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DENVER (KDVR) — When a United Airlines flight was bombed with dynamite, exploding in the sky over Colorado 70 years ago and killing 44 people, the unprecedented act set the tone for future FBI investigations into aviation disasters.
“It was not just a crime against the 44 innocent souls. It was a turning point, really for aviation history,” said Mark Michalek, special agent in charge of the FBI Denver Field Office.
“And it’s a tragedy that led to meaningful reforms and transformed the airline industry,” he told FOX31.
It was the first act of sabotage involving a domestic airliner.
“There wasn’t a playbook for this,” Michalek said. “The agents just got the job done.”
And it was the first time some investigative techniques were ever used.
“This was a consequential and defining moment in (FBI) history,” he said.
FBI documented victims, reviewed wreckage
The FBI’s role was to take fingerprints, identify victims, and review the wreckage, looking for clues about the cause, and do something that had never been done before but is now the standard in aviation disasters: rebuild the aircraft to understand why it went down.
“To be able to take it back to Stapleton Airport and essentially recreate the fuselage in a mock-up, to put the pieces together like a jigsaw (puzzle). As they built that fuselage, they were able to determine where the cause of the initial incident was. The point of impact, where the biggest damage was, was strictly luggage. And so from there, they’re able to find the luggage and pair that with victims’ families to identify that. There was some luggage that was not touched. There was some that had residue on it. And some, like Miss Daisie King, was completely obliterated, indicative of being the point of the explosion,” Michalek said.
That is how they figured out her son, John “Jack” Gilbert Graham, 23, was the one who put the bomb in her bag.
Don Sebesta was one of the lead FBI investigators on the case. His son, Jim Sebesta of Littleton, was just a newborn at the time of the investigation, but he has his father’s scrapbook filled with news articles from the trial.
“My mom had it after he passed away. (She) decided she’d donate it to the Bureau,” Sebesta told FOX31.
The clippings help fill in the details of a crime investigation and trial, unlike anything Colorado had ever seen. A trial that garnered international attention.
“From what I can tell, this was like the O.J. Simpson trial of the ’50s,” Sebesta said.
“It was the first time in Colorado that they were allowed to have cameras in the courtroom and it was kind of a first on the way they set up the forensic evidence,” he said.
Investigators dig into suspect’s life, secure death penalty
In the course of their criminal investigation into the crash, agents honed in on Graham after discovering he’d taken out life insurance policies on his mother just moments before the flight. At the time, you could buy life insurance at an airport kiosk. In his garage, they found bomb-making material identical to that used to bring down Flight 629.
They also learned Graham and his mother, Daisie King, had fought like cats and dogs, and that he had an extensive criminal record. Faced with the stack of evidence the FBI had gathered, Graham confessed to the crime, but later recanted. In a trial that captured the nation’s attention, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Graham was executed in the gas chamber at the state penitentiary in Cañon City on January 11, 1957.
“Our hearts go out to all the victims and their families. Really, that’s the focus,” Sebesta said.
He says one of the lasting legacies of the investigation into the bombing of Flight 629 is the meticulous work done by law enforcement and the exemplary work of the FBI.
“I would say, without hesitation, that it’s the most professional organization I’ve ever known, hands down,” Sebesta told FOX31.
And it’s clear the Bureau felt the same way about his father. In his father’s scrapbook, there’s a letter written by famed former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, commending Don Sebesta for his exemplary work on the Flight 629 investigation.
“The director of the FBI sent a letter to a line-level case agent thanking him for his work,” Michalek said.
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Anthony Sutton is a business strategist and writer with a passion for management, leadership, and entrepreneurship. With years of experience in the corporate world, he shares insights on business growth, strategy, and innovation through management-opleiding.org.
