I have been in contact with Chris Baird again and he, like I, cannot find any further information regarding the Chesterton crash. Too much time must have passed now as official records and missing or destroyed and US departments have send him on a wild goose chase between one another for records that we have concluded no longer exist due to age.
Such a shame.
The town of Chesterton, Indiana has drawn a blank as well. Anyone who remembers that crash is either dead or must be aged well over 90 by now.
Another thing I am continuing to pursue are any relatives of anybody who was aboard.
Once again official passenger lists indicate the following were aboard that night: (taken from Chris Baird's Arizona Wrecks website.
HAROLD R. TARRANT, chief pilot, 308 West Erie street, Oak Park, Ill.
A. T. RUBY, co-pilot, 320 Wisconsin avenue, Oak Park, Ill.
MISS ALICE SCRIBNER, 26 years old, 1507 North Sacramento boulevard, Chicago, plane stewardess.
FRED SCHENDORF, 28 years old, 6829 Chappel avenue, Chicago, manager of the apartments division of R. Cooper, Jr., Inc., electric refrigerators.
MISS DOROTHY M. DWYER, 25 years old, daughter of M. FRANCIS DWYER, 67 Mount Vernon street, Arlington, Mass.
EMIL SMITH, 911 Argyle avenue, Chicago.
H. R. BURRIS, of Columbus, O., radio service employee of United Air Lines.
I have seen numerous conspiracy theories on this bombing on the internet..
ReplyDeleteThe only one that makes sense is the one from Van Der Linden's Boeing 247 book saying this may have been a Chicago gangland hit.
If you look at the passenger list that leaves two possible "targets" from Chicago. Emil Smith and Fred Schendorf.
Emil Smith was "cleared". He was carrying a rifle on board but it was for a shooting meet in Chicago.
I dont know if that clears him from a gangland past though...
Does that leave Fred Schendorf as the target?
Did some one find out Emil Smith was returning to Chicago for a gun meet at the North Shore Club (from New York) and put a hit in?
Or was the young Schendorf the hit? He was an apartment manager? (big money in that..)
I do not want to tarnish either one of their names, so I will go no further.
I did numerous newspaper searches and found no gangland affiliation with Schendorf or Emil Smith.
--> Chris B.
Certainly is an interesting one to ponder and frustrating that they never conclusively found out who or what took explosives aboard. Assuming they ruled out lightning strike or other weather phenomena it seems unusual that ordinary people should be targeted. There was something about a maintenance engineer who was annoyed at something that had happened to him and may have wanted to get back at United management. How about Burris? He was an employee/radio operator but I think in one account he is cited for some sort of grievance but I may be mistaken on that count.
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