Original subtitles

On this episode of "expedition files,"

america's first known serial killer, h.h. Holmes,

is infamous for his cunning cruelty,

hiding behind the role of a doctor and family man.

But does he manage to cheat death, too,

and escape execution?

And we investigate the brutal murder

of Princess Anastasia

during the Russian revolution in 1917.

New evidence suggests her fate may not be what history

has led us to believe.

Then, U.S. congressmen hale boggs and Nick begich

board a flight in Alaska.

But they and their plane disappear.

Now, a shocking family relationship may reveal

their final destination.

In the corridors of time

are mysteries that defy explanation.

Now, I'm traveling through history itself

on a search for the truth.

New evidence.

Shocking answers.

I'm Josh gates,

and these

are my "expedition files."

Every family has secrets.

For most, it's innocent enough.

Don't do the math on when cousin Emily

gave birth after the wedding. You know what I mean?

But some family secrets are much more disturbing.

Tonight, we'll examine the files of three

real-life family dramas and try to unlock the truth

behind their twisted legacies.

Let's start here, 1896,

in the one place that nobody wants to be, a cemetery,

the holy cross cemetery, to be exact,

just outside of Philadelphia.

And these two gravediggers are digging extra deep,

because the casket they're about to Bury contains

the body of Henry Howard Holmes,

a businessman, a medical doctor,

and america's first serial killer.

And there's a twist coming, a big one.

Some say this murderer may have conned his way out of dying.

For the first time ever, we'll reveal

whether the man accused of killing over 200 people

is able to escape his own grave.

H.h. Holmes is born Herman Webster mudgett in 1861,

to an affluent New Hampshire family.

According to one account, his mother and alcoholic father

are mentally and physically abusive.

Once, his father is said to use kerosene on a rag to quiet

a crying baby Herman.

Meanwhile, at school, Herman gets good grades

but also gets bullied.

He supposedly finds solace in the forest,

where he begins torturing and dissecting small animals.

With a dark fascination with anatomy, mudgett goes on

to attend the university of Michigan's department

of medicine and surgery, where his obsession

with dead animals turns to dead humans.

At school, he actually works with his professor

to Rob graves,

and use the cadavers for teaching.

He even reportedly uses cadavers

to defraud insurance companies.

How? Mudgett buys a policy for a fictitious person,

then disfigures the corpse,

so there's no way to identify it.

Then, he collects the insurance payout.

After graduation, the now Dr. Mudgett

realizes that perhaps he can swindle his way

into larger fortunes.

In 1886, mudgett moves to Chicago

under the name Dr. Henry Howard Holmes.

It's a new start, or at least a new place,

to run some lucrative cons.

And this is where some believe he combined conning

with killing.

He starts managing a local drugstore

and reportedly tricks the widow who owns it

into selling it to him.

Not long afterwards, the widow disappears.

With profits flowing from the drugstore,

he starts construction on a building across the street,

that he calls his "castle."

Meanwhile, Holmes seduces a woman named Julia Connor,

the wife of a man running the jewelry store

next to his pharmacy.

This will make someone's wife very happy.

I want you to be happy.

When Julia's husband finds out,

he quits his job and moves away,

abandoning his wife and young daughter, Pearl.

It's alleged that Holmes promises to marry

his new mistress to gain control of her properties,

but the wedding never happens.

Christmas Eve of 1891 is the last time

anyone sees Julia or Pearl alive.

But it's during the height of Chicago's 1893 world's fair

that many say h.H. Holmes

begins a serial killing spree.

With hundreds of thousands of people

visiting the fair daily,

it becomes his human hunting ground.

His sinister specialty is luring young women

into the prospect of marriage,

gaining control over their life savings,

and then murdering them.

Then, over the next few years,

he begins forcing his employees

to take out hefty life insurance policies,

naming him the beneficiary.

After, he collects a tidy sum of money

when they turn up dead.

One of his victims is 23-year-old secretary

emeline cigrand, who Holmes allegedly locks away

in the basement of his castle and leaves to die.

Over the next few years, multiple women

that Holmes is associated with disappear,

and in 1894, with local suspicions rising,

Holmes flees Chicago.

But even on the run, he can't pass up a good con.

In Philadelphia, he concocts a scheme

with a carpenter named Benjamin pitezel.

Pitezel is to portray himself as an inventor

and fake his own death in a lab explosion,

and then split the $10,000 insurance money with Holmes.

But apparently, sharing isn't good enough for Holmes

because he doesn't fake pitezel's death.

He kills him for real.

What's worse, Holmes then allegedly kills

three of pitezel's children to keep them

eternally silent.

But then, justice finally catches up to h.H. Holmes.

On November 17, 1894, after weeks of tracking him,

police arrest Holmes in Boston for insurance fraud,

and he is subsequently charged with pitezel's murder.

The investigation leads authorities

to Holmes' so-called "castle" in Chicago.

There, they dredge up grisly evidence,

including the bones of a child and tufts of a woman's hair.

Investigators realize that pitezel

is just the tip of the blood-soaked iceberg.

The newspapers run wild

with stories of Holmes' "murder castle,"

claiming it contains secret passages, trap doors,

gas and torture chambers, and a basement crematorium.

Trying to capitalize on his fame, Holmes writes

an autobiographical confession from jail

and in total claims 27 victims.

Later, some historians will argue Holmes killed

up to 200 people.

Investigators are unable to confirm all the killings.

But in the murder of Benjamin pitezel, at least,

they have Holmes dead to rights.

In October 1895, h.h. Is found guilty of the murder

and sentenced to death by hanging.

On may 7, 1896, a crowd gathers to watch

as h.H. Holmes is put to death.

The next day, the body is interred

at holy cross cemetery.

It's here that Holmes is laid to rest, or was he?

Many believe he had one more scam up his sleeve,

faking his own death.

Flash forward to January 20th, 1898,

two years after Holmes is declared dead,

when a Chicago newspaper reports

that Robert la timer, Holmes' former janitor,

believes his old employer was never executed.

Latimer claims Holmes escaped the country to South America

and that he's even received letters from Holmes.

If true, it would be the scam of the century.

But how could Holmes have possibly pulled this off?

It's theorized that Holmes earns the trust

of the prison chaplain by converting to catholicism.

He then buys off everyone else on the gallows.

His accomplices acquire a body to pass off as his own corpse.

And they install a trap door beneath the noose.

When the moment comes, Holmes is presented

to the audience, but after he's hooded,

it's alleged that a row of guards

hide his body from view

as he slips through the trap door.

And a hooded impostor corpse is raised onto the gallows

and hanged in his stead.

The very alive Holmes then hides out in a casket

and is taken with the impostor's body to the cemetery

until night falls, and Holmes slips away.

It's an incredible story. But did it really happen?

More than a century later, the descendants

of h.H. Holmes are still trying to solve the case.

Because remarkably, amidst all the deceit and murder,

h.h. Holmes found time to have children.

Holmes is married four times.

At one point, he's married to three women at once.

The results are two children, Robert mudgett and Lucy Holmes,

who both live until 1956 and have children of their own.

Author Adam selzer has done extensive research

and written a book

about the Holmes family's search for the truth.

Jeff mudgett is a great-great-grandson of h.H. Holmes.

Holmes was buried in holy cross cemetery

outside of Philadelphia.

So in 2017, mudgett teamed up with some archaeologists

from the university of Pennsylvania

and got permission from a judge

to exhume that grave and see if he was still there

and see if they could get a DNA sample,

to see if it was really him.

So, a typical grave at holy cross in those days

was eight feet deep.

Holmes was said to be a little bit deeper than that.

They spent several days digging.

When they got down to six feet, they hadn't found anything.

But then, a little bit below that,

they found an empty coffin.

When you're digging up a dead body

to see if he's still there, and find an empty coffin,

you have to consider... Are all the stories true?

Did he escape?

Did h.H. Holmes pull off one of the biggest swindles

in American history, by faking his death

and then fleeing to South America?

An empty pinewood coffin seems to suggest so.

But to get a final answer, we have to dig even deeper.

Archaeologists are hot on the trail of h.H. Holmes,

as they unearth the grave

of america's first serial killer.

They've discovered a stunning clue,

an empty pine coffin.

Could Holmes really have succeeded in faking his death

and escaping with his life?

After a few days of digging, they found an empty pine box,

which was definitely a setback,

'cause the last thing you wanna find

when you're trying to dig up a dead body

is an empty coffin.

After a few more days of testing,

with time ticking away behind them,

they dug a little bit further down

and found another wooden board

with the name h.H. Holmes written on it in wax pencil.

This would have been the lid of the coffin that was described

by the papers at the time.

But down below that, they found cement.

Holmes' last request is to be buried in a block of concrete,

presumably the reason for all this cement

was to prevent grave robbers.

So, they broke into the cement

and it turned out the skeleton was fairly intact.

The jaw was way down below the skull,

so it almost looked like he was screaming.

The remains of the coffin lid said h.H. Holmes,

but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's him.

There was a medical examination of Holmes done back in 1896,

but after that they did do a dental cast

and you can easily just visually match

those dental casts with the skull.

To go even further, they were able to extract

some DNA samples that they sent over to England.

And initially it was coming back as inconclusive,

but eventually they decided there is a definite link

with the mudgett family.

For a man who spent his life using a fake name

and deceiving everyone around him,

the evidence proves there's one thing

Herman mudgett couldn't fake, his own death.

The power of forensic science and DNA testing has revealed

that the body in the grave of Herman mudgett

is the man himself.

And so, he didn't escape justice after all.

He met his fate, as intended, on may 7th, 1896.

You could say it's ghoulishly appropriate that Holmes,

a man infamous for digging up graves

and making bodies disappear, had his own grave dug up

to ensure his body was actually there.

After being exhumed, his remains were reburied

in the same unmarked plot outside of Philadelphia.

After all, a grave is supposed to be a place where families

can come to mourn their dearly departed.

In this case, though, I think we can all agree

that no tears will be shed for h.H. Holmes.

Our next family mystery takes us from a monster

to a Princess.

St. Petersburg, Russia, 1917.

I'm inside the winter palace,

home to the Russian royal family for over 180 years,

but not much longer.

That is tsar Nicholas ii and his youngest daughter,

the grand duchess of Russia, 15-year-old Anastasia romanov.

It is the beginning of the Russian revolution,

and her father is telling her he's about to resign

from power and give up the throne.

This starts young Anastasia and her family

on a terrifying journey

that will see them on the run for months,

until they all end up assassinated.

That is, unless she survives under an entirely new identity.

As dynasties go, the Romanovs are one

of the most impressive in history.

They rule Russia from 1613, doubling its size,

transforming it from a humble nation

to a modern empire.

But the arrival of the 20th century

will bring changes to this family dynasty

and all of Russia, that no one could have predicted.

In 1917, tsar Nicholas ii has been ruler of Russia

for more than two decades.

But now it's world war I, and over a million Russians

have already died in the brutal bloodshed.

Tsar Nicholas is head of the army,

and so public anger is directed

at him and his romanov family.

Because of the immense pressure,

Nicholas is forced to renounce his throne

on march 15th, 1917.

It's the end of the Russian royal family... Forever.

Rule is turned over

to the Russian provisional government,

which decides that the Romanovs need to be evicted

from their regal roles and palatial homes.

Nicholas, Anastasia,

and the rest of the romanov family

are sent into exile 1,300 miles away

from their palace in St. Petersburg,

to the town of tobolsk,

where they're to be held in the local governor's mansion.

But in just a few months, their lives will once again

turn upside down.

The fall of 1917 brings another turning point

for Russia and the Romanovs,

as the bolshevik faction, led by Vladimir Lenin,

seizes control of the government.

Bolsheviks decide the former royal family

should not be living in any kind of luxury.

So, in spring of 1918,

Anastasia and the other Romanovs

are relocated 300 miles west

to a humble home in yekaterinburg.

Little do they know,

this will be their very last stop.

It's 1918, 15 months after the former tsar Nicholas ii

gives up his rule in Russia.

Early in the morning of July 17th,

the former royal family is awakened by their guards

and led to the basement.

They're informed it's for their own safety,

since anti-bolshevik forces might fire on the house.

But within moments,

a bolshevik execution squad enters the room,

and the family realizes they've been set up.

When the gun smoke clears,

seven of the Romanovs have been killed,

along with four royal staff members.

A chapter in world history is closed.

The great dynasty is dead.

Eager to control the fallout, the bolsheviks keep

the whereabouts of the family's remains a secret.

But that, in turn, breeds stunning rumors

that some of the family are still alive.

But none of this hearsay is taken seriously.

Until ten years later, in 1928,

when a woman going by the name Anna Anderson comes forward,

and what she reveals is jaw-dropping.

She claims she is none other than Anastasia romanov.

I was born the grand duchess Anastasia romanov.

She bears an uncanny resemblance

and is about the same age as Anastasia would be.

And she tells a remarkable tale of her survival.

Anderson alleges the execution attempt went awry

and that she survived.

Some have speculated that it was thanks to jewels

that were sewn into her dress.

These had unknowingly created a kind of armor,

covering her vital organs,

shielding them from the hail of bullets.

Then, a member of the firing squad,

sympathetic to her plight,

helped her escape from the basement.

Anastasia simplified her name to "Anna,"

and made her way out of Russia.

Some of the physical evidence that Anna is Anastasia

is surprisingly compelling.

Both women suffer from a genetic foot deformity

called "hallux valgus," or "bunions."

Many believers also cite her piercing gray eyes,

which they say were an identical match

to tsar Nicholas'.

Despite the incredible nature of her claim,

Anna Anderson finds many people ready to believe

she really is Anastasia romanov.

She spends several decades living mostly in Germany,

making the case for her royal identity.

Numerous romanov relatives and acquaintances

believe and help her,

while many others continue to criticize her as a fake.

In 1968, Anderson marries

American history professor Jack man ah an,

a true believer, who even takes to calling her Anastasia.

Whether Anna Anderson is actually a former Russian royal

is something never resolved in her lifetime.

In 1984, at the age of 87,

she passes away, but the mystery is far from over.

It's 1991, and the Soviet union is falling apart.

With the regime's grip on power fading, Russian geologist

Alexander adonin decides it's finally safe to share

a secret he's been keeping for years

the location of the romanov family's hidden graves,

buried since their execution in 1918.

He directs investigators several miles

north of yekaterinburg

to a small hollow called pig's Meadow,

not exactly a name appropriate for royalty.

But there, in a shallow pit,

investigators find the remains of nine corpses.

The bodies are identified as tsar Nicholas,

the tsarina Alexandra,

three of their daughters,

and four royal staff.

But shockingly, the investigators believe

that the bodies of Anastasia and her brother alexei...

Are missing.

Could Anna Anderson have been telling the truth?

Anna died swearing she was Anastasia.

And in 1994, a decade after her passing,

burgeoning DNA science would finally answer her claim.

A tissue sample of Anna's was tested,

and it confirmed something remarkable.

She was not a match for any romanov DNA.

In fact, further investigation would reveal

that she was a Polish-born woman

named franziska schanzkowska.

After moving to Berlin when she was 18,

she reportedly suffered mental health issues after her lover,

a German soldier, was killed in action.

She also suffered head injuries in an explosion

at a munitions factory.

After being taken to a hospital for a suicide attempt,

she refused to identify herself

and was admitted as "miss unknown"

to a mental institution, where she declared

that she was indeed the grand duchess Anastasia.

Whether or not this was a manipulative scam

or simply the mental illness of a lonely young woman

will never be known.

What is a fact, however, is that Anna Anderson

was not Anastasia romanov.

But Princess Anastasia's body is missing

from her family's grave, so what happened to her?

Could she have escaped her execution?

Now, a new discovery finally reveals the truth

about her fate.

In 1917, following the Russian revolution,

the romanov royal family is assassinated.

But rumors persist that Princess Anastasia escaped.

And when a mass family grave is uncovered,

the bodies of Anastasia

and her brother, alexei, are missing.

Now, a shocking discovery reveals all.

In 2007, a team searching

200 feet away from the mass grave

finds the skeletal remains of two more people.

Scientist Michael coble is brought in

to help identify the bones.

I am a forensic geneticist, and I've been in the field

for about 28 years now.

And one of the big things that I worked on in my career

was improving techniques to get more information

from compromised remains.

The initial mass grave that was found in the 1990s,

most of the individuals that were in that mass grave

were complete skeletons.

These remains that were found in 2007, they were fragments.

They were pieces.

They were not complete skeletons.

In fact, there were only 44 bone fragments.

And if you think about it, humans have over 200 bones

in their body.

And if there were two individuals, you would expect

to find 400 bones. We found about a tenth of that.

Despite finding mostly minimal bone fragments,

coble is able to conduct highly specialized DNA tests

on the most substantial remains.

There were a few fragments that were large enough

that we could take samples of to test.

We were very fortunate that we had two leg bones,

one from a female and one from a male.

We absolutely identified alexei, the son, the only son

of the tsar and the tsarina.

The DNA results also confirm that other leg bone

belongs to one of tsar Nicholas' daughters.

However, with four daughters,

it isn't immediately clear which one.

Previously, experts believed Anastasia's remains

were missing from the mass grave discovered in 1995.

But the size of the recently found leg bone

casts doubt on that theory.

There were a lot of mysteries that surrounded

the identification of the original members

of the mass grave.

Based upon the limited amount of anthropology

that was done at the time,

they knew the height of the daughters,

but the problem is that the last year of her life,

Anastasia had a growth spurt,

and she was about the same height as her sister Maria.

So, let's get this straight.

They originally believed that the daughters

buried in the mass graves were the three older sisters,

because the length of the skeletons

matched their heights.

But this recent discovery of another female leg bone,

matching both the height of Anastasia or her sister Maria,

begs an important question,

was the daughter missing from the original grave

truly Anastasia, or could it have been Maria?

To find out, researchers reevaluated

the initial investigation.

The Russian scientists did facial reconstruction

of the skull from that mass grave in the 1990s.

And based upon their information,

they were very confident

that Anastasia was in that mass grave

and that Maria was missing.

And so based upon their analysis,

we decided to identify the unknown individual as Maria.

And that meant Anastasia

was originally part of that mass grave

that was recovered back in the early 1990s.

And all of the family were executed in July of 1918.

It appears that despite the long-held hope

Anastasia escaped her family's demise,

the truth is much more tragic.

The young grand duchess was killed with the rest

of her family on that fateful morning in 1918.

In the century since,

she had been lying beside the other Romanovs,

waiting to be identified.

The one thing that we were able to do in this case

is to show conclusively that all of the family were executed,

and that no one survived.

And so the tragic fate of the romanov family

is finally revealed.

But although the rest of the Romanovs lie together

at the Peter and Paul cathedral in St. Petersburg,

the two more recently discovered remains are still unburied,

held in a Russian state archive.

Hopefully, one day the Romanovs will be fully reunited,

so they can finally rest in peace.

From the story of a body found,

we next explore the mystery of two bodies

that remain lost in the wild.

It's October 16th, 1972, and I am in Anchorage, Alaska.

Two rising political stars,

Alaska congressman Nick begich,

and U.S. house majority leader hale boggs,

have just boarded that plane.

They're headed to a campaign fundraiser in Juneau,

but they'll never get there, because soon after takeoff,

this aircraft will vanish without a trace.

What happens to them?

Theories range from a cold war plot

to being swallowed by supernatural forces.

But is the truth behind their disappearance

even stranger?

The day they disappear, congressmen Nick begich

and hale boggs hop on a 575-mile flight

from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska,

that should take less than four hours.

But when the plane goes missing,

Peggy, Nick's wife of 16 years,

gets the call no one wants to receive.

A vast multi-agency search party is mobilized.

Alaska's coast guard, the national guard,

and the U.S. air force

set out to find the missing plane.

It is one of the largest search and rescue missions

in U.S. history.

Over 100 aircraft and multiple coast guard vessels

scour 326,000 square miles.

President Richard Nixon even authorizes

the top-secret sr-71 blackbird spy plane

to join the search.

But there's no sign of the congressmen's aircraft.

Other suspicions emerge.

With the cold war running hot,

could Soviet forces have shot down the plane?

But for many locals who have experience

in Alaska's vast back country,

begich and boggs' disappearance comes as no surprise,

because there have been reports of people going missing

between Anchorage and Juneau for decades.

This area is known as "the Alaska triangle."

And since 1972, an estimated 20,000 people

have mysteriously vanished inside.

Wild theories abound.

Some say strange energy vortexes are to blame.

Others believe it could be associated

with reported ufo activity.

So, did the notorious Alaska triangle

just claimed two more victims?

Or was it something else, like a terrorist attack?

Soon after the plane disappears,

a group of Serbian nationalists claim they assassinated

the congressmen, because of Nick begich's support

for the Croatian independence that they oppose.

And begich wasn't the only passenger

with powerful enemies.

On April 5, 1971, hale boggs delivered a fiery speech...

To demand

the resignation

of j. Edgar hoover.

Accusing the FBI and j. Edgar hoover

of wiretapping congressional phones.

Could the FBI have made the men disappear in retaliation?

With no trace of the aircraft and no witnesses,

it's all just speculation.

And there are no new leads for decades,

as the case goes as cold as the Alaskan tundra.

But then everything changes in 1994,

when a convicted murderer with connections to the mob

reaches out to the FBI from prison

and turns this political mystery

into a shocking family secret.

H.h. Holmes' multiple murders took place during.

Chicago's 1893 world's fair.

The event had a tough act to follow.

The preceding world's fair was held in Paris and saw the debut

of a little thing known as the Eiffel Tower.

Chicago's answer to the iconic parisian center piece?

A wheel designed by bridge builder

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

"The Chicago wheel," as it came to be called,

spanned 264 feet with passenger compartments

the size of train cars.

And this monster wheel was a monster hit.

Nearly 1.5 million people paid 50 cents to ride Ferris' wheel

during the fair, generating a dizzying profit,

the equivalent of $25 million today.

It's unknown if h.H. Holmes ever took a ride,

but the thought of a serial killer

sitting next to you on a Ferris wheel,

well, it's enough to make your head spin.

In October 1972, congressmen Nick begich

and hale boggs vanish without a trace

while flying over Alaska.

Decades later, a mobster serving

life in prison for murder, named Jerry pasley,

reaches out to the FBI with dirt to spill.

Pasley spins a wild tale, claiming the two congressmen

were assassinated by the mafia.

And in a shocking twist,

he says one of the lawmakers' wives,

Peggy begich, was involved.

Pasley says that just a few months

before the plane disappeared in Alaska,

Peggy begich met with a mafia crime boss in Arizona.

How does he know this?

Because that crime boss was also his boss.

Pasley claims that he was personally assigned to pick

Peggy up from the airport and drive her around.

Author and historian Jeremy kuzmarov

has extensively researched this mystery

and pasley's revelations.

Jerry pasley told the FBI

that he escorted Peggy begich to a meeting

with Joseph bonanno sr., the famous crime boss.

Pasley left,

and allowed begich and bonanno to talk together.

We don't know what they were discussing.

So, politician's wife meets with mob boss,

and just a few months later, the politician disappears.

Now, some might call that suspicious.

That is, if any of it is true.

Many believe that Jerry pasley was spinning jailhouse yarns

in hopes of a reduced sentence,

though the story he tells is intriguing.

Sometime in the weeks following Peggy's supposed meeting

with the mob boss, pasley says, he was assigned another task,

deliver a suitcase to Alaska.

The suitcase that was delivered in Anchorage

actually had a bomb in it.

The mob put that suitcase on the plane

with hale boggs and Nick begich on board

just before takeoff.

Pasley says the mob blew up the congressmen's plane.

Could this be the truth?

Did he even meet with begich's wife, Peggy?

Well, it turns out there's one more twist coming,

and it's a big one.

About a year after Nick begich is declared legally dead,

Peggy begich marries Jerry pasley.

The official story is that Jerry pasley

meets the widowed Peggy

while tending bar at an Alaskan hotel.

But he tells investigators a different story,

that he hit it off with Peggy

before her husband's plane vanished,

the night he escorted her around town.

Either way, as unbelievable as it may sound,

the former Peggy begich did indeed marry Jerry pasley,

as shown in this photo from their wedding

on march 4th, 1974.

Maybe this gives new meaning to

"keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."

But according to Jerry,

there was a nice financial incentive

that came with the marriage.

Jerry pasley told the FBI that Peggy begich

received double indemnity,

meaning double the insurance money,

because it was ruled accidental.

And with a huge influx of new cash

from the insurance payout,

they started to live the high life,

going to fancy restaurants, buying fancy cars, homes.

Okay, let's pump the brakes here.

Jerry pasley's jailhouse confession is hardly reliable,

and there is not a shred of physical evidence

that Peggy was truly involved in her husband's death.

It seems as though Peggy and Jerry

didn't find true love after all,

and divorced after only two years.

Following their split,

pasley was in and out of prison for 15 years

until he earned a life sentence,

and in 1995 decided to tell his story to the FBI.

And there is another question.

If the allegations against the mafia are true,

why would they want to kill the congressmen?

We know the mobsters may have had motivation

for wanting begich dead.

He was leading a drive against organized crime in Alaska,

which was attracting a lot of profiteers

and criminal elements who sought to profit

from the oil boom that was taking place

in the state and other opportunities.

When oil was discovered in Alaska,

thousands of oil workers moved into the state,

and it created these boom towns.

And the mafia sought to cash in by setting up

illegal gambling, prostitution, and narcotics rackets.

So you have a situation where the mob is making

millions of dollars in the state of Alaska,

and here you have this young, earnest congressman

who's intent on cracking down on the mafia

and put an end to their party,

and it's inevitable that some kind of collision

was gonna occur and some kind of catastrophe.

Were Nick begich and hale boggs really the brutal victims

of an assassination?

Well, if you wanna believe the words

of convicted mob associate Jerry pasley,

then the answer is yes.

But Peggy herself has never been

formally accused of, or charged, with any crime.

Peggy and pasley divorced after only two years.

Perhaps that heartbreak drove him to concoct

the crazy tale of bombs and briefcases.

There is a missing piece that could solve this puzzle,

the plane wreck itself, which has never been found.

Until it's located, this remains just another

strange mystery in the vast wilderness of Alaska.

I'm Josh gates, and I'll see you

on the next expedition.