In 1935 the daughters of the U.S. Consul General in Naples, Italy, jumped to their deaths from a charter airplane. Elizabeth and Jane du Bois committed that act of despair two weeks after their sweethearts, British Royal Air Force officers, were killed in a plane crash.
The newspaper account (with pictures of the sisters) that caught my eye is here. It includes the letters the women left in the airplane for their parents, letters that the family did not want made public. But they were. And they are still.
TIME had a tabloid version of the deaths. And here is a dispassionate rendering of the events from the Essex, U.K., Police Museum.
The newspaper account (with pictures of the sisters) that caught my eye is here. It includes the letters the women left in the airplane for their parents, letters that the family did not want made public. But they were. And they are still.
TIME had a tabloid version of the deaths. And here is a dispassionate rendering of the events from the Essex, U.K., Police Museum.