Original subtitles

NARRATOR: A passenger plane is obliterated

in the California hills.

STEVE: There were no wings, no fuselage.

There was no tail section. There were no aircraft seats.

NARRATOR: Hardened steel is ripped to pieces.

DENNIS: This was the worst damage I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: The wreckage paints a grim picture

of the final moments of

Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771.

The plane reached impossibly high speeds.

RICHARD: They told us that it

actually broke the sound barrier.

NARRATOR: Passengers experienced crippling G-forces.

DENNIS: We assessed the impact forces around 5,000 Gs.

RICHARD: It would have been a horrifying experience,

the final few seconds of their lives.

NARRATOR: Whatever brought down flight 1771,

investigators are certain of one thing,

it was not an accident.

MAN (over radio): Mayday, mayday.

(theme music plays)

Los Angeles International Airport,

one of the busiest in the world.

Every year, 40 million passengers arrive

and depart through LAX.

At Terminal One, a group of passengers and crew bound for

San Francisco are making their way through security.

A short while later, they board

Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 1771.

ROBERT: Pacific Southwest really was a, what we'd call a large

regional airline at the time.

RAY: Set me up with a scotch on your way back?

ROBERT: They had service in about 30 cities all over mostly

the western part of the United States.

NARRATOR: The flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco

is one of the most popular routes

at Pacific Southwest, also known as PSA.

Among the 38 passengers are several PSA employees,

including the airline's chief pilot.

ROBERT: It's very common for airline employees to commute

between cities for work and so as people would

take a bus to work,

many airline employees take a plane to work.

NARRATOR: Captain Gregg Lindamood has been flying

with PSA for 14 years.

The father of three is also a decorated combat veteran.

JAMES: Brakes.

GREGG: Brakes set.

JAMES: Flaps up. Spoilers retracted.

NARRATOR: First officer James Nunn

only joined the airline the previous spring.

He's also logged thousands of hours in the cockpit.

JAMES: Thrust levers.

NARRATOR: Today, they're piloting a British built

BAE-146 commuter jet.

With quiet turbo fan engines, it's designed for short haul

flights over densely populated areas.

(airplane noise)

(airplane noise)

The flight to San Francisco will take just over an hour.

JAMES: So do you know what you're getting

the boys for Christmas?

GREGG: Well it's gonna be Nintendo and with what it costs,

I think they can both share it.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT (off-screen): Anything to drink guys?

JAMES: Nah. I'm fine, thanks.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay just holler if you change your mind.

NARRATOR: Flight 1771 is cruising at 22,000 feet,

above the California countryside.

♪ ♪

GREGG: Can you ask them how it's been?

NARRATOR: Just over halfway through the flight,

Captain Lindamood worries about the mild turbulence.

JAMES: Center, PSA 1771. Any reports on the ride ahead?

We've had a little continuous light chop.

MAN (over radio): PSA, this is Rocky Mountain Center.

It's not too bad.

(gunshot).

GREGG: Oh my god, that was a gun.

NARRATOR: The crew now has

a much bigger problem on its hands.

JAMES: Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired onboard the aircraft.

CONTROLLER (over radio): Do you want to go to Monterey?

Could you make it, Sir?

NARRATOR: Moments later, flight 1771 falls into a steep dive.

STEVE: Witnesses caught a brief glimpse of the aircraft

as it was plummeting down from the sky.

WITNESS: It was going at a high rate of speed.

Looked like a dart just diving to the ground.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: Flight 1771 crashes into an isolated hill

280 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles.

Police get to the crash site,

and find a 30 ton airliner obliterated.

STEVE: There were no wings. There were no uh fuselage.

There was no, there was no tail section.

There were no aircraft seats.

There was just papers, papers everywhere and uh

the strong smell of aviation fuel.

NARRATOR: It doesn't take long for Sheriff Steve Bolts

to reach a grim conclusion.

No one has survived the crash.

STEVE: We're making a frantic search

throughout this remote cow pasture looking for survivors

and we can't even find deceased human beings,

much less human beings that had survived.

NARRATOR: Most catastrophic aircraft accidents happen

on takeoff or landing.

A shallow impact angle can sometimes leave

large sections of the plane intact,

giving passengers and crew a chance at survival.

The 43 people aboard flight 1771 had no chance at all.

This is one of the worst air disasters in California history.

INVESTIGATOR: Come on up here guys.

NARRATOR: The day after the crash,

investigators from both the National Transportation

Safety Board and the FBI are on the scene.

INVESTIGATOR: You ever seen anything like this?

This is gonna be a long day guys.

RICHARD: We knew that gunshots had been heard

by the air traffic controllers.

(gunshots).

JAMES (over radio): Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired onboard the aircraft.

RICHARD: If the reports of gunshots were accurate

then I realized immediately that we had

crime aboard an aircraft for which the FBI

had primary jurisdiction.

NARRATOR: But the reports may not be accurate.

The pilots and controllers may have been mistaken.

Even though speculation

about the gunman's identity is widespread,

it's up to the NTSB to

determine exactly what happened on Flight 1771.

BOB: One of the things you have to avoid in

accident investigation is preconceived notions.

For example, most of us never

turn on the radio, never watch television on the way to the

scene because, even though

you might not consciously be aware of it,

you can get front loaded with

information and when you get there you may subconsciously

start looking for things to substantiate that background

so you try to arrive on scene with

a totally objective view of what's going on.

NARRATOR: While NTSB investigators try to determine the cause of the crash,

law enforcement agents have questions of their own.

STEVE: It's establishing who had motive, establishing who had access,

establishing who was the intended victim.

INVESTIGATOR (off-screen): Right there.

They should be somewhere right in there.

NARRATOR: The FBI is searching for evidence of a crime,

the NTSB for clues about the crash.

If they can recover the black boxes they may find both.

DENNIS: With the total destruction of the aircraft,

I mean you had limited amounts of information that

you could gather from the wreckage.

BOB: At this point, the most important thing is to get the

cockpit voice recorder and get away from the speculation

and see what the cockpit voice recorder tells us factually.

RICHARD: The flight recorders tell the tale of what happens to the aircraft.

They're very important in reconstructing the events that brought the airplane down.

INVESTIGATOR: The impact comes in this way, then the tail.

They should be somewhere in here.

I think that's it.

NARRATOR: After hours of searching through the shattered remains,

the effort finally pays off.

They recover the plane's two black boxes.

DENNIS: The first recorder that was recovered

was the cockpit voice recorder and that was recognized

by its orange cover and all that that was still, although badly mangled,

was still recognizable as a recorder.

NARRATOR: The second black box has suffered even heavier damage.

The flight data recorder captures critical information

about the aircraft's performance.

INVESTIGATOR: What a mess. What a mess.

DENNIS: It had been so badly mangled

it wasn't recognizable as a flight data recorder.

NARRATOR: Both recorders will be sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington.

It is far from certain whether the data they hold can be successfully retrieved.

Without it, investigators may never know what happened on flight 1771.

BOB: That's about the first thing you do when you get on scene,

find the cockpit voice recorder.

You can't over emphasize how important that was in this case

because we had no airframe left to work with.

We really had no wreckage in the normal sense of the word.

NARRATOR: At the NTSB laboratory in Washington, Dennis Grossi

examines flight 1771's badly damaged cockpit voice recorder.

DENNIS: The case itself was basically crushed.

It was bent in like somebody had grabbed it and pushed it together like that

uh and this is hardened steel and we assessed the impact

force as around five thousand Gs,

just based on the deformation of the crash enclosure.

NARRATOR: The recorder, the aircraft and everyone onboard suffered an impact force

five thousand times the force of gravity.

The world's best fighter pilots can handle a sustained force of nine Gs.

In a crash, the human body can sometimes survive one hundred Gs for a split second.

A force fifty times as strong is difficult to comprehend.

Dennis Grossi knows the immense impact

may have ruined any chance of hearing the last words

from the cockpit of flight 1771.

REPORTER (over TV): No crash investigation is routine but among the jigsaw puzzle

of pieces from flight 1771, investigators

are looking for something very different, perhaps a gun.

NARRATOR: Finding the weapon could help the FBI identify who

might have fired shots onboard flight 1771.

But for the NTSB, gunfire alone does not explain this accident.

A bullet should not bring down a modern commercial jet.

BOB: There's a lot of misconception about decompression

and about whether or not a, for example, a

single shot could bring down an aircraft and if it's,

if it's simply a shot through the fuselage of the aircraft the answer would be no.

NARRATOR: It takes a much larger hole in the fuselage

for there to be an explosive decompression,

the kind of hole that led to one of the deadliest air disasters of all time.

In 1974, a faulty cargo door blew off Turkish Airlines flight 981.

The decompression caused the cabin floor to collapse,

severing the flight control cables.

The crash killed all 346 people onboard.

BOB: The aircraft would normally not come down

just from a bullet hole with no other implications.

It just wouldn't be enough to cause a, an explosive decompression,

which is what you almost have to have to bring the aircraft down.

NARRATOR: If a gunshot didn't bring the plane down, then investigators,

need to find out what did.

At the NTSB lab in Washington,

work to recover flight 1771's cockpit voice recording has

produced a surprising result.

Despite suffering huge impact forces, the audiotape is still intact.

DENNIS (off-screen): All right, let's give it a listen.

NARRATOR: The first 28 minutes of the tape reveal a routine flight.

GREGG (over recorder): It's gonna be Nintendo.

NARRATOR: The crew was trying to find out when the turbulence

they had been flying through would end.

GREGG: Can you ask them how it's been?

JAMES: Center, PSA 1771. Any reports on the ride ahead?

We've had a little continuous light chop.

MAN (over radio): PSA, this is Rocky Mountain Center.

It's not too bad.

DENNIS: We hear the flight crew talk, you know, do their normal procedures.

NARRATOR: But in the final two minutes, events take a chilling turn.

DENNIS: Sure sounds like a gunshot.

And then all of a sudden they hear and we hear on the recording this gunshot.

NARRATOR: The tape confirms what the pilots had reported, two gunshots.

(gunshots)

GREGG (over recorder): God. That was a gun.

JAMES (over recorder): Yeah, I know.

Squawk 77, squawk 77.

We've had a gun fired onboard the aircraft.

RICHARD: It was actually uh a very sobering moment because

we realized that we were listening to two people communicating with each other,

the pilot and copilot, uh in a very routine flight

that suddenly became anything but routine.

It was something that one doesn't quickly forget.

NARRATOR: Investigators listen

as the situation becomes increasingly disturbing.

RICHARD: The door to the cockpit was heard to open and a female voice,

presumably the flight attendant, was heard to say in a voice

that was filled with alarm.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: There's a problem captain.

BOB: And we heard a voice, a male voice which we presumed to be the captain,

saying what's the nature of the problem.

GREGG: What's the problem?

DAVID (off-screen): I'm the problem.

(gunshots).

NARRATOR: Investigators now know for certain that the killer

was a man and that he shot the flight crew.

DENNIS (off-screen): It's always startling when you hear something like that,

when you hear the commission of a murder.

As accident investigators, you just don't hear that.

This was a very unusual recording.

NARRATOR: A flight attendant and both pilots are shot.

DENNIS: That's five shots so far.

RICHARD (off-screen): And uh then we could hear the cockpit door shut again

and another final shot, the sixth shot.

(gunshot)

NARRATOR: Before the tape ends, they hear one last ominous sound.

DENNIS: The plane's in a dive. The engines are over revving.

BOB: Within about five seconds we picked up what's called windscreen noise.

In other words, you could tell that the aircraft was accelerating.

RICHARD: That noise increased in its pitch.

We learned of course that it was going into a dive at that point.

NARRATOR: 65 seconds after the murder of its crew,

flight 1771 smashes into the California hills.

RICHARD: It helped us to, to understand what we were investigating,

the heinousness of the crime that we were investigating.

NARRATOR: The CVR recording changes the NTSB's role in the case.

DENNIS: Let me know if I can help.

It just confirms that this wasn't an accident,

that it was in fact a crime and the FBI

would be taking over the investigation from here on out.

BOB: The FBI, bear in mind, knows how to investigate crime.

They don't necessarily know how to investigate an aircraft accident so we,

we would go ahead and do our normal investigative procedures

and make that information available to the FBI.

NARRATOR: The FBI is investigating a murder.

But solving it is now just one of their priorities.

GREGG (over recorder): What's the problem?

MAN (over recorder): I'm the problem.

NARRATOR: The CVR recording has highlighted another pressing issue.

RICHARD: Somehow someone managed to get a gun on that plane.

NARRATOR: A weapon was smuggled through LAX, one of the world's busiest airports.

Investigators wonder how the shooter managed to evade airport security.

RICHARD: Let's find out how that guy got on the plane, all right?

NARRATOR: If the FBI can't find answers soon, more lives could be at risk.

Two days after the downing of flight 1771, investigators are still combing through

the wreckage for a piece of evidence rarely found at a crash site,

a murder weapon.

INVESTIGATOR: That's a hydraulic line, probably from the main gear.

BOB (off-screen): The search for the gun was very frustrating because we knew

that that played a major role in what had happened.

We needed to know for sure uh that the gun was there.

I mean it's a supposition,

a pretty good supposition that there's a gun involved.

RICHARD: We weren't sure that, that we would succeed

because the field of debris was so wide

and the impact had reduced the airplane to so many small pieces.

NARRATOR: While the search for the gun continues in California,

NTSB investigators in Washington try to determine what caused

flight 1771 to go into a sudden dive after the crew was shot.

Dennis Grossi believes the answer may lie in the shattered remains of the FDR,

the Flight Data Recorder.

DENNIS (off-screen): The internal magazine that held the tape was the

only part that was actually recovered.

The rest was, was not recovered.

NARRATOR: Worse still, almost all the tape that records data is gone,

torn from the machine when it slammed into the ground.

DENNIS: This was the worst damage I've ever seen.

NARRATOR: Grossi examines a critical part of the recorder,

the tape heads that lay down data onto the magnetic tape.

He finds a tiny piece of recording tape has survived.

DENNIS (off-screen): The magazine didn't survive and the tape itself

was destroyed except for about a six to eight inch piece of tape

that ran around the recording heads and the capstan.

NARRATOR: With such a short piece of tape, it's doubtful

there will be any useful information on it at all.

DENNIS: We worked real hard at trying to get all the data that

we could off of that little piece of tape.

NARRATOR: Investigators in California

finally find what they've been hunting for,

the barrel of a gun.

BOB: The gun was found by one of the FBI agents uh pretty much

in the middle of where the aircraft impacted.

RICHARD (off-screen): We were very, very fortunate when we found the gun.

It was an unbelievable stroke of luck.

NARRATOR: It's not just any gun.

It's a 44 caliber Magnum.

RICHARD: The 44 Magnum was considered the most powerful handgun that you can have.

NARRATOR: But the barrel alone isn't enough.

They need the rest of the weapon.

Fortunately, they find it, the cylinder with six spent cartridges.

RICHARD (off-screen): Its frame was very powerfully constructed so

for it to tear the barrel off just suggests the power of the crash impact.

NARRATOR: The shattered pistol leads to a morbid discovery.

BOB (off-screen): When we found what was left of the gun, there

was a portion of the finger between the trigger and the trigger guard.

That went back to the FBI lab at Quantico, Virginia.

NARRATOR: Lab analysis may help solve a mystery that hangs

over the entire investigation.

The FBI has a weapon, a crime scene and 42 murder victims.

What's missing is proof of the identity of the 43rd person onboard, the killer.

RICHARD (over TV): We uh in our investigation today here at the site

have located a weapon and that weapon is going to be examined

and of course any connection between it and the

crime will be more fully developed.

RICHARD: We needed to determine a motive

for why someone would do such a thing.

Somebody would have had to fire those gunshots

and there had to be a reason for it.

INVESTIGATOR: It's part of a seat and part of the frame.

BOB: Really as far as the investigation on scene,

it's, it's totally NTSB as far as the kicking the tin if you will

uh but we were able to answer questions that might arise from

the FBI investigation on the scene.

As I say, they don't have the expertise to know what to look for

but from the criminal aspects of it, they certainly know what to ask about.

NARRATOR: At the crash site,

the NTSB has recovered a piece of wreckage that could help explain

what happened on flight 1771, a fragment of a passenger seat.

RICHARD: We actually found a seat that had a bullet hole in it.

NARRATOR: If they can determine exactly where the seat was located

then PSA's passenger seating records

could give investigators the name of another one of the victims shot

before the plane went down.

(gunshots)

Dennis Grossi has done all he can

to salvage data from the small fragment of tape recovered

from the flight data recorder.

DENNIS: I was able to decode that little strip of tape

and I got the last seconds.

NARRATOR: It does contain data, but only six seconds worth.

Investigators learn that in its final moments

the aircraft was operating normally with no

mechanical problems, except for one thing.

Someone had pushed the control column forward,

forcing the plane into a steep dive.

The aircraft accelerated to the speed of sound.

(explosion)

BOB: It went from 22,000 feet with cruise power in all four engines.

NARRATOR: Investigators now understand why only very small

pieces of wreckage were found at the crash site.

DENNIS: When the aircraft hit at such a high speed,

it impacted and basically compressed the earth and then,

then it released and it blew everything back out of the hole.

NARRATOR: The heavy impact propelled

some debris straight back into the air before it

could be singed by the explosion.

DENNIS (off-screen): All the light material,

all of the paper on the aircraft, any uh,

any of the insulation material on the aircraft,

all that light stuff got blown up into the air

and then the wind carried it for I believe miles.

NARRATOR: The fact that the plane was forced into a dive

explains why PSA 1771 crashed so quickly.

It also adds even greater urgency to the FBI investigation.

Since it was almost certainly the killer's hand on the controls,

this is now the worst mass murder in California history.

But investigators still don't have enough evidence to be certain who the killer was,

nor who he was trying to kill.

Was it the work of a madman who wanted to commit mass murder?

Or, did the killer target one particular passenger and coldly

sacrifice everyone else on board?

NARRATOR: The FBI investigation into the onboard shooting

and fatal crash of PSA flight 1771

has uncovered a lapse in security at LAX.

It may explain how a gun was smuggled onto the aircraft.

RICHARD: Any number of people in the airport could bypass

the security screening that was going on.

NARRATOR: Agent Bretzing learns that airline employees with

valid identification are allowed to bypass security at LAX.

ROBERT: What they had set up is a bypass

for crew members and airport employees,

actually anybody that had the proper badge.

You would show your badge and they would allow you to bypass

both the metal detector and the X-ray unit.

RICHARD: It was a big uh loophole.

NARRATOR: Bretzing knows the killer was a man.

And from flight 1771's passenger manifest,

he can see that there were four male passengers who

worked for either Pacific Southwest or its parent airline, US Air.

RICHARD: It's one of these guys.

ROBERT: We suppose that he did in fact bypass security carrying the weapon.

NARRATOR: Investigators need to prove conclusively

who smuggled the gun on board.

At the FBI laboratory,

forensic specialists analyze the piece of skin found in the trigger guard.

A technician is able to get a fingerprint from the skin fragment.

In search of a match, he compares the print to those on file for the four male

passengers who could have bypassed security.

And he finds a match.

RICHARD: There was enough of the forefinger that they were able

to peel open and then match it.

NARRATOR: Just days after the crash that claimed 43 lives,

the FBI has positively identified their killer.

BOB: That was a key element in the investigation.

NARRATOR: His name is David Burke.

RICHARD (off-screen): David Burke cleaned the airline.

He was one of those employees who would go in

after it landed and help clean up the inside.

NARRATOR: Investigators now know

David Burke smuggled a gun onboard flight 1771.

What they now need to explain is why.

RICHARD: A motive gives you understanding.

It helps to develop a full mosaic of the crime.

Knowing the motive you're able to conclusively determine what happened.

NARRATOR: Day three at the crash site.

Still sifting through the strewn remains of the plane,

investigators uncover a bizarre

but telling piece of evidence, one that points directly to

the motive behind David Burke's crime.

RICHARD: During the search, one of our people found an air sickness bag and knew

immediately that it was a pertinent piece to the puzzle.

NARRATOR: Because he pushed the plane into such a steep dive,

Burke unwittingly ensured that the vital clue could be discovered.

RICHARD: The uh air sickness bag had a very ominous message penned on it.

NARRATOR: Burke had written the unsigned note during the flight.

He expressed a grudge against a man called Ray.

RICHARD: Hi, Ray.

I think it's sort of ironical that we end up like this.

I asked for some leniency for my family, remember?

Well I got none and you'll get none.

That was the message that we recovered from that air sickness bag.

NARRATOR: The airsickness bag is the conclusive clue

they've been searching for,

the clue that establishes David Burke's motive.

The Ray in the note is identified as airline station manager Ray Thompson.

He worked for PSA's parent company, US Air.

He was also David Burke's former boss.

RICHARD: Ray Thomson was the supervisor.

NARRATOR: By now, Bretzing has also learned that Burke had a troubled history,

both with the company and with the law.

REPORTER (over TV): Burke had worked for US Air for 14 years,

most of them at the airport in Rochester, New York.

BOB: Uh there was allegations of,

of criminal activity when he was back in Rochester.

REPORTER (over TV): Burke was someone they had watched carefully

for narcotic trafficking and larceny.

NARRATOR: Allegations that Burke smuggled cocaine

on commercial flights were never proven.

DALE: Well basically he just apparently stayed one step ahead of us but,

but the bottom line is that he wasn't charged.

BOB: He moved to the west coast

presumably to kind of get away from the heat if you would.

NARRATOR: But three weeks before the crash Burke ran into more trouble.

He was fired from the company after being caught on tape

helping himself to the in-flight bar proceeds.

RICHARD (off-screen): He had stolen some money from the fund that the

flight attendants use when they're making change and

he had stolen what amounted to $69

and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

NARRATOR: Three weeks after being fired, Burke was given an opportunity to appeal.

ROBERT: Mr. Burke had been terminated several weeks prior to the flight.

RAY: Thanks for coming in, David.

ROBERT: He then came back for an appeal hearing on the day of the flight.

RAY: I've reviewed your file.

RICHARD: He was terminated by Ray Thomson.

RAY: Your appeal it's been denied.

NARRATOR: Under intense financial pressure Burke was near the end of his rope.

DAVID: Why you gotta be such a jerk?

RICHARD: That termination interview was, was not a, a placid one.

RAY: My decision's final, Mr. Burke.

DAVID: Thank you very much.

NARRATOR: As he left Thomson's office,

Burke made a remark that hinted at plans for revenge.

RICHARD: The secretary had said "David, I hope you have a nice day."

And David Burke, the suspect, paused at the door, turned to her and said...

DAVID: Oh I plan to have a very nice day.

BOB (off-screen): When he was fired he still had his credentials.

You gotta remember, this was 1987.

Security was a whole lot different than it is now.

RICHARD: What have you got there?

NARRATOR: Investigators now know

that in the days leading up to the crash David Burke went from

aggrieved ex-employee to a man coldly planning murder.

Now they need to find out all they can

about his movements on the day of the crash.

RICHARD: What can you tell me about David Burke?

NARRATOR: After his meeting with Thomson,

he went to his locker, possibly to get the gun.

RICHARD (off-screen): But he went to his locker

the day of that flight prior to the flight.

Whether he retrieved his gun from the locker or not, we are not, not sure.

NARRATOR: Instead of returning to the office,

Burke decided to buy a ticket for flight 1771,

a flight he knew Ray Thomson would be on.

RICHARD: Ray Thomson lived in San Francisco

and he flew regularly on that flight to

return to San Francisco at the end of the day.

It was common knowledge among the employees that

Ray Thomson would be on that, on that flight.

NARRATOR: Why Burke opted to kill so many others along with his former boss is

a question that defies rational explanation.

RICHARD: The average person certainly would not act with the

rage and the vengeance that had to consume David Burke prior to this act.

One can only imagine that

there must have been something else wrong with David Burke.

ROBERT: He just decided to take it out as an act of revenge against a company

and I don't know that there's any other motivation we can come up with.

NARRATOR: It's clear Burke's attack on flight 1771 was meticulously planned.

But exactly how events unfolded once his rampage began is still uncertain.

NTSB investigators have provided a big piece of the puzzle.

They've been able to match up

the bullet-punctured seat fragment with an exact onboard

location, row four, seat C.

Records show that on flight 1771 that seat was unoccupied

but the seat directly in front of that empty seat,

was occupied, by Ray Thomson.

The finding points to the sheer power of Burke's 44 caliber handgun.

His first two shots pierced not one but two airline seats.

(gunshots)

RICHARD: The bullet hole would have been

uh made as the bullet passed through Ray Thomson and

then entered that seat and left a bullet hole there.

(gunshots)

NARRATOR: They now know that Burke shot at least four people

during his rage-filled assault on flight 1771,

Ray Thomson and three crew members.

That accounts for five shots,

but investigators heard six shots on the tape.

They must account for them all.

The gunshot sounds were picked up by a microphone in the cockpit.

(gunshots)

By comparing the sound pattern of each shot,

investigators can determine if they were fired the cockpit or the passenger cabin.

(gunshot)

RICHARD: The shots that were fired in the uh in the plane, not in the cockpit

but in the plane were, were distinct but muffled.

NARRATOR: Other shots were louder and clearer,

indicating they were fired closer to the CVR microphone.

RICHARD: The shots that were fired in the cockpit were very loud.

We had three shots that were fired outside the cockpit and

three shots that were fired inside the cockpit.

NARRATOR: Investigators don't know who was shot with the final bullet,

just that it was fired in the cabin.

It's enough for them to finally piece together a picture of the

horrific final moments onboard PSA 1771.

♪ ♪

RAY: What the hell?

RICHARD: You can imagine what Ray Thomson must have thought

as this person whom he had just terminated a few hours before

walks past him in the airline, hands him this note and then

probably goes into the men's room.

And he's reading this note with its ominous message.

NARRATOR: Next, they hear the sound of the lavatory door opening.

RICHARD (off-screen): So we're, we're assuming that he handed Ray the note

went into the restroom where he took out the gun, came back out,

we heard the door close again just before the shots.

DAVID: Ray!

(gunshots)

RICHARD: Ray Thomson probably has the most merciful of all the deaths on that plane.

NARRATOR: In less than a minute, a routine flight has become a nightmare.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT (off-screen): There's a problem captain.

GREGG (off-screen): What's the problem?

(gunshot)

RICHARD (off-screen): He was very careful.

He had done the planning this far fairly well and uh we believe he,

he followed through with that plan.

DAVID (off-screen): I'm the problem.

(gunshots)

(screaming)

RICHARD: It wouldn't take much knowledge or experience on a

passenger part to know that they were in deep, deep trouble.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: There's a problem captain.

(gunshot)

NARRATOR: After shooting his former boss

(gunshots)

and three crew members,

David Burke pushed flight 1771 into a dive and left the cockpit.

The airline's chief pilot was now the only person onboard who

could pull the plane out of the dive.

RICHARD: An off duty pilot may have been moving himself forward

to try to render whatever assistance he could once

he realized something drastic was happening.

PILOT: What the hell are you doing?

You gotta let me in there.

Don't do this. Come on.

NARRATOR: But Burke had one bullet left.

PILOT: What the hell are you doing?

RICHARD (off-screen): That may have accounted for the sixth shot.

There are some who speculate that David Burke was taking his own life.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Had David Burke been taking his own life, the gun would have

fallen from his hand after he had shot himself.

NARRATOR: But since a fragment of Burke's fingertip was recovered

from the trigger guard,

Bretzing reasons that the killer was alive, holding onto the gun,

until the very moment of impact.

(alarms sounding)

RICHARD (off-screen): Alarms were sounding in the cockpit.

There was increased noise of the plane plummeting

and just before impact it became silent.

They tell us that it actually broke the sound barrier.

Of course, it would have been a horrifying experience,

the final few seconds of their lives.

NARRATOR: One man's rage meant two minutes of pure terror for 42 people.

(explosion)

REPORTER (over TV): The FBI believes one man was responsible

for the crash of PSA flight 1771 in the hills of San Luis Obispo County,

in which all 43 onboard were killed.

RICHARD (over TV): With all of the evidence that we have recovered here

that we would have more than sufficient to charge

David Burke with the violation of the air piracy statute.

NARRATOR: The unprecedented crime is solved.

But aviation authorities are left with a troubling question:

Could it happen again?

The tragedy of flight 1771 provoked action from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The body that regulates the airline industry

took urgent measures to tighten security.

ROBERT: The FAA came out and, and, uh, canceled the bypass authority

so therefore air crews and employees would have to go

through the normal screening, as any passenger would.

BOB: Now it's uh it's required that, uh, any employee that leaves an airline,

whether they've been fired or quit or retired or whatever,

must turn their credentials in immediately.

Getting on an aircraft with a gun now, I won't say that it's impossible,

but it's, it's next to impossible.

NARRATOR: But the new measures would not prevent

the world's deadliest hijacking incident.

The 9/11 attacks would usher in sweeping new airline security procedures.

ROBERT: After 9/11, several security gaps were certainly plugged.

NARRATOR: There are now federal air marshals

onboard many domestic US flights.

ROBERT: These are armed officers on flights in plain clothes.

NARRATOR: Cockpit doors have been reinforced with Kevlar and

they stay locked throughout all flights.

ROBERT: The doors are built so that they're very hard to get through.

They're ballistically sound.

If David Burke was on a plane today, when he got to the cockpit,

he couldn't have gotten in with the weapon he had

so he would have been able to still uh injure or kill people

in the back but he could not have brought the plane down.

NARRATOR: Finally, many domestic airline pilots are now allowed to carry firearms.

All of these measures have made flying safer, but nothing can

completely eliminate the risk of another David Burke.

ROBERT: Well in my view, aviation security has been heightened tremendously

but we still have a ways to go and aviation will always be a target.

(music plays through credits)