[4] On Friday, November 23, 1962, the day after Thanksgiving, George Wright, then 19 and from East Orange, New Jersey, and three accomplices: Walter McGhee , Elizabeth Roswell and Julio DeLeon of Asbury Park; were involved in the commission of multiple armed robberies.
At around 9:25 pm, during the second robbery, McGhee fatally wounded Walter Patterson, a 42-year-old World War II veteran and Bronze Star recipient who lived in Howell.
McGhee, as the triggerman, was charged with Patterson's murder and sentenced to a life prison term in February 1963, but was paroled in August 1977.
On February 15, 1963, Wright reportedly changed his plea from innocent to no contest to the charge of murder, in order to avoid a jury trial that could have resulted in the death penalty.
[10] Wright escaped with his future hijacking accomplice, George Brown, who was serving a three to five-year sentence for a 1968 armed robbery conviction.
On August 26, 1970, federal complaints were issued in Atlantic City, charging Brown and Wright with unlawful flight to avoid confinement.
[16] The pilot of the hijacked Detroit-Miami flight, Captain William Harold May, then 41, and a 20-year Delta employee, said Wright was the group's leader.
May told reporters that two of the hijackers smoked marijuana continuously during the flight, and commented, "They said they were revolutionaries, that America is a decadent society and they didn't want to live here anymore."
On Wednesday, August 2, 1972, federal complaints of air piracy charges were filed in Miami, naming the five accomplices as defendants.
Reportedly, Wright and his group were taken in by the American writer and prominent Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, whom Algeria's sympathetic socialist government allowed to open an office.
Without the money to finance and organize the struggle, there will be no freedom.This hijacking represented the final test of the Third World nation's commitment to supporting some contingents of the African American freedom movement.
French authorities declined the American extradition request in November 1976, holding the four defendants in Fleury-Mérogis Prison, awaiting trial on hijacking charges.
According to Mikhael Ganouna, producer of the film, Wright's hijacking accomplice, George Brown, lives in Paris, but isn't worried about being extradited because he has already served his sentence.
While living in Guinea-Bissau in the 1980s, Wright allegedly used his real name and worked as logistics manager of the Belgian nonprofit Iles de Paix.
[35][36] On September 26, 2011, Wright was arrested in Algueirão–Mem Martins, Portugal[37] after 41 years on the run, as the result of a United States Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force (Detectives Richard Cope and Daniel Klotz) and the New Jersey Department of Corrections Special Investigations Division that introduced cold-case evidence from New Jersey.
[41] Wright, who lived under the name of José Luís Jorge dos Santos,[42] had no known occupation, but allegedly at one point owned a barbecue chicken restaurant, sold items at a stall along a popular tourist beach, worked as a bouncer at a local bar, and, similarly to Melvin McNair, coached youth in basketball.