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Jack Gilbert GrahamAmerican criminal
Date of Birth: 23.01.1932
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Jack Gilbert Graham
Jack Gilbert Graham, an American criminal, was executed on January 11, 1957 in a gas chamber. Born in 1932, Graham gained worldwide notoriety for his audacious and brutal crime.
The United Air Lines Bombing
On November 1, 1955, a certain Daisie King boarded a Douglas DC-6B aircraft of United Air Lines. The plane, traveling from Denver, Colorado to Seattle, Washington, exploded in the air just 11 minutes after takeoff. The burning wreckage of the aircraft crashed into farmland and a field of sugar beets near Longmont, Colorado. All 44 people on board perished. The investigation revealed that the plane had exploded due to a bomb detonated in the cargo hold. Soon after the investigation began, Jack Graham's name surfaced as a suspect. It was discovered that the bomb had been secretly placed in the plane by his unsuspecting mother, Daisie King, who was traveling to Alaska to visit her daughter. It later emerged that Graham had orchestrated the bombing in order to collect a $37,500 insurance payout. Interestingly, he had purchased the insurance policy at the airport just before the flight. Additionally, experts speculated that Graham may have been motivated by a desire for revenge against his mother, who had treated him as a naive and foolish child. While awaiting trial and sentencing, Graham claimed in an interview that he had given his statements and signed them under pressure from authorities. He also confessed that he deeply loved his mother and could not come to terms with her loss.
The Trial and Execution
However, Graham failed to elicit any sympathy for himself. He was charged with first-degree murder and on May 5, 1956, he was sentenced to death. Even though Graham recanted all his confessions during the trial, there was sufficient evidence to prove his guilt. Notably, to simplify the proceedings, he was only convicted for the murder of his mother. It is known that prior to the trial, in February 1956, Graham attempted suicide in his cell but was unsuccessful. Subsequently, he was placed under 24-hour surveillance. On January 11, 1957, his sentence was carried out as Jack Gilbert Graham was executed in the gas chamber. This story has been interpreted in numerous books and films. For instance, the movie "The FBI Story" was released in 1959 and in 2005, Andrew J. Field published the book "Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629."
