"In 1972, he faced the Republican state senator Don Young. On October 16, 1972, he was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 along with Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana when the plane disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. Also on board were Begich's aide, Russell Brown, and the pilot, Don Jonz;[2] the four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich. In an enormous search effort, Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force planes searched for the party. On November 24, 1972, after thirty-nine days, the search was abandoned. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found." [Wikipedia]
A regular guest on CoastToCoastAM Nick Begich [the son that is, after all it is CoastToCoastAM, :)] has descrbed some unusual things about the search for survivors.
"The Washington-based newspaper, Roll Call, which reports on Capitol Hill, found information through the Freedom of Information Act that two FBI telexes had come in from the FBI office in Los Angeles, indicating that someone had contacted the FBI and that they had knowledge of the whereabouts of the plane and that two people were still living at the site and they gave the coordinates. This was followed up by another telex two days later in which the FBI said that they had verified the authenticity of the source and established their credibility. The source was working in surveillance technologies for an undisclosed firm and they had located the plane. . . conspiracy theorists have reported that Boggs wasn't happy with the [Warren] commission's findings and was pushing for the investigation to be reopened at the time of his death. However, according to his [Boggs] daughter Cokie Roberts, the nationally known television journalist, she told listeners to a talk radio show in April 2004 that her father had no problems with the commission's finding . . . ."
What a horrible thing for a family to go through. You hate to see families have to go through death under normal situations, but to never know exactly what happened must be horrible and frustrating. Prayers to the family that they continue to heal.