The Mysterious Disappearance of Two U.S. Congressmen

     On October 16, 1972, U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and his colleague Congressman Nick Begich along with Begich's aide Russel Brown and pilot Don Jonz took off from Anchorage Alaska in a Cessna 310 on their way to Juneau for a political fundraising event.  The plane never reached Juneau.  A massive search was conducted but there was no sign of the aircraft or its occupants.  

     Alaska state law required there to be an emergency locator transmitter on board the plane, but the signal was never heard.  A few amateur radio operators reported hearing a radio transmission from someone on board the plane after it crashed saying there were survivors who needed help, but authorities didn't find these reports to be credible.  After a thirty-nine-day search nothing was found, and the four men were presumed dead.  Questions and conspiracy theories alike have swirled around this case since it happened.  

     Were the four men the victims of an accidental plane crash?  Were they the victims of the notorious Alaska Triangle?  Or was one of the Congressmen the target of a sinister plot?  Many have pointed out that Majority Leader Boggs was a bit controversial, and he had reported someone running him off the road two years before his disappearance.  

     Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission, the government group tasked with investigating the Kennedy assassination.  Boggs openly disagreed with some Warren Commission findings, particularly the so-called single bullet theory.  There are reports that Boggs thought FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had lied to and misled the commission.  Boggs openly criticized the FBI on the floor of the House in the early 1970s.  There are reports that he thought Hoover and the bureau to be too powerful and he was seeking to cut the FBI's annual budget.  We also know that Boggs was also on President Nixon's radar.  In a recorded conversation between Nixon and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford in April of 1971 Nixon tells Ford that he can no longer take council from Boggs.  Ford speculates that Boggs is either drinking too much or taking pills.  Boggs also accused the FBI of bugging his phone and said other congressmen thought their phones were bugged as well.  Of course, none of this proves that Boggs was the victim of an assassination or foul play.  There are other things to consider in this case.

     In 1994 convicted murderer and mob associate Jerry Max Pasley told Alaska state investigators that he delivered a bomb to Anchorage on behalf of the Joe Bonanno crime syndicate.  Pasley claims the bomb was put on the Cessna before it took off.  Pasley worked for mobsters Joe Bonanno and Peter Licavoli and was convicted of five murders.  Pasley died in prison in 2010.  Presumably authorities never took Pasley's confession seriously.

     However, one strange factor and indeed a red flag in this case is that Jerry Pasley married the widow of Congressman Nick Begich about seventeen months after the plane disappeared.  They were married for three years and reportedly went into business with several mobsters from Tuscon.  This revelation opens up questions of whether this is a case of a gangster getting rid of his lover's husband rather than a political assassination. 

     So, what do you think?  Was this a political assassination?  Was it a freak accident?  Was it a love triangle gone wrong?  Will the missing plane ever be found?  Will we ever learn the truth about that October flight in 1972?