At 8:19 PM EDT on the night of July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK bound for Paris. It never got beyond Long Island Sound. At 8:31, it blew up, killing all 230 people aboard.
Not far away, Fred Meyer, a Vietnam veteran, was flying a New York National Guard helicopter... He says he saw a "rocket motor trail" in the sky and then "an explosion of military ordnance... it was not caused by a fuel tank explosion" (as concluded by the National Transportation Safety Board). Meyer pointed out he had seen hundreds of such explosions during his time in 'Nam.
Down below, Phyllis Torney, a retired nurse born in England, was on a boat. She saw what Meyer saw, but she experienced a dramatic aftermath. She was first questioned by Suffolk County detectives, who told her she "didn't know what she was talking about." Then, in a more traumatic follow-up, she was visited by two FBI agents. They noted that she had applied for US citizenship and that her application might be in jeopardy if she continued speaking out. She now has US citizenship and is once again telling what she saw.
Torney and Meyer are only two of more than 200 eyewitnesses, NONE of whom was called by the NTSB to testify.
But now several eyewitnesses have come forward to speak out about what they saw in a new documentary, "TWA Flight 800," produced by Epix. The film includes previously unavailable evidence which disputes the conclusion of the NTSB investigation. And it features revealing interviews with several of the original investigators who were reluctant to speak out until they had retired.
The investigators are part of an organization which has petitioned the NTSB to re-open the investigation based on the new evidence. The group was put together by Tom Stalcup, a physicist who noticed inconsistencies in the government's investigation and decided to conduct his own research. The result is this compelling
documentary.
Anyone who watches it will find it difficult to accept the government's conclusions.
The film will have its world premiere at 8 o'clock this Wednesday -- the 17th anniversary of the crash. That's a long time to wait for the truth.