Bomb victims’ families relieved
Loved ones keep alive memory of Ridgefield college student as Libyan charged in 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103
More than 30 years after the
1988 explosion of Pam Am Flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, the Justice Department announced new charges against a Libyan bombmaker in the tragedy.
The charges were announced Monday, the 32nd anniversary of the bombing, at the final news conference of Attorney General
William Barr’s tenure, underscoring his personal attachment to a case that unfolded during his first stint at the Justice Department. He had announced an earlier set of charges against two other Libyan intelligence officials in his capacity as acting attorney general nearly 30 years ago, vowing that the investigation would continue.
Multiple people from Connecticut were among those who died in the bombing, including Shannon Davis, 19, of Shelton; Scott Cory, 20, of Old Lyme; Turhan Ergin, 22, of West Hartford; Patricia Coyle, 20, of Wallingford; Thomas B. Schultz,
20, of Ridgefield; Amy E. Shapiro,
21, of Stamford; and Andrew A. Teran, 20, of New Haven. Also killed in the bombing was Elizabeth Marek, 30, a graduate of Brookfield High School, who was living in New York at the time of her death.
The case against the alleged bombmaker, Abu Agela Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, is for now more theoretical than practical since Masud is not in U.S. custody, but it is nonetheless one of the more consequential counterterrorism prosecutions brought by the Trump administration Justice Department.
“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” Barr said.
Former Stamford and Ridgefield resident Jane Schultz said she watched Barr announce the new charges in the bombing that killed her son, Thomas, and thought it was “very well done.”
“I thought he was very sincere,” Schultz said. “It’s one more cog in the wheel for justice.”
The Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after takeoff from London on Dec. 21, 1988, en route to New York City and then Detroit. Among the 190 Americans on board were 35 Syracuse University students flying home for Christmas after a semester abroad. One of them was Thomas. The 20-year- old was majoring in politics and history at Ohio Wesleyan University and wanted to become a lawyer.
When asked how she’s doing
32 years since her son’s death, Schultz — who now lives in Pennsylvania — replied, “We do the best we can.”
Jack Schultz, Thomas’ father, was among those who helped found the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, which spent years fighting for more details about the bombing.
And following her son’s death, Jane Schultz advocated for the construction of a permanent memorial to the Pan Am
103 victims. Her work paid off, resulting in the dedication of the Lockerbie Memorial Cairn at Arlington National Cemetery in November 1995.
“The idea of a memorial cairn was born to fill the large emotional void that the disaster had created,” Schultz said 25 years ago at the memorial dedication service.
She said the memorial represented “strength and stability,” and each stone on the cairn “has its own unique characteristics, a perfect representation of each victim — very similar yet so very unique.”
Scott Cory, a resident of Old Lyme, was another Syracuse University student who died when the plane crashed.
“The bombing of the Pan Am flight definitely impacted our community as we lost one of our former students,” James P. Wygonik, principal of Lyme-Old Lyme High School, said Monday.
“Scott’s family has kept his
memory alive in our school with a scholarship fund,” Wygonik said. “On behalf of the Lyme-Old Lyme High School, I hope today’s news helps in some way to ease the pain of his family and all families who lost loved ones that day.”
On Monday, Matthew Coyle recalled that, before she left Vienna, Austria for her flight home, his daughter Patricia told her parents not to bother meeting her when she arrived in New York,
“She said, ‘I’m all set. I’ll see you when I get home,’ ” Coyle recalled his daughter saying. “Thankfully, we didn’t go. All that chaos and confusion.”
The 20-year-old from Wallingford, who was studying early childhood education, was a Boston College student, who had spent a semester abroad studying at Webster College.
“She was a real stemwinder in our house,” Coyle said. “She was a great kid, very adventurous.”
Coyle said “the one big regret” he and his wife had was that they never visited their daughter in Vienna while she was studying there with a Boston College classmate.
“We’ve traveled a bit since then, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to visit Vienna,” Matthew Coyle said. “It’s just too hard.”
Coyle and his wife Jan have made it their life’s work to keep the memory of their daughter alive.
“It’s been a struggle, especially the first eight or nine years,” he said of coming to to terms with his daughter’s death.
For about a dozen years after her death, the Coyles ran a memorial tennis tournament in honor of their daughter because of her love of the game. And every year, the Patricia M. Coyle Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a graduating senior at Wallingford’s Mark T. Sheehan High School, who has demonstrated academic excellence, school involvement, and volunteer service during their high school careers.
A bench near the high school honors her memory as well.
“We can hold our head high,” Matthew Coyle said of the family’s efforts to remember Patricia. “Our children can hold their heads high.”
Patricia Coyle was a twin and her sister Kris has three children. The oldest daughter, Brenda, has twin boys.
Both of Particia Coyle’s sisters attended Boston College. Matthew Coyle and his wife moved to suburban Boston in 2016 to be closer to their two surviving children.
The Coyles have closely followed the case surrounding the bombing for years.
While Masud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the U.S. in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he could be the first to stand
trial in an American courtroom.
After Barr in 1991 announced charges against the two other men, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan government balked at turning them over, skeptical the men could receive a fair trial.
Al-Megrahi was convicted while Fhimah was acquitted of all charges. Al-Megrahi was given a life sentence, but Scottish authorities released him on humanitarian grounds in 2009 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He later died in Tripoli.
It wasn’t until 2003 that Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am disaster, with the country reaching a $ 2.7 billion compensation deal with the victims’ families. Sanctions were lifted and, in 2006, the Bush administration removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and restored diplomatic relations.
The Coyles said they watched in disbelief when al-Megrahi was released from prison after serving eight of his 27-year sentence. Then they heard Monday’s news that a former Libyan intelligence agent was being charged as the bombmaker. Matthew Coyle said he was “very pleased” that Barr had chosen to pursue the case.
“I guess we are just surprised this hadn’t happened sooner because he was identified four or five years ago,” Coyle said.
For Alex Plitsas, 35, of Fairfield, the 1988 bombing is forever linked with one of his first memories, of his grandmother crying and screaming while watching the news. Her brother, Plitsas’s great uncle Robert Pagnucco, was among those killed. Plitsas, now head of the Republican Town Committee in Fairfield, was living in Mamaroneck, N.Y. at the time.
He was around 3 years old when the bombing took place, but will never forget how his grandmother, Caroline Meskers, reacted when she learned of the bombing.
“I remember it vividly,” he said. “The news came on, and she burst into wailing. It was completely out of character for her.”
Plitsas said he used to work for the U.S. Department of Defense, and he once had an instructor who was a CIA officer involved in investigating the bombing. Plitsas said he had heard from some Washington contacts that the new charges were coming, and his family — including his grandmother — was relieved to hear the news.
“She was very, very excited,” Plitsas said. “The family had never really gotten closure on what happened.”