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Escaped Hijacker Lived Under Own Name

Even socialized with ambassador while in Africa.

George Wright, the New Jersey man who was on the lam for 41 years, apparently lived in Africa for years using his own name—and even socialized with the U.S. ambassador to Guinea-Bissau. The FBI tracked Wright—after he attempted to contact some of his New Jersey family—to Portugal, where he was arrested on Monday. But apparently Wright lived openly in West Africa under his own name, and John Blacken, the retired U.S. ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, said he knew Wright and his wife—and she may have worked as a translator on U.S. projects. Blacken said he was never alerted to Wright’s background. Wright escaped from a New Jersey prison in 1970, where he had been serving a 30-year sentence for murder. Two years later, Wright and his associates hijacked a plane from Detroit to Miami. He released the passengers for $1 million ransom, and then he fled to Algeria.