America's First Airline Bombing

In 1955, Jack Gilbert Graham insured his mother's life for $37,000 and then planted a bomb [in her luggage] on United Airlines Flight 629 which she boarded at Denver, Colorado. The device exploded just ten minutes after take-off, killing all 44 passengers and crew. Graham, who had nurtured a hatred of his mother ever since she placed him in an orphanage for the first eight years of his life, readily confessed and was sent to the Colorado Penitentiary gas chamber in January 1957.

Brian Lane, Chronicle of 20th Century Murder, 1993