlikable individual, even before people knew that he was a mass murderer. He throughout the years had been guilty of a variety of lesser offenses, including the heinous and unspeakable act of destroying a 1955 Chevy for insurance proceeds by leaving it in front of a train. He asserted an insanity defense at his trial, as the huge amount of evidence compiled against him (including several detailed confessions) made the argument that he simply did not plant the bomb untenable.

The verdict was quick and predictable, and Graham was executed in the gas chamber at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City on January 11, 1957 (the gas chamber is now a popular tourist attraction at the old prison in Canon City).

Graham's misbehavior provoked, in a large part, the eventual elimination of life insurance policy vending machines at airports. His trial was also the first one ever televised. His story also served as the first chapter in the very popular 1950s book The FBI Story as well as the first segment of the 1959 movie of the same name. According to these works, Graham, after his murder conviction, stated, "In case I get any mail, you can send it to Canon City Prison for the next month or so. After that you can send it to Hell!"

Ironically, Daisy had never signed the life insurance policy, and it was therefore worthless from the start.

GRAHAM'S PENULTIMATE DESTINATION