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NARRATOR: On December 21, 1988,

Jeannine Boulanger is driving to pick up her daughter Nicole

from New York's JFK airport.

JEANNINE BOULANGER: Couldn't get out of the house fast enough,

couldn't wait to get to the airport.

NARRATOR: 21-year-old Nicole is returning after 6 months abroad.

RADIO REPORTER: A Pan Am 747 carrying about 250 people...

BOULANGER: We weren't really listening

to anything in particular,

but I heard about a plane missing over Scotland.

NARRATOR: On the other side of the Atlantic,

fires burned in a small Scottish town.

BOULANGER: And then we went and inquired,

and the gentleman said that, um...

Pan Am 103 has been lost.

[Jeannine screaming]

I collapsed at the airport.

[screaming]

I was screaming, "My baby! My baby!"

My baby!

NARRATOR: On a dark December night in 1988,

one of the worst aircraft disasters in history

occurred in the skies over Scotland.

A Boeing 747 airplane broke apart at 31,000 feet,

with 259 people on board.

Seconds later,

the peace of a rural Scottish town was shattered.

Large sections of jumbo jet

smashed into residential streets,

bringing fire and death on an unimaginable scale.

The town's name was Lockerbie.

The shocking aftermath of the crash

was captured on video camera.

Much of this footage has never been broadcast before.

This is the story of Lockerbie told by those who were there

and those whose lives it tore apart.

MAN: Horrific. It was a horrific scene.

MAN: The whole street was gone. The whole street was on fire.

MAN: It is one of those nights one will never forget.

WOMAN: Praying with all my might that this wasn't happening.

WOMAN: I said the lord's prayer

'cause I thought we were going to die.

NARRATOR: It was an event that shocked the world

and would forever change the way we travel.

The small town of Lockerbie is located in the Scottish borders,

a peaceful rural corner of Scotland.

Lockerbie sits on the M74 motorway,

which is the main north-south road

between England and Scotland.

For many, the town is just a sign off the road.

MAN: A sleepy Scottish hillside town.

Very welcoming place.

WOMAN: A very quiet market town

where very little happened, to be honest with you.

MAN: The youngsters used to complain about

there was nothing going on, you know.

Even going 12 miles to Dumfries was a big adventure.

MAN: I knew where Scotland was, but...

And Edinburgh perhaps, Glasgow.

But Lockerbie was just beyond my understanding.

NARRATOR: In 1988,

Father Patrick Keegans is the local catholic priest.

He lives at Number 1 Sherwood crescent,

a small street on the edge of Lockerbie.

That Christmas his mother is staying with him.

She'd arrived on the afternoon of December the 21st.

PATRICK KEEGANS: I was looking forward to Christmas

because Christmas in a small place

is different from the city.

There's a sort of quaintness and a real joy about Christmas.

NARRATOR: Local school teacher Helen Fraser

also lives on Sherwood Crescent.

Helen, her husband, and two children

live at Number 29.

HELEN FRASER: It was the first day of the school holidays,

and I'd been teaching.

The children and I went to do

some bits and pieces of Christmas shopping,

and we came back and we put up the Christmas decorations.

NARRATOR: as locals prepare for Christmas,

they could have no idea that within hours

their small town would become a household name

and a symbol of worldwide tragedy.

At London's busiest airport, Heathrow,

passengers are arriving

to catch flights before the Christmas holidays.

Businessman Frank Ciulla is traveling to New Jersey

to spend Christmas with his family.

MARY LOU CIULLA: He didn't have to do anything

when he came home.

I even bought the sausage for the sauce,

which was very important in our family.

In fact I made sure that day, the 21st,

I went out and made sure I had that in the house

in case he wanted to make it that night.

MICHELLE CIULLA LIPKIN: so my dad's big thing

that he loved to do was go shopping on Christmas eve,

and that's just... That's insane.

No one likes to go Christmas shopping on Christmas eve,

and he loved it,

and so he would save all my mom's presents

for Christmas eve,

and for a couple of years I did the shopping with him

because I thought it was a really miraculous process

because he would just go, "this, this, this,"

and just buy all of this stuff for my mom.

NARRATOR: also arriving at Heathrow that day

are 35 American students--

members of a study abroad program

run by Syracuse university.

Among the 35 is political science major J.P. Flynn.

J.P. is an accomplished athlete.

JACK FLYNN: Tennis was his best sport.

He was first singles all the time, okay.

Even when he was a little kid

he would jump all the way up to first singles.

One he loved the most was basketball

because of the team spirit and the team playing and so forth.

NARRATOR: Traveling with J.P. That day

is his friend Tom Schultz.

Tom's mom, Jane, had visited him in Europe just a month before.

JANE SCHULTZ: When I walked into the kitchen,

he said, "Oh, Ma, you're gonna love it

because we cleaned up the apartment for you."

Well, cleaning up meant stacking about a thousand pizza boxes

in the corner.

He had his hair cut real short and he had it spiked,

and I didn't say anything,

and I knew he was just dying for me to say something about it.

So after half an hour he couldn't stand it

and he said, "Well, what do you think, Ma?"

And I said, "All I can say

is I'm glad your father isn't here."

NARRATOR: Among the many departures that day

is Pan American 103,

a non-stop transatlantic flight from London to new york.

Booked on board flight 103 is Nicole Boulanger,

a musical drama major at Syracuse.

BOULANGER: She loved fashion.

They often described Nicole

as being able to put on a paper bag with accessories

and looking like a million bucks.

She absolutely adored consignment shops,

where she could endeavor to find the most interesting things,

yet put together an outfit

that most of us would be shocked to see,

because how did she do that?

NARRATOR: At Heathrow, those boarding flight 103 in London

go through the normal check-in and security procedures.

Their airplane,

a Pan Am jumbo jet named "Clipper Maid of the Seas,"

is having baggage loaded on board

and being readied for the transatlantic flight.

Once every passenger is accounted for,

the clipper "Maid of the Seas" leaves its stand

and taxies for takeoff.

What no one on board knows

is that there's a brown suitcase in the hold

that does not belong to anyone on the plane.

Once in the air, Pan Am 103 heads north.

The journey to New York will take some seven hours.

The jumbo jet reaches its cruising speed

at an altitude of 31,000 feet.

On board the flight

are 243 passengers and 16 crew members.

Sitting in the first class cabin is businessman Frank Ciulla.

LIPKIN: I remember this one time where he came to the local pool

and he was dressed in the most atrocious outfit,

with a cowboy hat,

and everyone just thought he was like the coolest guy

in the whole world,

and of course I was so embarrassed.

NARRATOR: Drama student Nicole Boulanger

is sitting over the wings in seat 28B.

JEANNINE: She had so many, many, many friends.

And actually Nicole was not fully aware

of how much talent she actually had.

NARRATOR: Keen athlete J.P. Flynn

is sitting in window seat 45A towards the rear of the plane.

J. Flynn: Even though he was a very good athlete,

he pushed his academics just as hard.

He wanted to succeed at both.

NARRATOR: Sitting in the aisle one seat from J.P.

Is his friend Tom Schultz.

SCHULTZ: He was very good at arguing a point

and usually won his arguments,

so he had definitely the Irish, the gift of gab.

NARRATOR: 25 minutes into its journey

flight 103 crosses into Scottish airspace

and is about to turn west

towards the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The plane makes contact with Prestwick air traffic control.

This will be the last communication

between the ground and the plane.

46 seconds after 7:02,

Pan Am 103 disappears

from air traffic control radar screens.

In just a few moments,

hell will descend on the small town of Lockerbie.

Large sections of Pan Am 103 are plummeting to earth.

WOMAN: It just lit up with white light.

WOMAN: And then the whole sky turned orange.

MAN: The whole house went dark.

And the house shook so much, it was impossible to move.

MAN: And then things just started to fall out of the sky,

stone and debris all around about us.

MAN: And I thought, "I'm going to die here."

And then everything went still.

FRASER: I ran downstairs,

and the children came running from the kitchen,

and I just grabbed them,

and we sat in the corner of the hall

and said the lord's prayer,

'cause I thought we were going to die.

NARRATOR: Helen Fraser's house

is just a few hundred feet from a huge impact crater.

Within minutes,

emergency calls reach the fire department.

Their response is captured on radio.

KEEGANS: I opened up the front door,

and the whole street was gone.

The whole street was on fire.

There was fires in the garden, rubble and debris everywhere.

NARRATOR: Father Patrick Keegans and his mother

are incredibly lucky to survive.

Number 1 Sherwood Crescent

is just a short distance from the now blazing crater.

KEEGANS: I said to my mother, "We've got to leave."

So I got her ready as best I could

and put a scarf over her mouth and wrapped her up

and I put her in a big jacket and boots and corduroy trousers,

and I said, "We'll..."

I said, "We'll leave now, but don't look at anything.

Don't look. Just keep your eyes down,"

so she kept her eyes down,

and I took her through all this rubble.

FRASER: Everything was on fire.

The streets were burning, the trees were burning.

There were small fires and big fires.

NARRATOR: Sherwood Crescent

has been hit by the central wing section of the plane,

which includes the fuel tanks.

Thousands of gallons of aviation fuel

have exploded here,

obliterating five houses,

home to two families with children,

a married couple,

and two elderly people.

FRASER: I think the blessing would be that those who did die

would have died very quickly

and probably wouldn't have known very much about it.

I hope they didn't.

NARRATOR: In the first minutes,

there is confusion about what has happened

among the emergency services.

NARRATOR: Fire Officer Alan Riddet

happens to be in Lockerbie by chance that night.

ALAN RIDDET: Just started running up

and got pretty well up the street

towards the crater site

and realized it was bad.

You knew it was something big

when there was black smoke, to that extent, in the open.

NARRATOR: Local newspaper photographer Robin Bryden

is one of the first members of the press to arrive.

ROBIN BRYDEN: You couldn't really see a great deal

because of all the smoke,

and you could certainly smell the fuel,

and there was lots of people running around,

shouting for relatives.

Walked onto the road.

It was closed off.

And I walked down there and started taking the photographs

because you could see the burning houses.

MAN: As I was walking up the street

the fires were breaking out in front of me and behind me.

And I was starting to... I was frightened, you know.

I was thinking I've got caught in something here.

So I was tempted just to come back.

MAN: There was nothing we could do here at all.

I mean absolutely nothing.

The guy behind me,

we decided to run across the fields to the houses.

One or two houses were totally engulfed,

again nothing you could do,

but the ones on the outskirts,

there was obviously hope, you know.

NARRATOR: It's clear to many on the scene

that this is some sort of plane crash,

but they know little else.

RIDDET: When a reasonable number

of firefighters arrived on scene

and we started to try and tackle the fire...

When the water system failed.

We quickly realized that one of the engines

had fallen down through the water main.

So it became quite a difficult incident to deal with

because we had a major fire and not a lot of water.

MAN: What we're doing at the moment

is we're doing a reconnaissance of the area,

we're reporting back to the control unit

to update the picture that's emerging there.

RIDDET: The fire, to a large extent,

was the least of the problems,

the biggest concern

was about whether there were any survivors...

How could we help them?

NARRATOR: News that a passenger jet has crashed

quickly spreads across the united kingdom;

journalists and TV crews rush to the scene.

KIRSTY WARK: The phone rang in the newsroom,

and we were all there having a party.

And the news came through that something had happened,

a plane had downed.

We realized immediately that we should go very, very quickly.

NARRATOR: In the United States,

news reports begin to filter through to families.

J. FLYNN: I was listening to the radio, the news,

and they told me about a plane going down.

CIULLA: A jumbo jet went down over Scotland,

hit a petrol station, on fire.

Now, I knew my husband was coming home,

but it didn't give you the name,

you know, Pan Am or American, whatever,

so I was a little nervous.

I turned around, and the second time he came on,

he did say "Pan Am."

Not 103, but he did say "a Pan Am jet."

And I think that's when my stomach just kind of sank.

NARRATOR: News of the events in Lockerbie

reaches the British government in London.

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: I was in the house of commons,

and I got a message saying

that there had been an explosion,

that a Pan Am aircraft had crashed,

there'd been some sort of explosion in the sky,

and at that stage, nobody yet knew anything else.

NARRATOR: In Lockerbie,

hundreds of off-duty police officers rush to the scene,

including 21-year-old Kate Thomson.

KATE THOMSON: I do remember

being in the car with my colleagues, making our way,

and we were just south of Lockerbie

and we could see, in the distance, flames,

and another colleague from the service

came across our radios and said,

"I've found the cockpit, and it says 'Maid of the Seas.'"

NARRATOR: The discovery of the cockpit

is a crucial moment.

The emergency services on the ground now know

this is a 747 jumbo jet.

And they know there will be hundreds of casualties.

The cockpit is in fact lying some three miles

from the center of Lockerbie.

It's clear from this point on

that the wreckage hasn't just hit the town;

it is scattered for miles.

THOMSON: You could hear two-tone sirens.

You could see flames.

You could see there was smoke.

But along with that there was actually peace.

It was a strange kind of silence in places.

WARK: It seemed to me that the place was stunned.

It felt as if the whole...

The physical area of the town was just...

The whole thing was just completely stunned.

NARRATOR: At the local hospital,

doctors and nurses are called back to work

and emergency medical supplies and blood arrive.

The medical staff prepare to deal

with hundreds of casualties.

Specialists like RAF Mountain Rescue team leader David Whalley

also begin to arrive.

DAVID WHALLEY: When I arrived at Lockerbie,

all the way down you could see wreckage on the road.

The smell of fuel, aviation fuel,

absolutely stank.

I'd never smelled it so heavy in the air.

And the fires were just Dante's inferno.

It was horrific. It was a horrific scene.

NARRATOR: It isn't just aircraft wreckage scattered around,

but the remnants of human life.

WHALLEY: We went round,

and within five minutes we knew we could do nothing.

You know, it was mayhem.

And, you know, without saying too much,

there was bodies everywhere,

there was Christmas presents everywhere,

everybody that we could see was dead.

NARRATOR: The many ambulances that arrive in Lockerbie

stand idle.

There are very few wounded among the local people.

And at the hospital,

staff are still expecting many casualties

from the jumbo jet to arrive.

MAN: There have been no survivors reported

from the crashed aircraft,

and we're waiting for Dr. Hill,

who is the on-site medical officer,

to give us an official stand down.

NARRATOR: On the other side of the Atlantic,

relatives of the victims begin to arrive at JFK Airport,

many not aware that flight 103 will never land.

Among them is Jeannine Boulanger

and her husband.

BOULANGER: I collapsed at the airport,

and I remember being on the ground,

trying to get up,

and I was surrounded...

People were right on top of me with cameras and bright lights.

It was the worst moment that one could possibly have experienced.

[screaming]

NARRATOR: Other relatives will also hear the terrible news

that afternoon.

17-year-old Michelle Ciulla is told to return home from school.

LIPKIN: When I walked in the house,

at that point, my mother was on the floor,

crying and screaming.

And my sister was still in her coat,

and so I knew like things were happening really fast,

and I remember at that time, going into a room,

not even saying anything to them,

going into the room and just praying

and like praying with all my might

that this wasn't happening.

BOULANGER: Parents are supposed to protect their children,

and at that moment,

I realized that...

We could not have provided that for her.

REPORTER: Even now,

a few hours after the tragedy of Pan Am Flight 103,

the full extent of the disaster has not been assessed.

All around are fragments of the aircraft's fuselage.

Helicopters hover overhead with powerful searchlights

as the grim search for bodies continues.

NARRATOR: One of those walking the hills around the town

is police surgeon David Fieldhouse.

DAVID FIELDHOUSE: We met up with one of those chaps with his dog,

and he had found locations where there were bodies,

and when the number got to about 10 or 11,

we decided that we ought to go back and label every one of them

because we hadn't expected that sort of number,

and we labeled them--

well, I labeled them with my initials "DCF1"

and eventually up to 58.

NARRATOR: Around midnight,

the secretary of state for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind,

arrives in Lockerbie.

RIFKIND: When we first arrived,

I was taken tour of the site.

There was, sadly, artifacts on the ground--

a shoe, a handbag,

various elements of personal property

which had just fallen from the sky.

When one went to the first location

where there's a massive crater in the ground

caused by the impact of the fuselage,

with houses totally destroyed...

Clearly it must have been an enormously devastating event.

NARRATOR: As the news is officially confirmed

that a jumbo jet has broken apart in mid air,

the first thoughts are not of a terrorist attack.

ROBERT BENZON: When we first heard

that the event had started at 31,000 feet, or around there,

we worried about the integrity of the aircraft, frankly.

The 747 wasn't the brand-new design.

It had never broken up in flight before.

But if it was a mechanical malfunction

or some kind of a structural failure,

that would affect all the other 747s out there perhaps.

NARRATOR: If this is a structural failure,

it will be catastrophic for the airline industry.

Across the globe,

thousands of passengers will be stranded

just days before Christmas.

In the early hours of the morning,

the authorities call a press conference.

Secretary of state for Scotland Malcolm Rifkind

and U.S. Ambassador Charles Price

address the waiting media.

RIFKIND: It is one of those nights

one will never forget.

It's clearly been an appalling disaster.

CHARLES PRICE: Tragedies of this nature

are impossible to predict.

It's just a most unfortunate and incredible situation,

and we're very, very sorry.

NARRATOR: Nearly 10 hours after flight 103 has hit Lockerbie,

the authorities still have very few answers.

RIFKIND: You couldn't just say, "no comment"

to every single question.

You couldn't just say, "sorry, I can't help you,"

but quite often you had to say that.

It is certainly the case

that the aircraft clearly experienced

some form of explosion

which has resulted in many parts of the aircraft

falling in different locations.

That we know.

But what might have caused that to happen--

I'm sorry, I could not even speculate.

WARK: There was a huge sense of frustration

because we couldn't know,

we didn't know what had happened.

We didn't know whether it had been a massive engine explosion,

engine failure, pilot error, a bomb.

Nobody knew.

And as a journalist,

when there's so little you can say

and so little that you can report,

that is very frustrating.

NARRATOR: At Syracuse University in New York State,

news reaches the staff and students.

Judy O'Rourke is working

in the undergraduate studies office that day.

JUDY O'ROURKE: it was just a very, very typical day

until we got the call that Pan Am 103 was missing.

"How can you lose an airplane?" was really the first thought.

It just didn't make sense.

It wasn't until later in the evening

that we really could confirm

that the plane had indeed crashed and broken up somehow,

and that they were not finding survivors.

On campus the mood

was changed immediately.

People were looking forward to the semester break,

to holidays that were coming up, to finishing their exams.

Suddenly the rumors started flying

that this tragedy had occurred,

this horrible thing had happened,

and the tradition at Syracuse

is that when a tragedy happens,

when something of great importance happens,

we gather at the chapel,

the chapel throws its doors open.

And so that night that is what happened,

and students just streamed into the chapel.

[bell tolling]

NARRATOR: In the coming hours it will emerge

that there are in fact 35 students on the flight,

all of them traveling home for Christmas.

In and around the Town of Lockerbie

are the bodies of the 259 people

on board Pan Am Flight 103.

Many of these victims will be found in the coming hours,

but some will never be identified.

MARJORY MCQUEEN: My husband brought back some policemen,

I think, at three, four in the morning,

and I think they saw off quite a lot of the Christmas brandy

at that time because I think my husband said

that these men had seen things

that they should really should never have seen,

sights that just were awful.

FIELDHOUSE: It was a harrowing time

for all the local people and all the volunteers who were there

because I don't think anybody, including me,

had seen anything quite as severe as that before.

NARRATOR: The full horror of Lockerbie

will only emerge as the sun rises at daybreak.

As dawn breaks on the 22nd of December,

the full extent of the disaster becomes clear.

In Sherwood Crescent,

five homes are completely destroyed.

Eleven local residents are missing.

The wreckage of Pan Am 103

is scattered over 845 square miles.

And all of the 259 people on board the Jumbo Jet

have lost their lives.

WHALEY: And at first light

we had all the guys-- about 200 of us--

and we did a sweep

round the areas that we'd found stuff,

and we knew what we were looking for

'cause the reccie boys had come back and said,

"Engines here, fuselage here,"

and by first light we'd found the black box

and we'd located about 160 fatalities,

which is incomprehendable.

NARRATOR: The remains of Pan Am 103

can be seen all over town.

At Rosebank,

a large section of fuselage, containing 61 individuals,

has devastated several houses.

At Sherwood Crescent,

there is a huge crater where five houses had been.

Two engines have also hit the town

and buried themselves in the ground.

And the Jumbo Jet's cockpit is lying in a field

some three miles from Lockerbie.

WARK: It was really strange because of course

it was like the dawning of a new day,

and yet it was really not.

It was kind of the horror of the night

was just becoming a little bit clearer.

THOMSON: I'll always remember coming in,

and there was still that air of smoke, you know,

that was just lurking.

But by then Sherwood Crescent, all the fires had been put out,

and park place had been sealed off,

and they were obviously dealing with that,

but by then they'd started to arrange

a lot of the searches of the hills,

over the hill towards where the cockpit was.

NARRATOR: From the first hours of the emergency response,

the disaster is treated as a criminal investigation.

Every victim and piece of wreckage

is painstakingly recorded and cataloged.

This small Scottish Town

has become the focus of the world's media.

WARK: This is a very close rural community,

and naturally people are reluctant

to talk about what's happened.

People obviously at the moment still don't know

whether their friends and neighbors have been involved.

There's still a number of local people missing,

and we don't have any accurate figures on that.

For Lockerbie it must have been bewildering

to have all these big vans trundling in,

you know, reporters everywhere, swarming over the place.

But they were incredibly generous

and incredibly hospitable.

KEEGANS: It was a sense of being in an unreal world,

the first day,

when I saw TV crews and cameras and journalists.

So it was like being in a dream.

NARRATOR: In Sherwood Crescent,

residents see for themselves the human cost of the tragedy.

FRASER: And there was bits of stuff lying everywhere.

And there was this...

This piece of...

I didn't know what it was.

It was sort of...Grayish, pinkish, big sort of lump,

kind of, maybe ten inches by eight inches,

that sort of size.

And I kind of looked at it closely,

and then I realized it was a big piece of skin,

and I thought, "Oh, God."

I didn't really look very closely at anything after that.

And there was a bible lying beside it,

just the pages were fluttering.

NARRATOR: Some 17 hours after the event,

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

arrives in Lockerbie to see the disaster for herself.

RIFKIND: She did more or less the same tour that I had done,

including the visit to Lockerbie itself.

MARGARET THATCHER: It is very moving indeed

because there are a lot of personal possessions

that you can see scattered about.

RIFKIND: And I think she also made a point

of wishing to go to all the people

who had volunteered during the night to help,

with coffee, with sandwiches,

with medical support, with psychological support,

just to express thanks on behalf of the country.

THATCHER: Our American friends will remember us,

and we must remember their grief, too.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

FRASER: The rescue workers were a bit annoyed

because they had to stop working

when these dignitaries descended,

and at that time they were still hoping

they might find somebody alive...

And... of course they didn't.

NARRATOR: In total,

11 local people have lost their lives,

all of them residents of Sherwood Crescent.

Many of their bodies will never be found

due to the force of the explosion.

WHALEY: You don't expect this to happen

in a rural village in Scotland, at Christmas.

And Christmas was the big thing as well.

Teddy bears and Christmas presents...

It's hard, very hard.

NARRATOR: So many bodies had been recovered

that Lockerbie Town Hall

is converted into a temporary morgue.

It is here that the identification process

will take place.

Father Patrick Keegans agrees to accompany Joe Horgan,

a relative of one of those killed,

to the Town Hall.

KEEGANS: I went downstairs

where I thought the coffin would be.

I didn't know what to expect,

I didn't know what I was walking into.

And opened up these doors,

and it was where they were actually doing

the sort of embalming area.

I'd gone down there by mistake,

and all I could see was red and white,

and I can still see that to this day, red and white,

and the smell.

I thought--so I went back upstairs,

and Joe was there--

a big, strong chap, and I'm not very tall.

And this is the hard bit to say, but I'll try it.

So we opened up the doors of the Town Hall...

And the coffins all lay there in rows...

And Joe and I went up this row of coffins to the number--

the coffins were numbered--

and we held on to each other

and managed to say some sort of prayer,

and we left.

FRASER: We had a lot of bits which we didn't know about

until a policeman came and knocked at the door.

So he had a quick look

and then he came back and he said,

"You've got a few bits of human remains around."

I went and picked some Christmas roses

that we had growing,

and I put a rose...

Sorry.

I put a rose at each piece.

Said a wee prayer.

Kind of pointless thing to do, really,

but I just felt I couldn't not do anything.

NARRATOR: Hundreds of police officers, soldiers,

and accident investigators

are ordered to comb the countryside

around Lockerbie.

They need to locate thousands of pieces of wreckage,

the missing bodies,

and any clues that can help explain

what brought down Pan Am 103.

72 hours after the incident,

FBI explosives expert Tom Thurman

is called to a meeting

and asked to examine a strange piece of wreckage

by the lead accident investigator.

TOM THURMAN: He said, "This has been segregated out

from a lot of things that we're finding out in the fields,

and that it appears to be different."

And I looked at it closer and closer,

and I said, "Ok, based upon a quick visual

at this point,

which would have to be confirmed

by absolutely a laboratory examination,

this appears to be direct result of high explosives."

There was a silence.

NARRATOR: The explosive device

had been in one of the plane's baggage containers.

This discovery changes everything.

From this point on,

Lockerbie is an International Criminal Investigation.

But it will take several days

for tests to confirm it is in fact a bomb

and a shocking act of terror.

Christmas 1988

is a difficult time for those in Lockerbie.

KEEGANS: I couldn't say Christmas Mass.

I couldn't do the Midnight Mass.

So I got the Bishop to do it.

Bishop Taylor came and did it.

I said, "I'm not...I'll just cry my way through thiS."

So he says, "You could do one prayer."

I said, "Ok, I'll do one prayer."

I got maybe six or seven words out,

and that was it, just the tears came.

NARRATOR: The grief of those in Scotland

is shared by those in the United States

who have lost their loved ones.

LIPKIN: I remember Christmas day

just being the four of us,

and it was the first time our house had been empty

since it happened

and realizing that everyone else was with their family

and that this was really our loss,

like even if people care about us,

even if people help us, support us,

this was ours, and we were gonna need to deal with it.

That was really eye-opening.

-J. FLYNN: Everybody... -K. FLYNN: Just came.

J. FLYNN: Came and cried with us.

K. FLYNN: Our whole family was there.

J. FLYNN: And our memory of J.P.

SO...I forgot that.

K. FLYNN: Everybody was there.

BOULANGER: It was...

A non-existing time in many ways.

And there was an empty chair at the table.

NARRATOR: The investigators call a press conference.

It will end speculation about what caused the disaster.

MAN: It has been established

that two parts of the metal luggage pallet's framework

show conclusive evidence of a detonating high explosive.

NARRATOR: It is later established

that an unaccompanied suitcase

has been transferred onto the plane in London,

which contains an explosive device.

SCHULTZ: A reporter came up to me

and said, "We've just gotten the news,

it's just come over television,

that it was a terrorist bomb that brought the plane down."

BOULANGER: A bomb.

A young woman

and many other wonderful people on that plane--

adults,

very young children,

blown up in the air? For what?

CIULLA: I guess I could have lived with different thoughts,

naturally, if it was just a plane crash.

But to be murdered, that was something that...

That was hard to take.

NARRATOR: Over the following months

investigators piece together

thousands of fragments of evidence.

They discover that the bomb had been placed

in a Samsonite suitcase.

This bag was transferred into the Pan Am baggage system

from an Air Malta Flight at Frankfurt Airport.

HAL HENDERSHOT: We did know we were in

for a very long investigation.

It's tough when you have a murder.

It's harder when the murder could have happened

literally anywhere in the world

and the people that perpetrated that murder

were unknown and could be

who knew where at that point in time.

KEEGANS: One of the hardest things I suppose

was the early funerals.

That was hard.

Because the first funeral was Joanne Flannigan.

She was only ten.

And that funeral was here.

I was conducting the funeral.

I didn't feel very strong.

NARRATOR: When identification has been confirmed,

the bodies of the victims are returned in early January 1989.

In the United States, some of the families

come to meet the bodies of their loved ones at the airport.

K. FLYNN: A forklift lifted out the coffins one by one,

and there they are, dangling up in the sky,

and each family had a hearse there,

waiting to take the body.

It was like they were handling a piece of cargo.

It just...It was terrible.

NARRATOR: Tom Schultz has died

just days before his 21st birthday.

J. FLYNN: It was a horrible experience,

going to pick up your son's dead body.

And as I said before,

everybody was so sorrowful and crying and so on, so forth,

so we went through a long period of sorrow,

long period to this day,

still sorrowful.

We still cry a lot.

NARRATOR: J.P. Flynn

would have celebrated his 46th birthday in 2013.

CIULLA: Frank was returned home on the Concorde,

through the bank.

And actually they cremated him in London and all,

and on the plane they knew the story

and, which I thought was the nicest thing

I heard at that time,

was that they all toasted him with champagne.

BOULANGER: Nicole's body was not recovered.

There were body parts that were recovered

for which they could not assign an identity.

So that all of these were buried in one simple grave

in the Lockerbie cemetery,

with a headstone

of those whose remains could not be identified,

Nicole being one of them.

NARRATOR: The remains of 17 individuals

who cannot be identified

lie in the Lockerbie Cemetery.

The tragedy unfolding in Lockerbie

will have an immediate effect on international travel.

A Presidential Commission examining the events

makes 60 recommendations to tighten airport security.

Bags will no longer be allowed to travel

without an accompanying passenger,

and bag searches become more rigorous.

BENZON: Air travel really isn't a pleasant experience,

and Lockerbie was pretty much the first step in that, I think.

There'd been bombings before,

but Lockerbie was the eye-opener.

HENDERSHOT: I think, in my mind

that Pan Am Flight 103 and the bombing of that flight

was kind of the introduction

to say to the United States

that we're not as isolated as we thought we were

from acts of terrorism.

So to me it was kind of a starting point.

I'll always remember it.

Obviously I had a part to play in the investigation itself.

Um...

But it's something that I think it P...

For lack of a better description,

it woke a sleeping giant.

NARRATOR: In the year 2000

at a specially convened Scottish court

sitting in the Netherlands,

Libyan Nationals Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah

are tried for 270 counts of murder.

Al-Megrahi alone is found guilty

and sentenced to 27 years in jail.

Despite his conviction,

many questions still remain over the bombing.

In 2003, in response to a Civil Lawsuit,

Colonel Gaddafi's Libyan regime

agrees to pay $2.7 billion in compensation

to the families of Pan Am 103 victims.

In 2008, al-Megrahi is diagnosed with terminal cancer

and released on compassionate grounds

a year later.

He died in may 2012.

RIFKIND: I recall when the Arab Spring

happened in Libya two or three years ago,

when it began to look as if Gaddafi might be overthrown,

I couldn't help but say yes, yes, this is justice.

This needs to be done.

He's the person who was ultimately responsible

in all the evidence that has been obtained.

And it's good that justice

has caught up with him personally,

not just with Megrahi

or any individuals who were directly involved at the time.

KEEGANS: If those who've died

were able to speak to us just now, what would they say?

And they would tell us, "Live your lives joyfully,

because that's how we want you to live your lives."

Because in the back of my head, too,

there was this thought:

we're not going to allow the terrorists

to have our lives as well.

BOULANGER: The world is full of hate and terror,

and I've decided that I need to concentrate

on the goodness that surrounds us

and the beauty of life,

because I don't think my daughter

would want anything else.