Original subtitles

REPORTER: 'We have an unconfirmed report

'that a Boeing 747 airliner

'which left Heathrow at six o'clock tonight

'has crashed in the Lockerbie area of Dumfriesshire,

'but I must stress this is an unconfirmed report.'

'My name is Lorraine Kelly.

'Thirty-five years ago,

'I was one of the first reporters to arrive here on the scene

'of the worst terrorist atrocity in European history...

'..the bombing of Pan Am 103,

'above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

'For years, the focus

'has been on hunting down those who planted the bomb

'and bringing them to justice.

'But this is not that story.

'This is about the people of Lockerbie

'and what happened after the cameras left.'

You always remember what you've seen that night. You know, it's just...

..something horrific.

It's difficult to tell people, you know.

LORRAINE, 1988: 'It was soon clear rescue workers

'would find no survivors among the passengers

'of the doomed aircraft. All 259 perished.'

Every square foot had bodies just lying side by side each other,

and even the most experienced guys were struggling with this.

'That night changed thousands of lives

'on both sides of the Atlantic.'

All we saw were flames,

and that's what I thought of Lockerbie.

I never wish to come here, ever. Never wish to come here.

WOMAN SCREAMING

The most painful moment of my mother and father's life

was shown all over the world.

The agony is not over yet, and it's going to take a long time

for them to recover from the things that they've seen.

You have to remember the trauma

that the people that lived here went through,

because it didn't just go away.

'Three-and-a-half decades on,

'I want to know how those caught up in the disaster

'have begun to find peace.'

We've been strong enough to hang in all these years.

This is the pay off - to have this connection.

'And I need to confront my own difficult memories of that time.'

All these years, I've told myself, "You don't have PTSD."

That's my brain dealing with something so horrendous

that I've been pushing it away for 35 years.

'So, I'm finally returning to Lockerbie.

'For the last 35 years, I've worked as a presenter

'on breakfast television...'

Three, two, one.

SUSANNA REID: Now, Lorraine is here at nine. Morning.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

'I started working in TV in my early 20s,

'and by December 1988, I was Scotland Correspondent for TV-am.'

Our Glasgow-based reporter Lorraine Kelly

was one of the first to reach the crash site.

This is her report.

LORRAINE ON VIDEO: What was once a quiet Border town

is now a scene of utter devastation.

This morning, police continue their search

to try to ascertain what caused this horrific disaster.

Lorraine Kelly, TV-am News, Lockerbie.

'It was the reports I did from Lockerbie

'that first got me promoted to the studio.'

Our editor looked up, he just said,

"Ah! Should get her down here. There's something there."

There's now no doubt that the Pan Am jumbo which crashed

on the Scottish town of Lockerbie a week ago, killing 270 people,

was blown out of the sky.

It's actually quite difficult sometimes to equate the fact

that I got my big break from something so awful.

There's a bit of guilt there, I think. Definitely.

'Whenever I drive over the Scottish border

'on my way home to Glasgow, I pass Lockerbie.

'But since the disaster,

'I've never felt able to revisit the town itself.

'Though I've always had a sense I've got unfinished business there,

'so now I'm going back.'

I really want to talk to people, find out the actual human story

and how it affected the people of Lockerbie.

Because you do wonder what the long-term effect is on them.

I don't honestly know what to expect.

'At 7.03pm on the 21st December, 1988,

'Pan Am 103 exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie.'

I remember that night, getting a phone call,

and we were told that a light aircraft had come down.

We could scramble, like, in ten minutes.

As long as it took us to put our coats on and get out the door,

there we were.

So that's why we got there so early and before everyone else.

'As we approached the town that night,

'we had to dodge the debris that had fallen for miles around.'

You know, the sky was raining hell.

There was chunks of still hot metal lying on the road.

I remember we had a puncture, we had to stop and change it.

'On the outskirts of Lockerbie,

'we got our first real sight of the disaster -

'the nose cone of a jumbo jet.'

I was very young, you know, relatively inexperienced, really.

And this was on a scale that...

even the most hardened foreign correspondent

would have found difficult to process, I think.

'Police Sergeant Drew Young and his team

'were asked to guard the nose cone

'which had fallen in a field next to Tundergarth Church.'

Hi, Drew. Lovely to meet you.

Nice to meet you. And you.

'My memories of what I saw here are quite confused,

'and I want Drew to fill in some gaps.'

You know, it wasn't cordoned off or anything at that point.

So we must have got there incredibly early.

Where exactly was it in the field?

Just about another...

50 or 60 yards up.

It's funny, I always remember we walked for miles through fields

to get here, but the road's just there,

so... so we didn't.

So, is it about here? I'd say about here.

What do you remember about the actual night?

I was the duty officer. I was on call.

I heard the jets, and I thought, "Oh. RAF's flying low tonight."

And the jets were screaming.

What did you see?

What you see in the films, the big balloon of fire. Yeah.

Lit up the whole place, and blew me across the road.

CHUCKLES

And what did you think it was, though? Because this is...

At that point, I still thought it was a fighter.

Right. It wasn't till I came up here and saw the cockpit.

I think that's when it all dawned on us...

That's when the penny dropped. Same with us.

Cos we weren't sure, either.

I do obviously remember getting so close to it

I could still feel it was warm.

There wasn't anybody else around.

Certainly not anybody living.

But I don't remember...

..any bodies at all. I just don't.

There was 17 in the cockpit section.

There were two or three bodies round the bottom of the cockpit.

There was a man, and the top of his head was missing.

Another man, folded in half.

Just lying there, his head between his ankles.

Oh, my God.

Badness, that's all it was.

Drew, I'm s... I can't imagine

what it's like having those images in your head.

I'm just glad that somehow I have shut all of that out.

I feel that an awful lot of people

don't appreciate the scale of what happened

and the effect it had on the people here.

I mean, how do people feel about what happened,

people that lived through it like you?

People that experienced the absolute horror of it?

A lot of folk wouldn't talk about it. They dealt with it.

It's like a shutter coming down. You've got to get on with it.

And do you think that that still exists in someway today?

That people just don't want to talk about it at all?

It's still there. The town shut down that night.

The town shut down.

God, it's almost too much to take in, isn't it? It really is.

All those people. A lot of people. 270, so...

You know, when Drew was describing there

the condition of some of the bodies,

it's strange, because the bodies were so close to the cockpit,

I must have seen terrible things, but I've just blanked it out.

I really have.

And in a way, I think maybe that's for the best.

Because I came, and I did my job,

and then I was able to leave and got on with my life.

But I was able to do that.

People here had to stay and deal with the aftermath

and deal with all of these things that were happening

and being the centre of attention.

And then the world moves on.

But you're left. You're left.

You have to somehow come to terms with it, somehow get over it,

and somehow deal with it.

And how do you?

'In the hours after the disaster,

'Lockerbie's town hall was converted into a temporary morgue,

'to house the bodies which had fallen from Pan Am 103.

'18-year-old Colin Dorrance

'was the youngest policeman on duty that night.'

Hey. Hi, Colin. Hi, Lorraine.

'Colin was there when a local farmer brought in the youngest victim

'of the disaster, 20-month-old Bryony Owen.'

I was asked to stand guard at one of the side doors,

and it was at that point that Bryony was brought to us.

And we hadn't really picked up straight away

that this was one of the passengers from the plane.

She looked like she was asleep.

A little bit of mud on her face maybe,

and vivid blonde hair is what I remember,

and wrapped in a, I think it was a duffel coat.

And we then walked into the main hall,

and the place just fell quiet.

'Bryony and her 29-year-old mother, Yvonne,

'were travelling to meet family in Boston for Christmas.'

Was she the first?

She was the very first, and it made it so stark.

The room was empty, and we had such a small child with us.

Kind of didn't know what to do, really. But laid her down.

It was one of those moments that just I will never forget.

God, that's horrendous.

'Over the course of the next few days,

'more than 200 bodies were retrieved from the surrounding area

'and brought to the town hall to join Bryony's.'

It was a shocking... difficult...

Almost like a scene from a horror movie.

So this was just covered in...

Yeah. ..dead bodies.

Every square foot had bodies just lying side by side each other.

And in time, they were all then given a coffin each to be laid in.

And even the most experienced guys who had seen it all by then

were struggling with this.

Innocent children being involved was just very, very hard to take.

God. How do you cope with that?

Did you get any sort of help at all?

There was nothing formal put in place.

You would maybe, at break time, you know, let off some steam

and talk a little bit, but you just learned to live with it

and sort of, I'd call it putting it in a box.

But you just can't help but remember at some point that box is there.

Was there any time when you felt like just breaking down?

There are times I have been emotional,

feeling a little bit, you know, lost with it all.

You know, and as if you were on your own with it, too.

You get the political commentators talking about this subject

as if it was a political football.

And you get angry. You think, "Who are they to talk about this?"

Do you wish counselling was something that had been on offer?

Knowing what I know now, yes, I'd have taken that, I think.

Mm. I think I would, too.

And I wondered whether in the years that followed,

whether I wouldn't have benefited from just sitting down

and having that time.

'Psychological support, even for those like Colin

'who'd been involved in major disasters,

'was not common back in the 1980s.'

It was very much the whole stiff upper lip cliche.

That's exactly what we were like, you know, in that era.

That's what everybody was like.

You know, if I had broken down,

that would have been so unacceptable,

almost like a show of weakness.

Back then, you didn't show emotion like that.

You just buried it. Buried it.

'One of the most traumatic aspects of the Lockerbie disaster

'was that it brought absolute horror

'into the lives and homes of ordinary people.

'This is where Park Place meets Rosebank Crescent.

'A huge piece of the fuselage of Pan Am 103 crashed here,

'narrowly avoiding most of the houses

'but scattering the bodies of more than 60 passengers

'onto the roofs and back gardens of local residents.

'I don't remember all the upsetting things I saw during the disaster,

'but my memories of this shocking scene are all too clear.

'At the moment of impact,

'Peter Giesecke, a 36-year-old mechanic,

'was at home, watching TV.

'He lives in the same house today.'

DOORBELL RINGS

'In his back garden,

'Peter was confronted by something that, three-and-a-half decades on,

'he still finds difficult to talk about.'

At the time, we had a hedge up there. Uh-huh.

Right up there.

And, er, this young girl was over the fence,

over the hedge.

And she'd one shoe on.

This here is actually the hedge, right up here.

Right.

'The young woman whose body had fallen into Peter's garden

'was 21-year-old American Lindsey Otenasek,

'one of 35 Syracuse University students who died on their way home

'after three months studying in London.'

That's where I put a wreath.

Right.

Every... Every year, I put wreaths on there.

Just to remember her? Yeah.

Aw.

But, er...

..it's very, very hard, you know?

No, it is. I know.

Very hard. I know.

To see something like that in your house, in your home...

And that's how...

Just you take a minute.

That's...

It just makes me sad, like, you know,

to see them young people, 21 year old.

It's difficult to tell people, you know?

What you've seen that night, it always...

You always remember what you've seen that night.

You know, it's just...

..something horrific, you know?

It is 35 years on.

It clearly, obviously, still affects you greatly.

Do you tend to talk about it with other people in Lockerbie?

A lot of people say,

"Oh, leave it alone, leave it alone," like, you know.

And a lot of them just got on with their daily life, you know?

Just want to put it behind them?

Sort of put it behind them, you know. Aye.

When did you find out more about the girl that was here,

the body that you found?

It was two months later.

I got a knock at the door,

and this lady and gentleman came to the door.

They...

They says, "I believe you found my daughter in your garden."

'Lindsey Otenasek's mother and father, Peggy and Richard,

'had travelled to Peter's house from their home in Baltimore

'to see where their daughter's body had been found.'

Of course, she broke down in tears. Of course she did.

And there were a shiny pebble on the ground here,

so I picked it up, cleaned it, and gave it to her.

Aw. That was a pebble from where you'd found her? Behind there.

Yeah.

And did you give that to her mum? Yes.

And that's how we became friendly.

'Since their visit to Lockerbie,

'Peter has formed a close bond with the Otenasek family

'and recently travelled to Baltimore with his wife, Susan,

'to see them.

'He regularly speaks to Rick, Lindsey's older brother.'

Rick, hi. It's Lorraine here. Hello. How are you, Rick?

You all right? Great to see you all.

And you. And you.

I've been with Peter, and he's been telling me

all about the connection with your sister and your mum, of course,

and how much you all mean to each other.

How important was it to your mum and dad to come here

and to meet Peter?

Oh, incredibly important.

The connection now with Peter and Susan,

we have family in Lockerbie.

When they came last year, last summer,

we had this beautiful mass.

And I remember speaking on behalf of the family, saying...

..to Peter...

.."Whatever you've carried with you all these years,

"leave at this altar."

I know. So...

you left some things at that altar, Peter...

..and my family and I did.

And like I said, this is the pay-off. Yeah.

To have this connection. Yeah.

Right?

So... I know.

And how important that is.

And how much... But you've helped, Peter.

Huh? You've really helped.

You have.

I've got to do it.

No, I know, Peter,

but you've been strong enough to hang in all these years.

I'm very much in touch with my own pain, of my loss,

but to hear Peter's story,

to realise that's what they had to wake up to every day...

They were living in the carnage.

And what it must have been like for you all.

They were very stoic in Lockerbie. Aye.

Yes.

And I think maybe people didn't quite appreciate the trauma,

I know the agony, that they went through.

I mean, this is before, I think, we really identified

what unresolved trauma in your life can do to you.

If you're not careful, it does consume you.

I think what struck me most about talking to Peter

was how it still affects him so much.

He's such a good soul, and he's so kind,

and obviously, 35 years on,

it still is very close to him.

And I think Peter's carrying a huge burden with him.

'Like all of the people I've spoken to here,

'Peter didn't get any help for the horrific things he saw.

'And I want to know what kind of support was available in the town.

'Marjory McQueen is a well-known figure in Lockerbie

'and a former Lord Mayor here.'

Oh, it's lovely to meet you, Marjory. And you, Lorraine.

Thank you for asking us here.

'In December 1988,

'Marjory's late husband, Kenneth, was the senior GP in the town

'and dealt with the psychological impact on the community.'

What was his experience

of how people were dealing with this mentally,

how it was affecting them?

Quite a lot of people he felt

who should have been asking for help didn't.

I know that there are people

who were psychologically very much distressed by it.

Quite a lot of people found that alcohol was helping a bit,

and there seemed to be quite a lot of that about. Yeah.

An awful lot of the children started bedwetting.

But there were psychiatrists and psychologists assigned to the town.

There is a sense, though, of people maybe saying to the world,

"Leave us alone, let us get on with things." Yeah.

"Just let us do this in our own time."

Yes, yes.

I think Lockerbie, as a community, was quite tight at that time.

I think they felt that it just wasn't the done thing.

You know? You don't ask for help for a mental condition.

And I think that caused an awful lot of people

to suffer for a lot longer maybe than they might have.

Yes. I think that's possibly very true.

There are people today who still think about it, and I do.

If I hear a noise -

usually aircraft noise that I'm not sure about -

I will go out in the back garden and have a look.

Thirty-five years on, I still do it. I still do it.

Because the unthinkable happened. Yeah.

It will take people here a long time to fully recover from this tragedy.

Now they need to be left in peace

to slowly begin to rebuild their shattered lives.

'But Lockerbie wasn't left in peace.

'The press intrusion went on for years

'and was not welcomed by residents,

'who were struggling to get back to normal.

'With the anniversary of the disaster

'falling on 21st of December,

'the town didn't put up its Christmas lights for over a decade.

'And to this day,

'there is still no annual commemoration of the tragedy here.'

'When Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie,

'its wing section and fuel tanks crashed into the ground

'here in Sherwood Crescent, where there is now a memorial park.

'Over 100 tonnes of aviation fuel ignited on impact,

'destroying more than 20 homes.'

LORRAINE, 1988: 'Wreckage ploughed through whole blocks of houses.

'At least seven were completely flattened,

'many others severely damaged.'

'11 Lockerbie residents died instantly,

'including three children.'

They were probably sitting watching the telly, having a cup of tea,

the kids were probably doing their homework maybe,

getting ready to go bed,

and then death came out the sky.

We were able to get really close to this crater,

and it's so strange because I don't remember

there being any members of the emergency service here,

I don't remember there being any fire brigade or police or army.

But there must have been, and I'm wondering

whether the reality is mixed up with the nightmares that I have.

Am I remembering my nightmares,

or am I remembering what actually happened?

What I do remember vividly,

that smell, that aviation fuel smell,

that even to this day, when I smell that,

it takes me back right here.

'I know that many people in the town want to stop dwelling on the past.

'But for others, talking about the disaster has been crucial

'in helping them come to terms with what happened that night.'

Hello. Hi. Come on in.

Thank you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

'Gillian Moffat was nine years old in December 1988.

'She and her family moved from Sherwood Crescent

'only weeks before Pan Am 103 gouged a huge crater in the street,

'killing several of her neighbours.

'Her old family house was badly damaged.'

So, what do you remember at nine years old?

It was just the most surreal experience.

I remember Mum taking us through to have a look.

We just went to the barrier,

and I remember the roof was just about off.

The way the house was, we had our bedroom up the stairs,

and we would've been in there.

We would've been in that house.

And I remember just being absolutely devastated.

'While no-one in Gillian's family died that night,

'her husband Andrew's aunt and uncle lived in Sherwood Crescent,

'and neither of them survived.'

How's your husband with it all? Does he talk about it?

Er, no. Does he not?

No. Has he just drawn a line?

Yes. That's it?

Yeah, he doesn't talk about it. He doesn't.

But he doesn't talk about how he feels?

Oh, no, no, no, and there will be lots of people

who don't ever want to talk about it again,

and that's absolutely fine.

But you have to remember the trauma

that the people that lived here went through for years and years

cos it didn't just go away.

How did all the trauma that you'd kept inside...

How did that sort of manifest itself?

I think it's always been something that has triggered it.

I remember going back to school.

The helicopter went over.

I just... cried. I just couldn't... I got taken out of the class.

Years later, same thing happened.

It was fighter jets went over on some sort of night exercise,

and I was on the floor.

I was completely in the foetal position.

And, oh, God, I could have been back there.

Gillian, do you ever have, or did you have, nightmares? Oh, yeah.

Because I've certainly had nightmares about it.

Mm-hm. Can you remember any of them?

Everything's got planes in it.

If there's something going to happen in my mind,

it's got an aeroplane in it, yeah.

'After struggling for many years

'with the long-term effects of the Lockerbie disaster,

'in 2018, Gillian had a breakdown,

'and had to take time off her job as a midwife.'

Were you diagnosed with something?

What did they say? Yeah, they said it was PTSD.

Right. I couldn't work,

erm, and I really was in a really dark place.

When you got a diagnosis of PTSD, how did that make you feel?

Did you feel a sense of relief that at least somebody had told you this?

I suppose in a way, yes.

But there's almost a bit of,

"Well, there's probably lots of people have it."

CHUCKLES Yeah.

So why am I special? Because I'm not, I'm not.

Do you think it's self-indulgent? Do you feel that?

I think it's a conditioned response

to the culture of not talking about it for so long.

Let's face it, at any time when you have a loss or a trauma,

the one thing you need to do is talk about it.

And that is a healing process, isn't it?

That's how we get through things.

I'm so glad you got the help... Yeah.

..that you needed. Yeah.

I just wish you'd got it long ago. Yeah, uh-huh. Exactly.

What Gillian said really resonated with me,

that everybody is allowed

to have some sort of trauma from this.

It's OK. It's not a sign of weakness to say,

"Actually, I was really badly affected by that,

"and I still am today".

It sort of gets me thinking about

I have never really thought about what it's done to me,

and the long-term effects to me as well.

But I was only there reporting on it. I wasn't living it.

I was able to go in and then go back to my life.

So I don't feel as if I have the right to feel traumatised.

Yep, that's it. That's... That's it. MAN: Right.

Because I'm awful, awful concerned about that.

I don't want people to think that I'm...

MAN: No, I know. ..you know, that I'm special.

Do you know what I mean? It's exactly the same as Gillian.

MAN LAUGHS See, when she was saying that,

it was like, "Oh, my God, that's exactly how I feel!"

Ah, Jeez. There are a lot of parallels.

'Gillian was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder,

'and I'm now wondering how many others in the town

'were affected by this condition.'

Well, this is an article

about the Mental Health Consequences of the Lockerbie Disaster.

This was done after talking to people involved.

Erm... Ah, fascinating.

Let's see what they've come up with.

So, they're talking about people in Lockerbie,

and they're saying, in all,

73% had, or had had, PTSD.

That's huge. 73% of the people they talked to.

On each scale,

those exposed to dismembered bodies had the highest scores.

And that's really just about everyone I've spoken to.

You know, Peter and Drew and Colin and me too.

Initially, I don't remember seeing anything like that,

and I must have.

'I've left Scotland and come to Wiltshire

'to meet one of the psychiatrists who worked in Lockerbie

'with members of the emergency services and local residents.

'Professor Gordon Turnbull is now an expert on PTSD,

'and what he learned in the wake of the disaster

'has helped to transform our understanding of the condition.'

Here we are. Hello. Hello.

Very nice to see you. Nice to see you.

'Gordon is currently recovering from COVID,

'which has affected his voice,

'but has kindly agreed to talk to me.'

PTSD is a term that's bandied around quite a lot,

and a lot of people don't really understand what exactly it is.

HOARSELY: PTSD is a normal reaction

to shocking, life-threatening events.

Before Lockerbie,

there was a widespread misunderstanding about PTSD,

that it was something that some people shouldn't develop

and that they weren't entitled to.

And then Lockerbie happened.

A lot of people actually then began to realise

it's the mind's way of coming to terms with things

which are too terrible for it to comprehend.

Flashbacks and nightmares

give you another opportunity to process your traumatic memories.

So, PTSD is actually like a defence mechanism in a way?

Well, I couldn't put it better.

It's actually abnormal not to have it,

and Lockerbie has given us an opportunity

to be able to see it for what it is,

treat it when we need to and not ignore it.

But an awful lot of people living in Lockerbie

didn't really get as much help as they should.

I know you talked to some of them, didn't you?

I talked to about 100.

What sort of symptoms were they showing initially?

The classic ones. Flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance.

The thing that I found was I was getting flashbacks and nightmares

where I was almost above...

..that horrible scene.

And going back,

I've found I've been thinking about it a lot more,

there have been a lot more dreams, or nightmares, I should say.

Flashbacks and nightmares,

they are the cornerstones of PTSD.

They don't happen in any other condition.

I honestly didn't know that.

So, you think I had PTSD or have had it, or still have it?

If you've got flashbacks, you've got PTSD.

But I don't feel as though

I'm allowed to have something like PTSD,

because I was just a reporter there.

By saying that you're not entitled,

you're trying to separate yourself from an event,

you're avoiding belonging to it.

It's a defence mechanism.

You have to stop avoiding Lockerbie in order to be able to heal.

All these years, I've told myself, "You don't have PTSD.

"You're not entitled to have that. You shouldn't...

"You're not allowed to have that." Actually, that's the norm.

That's my brain dealing with something so horrendous

that I've been pushing it away for 35 years.

'Although revisiting Lockerbie

'has unlocked a lot of difficult memories for me,

'I still feel I need to go back to discover how,

'in more recent years,

'the town itself has started to heal.'

I hadn't been back to Lockerbie for 35 years

and now I'm returning there in a matter of weeks

and I feel almost a compulsion to go back.

I just want to find out how that community managed

to sort of get back to normal after something so horrendous.

ANNOUNCER: 'We are now approaching Lockerbie. When leaving us here...'

'Colin Dorrance, the retired policeman

'I talked to on my first visit,

'locked away his memories of the disaster for years

'and I want to know how, and why, that changed.'

I know you didn't want to talk about the disaster for a long time,

like many of us, I mean, myself included.

But what made you want to engage with that again?

You just put it away and you get on with life.

And that was the case for 24 years.

But it took my daughter to announce

that she wanted to go to Syracuse University

that drew me out of my shell.

She goes off to the US

and she starts to meet many of the families

of the students who were killed.

And gradually, one by one, the families started to get in touch.

They would reach out and some would then want to come and visit.

'Over the last ten years, Colin has welcomed over 250 people

'affected by the disaster to Lockerbie,

'many of them still struggling with their loss.'

It goes on to this day, there's still people coming

and they're reliving that time in their life again.

So they're deciding, "I either leave this in the psychological loft

"or I deal with it and engage with it".

Doing what you do and helping, does it help you? Very much.

I didn't realise how much under the surface,

I simmered away with this subject.

I think in the last ten years, being able to talk

and just slowly release some of that anger has just helped.

'Five years ago, encouraged by these new connections,

'Colin, and several others who'd lived through the disaster,

'set out on a charity cycle ride from Lockerbie

'via New York to Syracuse University.

'During their 600-mile journey

'many of the families who had lost loved ones on Pan Am 103

'came to cheer them on, including Peggy Otenasek,

'mother of Syracuse student Lindsey and her brother, Rick.'

What you all are doing, just an incredible gesture.

'Another Syracuse student who died that night

'was 21-year-old Nicole Boulanger.

'Nicole's sister, Renee, and best friend, Kim,

'have travelled to Lockerbie from the US,

'and Colin has been showing them around.

'I've arranged to meet them at the town hall,

'where all of those who died are remembered.'

Hello. Hi. Lovely to see you.

It's a pleasure to meet you. Really good to meet you.

In a very special room as well, isn't it?

Cos we've got this beautiful window.

It really brings it home, doesn't it, all the different nationalities?

Yes. Yes.

I wanted really first of all to talk to you

about your sister and what she was like.

That's my sister and I, December of 1969, Christmas.

You're adorable. That's gorgeous.

You see, we were only 53 weeks apart.

I was gonna say, you're like twins. Yeah. You really are.

And we celebrated our birthday, you know, every year on the same day,

because we're only a week apart in October.

That's her black and white.

My sister was very, very shy growing up,

and then she auditioned for something

the freshman year of high school, and she got the lead.

And when we went and saw her perform, we were like,

"Wait a minute, that's Nicole?"

You know, and we couldn't believe it.

Every time at Syracuse, she was going to perform.

I literally could not wait to see what she was going to do.

She was incredible.

# I have never felt like this

# For once, I'm lost for words

# Your smile has really Thrown me... #

'Nicole boarded Pan Am 103 at Heathrow

'on the evening of 21st December, 1988.

'Her parents, Jeannine and Ron Boulanger,

'had arranged to pick her up from JFK in New York.

'Renee was in their home town near Boston

'when she learned of the disaster.'

My mother called my boyfriend and said, "Get her home."

Reporters were in front of my house

asking if I was waiting for Nicole Boulanger.

I turned on the television and that's when I saw my mother

on the floor of the airport screaming, "Not my baby!"

And my dad was trying to pick her up.

'Jeannine Boulanger's reaction to the news of her daughter's death

'became one of the most harrowing moments of the Lockerbie disaster.'

SCREAMING

My baby!

That image and your mum when that happened, I'll never forget that.

I don't think anybody who saw that will ever forget it.

It was like utter, raw grief.

The most painful moment of my mother and father's life was, you know,

captured and shown all over the world.

It was, and it brought it home to everyone, I think. Yeah.

I ran from the pain for quite a while,

and I numbed myself from the pain, you know, through alcohol,

because the pain just was so incredibly hard.

I've been through a rough journey through this.

I know.

You know, and I know I'm not the only one, you know.

Mm.

And I have not spoken to media ever before,

I've never done it ever, but I feel I have to now.

I feel like it's time to let people know.

Why is it so important, though, for you to talk now, 35 years on?

Back in the '80s, you didn't talk about that stuff, nobody did.

And if you did, you know, you were kinda shunned. Yes.

And a lot of us suffer from post-traumatic stress.

You know, I wasn't really diagnosed until almost my 40s.

'Like Renee, Kim Wickham was diagnosed with PTSD

'in the years after the Lockerbie disaster.

'She was due to fly home with Nicole on Pan AM 103,

'but at the last minute, changed her plans.'

I visited Nicole that morning.

And...

I'll never forget it,

I... I gave her a Christmas present,

so she could listen on the plane,

a cassette tape with musical theatre songs.

And I was in Germany when I found out,

my grandmother called on the phone

and I said, "Yeah, what's going on? Why are you calling so late?"

And she said, "Your plane crashed."

And I, you know, right away, I was like, "What are you talking about?

"What are you talking about?"

And I knew Nicole was on the plane.

You know, we turn the TV on, and all we saw were flames.

And that's what I thought of Lockerbie,

just flames and terror, and horror.

And I never wished to come here, ever, never wished to come here.

'Five years ago, Kim and Renee decided to travel to Lockerbie

'for the first time.'

Why did you think, "Oh, I need to go back there?"

I was struggling a lot.

I kinda wished I was dead because I thought I deserved to be.

"Why was it Nicole out of anybody?

"Why wasn't it me?"

I felt so guilty, you know. And it's not surprising you feel that way,

it's called survivor's guilt, isn't it?

Yes. It was overwhelming for a very long time.

I think I was just desperate to,

you know, to finally heal

and I thought, "Well, maybe it is time that I go."

So, you know, you don't really understand the connection

until you actually physically come here.

And did you feel the same? I did.

When I came here, I felt comfortable talking about it,

because they knew exactly what I was going through.

You know, it was like this big weight was lifted.

Do you feel she's in a sort of peaceful place?

Absolutely. 100%. Yeah.

'Kim, Renee and Colin have invited me

'to come with them to Lockerbie's Garden of Remembrance.

'All 270 victims of the disaster are honoured here.

'But Nicole Boulanger and the 16 others

'whose bodies were never recovered have a special headstone.

'For her sister and her best friend,

'this is very much Nicole's final resting place.'

It still feels like yesterday. I know, are you OK? I'm sorry.

It's just awful, it really is.

It really is.

You know, the people of Lockerbie have been so kind and caring.

If it had to happen, I'm glad it happened here.

Thirty-five years ago, something so horrendous happened here.

It was the worst terrorist atrocity in European history.

And I was here, and I saw things that I really shouldn't have seen,

especially at such a young age.

But one thing that's really struck me coming back,

and it was very important for me to come back,

was how this community has healed itself.

And that's such a testament to their strength.

Also, how the people here have helped the bereaved,

particularly those that have come over from America.

And I think that goes two ways,

because it's helped the people of Lockerbie as well.

Lockerbie to me was always that image in my head of the crater,

the nose cone, the flames, the smells, the horrific sights.

And I've always sort of pushed away all of those thoughts and images,

because that's how your mind and body cope with a trauma like that.

Thirty-five years on,

to come back to this beautiful, beautiful border town,

where everybody's made me so welcome and shared their stories

and trusted me with their stories, that has helped me so much

and has given me a lot of comfort as well.

I see Lockerbie now in a completely different light.

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