How Did The Sunset Limited Attack

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The Sunset Limited attack took place 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona on October 9, 1995, at 1:30 am (D’Angelo, 2015). The Sunset Limited is a passenger train from Amtrak that was traveling that evening from Miami, FL to Los Angeles, CA. That evening, “19 feet of rail was ripped loose and 29 spikes were pulled out and plates that connect the rails to the railroad ties were removed” (D’Angelo, 2015). When the train went off the track it killed 1 person an Amtrak employee and injured 112 passengers. One passenger name Hallford got off the training and started walking around in the dark. While walking around he found three notes from the ‘Sons of the Gestapo.’ Pat Borree worked as a Buckeye dispatcher, who received a call from Maricopa …show more content…

“At a news conference in Washington, the president and chairman of Amtrak, Thomas M. Downs, said the derailment had been caused by the removal of bolts that hold a 36-inch-long connecting bar to two pieces of 39-foot-long rail” (Mydans, 1995, para. 18). “Amtrak executives said that the derailment was an act of sabotage that could have taken one person only 10 minutes to carry out” (Mydans, 1995, para. 16). The most interest part is that whom ever moved the railroad tracks left no traces of their work other than the letters and had to know the wiring system of the railroad track. The railroad track has sensors in it so that if it moves the conductor knows to stop the train or find out what is wrong up ahead. The next part of this that makes no sense is that Amtrak says that one man can move 39 feet rail 2 degrees which weigh roughly 130 pounds per yard (Wabtec, 2017). There is absolutely no way that one man jumped the track wiring and then moved 1690 pounds of track in ten minutes. Moreover, the area that the train was derailed was in the middle of nowhere. The closest road was 38 miles away. Two decades later the FBI has not been able to figure out who committed this crime and has offered a $300,000 reward for information to capture the terrorist. This paper will discuss two possible suspects that could have derailed the train Sons of the Gestapo and a government conspiracy …show more content…

Hallford found two notes under a rock in the dark desert night. Furthermore, it was said that after the crash the Amtrak employees told the passengers to stay inside the train because of the elements in the desert such as rattle snakes. Law enforcement found the other two letters left by the Sons of the Gestapo (SOG). When the FBI started looking for who the SOG was nothing was found in any database on this terrorist organization. Additionally, no one had ever heard of this organization before. If you break apart the name Sons of the Gestapo, the Gestapo refers to the Nazis in Germany during World War II. This would mean they were sons of the Germany Nazis. However, 6 months earlier the Oklahoma City bombing had just happened. From the typed letters that were left in the desert that made reference to Waco, TX the FBI believed that this was another right wing extremist group. There are only a couple problems with this theory the Sons of the Gestapo do not exist other than on those pieces of paper in the desert. Second, this terrorist attack would have had to be done by someone that knew the railroads well such as an employee that was fired the year before for running into trained bridge. There has never been any evidence of the SOG minus the letters, which is probably why this mystery has not been

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