FBI Agent Finds Solace in Working on TWA Probe

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. —  In a hangar filled with the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, a mangled seat immediately caught the attention of FBI Special Agent Charles Christopher.

He had found what he was looking for: the seat where his wife, Janet, a flight attendant, had last rested.

“I’ve flown with her enough to know exactly where she was sitting. I know the galley that she had the coffeepot on. I know the door that she was sitting next to,” Christopher said.

For Christopher, a Navy and Vietnam veteran who has shadowed mob figures, arrested terrorists in the World Trade Center bombing and disguised himself to infiltrate criminal enterprises, this has become the most important investigation of his life.

The day after his wife’s funeral, Christopher called James Kallstrom, a Marine Vietnam veteran and friend of 25 years who is heading the FBI’s investigation of the disaster, and asked to join the probe.

“I wanted him to be part of it,” said Kallstrom, who in 1983 was a member of his friend’s wedding party. “Nobody wants to know the answer to this tragedy more than he does.”

No one touched by the tragedy has quite the vantage point that Christopher, 55, shares with his 12-year-old son, Charles IV, as they try to make sense of a case that has stymied investigators for more than five months.

“She would want me to do what I am doing. Keep going. Don’t give up,” Christopher said in an interview.

He does not share the frustration of some of the families of the other 229 victims, who believe that more could be done to determine whether a bomb, missile or mechanical malfunction made the Paris-bound plane explode July 17. All 230 people aboard were killed.

“I learned a long time ago if you want to find the answers, you have to be patient. The FBI is dedicated to finding the end to this thing,” he said.

Kallstrom recalled that August day in the hangar that Christopher paused for a long moment, hunched over with tears in his eyes, staring at the chair where his wife had last sat.

“He wanted to stand by that seat. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to look at it,” Kallstrom said. “It was a very tough, tough moment.”

A mutual friend brought the Christophers together in 1972, when he agreed to drive some furniture in his new pickup truck to Janet’s apartment. She already was a TWA flight attendant, a goal she had set for herself at age 8.

Janet so loved to fly that Christopher waited 10 years to marry her, until he could accept the fact that she would never give up her international flights. They finally wed on Jan. 8, 1983, in Milford, Conn.

“I had to let her fly if I was going to keep this woman in my life,” Christopher said.

One of five daughters of a General Electric engineer, Janet Christopher was the efficient engine of the family, leaving meals in marked containers for her husband and son to eat during the two days a week when she was working.

Christopher said his wife was “the energy that made this family work.”

“She paid all the bills. Not a day goes by that Charles and I don’t give a hug and take a moment to talk about mom,” he said.

Janet Christopher, 47, was on the doomed flight because she had switched assignments to be home with her family for the weekend.

Christopher and his son had just settled in their living room to watch television when a news bulletin announced that the plane had gone down over the Atlantic Ocean.

“It’s Mom! It’s Mom! It’s Mom!” the son screamed. Christopher calmed him down, then immediately called Kallstrom.

“He’s like a brother. We’ve looked out for each other a long time,” Christopher said.

At the funeral, Kallstrom delivered a eulogy and presented Christopher with a wet, sandy American flag that divers had found the day before intact on the ocean floor amid shattered debris.

On Christmas Day, Christopher and his son rose, ate breakfast in the kitchen and opened presents, just as their family had always done.

“The stockings were on the mantle like always,” Christopher said. “Janet’s was hanging there too. We both really missed her terribly.”

Now, father and son have learned to lean on each other, a process that began just before the funeral when Christopher got out of a car in front of the church.

“I was looking around, kind of dazed,” he recalled. “I was looking from one side to the next, taking a deep breath, and my son reached over and took me by the hand and said, ‘C’mon, Dad,’ and we walked into the church together.”