Afterburn

There is a little known, 1992 made for TV movie based on real events called Afterburn. Wikipedia does a terrible job with the plot summary that sounds more like a teaser trying to click bait you into watching it.

Janet Harduvel is an Air Force wife who receives the devastating news her husband Ted has died on the job. Adding insult to injury, the US government blames his death on him.

"Pilot error" is the official explanation for his death.

She's not willing to let it go. She begins trying to figure out what really happened.

An old tape only playable on not commonly available older tech turns out to be a key piece of evidence. It states that these high speed jets will eventually develop serious problems if not proactively properly maintained because the amount of shimmy experienced will start cutting into the wiring.

It's not a matter of IF. It's a matter of WHEN.

Her husband really died due to instrument failure while flying in conditions where he was dependent on his instruments. His instruments lied to him leading him to crash catastrophically.

At some point, she finds a code for a jet part and the military refuses to tell her what the part is. They stonewall her. "Classified information."

So she convinces her sister or a friend to memorize half the code and she memorizes half and they go act a little slutty and flirty and pretend to be impressed with some guy's job and are like "Oh, so if we had a code, you could look it up? Cool! Let's make up a code!"

And that's how they con some guy into giving them the name of the part that failed, killing her husband.

My dad used to go drinking and win sucker's bets on things like "Can you name all fifty states and their state capitals?" He had all fifty states and their state capitals memorized in alphabetical order and could write them down in about a minute.

Yes, he was smart and had a good memory, better than average. But this was a parlor trick that involved preparation.

He was in the military. He moved frequently. Other people moved frequently. He had an endless supply of NEW suckers who didn't know this was a setup.

Many criminals operate on this basis.

1. They have one or more accomplices.

2. They break the crime up into separate tasks, none of which is particularly damning.

3. They plan the crime and pursue preparation.

4. When arrested, they admit they did X part and don't admit it was planned and this is a conspiracy and pretend they had no idea it would be a big deal.

They actively create plausible deniability by doing things that seem like an accident or happenstance and don't admit how much preparation and coordination was involved. Then all complicit parties get a walk or a slap on the wrist when no one can prove it was on purpose and most law enforcement personnel aren't even inferring this detail.

I'm not a big believer in wild coincidence. If something keeps happening, either it was planned or at a minimum someone didn't do their due diligence to eliminate this as a problem after seeing it a few times.

Which amounts to essentially the same thing. If you can see it coming and have seen it repeatedly and don't stop it, you're effectively planning it.