WLS Channel 7 - Eyewitness News at 10pm - "The Crash of Flight 191" (Part 3, 1979)

Here's Part 3 of a special expanded edition of Eyewitness News at 10pm with Fahey Flynn and Joel Daly on WLS Channel 7, dealing almost entirely with the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 at O'Hare Field, the worst air disaster in U.S. history. This also features some other news of the day. Includes:

Joel Daly mentioning other fatal plane crashes in history, including two prior ones at O'Hare (in 1961 and 1968), plus two at Midway Airport (in 1972 and 1961 - he mentioned them in reverse order), San Diego (nine months before the Flight 191 crash), and the outskirts of Paris (in 1974 - ironically, also a DC-10).

Fahey then identifies the names of the four Playboy executives who perished in the Flight 191 crash: Sheldon Wax, 51, managing editor; his wife, Judith Wax, 47, a freelance writer and humorist whose autobiography, "Starting in the Middle," had just recently been published; fiction editor Victoria Chen Haider; and Mary Tierney Sheridan who was administrative director of the international publishing division; all four were headed for a book convention of the American Booksellers' Association in Los Angeles. He quotes Mike Murphy, Playboy's vice president and director of circulation and promotion, as calling them "virtually irreplaceable." A picture of Sheldon Wax is briefly shown.

Fahey then goes on to other, non-crash news, introducing a report on the execution of John Arthur Spenkelink in Starke, Florida (he was the second person to be executed in the U.S. in the past two years); Al Dale reports, with alternation between film footage and sketches of the execution by Don Pottratz.

Joel reports on the conviction of Thomas Vanda for the 1977 stabbing murder in Oak Park of 25-year-old Marguerite Bowers. He notes Vanda was released from a mental institution the prior year, before the tape cuts out.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Friday, May 25th 1979.

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