Lawyer linked to explosion that dropped plane in 1960
By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff Writer
On a dreary January morning 47 years ago, an airplane crash in Brunswick County sparked a mystery that still hasn’t been solved.
The day is still remembered by locals who were there.
Julian Frank, an attorney from Westport, Conn., apparently was holding an explosive device when it detonated just after 2:31 a.m. on Jan. 6, 1960, aboard a DC-6B airliner bound from New York to Florida. The bomb aboard National Airlines Flight 2511 exploded in the skies over Carolina Beach, sending the plane into a long, wide dive that ended in Richard Randolph’s farm near Bolivia.
The Randolph family was incorrectly identified in the first segment of this story.
While the majority of the plane came to rest on the Randolph farm, Frank’s body and other debris were found near Snow’s Marsh.
Questions still remain unanswered today as to why Frank apparently committed suicide, and took NAL 2511 with him.
Sturdy craft, steady crew, routine trip
Much of the story of National Airlines Flight 25ll can be found in yellowed newspapers and photocopies of single-spaced, typewritten government reports.
The most exhaustive report of the crash was released July 29, 1960, by the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB reviews data compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration whenever there is an airplane crash, especially a major commercial disaster like Flight 2511.
According to the report, National Airlines Flight 2511 from New York was a DC-6 that replaced a Boeing 707 aircraft on the Idlewild-to-Miami trip.
The 707 was designated NAL Flight 601. After a crack was found in the 707’s window, the 106 passengers scheduled to fly on Flight 601 were divided between the DC-6 and a Lockheed Electra.
The DC-6B was designated NAL Flight 2511, and took on 29 of the original passengers. The crew was experienced, not just in flying, but in flying the DC-6B
Capt. Dale Southard was a World War II pilot who had joined National Airlines in 1942 before being called to active duty. His co-pilot, Richard Hentzell, 31, had been an employee of National since 1954. The aircraft engineer was Robert Hallickson, 35, who had also worked for National since 1954. Most of his flight time was in a DC-6.
The airplane also carried two stewardesses, Valerie Stewart, 25, and Marilu O’Dell, 23, who went to work for National on the same day, tov. 1, 1957.
The flight was a routine one, especially for NAL pilots. The New York to Miami route helped make National a major airliner, transporting vacationers and businessmen back forth between the Big Apple and the Sunshine State.
According to an airline history website National’s slogan – “Coast to coast to coast” – referred to the company’s numerous non-stop flights to and from points along the East and West coasts, as well as the busy New York-to-Florida run. Vintage television commercials for National show the company promoting “Miami Go Go” trips as late as 1969.
Biographies and news stories about the victims show a wide cross-section of reasons folks were aboard NAL 2511.
Among the passengers were a handful of attorneys – including four of Julian Frank’s neighbors. Frank was the only one of the barristers to list “business” as his reason for flying; the others were on holiday.
Another lawyer-turned-vacationer was Pearl Merrill, a pioneer in civil rights for mentally handicapped people and the president of the Child Guidance League, an early non-profit counseling organization.
Another businessman who flew that night was Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Edward Orrick McDonnell.
McDonnell earned the medal during naval action at Vera Cruz in 1914. He was also a pioneer aviator with the U.S. Navy, and served as a rear admiral in World War II. An executive with Pan Am airways and other corporations, the retired Navy flier was on his way to Florida on a business trip.
Unsolved mystery
As the search wore on, the search continued for Passenger No. 33, attorney Julian Frank, and a banker from Havana, Cuba, named Carlos Ramos Valdes.
The banker’s body was found at the crash site, where it had been overlooked in a densely wooded area. Frank’s body was found in Snow’s Marsh, near Carolina Beach, along with a piece of the airplane’s bathroom wall.
In stark, scientific terms, the autopsy of the Connecticut lawyer’s remains left no doubt about who was closest to the device that destroyed the aircraft.
“Medical experts with extensive experience … indicate the injuries sustained by the body found at Snow’s Marsh could only have been caused by an explosive blast.”
As the investigation developed, news accounts of the crash noted that Frank was under investigation for malpractice, embezzlement and other illegal activities. Debbi Celli, a librarian with the Westport, Conn., Public Library, supplied this writer with a number of articles from the local Westport newspaper regarding the Franks and the plane crash.
Apparently, Frank was something of a mystery in 1960 as he is today.
Frank was married to a former model and had two children. His wife, Janet Wagner Frank, still did some modeling, appearing on the cover of Woman’s Day magazine with the couple’s youngest child a few weeks before the crash. Tragically, Janet Frank suffered a miscarriage a few days after news stories about her husband’s business dealings began circulating.
Julian Frank was the son of a former deputy commissioner of police in New York City. Frank had recently gone from a $10,000 per year attorney’s position to making the “princely sum” of $150,000 per year in private practice. His wife was quoted as denying any money problems. They lived in a fashionable section of Westport, and enjoyed sailing, tennis, and playing bridge. He was also heavily involved in the Westport-area Democrat party.
Newspaper accounts quote friends of the family as saying Frank was “obsessed with money.” He practiced law in Manhattan, but was a mover and shaker in the local real estate market in Westport as well.
Despite these problems, the man who was called a “gifted athlete” was reported to be “jovial” at a New Year’s Eve party just before the crash.
The Franks were frequent socialites, but according to a story in the local newspaper, The Westport Town Crier, they had very few close friends.
“… Julian A. Frank remains essentially an unknown man in his hometown,” one story starts.
Money troubles
Problems with some of Frank’s accounts began showing up in the spring of 1959. According to FBI agents interviewed after the crash, Frank was being investigated on at least four criminal charges. At issue was between $600,000 and $1 million in poorly handled investments and other accounts.
Further clouding the investigation was a report – by a U.S. Senator – that Frank was supposed to personally deliver $1 million to a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. office in May, but never showed up. The money was reportedly part of a planned gambling resort in Aruba. Investigations by The New York Times and other publications tied Frank to gambling organizations in New York and elsewhere.
Then there was the insurance.
Frank took out more than $800,000 in life insurance between November 1959 and the date of the crash. Federal investigators noted that several of the policies were the $60,000 policies offered in airport vending machines, but none would pay out in case of suicide.
One of the insurance agents in Westport told reporters that Frank refused a double indemnity rider for one of the policies. The rider would have paid double in the event of a violent or unforeseen accident – like a plane crash. Some of the life insurance was purchased by Frank and his partners in a new real estate firm they founded in September – when law enforcement officers were asking questions about some of Frank’s dealings.
Shortly after Frank was buried, his widow and children left town. Mrs. Frank was hospitalized in South Carolina after becoming sick on a train in Charleston. Her attorney blamed the media and gossip for Mrs. Frank’s miscarriage and later sickness.
For weeks after the explosion, the Associated Press published stories hinting a connection between Frank and organized crime.
No such ties were ever proven, but other odd clues came out.
Bomb threat, strange behavior
A bomb threat was made to the airport shortly before NAL Flight 2511 boarded at Idlewild. Officials said the bomb threat described an explosive that would go off in a cargo area at 3 a.m. When no bombs were found, the airport quickly went back to normal, and Frank and the other passengers boarded their replacement plane.
Frank was observed to be carrying a blue carry-on flight bag that weighed around 20 pounds.
Pieces of fabric embedded in his remains were consistent with that type of bag.
Then there was the couple who replaced Frank on the other plane.
In February 1960, investigators told the Associated Press that a “tall, slender man” gave up his seat on the Electra so the couple could travel together.
He was heard to say he “didn’t care” which flight he took.
His demeanor struck the couple as strange, but the couple was happy to take him up on the offer.
Period news accounts and official reports do not give further details about why the man’s behavior was considered odd.
The investigators reported that the only man on the DC-6 who matched that description was Frank.
Federal authorities also tried to determine if Frank (who had no known explosives training) might have accidentally carried the bomb on the plane.
They immediately noticed similarities with a Nov. 16, 1959 crash in the Gulf of Mexico, and before long, evidence linked at least one man to Frank.
The bombing was believed to have been accomplished in the same way, with a passenger unwittingly carrying a booby-trapped bag onto the plane. Not enough debris could be recovered from that aircraft to prove the theory.
The target of that possible bomb was reportedly involved in a criminal enterprise, and a former partner arranged the bombing.
The hapless bomber in that case turned out to be a substitute passenger; the actual intended “victim “of the Nov. 16 bomb was arrested by authorities a week after NAL 2511 crashed.
The intended victim of that crash – Dr. Robert Spears of Dallas, Texas, referred to repeatedly in news accounts as a “naturopath” and “abortionist” – was a friend and client of Frank.
Spears had a cache of dynamite and detonators on the ranch where he was arrested.
While he denied having anything to do with either explosion, Spears did admit to collecting several large insurance policies he took out just before the crash.
A 17-year-old from Westport, Karl Kerry, defended Frank in a front page letter to the editor in The Town Crier in the weeks after Frank’s burial.
Kerry wrote that he lived in the same neighborhood as Frank, and the disgraced lawyer coached a neighborhood football team, took young people sailing, and encouraged the kids to be good sports.
“He was a man with a brilliant mind,” Kerry wrote, “and a wonderful person to know.”
Whether he was an intimate of organized crime, a helpless victim, or a man intent on committing suicide can’t be proven.
Cold, hard facts
The technical reports, however, proved that if Frank didn’t set the bomb off, he at least handled the device at the moment of detonation.
According to the official report on Flight 2511 by the Civil Aeronautics Board, aircraft maintenance, weather, or pilot error played no part in the crash.
Initial speculation pointed the finger at not a Mafia-style hit, but such freak accidents as depressurization of the cabin or even a collision with a dropped auxiliary fuel tank from one of the military jets patrolling the coast at the time.
It didn’t take long for authorities to determine that the DC-6B wasn’t the victim of a freak accident, but of a bomb. Based on the forensic investigation of the aircraft debris and Frank’s body, it was determined he held the bomb at the time of detonation.
Officials created a wood and chicken wire mock-up of the plane in a hanger at the Wilmington airport.
While the bodies were taken to a Southport gymnasium, debris from the aircraft was taken to the hanger and painstakingly put in the proper place on the plane.
The investigators determined that all the pieces of wreckage found at Kure Beach, Carolina Beach and Snow’s Marsh came from the body of the plane, between the wing and the lavatory.
This helped them determine that the explosion occurred on the right side of the passenger cabin, near the leading edge of the right wing.
The investigators were able to assemble everything except a roughly triangular shaped piece of the airplane’s body that centered around the triple seat where Julian Frank was sitting when the bomb went off.
When Frank’s body was found in Snow’s Marsh, a piece of the lavatory wall was found nearby.
Frank had chemical traces on his hands consistent with acids from a battery.
Medical examiners found pieces of wire and metal shrapnel in Frank’s body that indicated he was holding the device as it went off.
The case may never be solved. Why Frank detonated the explosive – or if he did so on purpose – likely will never be known. The case is still considered open by the FBI and the FAA.
Appropriate weather
For hours, the only reporters on the scene of the crash were News Reporter editor Vic Bubbett and a young reporter named Jim High.
The newsmen provided photos and stories both for that day’s edition of the State Port Pilot and the next day’s News Reporter.
High – now the publisher of The News Reporter – said the morning’s weather was “fitting” for a tragedy.
“It was a damp, dreary January morning,” he said. “It wasn’t raining, but everything was wet.”
Another sadly ironic sight stuck with High – a section of the wing emblazoned with National’s logo and the legend, “Airline of the Stars.”
“The wing was there in the mud, torn from the airplane,” he said. “I guess the airline wanted to appear luxurious. It wasn’t glamorous anymore.”
Brunswick County Commissioner Tom Rabon remembers the crash very well. He was one of many curious locals who visited the crash site before it was cordoned off.
“I sneaked in there about 10 o’clock,” he said, “before they got everything secured. I was young, and I was nosy.
“I saw enough that day to know I didn’t want to see anything like that again.”