An Oregon woman searching for her son, whom she put up for adoption when she was just a teenager, learned recently that he died in the 1988 Pan-Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Carol King-Eckersley, 65, had promised some 45 years ago not to search for her son or interfere with his life after the
adoption, according to the BBC. But after her husband died last year, she began the search to help her get through the sadness.
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She knew her son's name and birthday, and when she started to search on the Internet, she came upon a remembrance page for those killed in the airline accident 25 years ago.
The BBC documentary "Living with Lockerbie," which tells her story, aired on Monday and will rerun on Saturday.
"270 people died in that tragedy and one of those happened to be the only child I ever had," King-Eckersley said. "And I didn't even know it until last April. So it became a kind of double tragedy. I found him and I lost him on the same day."
Kenneth Bissett, King-Eckersley's son, was a student at Cornell University studying with Syracuse University's overseas program in London. Bissett was supposed to fly home earlier but stayed in London for a 21st birthday party arranged by friends.
The Daily Record reported that memorial events are scheduled for Saturday in Lockerbie, London, and Washington, D.C., for the 25th anniversary of the disaster.
Former FBI director Robert Mueller told the BBC in September that the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has led to the discovery of new information about the bombing. Mueller believes that more people will be arrested in connection to the bombing.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in the Lockerbie disaster, was released from jail in 2009 by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Al-Megrahi died last year claiming he did not take part in the crime.
King-Eckersley told the BBC that she could not imagine how her son's adopted parents, Florence and John Bissett, handled such a tragedy.
"I'm just starting to get to know him," she said. "In a way I'm going backwards because the getting to know him makes it sharper, makes the regret deeper."
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