unseen photos from Lockerbie-30 years ago today
December 21, 2018
The image of a young dark-haired woman, dressed in a blue sweater and lying face down on his garden hedge, is one that for Peter Giesecke not even 30 years can diminish.
Minutes before his torch beam drew his startled gaze to her lifeless figure in the darkness outside, he had been watching Michael Aspel's This is Your Life on television, when a deep rumbling sound had drawn him to the window. Unaware of the hell about to unleash itself on the town of Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, on 21 December 1988, he watched perplexed as a bright light - the broken remains of Pan Am Flight 103 - fell from the sky.
By 7.03pm, a deadly combination of mangled fuselage and burning aviation fuel had rained down upon the town of Lockerbie with lethal force, with the ensuing fireball incinerating homes in the town's Sherwood Crescent and, with it, 11 residents.
Meanwhile, the bodies of the tragic passengers on board the doomed flight and their personal belongings were scattered on residential streets, surrounding gardens and the countryside around.
But for Mr Giesecke, now 65, the discovery that night of one of those lost souls – Lindsey Otenasek, the 21-year-old Syracuse University student who landed on his hedge in the back garden – forged an unbreakable bond of friendship with her family in the United States.
To this day, Lindsey's mother, Peggy, 85, still cherishes two small pebbles from Mr Giesecke's garden she took as a permanent reminder of the spot where her daughter – the youngest of her six children - was found, and of the Scottish town which treated her and other victims with such kindness and respect.
Last night, Mr Giesecke recalled the moment the families met for the first time, saying: 'About a year after the bombing, I remember working in my garden when I saw a couple standing uncertainly on the pavement outside my gate.
The woman looked at me and said 'I believe my daughter Lindsey was found in your garden.'
'We'd been used to families visiting in the streets around in similar circumstances and so their visit wasn't really unexpected. I'd never learned the identity of the girl on my hedge but I'd never forgotten her.'
He added: 'The garden and the area had all been cleaned up by then. The hedge was gone and there were fresh pebbles down. I showed her exactly where I'd found her and she was very grateful I could explain what happened that night.