Another 2014 Plane crash with possible money motive

[Drew Phipps]

From news 6/1/14:

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/06/01/7-...d%3D482829


Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner dies in plane crash

Jun 1st 2014 7:07AM


PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner Lewis Katz was killed along with six other people in a fiery plane crash in Massachusetts, his business partner said Sunday.Harold H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest confirmed Katz's death to The Associated Press, saying he was informed by their lawyer, Richard Sprague. The crash came just days after Katz and Lenfest gained full control of The Inquirer by buying out their co-owners for $88 million in a deal that ended an ugly monthslong feud among the partners.

The Gulfstream IV crashed as it was leaving Hanscom Field at about 9:40 p.m. Saturday for Atlantic City, New Jersey. There were no survivors. The identities of the other victims weren't immediately released. Nancy Phillips, Katz's longtime companion and city editor at the Inquirer, was not on board. Officials gave no information on the cause of the crash. They said the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.


When bidding on the company, which also operates the Philadelphia Daily News and the news website Philly.com. Katz and Lenfest vowed to fund in-depth journalism to return the Inquirer to its former glory and to retain its editor, Bill Marimow. "It's going to be a lot of hard work. We're not kidding ourselves. It's going to be an enormous undertaking," Katz said then, noting that advertising and circulation revenues had fallen for years. "Hopefully, (the Inquirer) will get fatter." Katz, who grew up in Camden, New Jersey, made his fortune investing in the Kinney Parking empire and the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network in New York. He once owned the NBA's New Jersey Nets and the NHL's New Jersey Devils and was a major donor to Temple University, his alma mater.
The fight over the future of the city's two major newspapers was sparked last year by a decision to fire the Inquirer's Pulitzer Prize-winning editor. Katz and Lenfest wanted a judge to block the firing. Katz sued a fellow owner, powerful Democratic powerbroker George Norcross, saying his ownership rights had been trampled. The dispute culminated last week when Katz and Lenfest, a former cable magnate-turned-philanthropist, bought out their partners.
Lenfest said Sunday that the deal to buy out the company will be delayed but will proceed.

Three previous owners of the company, including Norcross, said in a joint statement that they were deeply saddened to hear of Katz's death. "Lew's long-standing commitment to the community and record of strong philanthropy across the region, particularly Camden where he was born and raised, will ensure that his legacy will live on," they said.

When the crash occurred, nearby residents saw a fireball and felt the blast shake their homes.
Jeff Patterson told The Boston Globe he saw a fireball about 60 feet high and suspected the worst.
"I heard a big boom, and I thought at the time that someone was trying to break into my house because it shook it," said Patterson's son, 14-year-old Jared Patterson. "I thought someone was like banging on the door trying to get in."
The air field, which serves the public, was closed after the crash. Responders were still on the scene Sunday morning. Hanscom Field is about 20 miles northwest of Boston. The regional airport serves mostly corporate aviation, private pilots and commuter air services."


My sympathies to the family and friends of those affected. I hope the NTSB can find the site.

[Magda Hassan]

I read this on Haaretz last night and wondered about it. It seems ripe with potential. Worth watching for further developments.

[Peter Lemkin]

Plane Crash Kills Owner of Philly Inquirer After "Ugly" Debacle with Christie-Ally George Norcross, who has Boasted of "Crushing" His Enemies

By /June 1st, 2014

LEWIS KATZ

It was reported this morning that Lewis Katz, co-owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, was killed in a plane crash at Hanscom Field in Massachusetts. Confirmation came from his attorney, Richard Sprague, formerly chief counsel and director of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations investigating the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (From the Mary Ferrell Foundation on "The Last Investigation": "The Church Committee's unfinished business fell to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which got off to a rocky start. Shortly after Chief Counsel Richard Sprague declined to sign CIA secrecy oaths and began asking pointed questions about Oswald's visit to Mexico City, he began to be denounced in the press and even by his own committee chairman, Henry Gonzalez. The committee was almost terminated before it really got started, rescued only by the dual resignations of Gonzalez and Sprague, and the untimely apparent suicide of key witness George DeMohrenschildt on the eve of a refunding vote. Justice Department organized crime expert G. Robert Blakey replaced Sprague, worked out secrecy agreements with the CIA, and the Committee was re-launched. …")

Katz, legally supported by his CIA-crossed attorney, had recently walked away with ownership of the Inquirer after controversial court debacles with former co-owner George Norcross, an extremely powerful Democratic power-broker in New Jersey (and obviously a man without principles, not to mention party loyalty), an ally of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie) who, in the story posted below entitled "The Man Who Destroyed Democracy," brags on a secret tape recording of dealing harshly with his enemies:

"… On clandestine law-enforcement recordings, made public in 2005, Norcross boasted of his power and promised to make a profane end of his opponentsrapid-f*iring F-bombs and saying he'd see to it that those who crossed him were punished,' fired' and crushed. …"

George Norcross

If the investigation of the Machiavellian George Norcross had not been bungled, it's likely that he would be sitting in a penitentiary at the current moment.

The Norcross corruption profile and his own threatening statements have led me to entertain the possibility that the ball of fire at Hansom Field an Air Force Base that killed Katz may not have been so accidental, after all. Odds are that itwas just an accident I'm no conspiracy theorist but given the adversity, personalities and politics behind the scenes, it has to be asked if the plane was perhaps sabotaged to "punish" and "crush" a Norcross adversary.

The Boston Globe reports that "the private jet that crashed on takeoff at Hanscom Field Saturday night, killing seven people, left the runway and continued rolling through the grass, colliding with an antenna and bursting through a chain-link fence before it came to rest in a gully, where it was consumed by fire, a federal crash investigator said today."

No certainty here, but I think that any objective observer who reviews the facts can only come away with a nagging suspicion that there may well be more to the fatal crash in Massachusetts than meets the eye. Alex Constantin
e

[Dawn Meredith]

I read a very nice piece about him, that he was not your typical rich guy. Then here I see Richard Sprague is his attorney. Hmmmmm. We know Sprague is the real deal and it is why he was forced from HSCA. The lamestream media had a big hand in forcing him out as he was going to wherever it took. Including the CIA. Which flaky Blakey avoided.
I was not suspicious when I first heard about the crash. Although I did wonder how a crash occurs on takeoff. Now...I will await investigative journalists as I know that MSM will write.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

I read a very nice piece about him, that he was not your typical rich guy. Then here I see Richard Sprague is his attorney. Hmmmmm. We know Sprague is the real deal and it is why he was forced from HSCA. The lamestream media had a big hand in forcing him out as he was going to wherever it took. Including the CIA. Which flaky Blakey avoided.
I was not suspicious when I first heard about the crash. Although I did wonder how a crash occurs on takeoff. Now...I will await investigative journalists as I know that MSM will write.

Dawn

I should read the entire article before posting. I got as far as the name Sprague then posted. Then read the rest of the piece to see it details exactly what I posted. Oh well...::

[R.K. Locke]

This one stinks to high heaven.

[Drew Phipps]

Not only did the plane "roll" off the runway, after failing to get airborne, and catch fire, it EXPLODED with a ball of flame 60 feet high and a sound loud enough to rattle doors in the neighborhood nearby.

[Peter Lemkin]

The man may have been rich, but he seems [seems!] to have had no special connections [positive or negative] to the National Security State [thus far made evident]. The Sprague as lawyer connection is Twilight Zone stuff. Given that he might not be anything more than another Media outlet [or was], will the investigation be unbiased...or will they rule it was 'an accident' - wrench left on airport runway that was turned into missile into fuel tanks during takeoff - or some other such invention?! Or does he or his enemy have a hidden connection to the mafia that runs the Country and the World?

One would hope that Sprague hires his own PIs to do a private investigation and NOT trust the NTSB and other Federal and Local Agencies to do the only investigation! He must have learned more than a thing or two with what he went through!

[Peter Lemkin]

Ed Rendell: I Could Have Been on Inquirer Owner Lewis Katz's Crashed Jet

Had it not been for a fundraiser, the former Pennsylvania governor says he would have boarded the chartered plane that killed seven in a crash Saturday, including his friend Lewis Katz.
The last time Ed Rendell saw his close friend Lewis Katzwho was killed Saturday night in a plane crashwas on Friday and completely by chance.

Katz, the Philadelphia tycoon, former sports team owner, and philanthropist who had just purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, had been trying for days to persuade former governor Rendell to fly up with him on Saturday to Concord, Mass., for a cocktail party and dinner at the home of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

"I stopped to get some produce at a place on 20th Street, and Lewis was sitting in an outdoor seating area at a restaurant across the way," Rendell, 70, told The Daily Beast on Sunday afternoon, a few hours after he learned that his friend had been killed the previous evening, along with six other people, in the fiery explosion of his chartered jet. "We joked and kibitzed, and Lewis said, You really ought to come tomorrow. Doris would love to see you.' And I said, Listen, I'll call you, but I don't think I can.'"

Rendell, who served as Philadelphia's district attorney and mayor before being elected Pennsylvania governor in 2002, explained that he had an early-morning speaking commitment at the Little Shul in south Philadelphia and was worried he wouldn't be back in time. It was a fundraising event for the renovation of the state's smallest synagogue, which is situated in a row house, "and I couldn't let them down," Rendell said.

Had it not been for the fundraiser, Rendell said, he would have been aboard the jet and killed along with the 72-year-old Katz, three other passengers, and three crew members, when it crashed on the runway and reportedly hit a fence and exploded at Hanscom Field, a small airport outside Boston, on its way to Atlantic City, N.J.

"That flashed through my mind for a second when his son Drew called me this morning," Rendell said about his brush with cheating death. "But what flashed through my mind most of all is that I was never going to talk to him again."

Rendell said he is unsure what to make of news reports that Katz and his guests were using a chartered four-passenger Gulfstream IV for the trip to and from Massachusetts. Katz, who had been one of Rendell's biggest political fundraisers and best friends since his district attorney's campaign in 1977, owns two 12-passenger Gulfstream Vs, Rendell said. He added that since leaving public office, he has flown on one of the G-Vs "25 or 30 times" as Katz's guest.

If Katz was using a chartered jet, "maybe that explains it," Rendell said. "With his regular pilots, if there was a speck of water out of place on that plane, they wouldn't take off. That's how careful they were. They were great pilots. They never would have crashed into a chain-link fence."

"The shock and the sorrow here are unbelievable, not only because he was a great philanthropist, but because he did so many small things for people that no one ever heard of."

Rendell added: "All of Lewis's close friends, we all know his pilots and his stewardess, and we're desperate trying to find out if they were on the plane." As of this writing, only Katz and his next-door neighbor, retired preschool teacher Anne Leeds, 74, had been officially identified among the dead.

Rendell said he talked with Katz on Tuesday shortly after he and a business partner, Gerry Lenfest, made the winning bid for the Inquirer and Daily News, agreeing to pay $88 million for control of the financially strapped morning and afternoon papersa $33 million premium over what New Jersey powerbroker George Norcross, along with Katz and Lenfest, had paid for the media properties only two years ago.

"Lewis knew he had to do the right thing, and he way overpaid for the papers," Rendell said. "He did it because he wanted to keep the papers in Philly, and he didn't want to close down the Daily News, and wanted to keep it free of any interference."

On Tuesday after the auction, "Lewis and I did a postmortem … I'd never seen him happier than he was this week," Rendell went on. Katz's son Drewwho is named after the legendary Washington columnist Drew Pearson, for whom the elder Katz worked as an assistant when he was a college studentwill take his father's place on the board of the newspapers' parent company.

"This is unbelievable," Rendell said. "The shock and the sorrow here are unbelievable, not only because he was a great philanthropist, but because he did so many small things for people that no one ever heard of. His greatest thrill in life was helping people." Rendell added: "This is so fucking hard."

[Drew Phipps]

The pilot had the brakes on when the plane was in the grass:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6052[/ATTACH]

The hard braking caused a landing gear to snap off prior to the explosion:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6053[/ATTACH]

So the flight crew wasn't suicidal.

Black boxes were recovered.