Mile-High Murder: The Bombing of Flight 2511
Young McArthur Randolph was the first to see the crash site. He started to explore the family farm on the morning of January 6th, 1960, eager to find what had caused the loud noise that disturbed his family’s sleep the night before. That morning his father, Richard, told him about a small flash of fire in the night sky and he was determined to find out its cause.
When he stepped outside he found his father’s farm covered in debris and bodies.
By 7.00 am his father, Richard, was in the small town of Bolivia, using the closest phone available to report the aeroplane crash. When the police reached the Randolph Farm, local officers were confronted with the remains of National Airlines Flight 2511, which had left New York the previous night, heading for Miami.
What followed was an investigation with no clear outcome, although authorities agreed on the reason the plane crashed — an explosion caused by dynamite.
The investigation
The crash site covered over twenty acres of North Carolina farms, marshland and forest. As well as the scattered parts of the plane, investigators discovered a huge hole, which they speculated was caused by one of the engines falling to earth, then exploding. The rest of the plane had shattered— the largest single piece left intact was a…
