Jack Gilbert Graham's Airplane Bombing

In 1955, Jack Gilbert Graham hid a dynamite bomb in his mother's suitcase before she boarded United Airlines Flight 629 from Denver. The explosion tore the plane apart midair, killing all 44 passengers and crew. He hoped to collect on his mother's $37,500 life insurance policy he had purchased just before the flight. When federal agents arrested Graham, they discovered there was no federal law against blowing up an airplane. Colorado prosecutors instead charged him with the single murder of his mother, and he was executed in 1957.

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