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As the scraps were fitted onto a mockup, the evidence showed that the explosion had occurred in the rear cargo pit, in an area where there were no fuel lines or electric wires that might have caused an accidental explosion. The investigators concluded that the plane had been deliberately blown up by someone who had put a time bomb in the passengers' luggage. If so, it would be the first known case of successful sabotage in the history of U.S. commercial aviation.
The Emerging Murderer. Having reconstructed the plane and the crime, the investigators set about reconstructing the criminal. The FBI turned loose some 200 agents on the case. Combing the crash area, the G-men found a cog from a clock that might have been the timing device on the bomb. Other agents interviewed relatives of the crash victims all over the U.S., carefully sifted through a hundred pasts for clues. Even before United Air Lines offered a $25,000 reward for information, tipsters began to come forward. Bit by bit, the figure of the murderer began to emerge. Last week, 13 days after the crash, the FBI arrested Jack Graham, the attentive son.
John Gilbert Graham is a tall, husky man (6 ft. 1 in., 190 Lbs.) with a shock of dark hair in a butch haircut, pouting lips and a perpetual hangdog look. At 23, he has an impressive criminal record and a reputation for secretiveness. He was born in Denver in 1932, the second child (by her second husband) of Daisie Walker, a politician's daughter from Steamboat Springs, Colo. When Jack was two, his father died, and Daisie was left penniless. She farmed out the boy and his older half-sister, Helen. Jack went to a Denver orphanage. In 1940, when his mother married John Earl King, a prosperous rancher, she gathered her family together again.
Jack was a good student and had a better-than-average I.Q. (115), but his classmates called him "Abigail" because "he was so different." He liked to hunt and fish, and his mechanical aptitude, ac cording to Dr. Earl G. Miller, the family physician, "bordered on genius." After one year of high school, Jack went off to Anchorage, Alaska, to stay with Helen and her husband, a construction worker. After a few months, however, he joined the Coast Guard, lying about his age (he was 16). After nine months, including 63 days AWOL, he was discharged as a minor. In January 1950, he was back in Denver. The next year he went to work for a manufacturer of trailer-truck equipment as a $200-a-month payroll clerk. A month later, Graham stole a batch of company checks, forged the name of an official on them, and cashed $4,200 worth in three days. Then he left on a five-state joy ride in a new convertible. Eight months later, he was arrested in Lubbock, Texas, in a shower of bullets, when he attempted to ram through a roadblock. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail for bootlegging, was later handed over to the Denver police to face the forgery charges. But when his family offered $2,500 in partial restitution on the stolen $4,200 and promised that Jack would repay the rest, the boy was put on probation.