Mass murder in the sky: John Gilbert Graham and United Flight 629

John Gilbert Graham fought to hold down the contents of his stomach when he heard that an airliner out of Denver's Stapleton Airfield had crashed shortly after takeoff on the night of November 2, 1955. No one, however, had to tell Graham that the plane was United Airlines Flight 629 bound for Anchorage, or that his mother Daisie King was on the doomed DC-6B. He knew this before anyone because he had carefully loaded his mother's suitcase with 25 sticks of dynamite and rigged the explosives to detonate 20 minutes after takeoff. 

The explosion that brought down United 629, killing all 44 passengers and crew, was witnessed by farm families in the Longmont area who heard a blast followed by a rain of fiery debris falling from the sky. When they arrived to help search for survivors, they were subjected to gruesome tableaux of Graham's handiwork. What they didn't know was that the explosion was a scheme to collect life insurance money by a hapless criminal and Colorado's newly-crowned worst mass-murderer.

Not surprisingly, the bombing of Flight 629, also known as "the Mainliner", was huge news in Colorado and across the country. The subsequent investigation and Graham's trial set the stage for modern airline disaster investigations and copycat crimes, and even planted the roots of CourtTV. 

Who was John Gilbert Graham?

John Gilbert Graham was a 23-year-old husband and father of two who worked at his mother's drive-in-restaurant, the Crown-A, at 581 S. Federal Blvd., and at a Hertz Rental Car garage. He lived at 2650 W. Mississippi in a home purchased by his mother and was known to be moody and somewhat erratic. 

Though nothing in his life justified the murder of 44 people, Graham's upbringing had been anything but idyllic. His biological father, William, had passed away when he was only three-years-old, though his parents had separated when he was just 18-months-old. After the separation, Graham was raised by his grandmother, though Mrs. King remarried a well-to-do rancher. When Graham was nine, his grandmother died and he was sent to the Clayton College for Boys. 

Clayton College was a relatively progressive orphanage that allowed the boys a fair amount of physical freedom. But most little boys need their mothers and Graham was no exception. He felt utterly abandoned by his mother and, according to Eleven Minutes: The Sabotage of Flight 629 by Edward C. Davenport, Graham felt he'd been sent to Clayton because his mother didn't love him. 

Graham's feelings of abandonment were, no doubt, exacerbated by the fact that he spent school holidays on his stepfather's ranch, but was forced to return to the orphanage when the breaks were over. 

When Graham was 13, he was taken in by one of his stepfather's neighbors and lived there for a short time. Like so many other episodes in his short life, it just didn't work out and he was eventually allowed to live on the ranch with his mother. 

From then on, Graham's life was one botched scheme after the next. 

This phase included a brief stint in the Coast Guard and a never-ending cycle of entry-level employment and brushes with the law. Throughout, Graham maintained a complicated relationship with his mother. She bailed him out of multiple legal problems, always ready to pay restitution and keep his jail sentences minimized. As Graham grew older and, sort of, settled down, she purchased him a house and hired him to manage her restaurant. 

Davenport points out that Mrs. King's love was anything but unconditional and he was always left feeling resentful that her love wasn't real. 

A Rocky Mountain News article from April 1956 quoted a friend of Daisy’s describing the mother-son-duo saying, "Jack was her favorite. She took his word as law and gave him a lot of things. I suppose Daisie was a little neurotic."

For his part, Graham made his mother's life difficult by exploding at restaurant employees and continuing to engage in dubious activities. On Labor Day weekend in 1955, a mysterious explosion nearly leveled the Crown-A and Graham was the main suspect. Though nothing was ever proved, he would eventually take credit for attempting to blow up the place as part of an insurance fraud scheme. 

One person who truly seemed to love Graham unconditionally was his wife Gloria, who he met during a failed stint at Denver University. Gloria stood by Graham right up until the bitter end and is portrayed as an innocent and sympathetic character in nearly every account of the UAL 639 tragedy. And Gloria was with him the night the FBI's trap sprung shut on her husband.

The Case Against James Graham

With Graham's confession in hand, the prosecution's case seemed open-and-shut, but that was simply too good to be true. Four days after taking credit for the bombing, Graham recanted his confession in an interview that appeared in the Rocky Mountain News under the headline, "DYNAMITER CHANGES HIS STORY." He was charged with the murder of his mother. Federal charges with regards to the destruction of the plane, the kind that would likely be leveled today, had not yet been written. Suffice to say, if Graham had pulled off this crime today, he would have faced dozens of charges. 

But, through the course of the investigation, prosecutors amassed plenty of evidence against Graham. Despite his own presumptions, Graham was not a particularly skillful criminal. For starters, his own criminal actions, hair-trigger temper, and braggadocio were more than enough to help seal his fate.

Graham's change of heart also included an attempt at clearing himself by reason of insanity. After a botched suicide attempt, he was taken to the State Hospital in Pueblo where doctors found him to be in good enough mental condition to stand trial. 

With a trial date set for April 16, 1956, Denver braced itself for what would be one of its most sensational criminal trials ever. 

At trial, prosecutors brought forth witnesses who recalled Graham purchasing dynamite and blasting caps (which were cheap and easy to obtain in the 1950s), and were able to pick him out of a lineup. They also produced witnesses who attested to Graham's mechanical skills and prior experience with dynamite. They also linked wire used in the bomb to wire found in Graham's home. 

After the crash, Graham told neighbors that he was upset that his mother died without ever seeing the surprise Christmas gift he'd spirited into her luggage. And because Graham was so specific about exactly what kind of gift (the jewelry drill) investigators had no problem finding the only places in the Denver-Metro area that sold them—and proving that Graham didn't actually purchase one. And his mentions of "premonitions" of his mother's death as early as November 3, 1955, didn't help his case either. 

Over the course of the 15-day trial, prosecutors meticulously laid out a case that established the cause of the crash as a non-mechanical explosion. To bolster their point, they brought the judge and jury to a massive hangar near Stapleton Airfield where the Mainliner had been meticulously reconstructed. Though this type of reconstruction had been used to investigate other air disasters, this was one of the largest reconstructions done up to that point in time. 

The case against Graham was amplified in a way that no other suspected criminal had experienced to that point because of a new spectator in the courtroom: television cameras. The State of Colorado v. John Gilbert Graham was the first trial in U.S. history where television cameras were allowed to record the proceedings. Court activities were not broadcast live and any participant who preferred not to appear on camera could opt out. The judge had a remote button that allowed him to turn the cameras off and on as necessary. Only one person opted out of TV coverage: the defendant.

On May 5, after hearing 80 witnesses and examining 174 pieces of evidence, the jury in the Mainliner case was left to render their verdict. In just over an hour they came back with a guilty verdict and a recommendation of death for John Gilbert Graham. Though his attorneys advised otherwise, Graham waived all his appeals and on May 15, Graham was sent to Colorado's Death Row in Canon City. Against his wishes, Graham's legal teams filed motions to halt his date with the gas chamber. These proceedings stretched on until October of 1956 when the Colorado Supreme Court upheld Graham's death sentence. His execution date was set for the week of January 12, 1957.