The Boggs-Begich Disappearance: Lost in Alaska

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There's no place quite like Alaska.

Although it's twice the size of Texas, less than 750,000 people live there, total.

Add in the fact that most of the state is untouched and undeveloped, and you can see why

Alaska is known as the last frontier.

With all that in mind, it makes sense that getting around the state presents a unique

set of challenges.

Most of the cities in Alaska are only accessible by boat or plane, but flying through a frozen

tundra isn't exactly easy.

Since 2016, over 40% of fatal U.S. plane crashes have occurred in Alaska.

But these victims' families aren't just grieving the loss of their loved ones.

Many are seeking closure, too.

Because when you get on a plane in Alaska, you aren't just at risk of dying.

You're at risk of disappearing without a trace.

From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations,

and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories.

They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction.

I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is conspiracy theories, cults, and crimes, a Crime House

original powered by Pave Studios.

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most shocking events and nefarious organizations.

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Today I'm discussing one of the most baffling mysteries of the 1970s known as the Hale

Boggs disappearance.

In October 16th, 1972, congressmen Thomas Hale Boggs and Nick Beggich were campaigning

for re-election in Alaska.

That day, they boarded a plane in Anchorage bound for Juneau.

They never made it.

And all these years later, we're still not sure what happened along that 575 mile journey.

Some people think it was a tragic accident, but others are more skeptical.

They believe the two congressmen were the victims of one of the largest conspiracies in

US history.

All that and more coming up.

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On March 12, 1968, a discovery on the northern coast of Alaska changed everything.

One day, enormous oil and natural gas reserves were found in Prudo Bay.

There were other oil fields in Alaska by then, but none this massive.

The possibilities were endless.

If oil companies could access the reserves in Prudo Bay, Alaska was looking at hundreds

of millions in revenue.

But before any of that could happen, someone needed to cut through the red tape and get

a pipeline built.

A young politician named Nick Begich hoped he could be the one to make it happen.

Begich was a first-generation American whose parents had emigrated from Croatia in the early

1900s.

Eventually, Begich settled down in Anchorage, Alaska, and completely fell in love with

the state.

After college, Begich worked as a guidance counselor and teacher at the University of Alaska.

He also started a family of his own and went on to have six kids.

Everyone who knew him said he had an awkward, nerdy sort of charm.

Most importantly, they said he cared about Alaska.

And by 1970, Begich had successfully transitioned to politics and was a newly elected Democratic

member of the House of Representatives.

He quickly joined the team working on the new pipeline to Prudo Bay.

He helped draft the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

One of the main goals was to get Alaska natives compensated for the land they would lose

to the pipeline.

The bill ultimately passed Congress and was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

It granted payments for over 44 million acres of land, paying out over one billion dollars

to Alaska natives.

For Begich, it seemed like a promising start to a long political career, but there was

one man who seemed immune to his charms.

57-year-old Thomas Hale Boggs, who went by his middle and last names, had represented

Louisiana as a Democrat since the 1940s.

As majority whip in the House of Representatives, he'd been friends with both John F. Kennedy

and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.

By 1970, he was also being considered for majority leader in the House, which would have

been quite a promotion.

Begich, a freshman congressman, backed Boggs' opponent in the race.

Boggs came out ahead, but he wasn't going to forget Begich's betrayal so easily.

Boggs wanted to know exactly who his enemies were, because he was gearing up for a fight

with the FBI.

On April 5, 1971, Hale Boggs addressed the press on the floor of the House of Representatives.

He said he was concerned that he and his colleagues were under surveillance by the FBI.

He called for the immediate resignation of FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover.

His reasoning?

Wire-tapping elected officials and American citizens violated the bill of rights.

When one reporter pointed out that Hoover denied these allegations, Boggs responded by

saying,

If he categorically denies it, I categorically say it's true.

Boggs didn't know it at the time, but his accusations against Hoover would shake Washington

DC to its core.

President Nixon was furious.

He had a private meeting with Gerald Ford, who was the House Minority Leader at the time,

and Nixon's close ally.

During the meeting, Nixon complained that he could no longer confide in Boggs as a member

of Congress.

He ranted that Boggs was paranoid and had been drinking too much.

Boggs had probably struck a nerve with Nixon.

The President was at the peak of his popularity.

The public didn't know his administration was wire-tapping people left and right.

It would be more than a year until the Watergate scandal broke.

Though Boggs never got the chance to see it all play out, he still knew the risk he was

taking by accusing Hoover.

But if any man could take the heat, it was Boggs.

By 1972, he was one of the most famous men in the House and had a rock-solid base in Louisiana

with no major challenges on the horizon.

In fact, he was expected to be the front runner for the next speaker of the House.

As the election year rolled around, Nick Begich approached Hale Boggs.

He asked if the older Democrat would campaign with him for re-election in his state of Alaska.

Since the state only had one representative, Begich was seen as an important cornerstone

for Democrats.

Although Boggs was probably still salty about the past, he was prepared to move on for

the sake of the party.

So in mid-October of that year, he flew to Alaska to join Begich.

On the evening of October 15th, the two congressmen had a cocktail reception in Anchorage with

120 of their fundraisers.

Boggs was jet-lagged, but he mingled with the crowd in front of a roaring fireplace.

Later that evening, they drove to a second more public fundraiser in a hotel ballroom.

It was packed with people, including local reporters and news cameramen.

It was rare that a DC big shot like Boggs came all the way out to their state.

Boggs introduced Begich, saying he was very fond of the young congressmen and his wife.

Boggs also voiced concern that they were facing a rise in authoritarianism in American politics

and an infrastructure crisis in every major city.

Begich took the mic after Boggs, eagerly announcing their plans for the next 48 hours.

Their next appearance was scheduled for the following day in the capital of Juneau.

No one knew they would never make it there, alive.

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On the morning of October 16th, 1972, a pilot named Don John's arrived at the airport in

Anchorage, Alaska. John's had a lot of flying experience, especially in Alaska.

He knew the weather could change on a dime, so he'd been checking the reports all night

to be sure the conditions were safe. He'd flown famous politicians like Ted Kennedy and Hubert

Humphrey before, and wasn't taking any chances. That morning, the skies were gray over Anchorage

airport, but John seemed pretty confident that it wasn't too cold or windy to fly.

Earlier that month, he'd written a column for a pilot's magazine.

He said that flying in icy conditions can be like playing with the devil.

But that day, everything seemed fine to John's.

After a quick breakfast at the airport, John's called his son,

then headed to the aircraft, parked just below the control tower.

It was a white and orange Cessna 310C with two engines and four seats, one for the pilot,

three for passengers. The plane was in peak flying condition.

The previous day, an engineer in Fairbanks had completed a 100-hour checkup on all the systems.

John's took half an hour to refuel the plane and taxi it back to its place on the tarmac.

By the time he returned, three men were waiting for him.

Congressman Hale Boggs and Nick Begich, as well as Begich's aid Russell Brown.

After a brief introduction, they all boarded the plane.

At 8.59am, the plane took off from runway 24.

The flight headed southeast, following a 575-mile route from Anchorage to Juno, the state capital.

If all went according to plan, they'd land in about three and a half hours.

John's had enough fuel for six hours, so they were comfortably within range.

Ten minutes in, Don John's radioed an FAA specialist to file his flight plan.

He told them he'd probably have to fly by visual flight rules because of the atmospheric conditions.

That meant he'd fly southeast toward Yakutat, for most of the way,

then redirect toward Juno. The specialist asked if they had an emergency beacon

and locator on board. John's confirmed they did.

At the airport in Juno, staff prepared for the plane's arrival.

They were supposed to land at 12.30pm, but the time came and went without any sign of the

Susna and no word from John's. At 1pm, a call was placed to the US Air Force Rescue

Coordination Center, outright panic set in at 3pm when the plane would have run out of fuel.

Words spread fast throughout Juno, then all the way to Washington.

Back in Louisiana, Lindy Boggs' Hale Boggs' wife received a phone call.

It was from one of their mutual friends, warning her not to watch the 10 o'clock news.

In it, the anchor announced that the plane carrying Hale Boggs and Nick Beggich had

vanished somewhere in southern Alaska between the cities of Anchorage and Juno.

The search and rescue effort began the next day on October 17th.

Initially, the team focused on an area called Portage Pass, a narrow corridor along the

flight path Don John's was planning to take. It was 50-60 miles southeast of Anchorage.

Since John's called shortly after takeoff, then went silent, it seemed likely that the plane

had gone down near there. Especially since Portage Pass was known for its turbulent weather.

In fact, another pilot had reported severe turbulence when flying over the pass early on the

morning of the disappearance. Problem was, the conditions hadn't improved much since then.

The search and rescue team had 50 planes at its disposal, but that birthday only 15 larger

planes were able to take off. The clouds were too thick and the rain was too heavy for the

others to join them. The planes that were able to take off hoped for something to show up on their

radar. They couldn't see through the clouds, but they could pick up a signal from the

Cessna's emergency locator beacon, which had a signal range of 150 miles. No signal appeared.

As words spread about the missing congressman, several tips came in.

A fisherman reported hearing a Cessna passing over the town of Whittier right near Portage Pass

that morning. That suggested the plane had at least made it to the pass before something went wrong,

but the most dramatic witness came from California. Ham radio operator Roy Harris picked up what he

described as a distress call from his amateur radio station in Nevada City. The pilot on the radio

said they were experiencing engine problems and had just 14 minutes of gas left. They described

their position as overwater but getting close to land. After the call abruptly cut off,

Harris notified his local sheriff. And Harris wasn't the only radio operator who heard this call,

Al Miller, also from Nevada City, heard the same one. Miller remembered the pilot saying he had

eight minutes of gas, not 14. Other than that, the details matched up perfectly.

It was a promising lead, but it didn't do much to move the investigation forward.

Search and rescue didn't know if the radio operators had heard Don Johns or another pilot

experiencing technical difficulties on the west coast. But the biggest challenge was the amount

of ground the search and rescue team needed to cover. The plane could have gone down at any point

along the 575 mile route, a potential area of around 300,000 square miles. The team had found a

life raft on Portage Pass, but no one knew how long it had been there. So after eight days around

October 26th, the search team changed their focus from Portage Pass to the Gulf of Alaska.

By this point, the authorities thought Johns must have been mistaken when he said they had

an emergency transmitter on board. There was no other way to explain the absolute radio silence

coming from the Alaskan Mountains. The election was less than two weeks away, and two prominent

candidates were still missing. Republican congressional hopeful Don Young made a statement on behalf of

Begich. Young was challenging Begich for his seat in the house. He said he hoped they wouldn't lose

Begich, calling him a good man to have in Alaska politics, even as an opponent. Meanwhile,

the family members of the missing congressman struggled to stay positive. They weren't just worried

about their loved ones. They were forced to deal with hoaxes and false leads, too.

A couple weeks after Begich went missing in early November, his wife Peggy received a cryptic letter.

The author took responsibility for killing her husband, saying he died because he allied himself

with Croatian separatists. Peggy passed the letter to the FBI. The bureau took this claim seriously.

Croatia was in the midst of a crisis at the time, with nationalist groups attempting to liberate

the country from its communist regime. Plain hijackings and terrorist attacks attributed to these

groups were not unheard of in 1972. But ultimately, the FBI determined that the letter was fake.

Even though the congressman was of Croatian descent, he had no ties to any Croatian nationalists.

The most likely motive was someone trying to take advantage of the tragic disappearance

to spotlight their own political cause, which made sense. The U.S. election was just around the

corner. On November 7, 1972, Richard Nixon won his second term in a landslide, securing every

state but Massachusetts in Washington, D.C. Nick Begich and Hale Boggs won re-election in absentia.

Their final campaign, which likely cost them their lives, had been successful.

For their families, it was a bittersweet moment. On November 24, the search was officially suspended.

After 39 days, not a scrap of plain had been found. Experts were baffled, even in such a large

state, disappearances like these were rare. At that point in time, 1200 planes had vanished in Alaska.

Of those, only three had never been found at all. Nick Begich and Hale Boggs were presumed lost,

and that December, after a brief hearing, both men were officially declared dead. Begich was 40.

Boggs was 58. In January of 1973, memorial services were held for both men. The Louisiana

Memorial for Hale Boggs was attended by former President Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as Nixon's

Vice President, Spiro Agnew. Meanwhile, a tribute was held for Nick Begich at East Anchorage High

School. The tallest building in Whittier, Alaska was renamed the Begich Towers,

and a peak on Portage Pass was named Begich Peak, marking the spot near where his final flight was

presumably lost. At that point, the country was left with two questions. What happened to the two

men, and who would fill their seats in Congress? The second question was the only one with a clear

answer. In March of 1973, about five months after Begich and Boggs disappeared, their districts both

held special elections. Both of their widowed wives were on the ballot. Peggy Begich had an uphill

battle, and wound up conceding. Republican Don Young eventually took the seat, which he held for

almost 50 years before his death in 2022. In an ironic twist of fate, he also passed away in the

middle of a reelection campaign aboard a plane headed to Alaska. Meanwhile, Lyndy Boggs had more

success than Peggy. On March 20, 1973, she won her special election and became the first woman

to represent Louisiana in the house. She held that position for almost 20 years. Even then,

her husband's disappearance hung over her. In the decade since he went missing, countless conspiracy

theories have sprung up. People wondered if Boggs' plane hadn't accidentally gone down that day.

Maybe he was targeted, because Hail Boggs was no ordinary politician. Back in 1963,

he'd been the youngest member of the Warren Commission, the committee assigned to investigate

the assassination of JFK. Was it possible he'd lost his life because of it?

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After the 1972 disappearance of Hale Boggs and Nick Beggich, the National Transportation

Safety Board conducted an inquest to determine what happened to the plane. The results were

inconclusive. Without any evidence, it was impossible to say whether there was a mechanical issue,

a pilot error, or something else. But that didn't stop some NTSB investigators from casting blame

on pilot Don Johns. According to them, he was a reckless man who took unnecessary risks.

This seemed partially true. After all, Johns enjoyed the thrills of flying,

but people who knew him personally insisted that he always flew carefully when passengers were on board.

Ultimately, the NTSB didn't think Johns or the engineers who serviced the plane before the

flight were at fault. They determined that icy conditions had caused the plane to crash.

They believed that Frost had gotten into the engine or caused some sort of mechanical failure.

And the NTSB promised that if the plane was found, they would continue the investigation

and figure out what happened once and for all. In the meantime, there were plenty of theories

about what could have taken place. Boggs in particular was the focus of a lot of speculation.

He was a historic figure who had served in Congress from the 1940s through the Civil Rights

Era and Vietnam. But his most notable act wasn't a piece of legislation. It was his investigation

into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Almost 20 years before he went missing,

Hale Boggs served on the Warren Commission, alongside future president Gerald Ford,

and then CIA director Alan Dulles. They were trying to answer the now legendary question,

did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? At 49 years old, Boggs had been the youngest of the seven

man committee, and he took his role on the Warren Commission very seriously. According to personal

letters, he planned to keep a diary throughout the process. This diary was never found,

and in 2020, his surviving family members said they didn't know anything about it,

so either Boggs changed his mind, or he kept a diary that was then either confiscated

or destroyed. But that's not the only detail conspiracy theorists can't get past.

Boggs was also one of the only members of the Warren Commission who publicly said he wasn't

fully satisfied with their conclusions. He never said he thought Oswald didn't act alone,

or that there was more to the story, but that one admission was enough to make people wonder.

According to this logic, Boggs knew something about the JFK assassination that made his higher

ups nervous. Maybe they worried he'd tell the public everything he suspected as soon as he became

speaker of the house. If that was the case, his Alaskan flight with Nick Beggich wasn't the first

attempt on his life either. On July 23rd, 1970, an unknown car ran him off the road in Washington,

DC. After recovering, Boggs chased the vehicle and got the plate number, though he submitted a

report to the police, the culprit was never found. But when it comes to the fatal flight,

some people think they know who might have been responsible. Remember, Boggs had made an enemy of

J. Edgar Hoover not long before his disappearance. Hoover was known to be a vindictive man. It's

possible he wasn't above targeting a sitting congressman. Of course, this theory had a major problem.

By the time Hail Boggs disappeared, J. Edgar Hoover had been dead for five months. If he had

planned on taking the congressman out, it would have been from beyond the grave. In the end,

that was just another theory without any legs. We may never know if Boggs was targeted because of

his public statements, but he wasn't the only one on board that day whose life was the subject

of speculation. Decades after Boggs and Beggich went missing, in the late 2010s, a journalist

named John Wallsack revisited the case, which culminated in his 2020 podcast, Missing in Alaska.

During his research, Wallsack spoke to many people who knew the two congressmen,

and in the process, he uncovered a fascinating detail. 16 and a half months after the disappearance

of Nick Beggich, his widow Peggy remarried. She'd come into a lot of money after her husband's

disappearance. His life insurance policy had a double indemnity clause in case of accidental death,

which meant she pocketed around $158,000. This would be more than a million dollars today.

The man she married was named Jerry Paisley, a bar owner she met in Fairbanks. It turned out

Paisley was a mob enforcer from Tucson, Arizona, who'd moved to Alaska because of the booming

oil industry. He had experienced terrorizing people on behalf of the mafia, and making and

delivering bombs. There's no evidence that he did any mafia activity while in Alaska, however,

he was implicated in a mafia protection racket and a series of bombings while in Tucson.

One of the victims was a journalist who died in the early 1970s. Peggy and Paisley's marriage

didn't last long. They divorced in 1976 after about three years. At that point,

Paisley moved back to Arizona and spent the next decade serving minor prison sentences.

He was blocked up for good in 1993 for charges including murder, and that was when things got

interesting. The next year in 1994, he reached out to the FBI hoping to make a deal. In his interview

with investigators, he alleged that Peggy Beggich had met with a former mob boss in September of

1972, a month before the plane crash. According to Paisley, the boss had given him an assignment.

Paisley was told to take a locked briefcase to Alaska. One of the mob bosses lieutenants

told him there was an explosive device inside. Paisley alleged that Peggy wanted to cash in on her

life insurance policy by exploding her husband's plane. He said only seven people knew about this

plot. Peggy, the mob boss, Paisley, and three other associates. According to John Walsack,

the three investigators who interviewed Paisley found him to be a credible witness.

His story was consistent and he told them facts about other unsolved cases that they could verify.

But of the seven people Paisley named, only three were still alive, and none would talk to Walsack.

As interesting as this theory is, it has a few crucial holes. First, there's no evidence that

Peggy Beggich knew any mobsters, and second, she wouldn't have known which aircraft her husband

was going to use. The Cessna was chartered at the last minute. The most likely explanation

is that Paisley was just looking for a lighter sentence. Without any outside sources to verify

his claims, we have to assume they don't hold up. At the end of the day, we're left without a

shred of physical evidence to point us in the right direction. But we can look at the facts.

Airplane accidents are common, and plane crashes happen more frequently in Alaska than almost

any other state because of its sheer size. What happened to the two congressmen in 1972 was

shocking and unpredictable, but it wasn't unheard of. Because of how many planes crash or go missing

between Juno, Anchorage, and the northern town of Ukiagvik, the region even has a nickname,

the Alaska Triangle. Like the Bermuda Triangle, it has an ominous reputation. The Alaska Triangle

has been the site of more than 16,000 disappearances since 1988 at a rate of four people per year.

Because of its proximity to the Arctic Circle, the Alaska Triangle is known to have magnetic

anomalies that can disrupt navigation equipment. That might be why so many planes get lost there,

but it probably doesn't explain why Don John's lost control of the aircraft. According to his last

known communication, he was flying VFR, so even if something went wrong with his compass or

other equipment, he'd still be flying by eye. Which brings me to my final question. What do you

all think happened to hail Boggs and Nick Beggich? Were they the victims of a tragic accident?

Did their plane go haywire because of the Alaska Triangle? Or did something more sinister

take place that day? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The story of hail Boggs and Nick Beggich is a fascinating and tragic one. It's hard to accept

that we may never get closure, but instead of focusing on what we can't change, we can reflect

on everything we do know. Both congressmen died doing what they loved, serving their constituents.

Nick Beggich was at the beginning of his career. In many ways, he helped transform Alaska,

boosting the state's economy while prioritizing native residents. Who knows what else he could have

achieved? Meanwhile, hail Boggs took time away from his own campaign to help a younger congressman.

In his own storied career, he was a mentor to many and an inspiration to countless Americans.

He was one of the few politicians who was brave enough to go against the grain.

He wasn't afraid to stand up to the FBI and the president. He cared more about transparency

than preserving his own reputation. And that's something we can all admire.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is conspiracy theories,

cults and crimes. Come back next time. We'll decode the episode together and hear another story

about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious cults, conspiracies, and criminal

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Conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson,

and is a crime house original, powered by paved studios. This episode was brought to life

by the conspiracy theories cults and crimes team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie

Protsovsky, Laurie Maranelli, Sarah Camp, Robert Teamstra, Sheila Patterson, and Michael Langsner.

Thank you for listening.

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