FBI AGENT TRIES TO CRACK CASE OF TWA CRASH THAT KILLED WIFE.

Byline: Associated Press 

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 coffee pot 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 friends' 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 one of a series of interviews with The Associated Press.

He does not share the frustration of some of the families of the other 229 victims, who believe 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 she would never give up her international flights. They finally wed 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.

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