Jack Gilbert Graham

Graham's apparent motive for the bombing was to claim $37,500 (equivalent to $380,000 in 2021) worth of life insurance money from policies he had purchased in the airport terminal just moments before the aircraft's departure.

The case is the subject of the episode titled "Time Bomb" of the 2013 Investigation Discovery miniseries A Crime to Remember.

The book Mainliner Denver: The Bombing of Flight 629 by Andrew J. Field (Johnson Books, 2005) was published on the 50th anniversary of the bombing.

The FBI, United Airlines and the district attorney wanted Graham tried, found guilty, and executed promptly as a "deterrent to others who might plan copycat murders", Amole wrote in a 1995 column in the Rocky Mountain News. Decades later, the footage was eventually aired on one of Denver's local PBS stations in a documentary called "Murder in Midair", produced by Don Kinney. However, Graham also confirmed on a number of occasions that he had made and set the bomb. When he described the bomb, he gave details that later were confirmed by investigators. Graham also told prison doctors that he "realized that there were about 50 or 60 people carried on a DC6, but the number of people to be killed made no difference to me; it could have been a thousand. When their time comes, there is nothing they can do about it."

Graham's mother had been a passenger on Flight 629, and was traveling to Alaska to visit her daughter, Graham's half-sister. At the time, flight insurance could be routinely purchased in vending machines at airports, until changes to the system in the 1980s.

The case was the basis for the 1960 "Fire in the Sky" episode of M Squad.

Graham was portrayed by Nick Adams in the 1959 motion picture The FBI Story starring James Stewart and Vera Miles.

The case was the basis for the 1959 "Flight 169--Mass Murder" episode of Deadline (1959 TV series).

Graham was executed in the Colorado State Penitentiary gas chamber on January 11, 1957.

The trial that followed resulted in Colorado becoming the first state to officially sanction the use of television cameras to broadcast criminal trials. There was no federal statute on the books at the time (1955) that made it a crime to blow up an airplane. Therefore, on the day after Graham's confession, the Colorado district attorney moved swiftly to prosecute Graham via the simplest possible route: premeditated murder of a single victim – his mother, Daisie King. Thus, despite the number of victims killed on Flight 629 along with Mrs King, Graham was charged with only one count of first-degree murder. As the case progressed, Graham quickly recanted his confession, but at his 1956 trial his defense was unable to counter the massive amount of evidence presented by the prosecution. In February 1956, he attempted suicide in his cell, and was thereafter put under 24-hour surveillance. On May 5, 1956, Graham was convicted of the murder of his mother, Daisie King, and was sentenced to death.

In 1955, shortly before the aircraft bombing, King's restaurant was destroyed in a suspicious gas explosion, believed to have been deliberately caused by Graham. Graham had insured the restaurant and collected on the property insurance following the explosion.

United Airlines Flight 629 was using a Douglas DC-6B airliner (named "Mainliner Denver") piloted by World War II veteran Lee Hall on the evening of November 1, 1955. The flight had originated at New York City's LaGuardia Airport, making a stop in Chicago before continuing to Denver; it then took off from Denver, Colorado's Stapleton Airfield, bound for Portland, Oregon, with continuing service to Seattle. Minutes after the plane's departure from Denver, the DC-6B exploded and the flaming wreckage fell to earth over tracts of farmland and sugar beet fields near Longmont, Colorado. There were no survivors.

John "Jack" Gilbert Graham (January 23, 1932 – January 11, 1957) was an American mass murderer who, on November 1, 1955, killed 44 people aboard United Airlines Flight 629 near Longmont, Colorado, using a dynamite time bomb. Graham planted the bomb in his mother's suitcase in an apparent move to murder her and claim $37,500 (equivalent to $380,000 in 2021) worth of life insurance money from policies he purchased in the airport terminal just before the flight departure. Graham was charged with and convicted of the murder of his mother. He was sentenced to death and was executed by the state of Colorado in January 1957.

John Gilbert Graham was born on January 23, 1932, in Denver, Colorado, the child of Daisie Graham and her second husband. Nicknamed "Jack," Graham was Daisie's second child, as she already had a daughter from her first marriage. Graham was born during the height of the Great Depression, and, in 1937, his father died from pneumonia, causing Daisie to send the young Jack to an orphanage due to their poverty. In 1941, Daisie was married for the third time to Earl King, who died shortly after their marriage. Using her inheritance from King's death, Daisie became a successful businesswoman, but despite her newfound wealth, Daisie did not collect Graham from the orphanage. The two remained estranged until 1954, when Graham was 22 years old, and Daisie King was running a successful restaurant. After their reunion, King and Graham had a poor relationship, and were often witnessed arguing.