These are the photos at Air Disaster.Com, a reference for Press
covering Aviaiton Disasters. The first photo shows the trail of smoke
as I described from the pictures I had seen. No fireball. No real
fire until the aircraft hit the ground, which the other two photos show
the aftermath of. Going to review that Time story above. I know for a
fact there are other photos of the DC-9 taken at closer range. No
fireball. No plume of smoke.

The sad thing is, this accident boiled down to a private pilot having a
heart attack, the aircraft straying into LAX airspace while his family
members tried to get control of the aircraft, before impact with the
DC-9. The horizontal stablizer struck the private aircraft and
detached.

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/am498/photo.shtml

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/am498/2.shtml

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/am498/3.shtml