CRASH INVESTIGATORS STUDYING SUITCASE;
BODIES IDENTIFIED

Published on TUESDAY, December 27, 1988
© 1988 The Arizona Republic
 
The first of the dead have been identified from Pan Am Flight 103, and investigators began tests today on a suitcase for clues as to whether a bomb or structural failure caused Britain's worst air disaster.

Police hoped to release perhaps half a dozen bodies to next of kin today once the last formality of registering the death in Lockerbie was completed. Names and nationalities were not issued.

One more victim was found Monday, bringing the total in two temporary morgues in the city hall and an ice rink to 240. That's 29 short of the apparent total -- 258 on the Boeing 747 and 11 listed as missing on the ground.

Police spokesman Angus Kennedy said today that three more men had been arrested after being found in possession of parts of the aircraft.

The men, ages 20, 21 and 40, will appear in court Wednesday, along with a 28-year-old man who was arrested Monday for looting at the crash.

''I am disgusted with certain things I have seen -- at the very thought that something like this could happen in the midst of all this, when everyone else is trying to help,'' said Paul Newall, the area's chief deputy constable.

More than 600 rescue workers resumed their search under clear blue skies today for the remaining victims and for wreckage scattered over 100 square miles of rugged terrain, dense woods, lakes and bogs.

Civilian and Royal Air Force pathologists and a group of orthodontists were examining the bodies but expected to take another 10 days to complete identifications.

A suspect suitcase and an unspecified amount of wreckage were sent Monday to the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment in southern England ''for more detailed examination to determine whether they exhibit evidence of a pre-impact explosion,'' Michael Charles, the top British investigator on the scene, said in a statement.

Transport Department press officer Penny Russell-Smith said the tests began today and might be concluded ''as early as tonight or perhaps a few days.''

The Times of London reported that the suitcase, noticed lying among wreckage, was ripped and torn and might have been damaged by flying metal.

The report said the Fort Halstead scientists ''should quickly be able to establish whether those marks were made by an exploding bomb.''

Charles' statement added that although no evidence of structural failure had turned up, that was still being probed as a possible cause.

Structural failure or a bomb have been identified by experts as the most likely reasons why the Pan Am plane disappeared from radar screens just as it reached cruising altitude of 31,000 feet Wednesday over southwest Scotland.

The Daily Mail said without attribution: ''Circumstantial evidence points to a bomb being planted in a suitcase loaded into the forward baggage compartment beneath the flight deck and the first-class cabin. This part of the aircraft was ripped away from the main structure of the fuselage.''

The New York-bound flight originated as a Boeing 727 from Frankfurt, West Germany, with a change of planes at London's Heathrow airport. Federal police in West Germany and the commander of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad last week began investigations at those airports.

Monday was Boxing Day in the long British Christmas celebration and a day of more public grief at the Roman Catholic church in Lockerbie, where the Rev. Patrick Keegans celebrated a requiem Mass.

''Confronted with the horror of such loss, we feel empty, hurt, confused, and we say to ourselves, 'Things will never be the same again,' '' Keegans said in a brief homily.

''As Christ did on the Cross, we, too, scream at the Father, 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?' He does not seem to answer. There is only silence.''

Keegans, who has been counseling both parishioners and relatives arriving from other countries, lost his home in the crash.