The Third Suitcast

If husky, 31-year-old John Henry Grant seemed more subdued than the rest of the family, nobody noticed it. As he carried the two suitcases into the Los Angeles Municipal Airport his two youngsters looked eagerly for the DC-3 that was to take them to San Diego in celebration of young Bobby's fifth birthday.

Nobody even thought it strange that Jack Grant made a trip back to the car to bring a heavy third suitcase for Mrs. Grant to take on the plane. It was his own rectangular yellow rawhide bag. Only he knew that it was crammed with an ingenious time-bomb lash-up--an alarm clock, a bundle of dry cells, a packet of matches and a folded rubber inner tube filled with gasoline. The clock was set for 2:30 p.m., when United Airlines' flight 258 would be about halfway to San Diego.

It was just after 1:30 when Grant shepherded the family to the insurance vending machine in the lobby, told; wife Betty how to fill in his name as beneficiary on a $10,000 policy for herself, a $10,000 one for six-year-old Marie Ann, and $5,000 for Bobby. He tucked the receipts into an envelope, then hustled his wife and kids out to the loading gate.

Jack Grant was watching closely from the gate when a cargo loader banged his yellow bag against the airplane hatch. The baggage smasher dropped it in horror as it began to spout flames. White-coveralled mechanics and loaders converged with foaming CO2 bottles, put the fire out before the gasoline could catch. By that time, Grant had thrust the insurance receipts into Betty's hands, blurted something that sounded like "I'm going to be arrested! I'm going to jail for sure," and fled.

A few minutes later Mrs. Grant got the dreadful news. Grant had been caught, had admitted that he had planned to blow up the plane to collect $55,000 in insurance on his wife and children ($25,000 from the vending machines and $10,000 on each passenger, carried by the airline). Later, Betty Grant, a plump woman with an upswept hairdo, got some more news: her husband had promised to marry a slender, red-haired American Airlines stewardess named Elizabeth Soumela, who knew nothing of his plans to kill his family, and thought his divorce was about to come through. In New York, a 32-year-old private secretary identified Grant as the father of her three-year-old baby, and said that Grant was $1,000 in arrears on the money the court had ordered him to pay her.

In jail, Jack Grant moodily faced reporters and photographers. Stewardess Soumela, he said, was a nice girl but he was just "stringing her along" because she helped him forget his financial troubles and let him use her car. Moreover he didn't really dislike his wife and children. Blowing up the plane with 16 people aboard, he said, just seemed like the most sensible way to get out of debt.

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