The Pain of Conspiracy Theory: TWA 800 Ten Years On

Delaware Dem

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Sunday July 16, 2006 · 2:10 PM PDT

2006/07/16 · 14:10

The anniversary of a horrible night ten years ago is upon us. And as with any anniversary of a tragic event, the traditional media is replete with retrospectives. CNN Presents aired their analysis over the weekend. Across the internets, the various conspiracy theories surrounding TWA 800 and the deaths of all aboard get a second, third, or fourth airing.

Some believe it was a U.S. Navy missile. Others believe it was a terrorist bomb or missile. There are even some theories with more a basis in science fiction than in reality. The official probable cause was that a spark ignited the flammable vapor in the central fuel tank, causing an explosion that ripped the plane in two sections, dooming all aboard.

What do the victims' families believe? It doesn't really matter. Some say knowing the truth brings closure, and not knowing prolongs pain. I disagree. Pain cannot be prolonged. It is there constantly.

The worst thing that could have happened to the survivors of this tragedy, of any tragedy, has already happened. Knowing the truth does not erase the tragedy, the death of loved ones. It does not really bring closure, in my opinion. For those who have experienced tragedy, there never is closure.

NEW YORK (AP) - Andy Krukar boarded TWA Flight 800 with a diamond ring in his pocket, planning to place it on his fiancee's finger at the Eiffel Tower during a weekend of romantic dinners and strolls through the streets of Paris. The fiancee, Julie Stuart of Bridgewater, Conn., was going to follow him to Paris the next day to celebrate their formal engagement.
But Krukar was killed when Flight 800 exploded into a spectacular fireball over the Atlantic Ocean just minutes after taking off from Kennedy Airport - a disaster that claimed the lives of all 230 people on board.
Miraculously through, a Coast Guardsman working at the crash scene found the engagement ring bobbing in the waves in its burgundy jewel box.
Stuart wears the ring every day.
It was 10 years ago when TWA Flight 800 fell from the sky and Stuart lost her husband-to-be. But it doesn't take an anniversary for her to remember that painful summer of 1996 - a look at the glistening diamond ring can bring it all back. For other family members, it's a rainbow, a glass of wine, a precious memory with their loved ones.
"Time heals you enough so you can move on," said Stuart, 40. And yet, although she is now married with two children, part of her lingers in the past: "I feel Andy is always watching over me."
Joe Lychner of Austin, Texas, lost his wife and two daughters in the disaster. His wife, Pam, a former TWA flight attendant, and 10-year-old Shannon and 8-year-old Katie were going to Paris on vacation. A last-minute business appointment forced him to miss the flight.
"In the early days I wondered if I could go on living without them," Lychner, 48, said. "I kept asking myself, `Why them? Why not me?'"
Lychner is now remarried, and he and his wife have two children, ages 6 and 2.
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"I think about her constantly," Brinkley said. "She was such a sweet person, always laughing."
Aurelie and Walter Becker, from St. Petersburg, Fla., said time marches on, even if you try to stop it.
"We are getting older every year, but our daughter Michele will always be 19," Aurelie Becker said. "She will be forever young."

Time allows you to move on, to begin living again. But it does not bring closure. If a memory or a glimpse at a diamond ring can bring all the pain back, what does a conspiracy theory do?

To be sure, there are some among the families of the victims who, at best, are skeptical or disbelieving of the official probable cause of the crash.

Federal investigators determined that TWA 800 was destroyed by a fuel-tank explosion - likely caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the Boeing 747's wiring that ignited the tank's vapors.
But conspiracy theories that the plane was blown up by a terrorist's missile or the U.S. government have persisted over the past decade - even among some family members.
"I grow older and the hate against those who lie only grows," said Michel Breistroff Sr., who now lives in France and still believes a missile brought the plane down. "As long as I live, I hope I will get the truth."
Breistroff's son, Michel, had just graduated from Harvard University and was on his way home to Paris to play for a professional hockey team when he was killed.

The way people deal with grief and loss is as varied as the human race. I do not begrudge any survivor that which may keep them going. But still...

Still, most the families accept the cause as mechanical and find the continued conspiracy speculation painful.
"There may be entertainment value but each time there's a show on conspiracies their healing wounds are ripped apart," said John Seaman, head of the Families of TWA Flight 800 Association.
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One of the fallen was Rance Hettler, a 6-foot-3 track star at Pennsylvania's Montoursville High School, which lost 16 students on TWA 800.
He planned to attend Northeastern University's School of Criminal Justice upon his return from Paris. He wanted to be an FBI agent.
Soon after Hettler's body was recovered by Navy divers, the FBI made Rance an honorary FBI agent, presenting his parents, Jackie and Gary Hettler, with an FBI baseball cap at a small ceremony at bureau headquarters. They put it in their son's coffin.
Ten years for Jackie Hettler has done little to ease the pain.
"I still have a big hole in my heart that will never be filled," she said.

So what exactly am I saying here? Well, perhaps one of the reasons we look down upon and discourage conspiracy theories here at Daily Kos is not because they devalue our collective credibility, but because they reopen still healing wounds for those actually affected by tragedy, especially when little will come of the conspiracy theory. I generally tend to find, with the exception of Mr. Breistroff and other family members like him, that those advancing conspiracy or alternate theories have their own motives and were not directly affected by that of which they seek the truth.