Francisco Gonzales

 VICTIMS: 44

This story is a warning to all those people that may know a nutter who continuously threatens to kill themselves in a blaze of glory.

Francisco Gonzales always promised this. He would constantly threaten members of his family that they would die alongside him, by his hand. Unfortunately for his victims he never actually told how he would go about killing those around him, so he couldn't be stopped from taking a final act of revenge.

And what brought about his problems? Well he was having trouble with his wife and also had accumulated a fair amount of debt (which is surprising since he lived in Reno, Nevada) when he decided he had finally had enough. But for some unknown reason he didn't take his family out with him, he chose to help his wife instead.

On May 6, 1964, Gonzales purchased a Smith & Wesson revolver for his intended mission.

The next morning he took out a $100,000 insurance policy on his life and then went to Reno airport where he bought a ticket on Pacific Air Lines flight 773 to San Francisco.

I guess it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened on board the plane. No long after the plane took off Gonzales pulled out his gun and kicked his way into the cockpit. Once in there he raised the gun and put a bullet into the back of the pilot's head. Ernest Clark, 52, had his brains splattered all over the control panel as Gonzales turned to the co-pilot and repeated his earlier action.

What happened after this is unknown - but it would seem that Gonzales probably turned the gun on himself. A while later a nearby airport picked up a message stating - "Skipper's shot. We've been shot. Trying to help."

And that was the last anyone heard from the plane apart from the massive explosion when it hit a hill near San Ramon, California. All 44 passengers and crew died.
 

MY OPINION

I've always wondered why more psycho's don't go off in planes. It would seem the best place to do it. Your guaranteed a good kill count, and it would be almost impossible to screw it up. Oh well that's just my opinion (hence the title of this crappy little bit) and I'm sure there are a lot of negatives as well. Anyway the guy was a loser who deserves almost no recognition, but 44 is impossible to ignore, so just the one thumb up on this guy.