Deep Dive
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On December 7, 1987, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, carrying 38 passengers and 5 crew members, departed LAX at 3:32 p.m. for what should have been a short flight to San Francisco. Moments after reaching the standard cruising altitude of 22,000 feet, the pilots inside the aircraft signaled distress.
sending a mayday signal to Oakland air traffic controllers. When the air traffic controllers asked the pilots what was wrong, the pilot is heard saying that there's been gunshots fired inside the plane. Seconds later, flight 1771 nosedived to the ground, almost breaking the speed of sound.
All 43 people on board Flight 1771 were killed. Was this some tragic accident, a malfunction in the aircraft? Or did someone intentionally cause that PSA flight to crash? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 38, Murder on Board PSA Flight 1771.
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.
If you're interested in supporting my show and getting access to exclusive content and bonus material, consider visiting our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales. Every contribution, big or small, helps me to continue to produce the true crime content you love. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon.
Another way you can support is by leaving us a rating with a review. Now, let's talk about the murder on board Pacific Southwest Airline Flight 1771. Hey, Forensic Tales listeners, I have to admit, I'm really excited about the case we're discussing this week because we haven't covered a story like this. And it's completely different than any case we've talked about before.
But I wanted to cover it because it's such a crazy, fascinating, and just downright horrifying story that talks about one of our greatest fears. So what are we talking about this week on the show? We're going to take a deep dive on Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771.
The story of PSA Flight 1771 began in 1987, almost 33 years ago from today. This is back when Pacific Southwest Airlines was a United Airlines company that was headquartered in San Diego, California.
From the 1950s through the late 80s, Pacific Southwest Airlines was pretty much the leading discount airline company in the entire United States. They were an airline that offered extremely affordable flights, pretty similar to what airlines like Spirit and Southwest now offer here in the U.S.,
PSA referred to itself as, quote, the world's friendliest airline and even painted a smile on the nose of its airplanes. Just to give you guys an idea of just how affordable and cheap their flights were during the 1950s, when the company was first starting to take off.
They offered nonstop flights from Burbank up to San Francisco, California for just $9.99. And no, that's not a $999. That's $9.99, which of course seems absolutely ludicrous nowadays. I don't even think you can buy a sandwich for under $10 on an airplane today.
So what PSA was doing really revolutionized a brand new affordable way for Americans to travel by air. During the airline's peak popularity, PSA was offering over 240 non-stop flights each week from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which became one of their most popular routes.
PSA became many people's go-to airline to use when traveling between Southern California up to Northern California and vice versa. It was just a really convenient and affordable way to fly. One of PSA's employees who worked for the airline during the 1980s was a man by the name of David Burke.
David Burke was born on May 18, 1952, and grew up in the United Kingdom. Both of David's parents were from Jamaica, and later on, David and his family left the UK, and they decided to immigrate into the United States, where they eventually settled into the state of New York.
As an adult, David found work in the city of Rochester in New York, working for the airline company US Air. Even though David never married, he would go on to father seven children with four different women over the years. So his job at US Air was really important to not only support himself, but he had seven children that he was providing for.
By the end of 1987, David had been working for US Air in Rochester, New York for a little over 15 years. He started working for the airline when he was just in his 20s. And by the year 1987, he had spent 15 years with the company and was now in his mid 30s.
But after these 15 years, David became the center of both an internal and external investigation into the airline. US Air terminated David from its airline on November 19, 1987, after a hidden camera caught him stealing $69 from the airline's cocktail fund.
David's supervisors had become aware that there were some recent shortages in the cocktail fund. The tabs weren't adding up at the end of the day. To figure out where the shortages were coming from, a hidden camera was set up, and as broad as daylight, you see David taking money right out of the drawer where the money is kept on the airplane and put it right inside of his pocket.
Now, on the surface, this seems like a really silly and just outright stupid way to lose your job after 15 years of service. Obviously, this wasn't the first time that he likely stole from the company. But how much money is really made from cocktails during a flight that is worth getting fired for?
Because during the incident in November, David had pocketed $69, which led to his termination from US Air. He was now completely unemployed without any source of income. But pocketing cocktail money wasn't the only thing David Burke was being investigated for.
At the same exact time David was being internally investigated for stealing, he was also a subject in an external investigation that suspected some of the airline's employees, which included David Burke, were smuggling drugs, specifically cocaine, from Jamaica and bringing it into the United States through the use of U.S. air.
which if convicted is a very, very serious drug charge. And because the allegation is that David was helping to smuggle the drugs into the United States through an airline, this would have become a federal case with very serious punishments and consequences. Immediately after he was terminated from US Air in Rochester, New York,
Probably sensing that he was also under investigation for drug smuggling, David relocated to Los Angeles, California.
Although he was never officially charged with having any connection to the drug smuggling, many people speculated later on that his decision to relocate across the country was largely due to the fact he wanted to avoid any suspicion of being involved. And just a note, he was also never criminally charged with stealing from U.S. Air.
Instead, the airline just decided to terminate his employment and not pursue any criminal charges against him. During this time, David's former company, US Air, had recently purchased Pacific Southwest Airlines. So PSA was owned by US Air when he was fired. US Air was basically the parent company to PSA.
So this whole thing, this was really difficult on David. He had worked for the airline for so many years. He worked in many different departments while he was there. Most recently, he worked as a ticket agent. And he had seven children to feed and look after. He needed this job. This job was everything to David Burke.
So after being fired, he felt deeply betrayed by the company and he maintained his innocence. He claimed he never stole the cocktail money. And even though the incident was entirely caught on hidden cameras, he really didn't agree with the airline's decision to fire him. And he was desperate to get his job back.
David relocated to Los Angeles, California in early December 1987, so just a few days after he was fired from US Air. His decision to move to LA wasn't just because he lost his job, but because he was
He moved out there because his estranged girlfriend, a woman by the name of Jacqueline Camacho, lived and stayed in L.A. So he knew he would at least have a place to stay while he looked for work. And also a side note, Jacqueline was also employed by USAir and worked out of LAX.
But after moving to L.A., David never really seemed to settle in to his new life there. He was still so angry at US Air for firing him. He just couldn't accept that after giving pretty much everything to this company for over 15 years, that they would fire him over a couple bucks.
A couple weeks later, on December 7th, 1987, now only 18 days after being fired, David scheduled a meeting with his former supervisor, Raymond Thompson. He scheduled the meeting to ask for his job back. He wasn't going to admit to stealing, but he needed to at least ask for a second chance.
He needed this job to not only support himself, but also for his seven children. David and Raymond Thompson met at LAX, Los Angeles International Airport. Raymond was a manager for US Air who worked at LAX, but lived in Northern California. So Raymond would commute to work on PSA flights.
He would board a PSA flight in San Francisco, SFO, and then he would fly down to LAX. He did this every single day for work. Now, if you aren't from California or you just don't know the region, the flight from LAX to SFO is really short. From gate to gate, you're looking at about an hour and 15, 20 minutes at the most, and
Now, I know a lot of people who spend this long, sometimes longer, commuting to work in their cars every day. And to be honest, if my daily commute was an hour, hour and a half every day, I'd prefer to fly than drive my own car anyway. And because Raymond was an employee of PSA, he was a manager, he really took advantage of this benefit.
So the meeting between David and Raymond that day on December 7th didn't go the way David hoped for. And that's because Raymond wasn't willing to give him his job back. They weren't going to rehire him. After the meeting, David walked out of Raymond Thompson's office at LAX and immediately approached the PSA ticket counter at the front of the terminal.
He pulled out his wallet and asked the ticket counter agent if he could purchase a one-way ticket on PSA Flight 1771. The flight was scheduled to depart LAX at 3.31 p.m. and arrive in San Francisco at 4.43 p.m. The PSA ticket agent checked availability immediately.
saw that the flight only had 38 passengers on board and issued David his one-way ticket. Once David had his ticket in hand, he didn't head in the direction of the normal security line inside of the terminal. Instead,
He made his way through the airport's employee security line, completely bypassing the normal passenger security checkpoint and the metal detectors. David was able to completely bypass airport security after he flashed his employee credential bag to TSA agents, the very badge he was supposed to have surrendered when he was fired, but didn't.
PSA Flight 1771 departed LAX right on time at 3.31 p.m. This particular aircraft had been carrying PSA passengers for a little over three years, and the airplane had a nickname, the Smile of Stockton. On board were 38 passengers and five crew members for a total of 43 people.
The flight's captain was Captain Greg Lindemood, who was 44 years old and a very experienced captain. Right next to him was 48-year-old First Officer James Nunn, also another very experienced pilot with PSA.
Also on board Flight 1771 was Raymond Thompson, David's former supervisor, who was making his normal trip back up to Northern California. Besides Raymond, there was another PSA employee on board that day, Douglas Arthur, who served as the chief pilot for PSA in Los Angeles.
Also on board Flight 1771 was David Burke with a one-way ticket. Shortly after takeoff at 3.31 p.m., the airplane reached its normal cruising altitude at 22,000 feet.
At 22,000 feet, Captain Lindemood announced to passengers that they were expecting some turbulence in the air. So everyone on board was going to have to remain seated with their seat belts on for the duration of the short flight, which isn't really a problem considering the flight was only supposed to be a little over an hour. As the pilot made this announcement,
David Burke began writing a letter on one of the airplane's air sickness bags, those bags that are conveniently placed in the seat pockets. As the airplane cruised at 22,000 feet, David took his pen to paper and wrote, quote, Hi, Ray. I think it's sort of ironical that we ended up like this.
I asked for some leniency for my family. Remember? Well, I got none and you'll get none. After writing the letter, David placed his pen back inside of his pocket and got up from his seat. With the note in hand, he made his way towards the airplane's bathroom in the back of the plane.
On his way, he dropped the note off on Raymond Thompson's lap, his former supervisor, just a few seats away. Inside the bathroom, David pulled out a .44 caliber Remington Magnum pistol from inside his jacket pocket. With pistol in hand, he exited the airplane bathroom, made his way up the aisle, and
and quickly fired two shots directly at Raymond Thompson, killing him almost instantly. The two gunshots were recorded on the airplane's cockpit recorder, which was on and recording during the flight. Now, just to be clear, the exact nature and order of events that occurred today
aren't 100% known. The pieces of what we took place here was from what was recorded on the cockpit recorder, as well as what was reported by the pilots to air traffic controllers. So after Raymond was shot twice and killed in his seat,
Captain Linda Mood and First Officer Nunn frantically radioed in to the Oakland Air Traffic Control, reporting to controllers that shots had been fired inside of the airplane. The captain reported, quote, there's gunfire on board, end quote.
The two pilots quickly declared an emergency on board and changed their squat code to 7700, signaling distress, signaling a mayday. A few moments later, the cockpit voice recorder recorded a crew member, which was presumed to be flight attendant Deborah Neal, open the cockpit door and told the pilots, quote, we have a problem.
Captain Lindemood is heard saying on the recorder, what's the problem? Seconds later, David Burke approached the flight attendant, Deborah Neal, from behind, shooting her once. David announced to the pilots, I'm the problem. Three more rapid gunshots are heard over the cockpit recorder, presumably shots that killed both pilots.
So within seconds, the cockpit recorder picked up increasing windscreen noise as the airplane's nose pitched down and began picking up speed after both pilots were shot and killed. A final gunshot was heard a few moments later. There's some speculation about who was the victim of this final gunshot.
Some people speculated that David Burke shot and killed himself, while others speculated that David likely shot Douglas Arthur. Remember, Douglas was also on board and he was the chief pilot for PSA at LAX. So the theory is that Douglas Arthur likely saw what was happening and he tried to gain control of the descending airplane.
Now, when we get to the forensic evidence of the case, I'll explain to you why I don't believe David shot himself. That I believe the last gunshot heard on the plane's recorder was at Douglas Arthur, who likely tried to save everybody on board and who also tried to stop David Burke.
So after both pilots were shot and killed, PSA Flight 1771 started descending in such a steep dive that the airplane nearly broke the speed of sound. Actually, some experts speculated later on that the aircraft actually did break the speed of sound.
The plane eventually crashed into the hillside of the Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County at 4.16 p.m. Based on the condition of the airplane's black box, experts concluded that the plane likely experienced a deceleration of 5,000 times the force of gravity when it finally hit the ground.
When authorities arrived at the hillside after the crash, if you didn't know what happened, you would have no idea that these were remains of a commercial airplane. There was nothing left out there that even resembled a commercial airplane at first glance.
Debris from Flight 1771 was scattered over hundreds and hundreds of yards that would take investigators months to finally sift through. One of the most terrifying events we experience in our society are plane crashes. Many people won't even get on an airplane if they don't absolutely have to.
But when you think about it, this kind of thinking and this fear is completely illogical because the likelihood of being in an airplane crash is often described as being pointless to quantify. And that's because the chances of you or I dying in a commercial plane crash is 1 in 5.4 million.
And just to put that number into perspective, our chances of dying in a car crash are over 200 times more likely than that. But still, our fear of flying in airplane crashes is a real thing that many of us experience and feel.
So investigators from both the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, and the FBI arrived at the crash site to try and figure out what exactly happened. Until the airplane's black box was recovered, it wasn't really clear what happened.
Of course, investigators knew something had occurred inside the plane simply based on what the Oakland air traffic controllers had reported about what the pilots had said sometime before they were shot. By the end of the first day of digging and investigating, authorities announced that all 43 people on board Flight 1771 had been killed in the crash. There, unfortunately, were no survivors.
The NTSB and FBI spent the next several days digging and recovering the pieces of what was left of the airplane. And Patricia Goldman, who was the head of the NTSB on-site investigators for the crash, announced, quote, that they could not find apparent problems with the aircraft, frame, structure, or engines that would have led to the crash, end quote.
In other words, this was no accident. This was clearly foul play. On the second day of digging through the crash site, investigators recovered what would have become a very important piece to their investigation. And that's because authorities recovered parts of a handgun containing six spent cartilage casings among the debris.
Most of the handgun had survived the crash and was largely still intact. And most importantly, the part of the gun that was found was the trigger, the part of the gun that most likely would contain any forensic evidence. Later that day, they also found the note that David Burke wrote on one of the airplane's sickness bags saying,
That same note that was dropped off on his supervisor's lap. Although this early on in the investigation, the NTSB and FBI didn't know who David Burke was or who wrote the note. They just know that whoever wrote the note probably had something to do with the crash and why there was a handgun on board.
But the good news is, is that NTSB and the FBI now have a suspect. They just needed to find out who wrote the note and who brought the handgun on board. Experts had already concluded that the airplane didn't experience any mechanical issues causing the crash. And now that they've located parts of a handgun and a note that pretty much reads like a murder-suicide note, this is huge.
This discovery among the debris pretty much corroborates what authorities already knew about the crash from what the air traffic controllers testimony about what might have happened on board that day. So the handgun was sent to the forensic lab for testing to be done on it.
And when the technicians started their analysis of the gun, they were looking for any fingerprints that would identify the owner, which is a pretty routine thing to do in this case. But it wasn't just fingerprints that were found on the gun. In the forensic lab, experts discovered that part of a human finger was still lodged on the gun's trigger.
A full-on fingertip was still pressed down on the gun's trigger. The gunman's finger. The fingertip, which was just a few centimeters long, was still pressed down on the gun's trigger, telling investigators that the finger belonged to the shooter.
This also meant that this person was holding the gun at the same moment the plane crashed into the hillside. So not only do they get a fingerprint from the gun, they get part of an entire finger. So the tip of the finger was identified through its fingerprints as belonging to David Burke.
Authorities now have a name for their suspect who they believed caused Flight 1771 to crash, killing everybody on board. Authorities began digging into who was David Burke? Who was this guy? And they quickly put the pieces together that he was the one who wrote the note, but they needed to figure out why.
Why would David have wanted to cause an entire airplane to crash with himself on it? Investigators learned that David got the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 caliber Magnum revolver from a former coworker.
The coworker admitted that he loaned David the firearm, but said that he had no idea what he was planning to do with it. And he had no idea that David was planning to board a PSA flight that day. Police also contacted David's estranged girlfriend, Jacqueline Camacho, the woman that he moved in with in Los Angeles and who was also an employee at US Air.
She admitted to police that on the day of the crash, David had left her a very, very upsetting message on her answering machine and said that she hasn't heard from him since. The message David left on his girlfriend's answering machine said, Jackie, this is David. I'm on my way to San Francisco. Flight 1771. I love you.
I really wish I could say more, but I do love you. The 30s had put the pieces together that David Burke was the one responsible for the crash of PSA Flight 1771. Infuriated that he didn't get his job back with US Air, he borrowed that revolver from a co-worker. He purchased a one-way ticket
The same flight his supervisor, Raymond Thompson, took each and every single day. Before getting on the airplane, he called his girlfriend and left her a message on her answering machine to say his final goodbyes. Once on the plane, he wrote Thompson a note on the back of an air sickness bag. He went to the airplane's bathroom, took out the gun, and shot Thompson twice.
He went on to shoot one of the flight attendants and then both of the pilots, causing the plane to rapidly descend towards the ground. What was left of the airplane's flight data recorder indicated that either David Burke himself pushed the control column forward in the cockpit, sending the plane into a nosedive,
or that one of the pilots, after being shot, fell and slumped onto the control. Either option is entirely possible, and we may never know the answer to that. David worked for the airline for almost 15 years in many different positions, including
He just may have had the knowledge about what to do and what buttons to press to cause the plane to nosedive. But without any solid evidence, there's no witnesses. Again, we may never know exactly what happened inside that cockpit. Now, what about that final gunshot heard on the plane's voice recorder?
Here's why I think that the last and final gunshot was likely aimed towards Douglas Arthur, who was PSA's chief pilot in the LAX, who was also on board that day. And here's why I don't believe David Burke shot and killed himself.
The forensic evidence points towards the theory that David was alive and well before the plane crashed, that he didn't shoot and kill himself. The forensic evidence found on the recovered gun tells a completely different story. A fingertip, still pressed and locked onto the gun's trigger, was recovered. And we already know that the finger belonged to David Burke.
If David had shot and killed himself, as heard on the final gunshot on the recorder, he wouldn't have been able to still hold on to the gun when the plane crashed. And his finger wouldn't still be on the trigger. If he would have shot himself, and just by laws of gravity, the gun would have fallen out of his hand. That wasn't the case here. The finger was still on the gun's trigger when it was found.
David Burke didn't shoot himself. The forensic evidence tells us he held on to that gun until impact. So if this theory is true, which based on the forensic evidence, it points to that, this means that David Burke chose to die in the crash instead of pulling the gun on himself.
In my opinion, it seems like shooting himself would have been a much easier way out. Instead, he lived for several more minutes as the plane descended towards the ground, which experts have estimated was traveling at over 800 miles per hour. He would experience those last few horrifying moments again
just like everyone else on that plane. Which, when I think about those people, those innocent people who were on board, it just makes me sick to my stomach to even think or imagine what must have been going on in their heads before.
in their minds as they experience a complete nosedive going 800 miles per hour, knowing that you're not going to survive. The reason why I believe the speculation that David used his last bullet on Douglas Arthur is that Douglas was the only person on that airplane that could have saved everybody on board.
He was still the chief pilot at LAX. He certainly would have been able to get inside of the cockpit and he would have been able to get the airplane under control, but he wasn't able to get David Burke under control. I believe Arthur tried to approach him and gain access to the cockpit when David shot him in cold blood.
And that's the final gunshot we hear on the tape. It wasn't just PSA employees who were on board Flight 1771. The president of Chevron USA, James Sia, along with three other of Chevron's public affairs executives were also on board. Now, if that's not terrible enough...
Three officials from Pacific Bell or Pac Bell, the telephone company that is now owned by AT&T, were also on board Flight 1771. That makes two major United States companies that had three high-level executives on a single flight possible.
which at face value sounds a little crazy. But remember, PSA was the leading affordable airline in the US. The airline offered a ton of nonstop round trip flights from Southern to Northern California each and every single day.
which made it a really popular airline for business executives to use, especially companies that traveled on airplanes on a daily or on a regular basis.
So it wasn't crazy, at least then, for business executives to use PSA. They were cheap, they had seats available, and they had frequent flights between major cities, LAX and FSO being one of PSA's most traveled routes. Since the tragic crash of PSA Flight 1771, several laws and policies have been created.
The federal government passed a law that required the, quote, immediate seizure of all airline and airport employee credentials after an employee's termination or resignation from the company. David Burke's employee credential allowed him access to the employee-only security entrance,
That allowed him to avoid metal detectors and allowed him to get on board with that gun. David had been terminated from US Air for nearly three weeks before the crash, but his badge still worked. No one in the organization thought David
or took the time to either take the badge from him, or at the very least, disable his access to prevent something like this from happening. It's especially alarming in this case because David was terminated for stealing, and he was also the subject of an external investigation into drug smuggling, but nobody thought to take away his badge.
When I worked at Sears years ago, the day that I left, they asked me for my employee discount card back so I couldn't get my 20% off anymore. So if someone would have taken his badge like they were supposed to, this would have never happened.
So the federal government also implemented the policy that all airport and airline employees were subject to the same security measures as regular passengers. In David Burke's case, he simply just flashed his bag and he was allowed to board the plane. He wasn't subject to any search. He didn't have to pass through a metal detector or anything like that.
And neither did any other airport or airline employee back then. It was pretty much assumed that because you're an employee, you just get to board the plane. You don't have to worry about any security screenings. But after Flight 1771, pilots, flight attendants, any airport or airline staff are now required to pass through the same level of security just like the general public is.
The crash also prompted several major companies to revise their internal travel policies. Six executives from Chevron and PacBell were all killed in the crash. Neither company had ever experienced a situation in which three of their top executives in their company were all killed in a single event.
I don't think that's ever happened ever since, except for maybe 9-11 or something like that. So companies now had to really look at their travel policies to avoid anything like this happening, where the entire company lost all of their executives. So companies started to create policies that forbid travel by more than one executive on the same flight.
They're saying, like, if something like this happens again, we don't want all the leaders and the managers of the company to be killed in one single event. And this is a policy that most major companies in the United States have today. To this day, the remains of 27 passengers have never been identified. Very little is left of the airplane and anything and anyone who was inside.
The force at which Flight 1771 crashed into the hillside completely obliterated everything. They found no wings. They found no fuse lodges. They didn't even find any of the airplane seats. If you see pictures or watch some of the news coverage of what the crash site looked like, all you can see is just small pieces of stuff.
Nothing is recognizable. Again, at first glance, I don't think you'd even know that these pieces used to be an airplane with over 40 people on board. After the crash, David Burke's family have come forward to defend David.
In a New York Times article, David's brother, 27-year-old Alamont Burke, questioned how authorities were able to recover the note that David allegedly wrote to his former supervisor on the airplane.
His brother said something like, how could they find a note in all of that wreckage? Was it even the airplane's black box or something? Basically insinuating nothing survived the crash. How could authorities claim they found the letter and how could it have survived?
David Burke's older brother also came forward and said that the family stands behind David, that they will, quote, wear the red badge of courage if necessary in his honor. His brother, Alan Burke, has maintained that David moved to California to start a new life after being fired from US Air, that David wanted to start over with his girlfriend, Jacqueline Camacho.
Even David's mother, Iris, stood behind her son and also said that he went to California to start fresh, to make a new life for himself, and not to become some sort of mass murderer that he's being portrayed as.
Police in Rochester, New York have said that they suspect that David had used profits from the drug sales, so the drug smuggling US Air was investigating him for, to purchase the home that he owned and the expensive Mercedes-Benz that he drove around.
Now, when I say expensive, I mean the Benz was well over $100,000. And in order to get the car in the first place, David had to have it specially shipped over from Germany. Now, I don't know what the industry standard is on airline ticket agents' salaries during the late 1980s, so I don't want to pass any judgment here, but that's a pretty expensive car to be driving around in.
But David's family sidestepped that objection by saying that David was known to do favors for important travelers on U.S. air who often repaid him with either discounts on certain products or some sort of other favors. So the family completely dismissed the speculation that drug money was used for any of David's purchases before the crash.
And when the Burke family has been asked what they believe then really happened and why Flight 1771 crashed, they have said that not everything is known about what happened that day. That what really happened just might surprise everybody. And in case you're wondering, that's a direct quote from one of David's brothers.
What happened on the afternoon of December 7, 1987, almost 32 years ago, is an absolute tragedy that is almost too difficult to put in words. 42 innocent people lost their lives at the hands of David Burke, someone who wanted to seek revenge against the employer who he believed did him wrong.
His main target was his former supervisor, Raymond Thompson. But instead, he made the decision to take his revenge out on so many others who had absolutely nothing to do with the situation. The families of 27 victims never even received the remains of their loved ones in order for them to have a proper burial.
Even though we don't know every detail about what happened inside of Flight 1771, through forensic science, we do know that David Burke was the shooter, the one responsible for causing the plane to crash. David Burke became the worst African-American mass murderer in U.S. history. ♪
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