Passengers and crew
Dr Eckert told Scottish police that distinctive marks on Captain MacQuarrie’s thumb suggested he had been hanging onto the yoke of the plane as it descended, and may have been alive when the plane crashed. The captain, first officer, flight engineer, a flight attendant, and a number of first-class passengers were found still strapped to their seats inside the nose section when it crashed in a field by a tiny church in the village of Tundergarth. The inquest heard that the flight attendant was alive when found by a farmer’s wife, but died before her rescuer could summon help.[13][page needed]
Prominent among the passenger victims was the 50-year-old UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, who would have attended the signing ceremony at UN headquarters on 22 December 1988 of the New York Accords.[20]
Paul Avron Jeffreys, former bass player with the UK group Cockney Rebel, was on the flight with his new wife Rachel, en route to their honeymoon celebration.
Another victim was poet Joanna Walton, main lyricist of Robert Fripp’s 1979 Exposure album.
Jonathan White, aged 33, the son of actor David White (who played Larry Tate on Bewitched), was also killed. He had recently graduated from UCLA.
[edit] Students and families
Thirty-five students from Syracuse University, four from Colgate University, four from Brown University, two from Seton Hill University, and two from the State University of New York at Oswego were on board, flying home from overseas study in London. There was also one student from Hampshire College flying home from a field study in Nigeria. Ten of the victims were residents of Long Island—including father and son, John and Sean Mulroy—and were returning home for seasonal celebrations with families and friends, as reported by Newsday of 27 December 1988. Five members of the Dixit-Rattan family, including 3-year-old Suruchi Rattan, were flying to Detroit from New Delhi. They were supposed to be on Pan Am Flight 67, which had left Frankfurt for New York earlier in the day, but one of the children had fallen ill with breathing difficulties, and the pilot had taken the plane back to the gate to allow the family to disembark. The boy soon recovered, and the family was transferred to PA103 instead.[citation needed] Suruchi was wearing a bright red kurta and salwar—a knee-length tunic and matching trousers—for her journey. She became associated with a note left with flowers outside Lockerbie town hall that said “To the little girl in the red dress who lies here who made my flight from Frankfurt such fun. You didn’t deserve this. God Bless, Chas.”
U.S. intelligence officers
There were at least four U.S. intelligence officers on the passenger list, with rumours, never confirmed, of a fifth onboard. The presence of these men on the flight later gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, in which one or more of them were said to have been targeted.
Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in Clipper Class, Pan Am’s version of business class,[22] seat 14J. Major Chuck “Tiny” McKee, an army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Beirut, sat behind Gannon in the center aisle in seat 15F. Two Diplomatic Security Service special agents, acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee, were sitting in economy: Ronald Lariviere, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was in 20H, and Daniel O’Connor, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, sat five rows behind Lariviere in 25H, both men seated over the right wing. The four men had flown together out of Cyprus that morning. There was also a Department of Justice Special Agent on the flight, Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein.
Also on board, in seat 53K at the back of the plane, was 21-year-old Khalid Nazir Jaafar, who had moved from Lebanon to Detroit with his family, where his father ran a successful auto-repair business. Because of his Lebanese background, and because he was returning from having visited relatives there, Jaafar’s name later figured prominently in the investigation into the bombing, as well as in one of the conspiracy theories concerning the Lockerbie bombing.
Real people. Real death. Real pain. Unreal result.
Like TWA 800, also taken down by Muslim terrorists, no matter how much the US tried to cover for them. I remember the constant funerals at St. Pat's in NY. Of course, that was nothing compared to a few years later, when NYC was nothing but funerals for the 9/11 victims.
A NJ artist sculpted various family members to depict their pain. The sculptures were placed in a NJ park. It got a lot of attention and was one of the most painful exhibits I have ever seen.
For anyone to excuse this monster as ONLY having been marginally involved just makes me ill.
You nailed it.
I remember the story of the Lockerbie breaking as if it were yesterday. Most vivid was the mother of one of the students returning for the holidays after their semester abroad. As she arrived at JFK to welcome her child back home she got the devastating news. She just fell to her knees in the middle of the terminal screaming, “my baby, my baby.” It was the most profound grief. The country wept with her.
I can guarantee you my kids got extra hugs that night, and held close a little longer. That feeling has never left me.