Plane Hijacking in Honduras 1972

In May 1972, 45 years ago, 49 year  old Frederick William Hahneman hijacked an Eastern Airlines airplane whose route was Allentown-Miami with a stop over in Washington D.C., he pulled a gun on the crew and demanded $303,000 dollars as ransom, Eastern complied and gave him the money at Dulles International, and then had to change them to larger denomination bills as he wanted 500 and 1000 dollar bills, along with some parachutes, then he let all of the passengers get off the plane, he then ordered the crew to take off, apparently the plane had problems and had to land in New Orleans where he said he wanted another plane and he herded the crew at gunpoint to change planes (I have just read about this, and frankly I doubt this, he probably could have been neutralized while changing planes). Anyway he did take off in a plane and ordered the crew to fly to Honduras, he was a countryman of mine, in spite of his name he was from Honduras, once here he parachuted out of the plane and landed in mountainous country.

I still remember there was a serious manhunt for him because there was a big reward offered and besides he was carrying that bag with over 300 grand. Eventually I think a barber near the port of Tela saw him and reported him so he was caught and turned over to US authorities, which by the way would make him the first person extradited to the US with whom we had no such treaty back then, but by that time he was a US citizen so I guess that was really no problem. He was sentenced to life in prison but he was paroled in 1984. He died in 1991.

I remember reading in the newspapers at that time that his lawyer said that the reason for the hijacking was such an incredible one that he would never say what it was.