On May 26th, 2003, Mari Joseph got a phone call.

The voice on the other line was angry with him, accusatory.

At first, Mori was confused, then terrified.

When the caller hung up, Maury was still in shock,

but he didn't waste any time.

He dialed the U.S. Embassy in South Africa Africa where he was currently staying and reported a disappearance.

He told them his airplane was missing.

Next he phoned his wife who was back home in Miami. He told her to contact the FBI.

By now the State Department was contacting every American embassy in Africa. And within a few hours, every intelligence agency in the world

would know and would be searching for the massive Boeing 727. This piece of paper has a list of literally hundreds of airplanes that have disappeared over the years and nobody has any idea

where any of them went. As of today, 17 of them are still classified as lost. I'm just I'm just

staggered that a 747 as the biggest as is can still disappear.

I'm Andrew Eiden, and from Podcasts

I'm Andrew Eiden,

and from Podcast One, this is Lost In, a show about people who go missing under strange circumstances.

Today I'll be telling the story of Ben Padilla, a flight engineer for a Boeing 727 that took off from Angola's capital city of Luanda,

with been on board and was never seen again.

When Mari Joseph hired Ben Padilla, he thought his troubles were ending.

Mari turns to Ben and says, hey, would you go get this airplane for me?

For more than a year, Mari had spent millions in an effort to fix up a Boeing 727 and resell it.

His initial buyer was supposed to get a crew to handle the refurbishment, but he completely dropped the ball.

Now the plane sat idle on a dusty runway in Luanda, the capital of Angola.

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