Tragic story. and yes, a 727 will lock up the rear wheels when shifted into reverse while driving at speed. happened to me. was driving along and my coil was going out, breaking down as the heat was building up, so I was getting popping, backfiring, etc. under load. while driving I was still trying to figure out what was going on...in neutral, it would rev and run just fine, sounded great. in gear it was surging and bucking. in my frustrated haste, I shifted from Drive to Neutral, with the intention of reving the engine to "clear it out" as that was seemingly helping for a little bit (again, I was still trying to figure out what was going on) I accidentally went too far and into reverse, locked up the rear wheels for about a second and a half. car got a little sideways, but not too bad, got it into neutral and coasted for a bit to gather myself up after freaking out (happened with a car coming at me in the other lane! imagine that...rears locked up, back end starts to step out, and you see a car coming at you 100 yards away and closing at 110 mph!)

anyway. I only did that once!