DECADES SINCE HORROR OF LOCKERBIE BOMBING
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Kim Wickham was at Heathrow airport and scheduled to fly on Pan Am 103 with her friends Nicole Boulanger and Ken Bissett.
But she revealed how she decided to visit friends in Germany instead, a decision that saved her life but blighted her conscience for the past three decades. She said: “I was supposed to be on the plane and I feel guilty.
“I don’t know what the logic of it is but it doesn’t really go away. I felt guilt and overwhelmed with sadness.”
Kim has broken her silence as part of a documentary marking the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, which claimed the l ives of a l l 243 people on board.
In tota l , 270 people died when a bomb in a cassette player packed into a S ams o n i t e suitcase exploded in the cargo hold of the flight.
Heartbroken Kim, 51, from upstate New York, describes how she defied her parents’ wishes by going to Germany instead of flying home to her family for the festive season.
She said: “I called my parents. They weren’t happy with me at all.
“They said to come home on the flight. I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden I’m at the Pan Am office. I took a breath and walked up and changed my f l ight and went to Germany.
“I arrived and I remember looking at my watch a lot, I’ve no idea why.”
In a documentary covering two days of the worst terrorist atrocity seen in
Sunday Mail
to buy a teapot for her mother. Motown group, TheTh FourF TTops alsol missedidththeir i flight after a Top Of The Pops producer’s last-minute change meant they had to reschedule.
Abdelbaset a l- Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001 and died in May 2012 maintaining his innocence. His family are still trying to appeal his conviction.
The documentary, which airs on Wednesday, also hears from Jim and Jane Swire, the parents of Flora Swire who was on the way to the US to visit her boyfriend. Jim, a long- time campaigner who believes Megrahi was innocent, told how he wanted to see his daughter’s body. But Jane tells how it was too much for her to bear.
She said: “I didn’t want to see her body partly because I knew it would be damaged by that huge fall of 30-odd thousand feet and I had a horrible feeling I might remember her in that state instead of that lovely, beauti ful vibrant young girl I’d kissed goodbye to. I didn’t want to see her, but it was important to Jim.”