In the spring of 1925, a wealthy diamond merchant from Strasburg, Germany, named I. Lasker had his personal secretary make arrangements to transport a consignment of precious stones valued at about $100,000 from Vienna, Austria to Budapest, Hungary via airplane. Adjusted for inflation, that would be just under $1,800,000 in today’s money.

Lasker could have shipped the diamonds through the mail, but he deemed that too risky. He could have sent them with his personal secretary, but he deemed this too risky as well. To ensure that nothing happened to the valuable cargo, Lasker had decided to charter a plane and deliver the stones himself. Lasker’s brother would await their arrival in Budapest and was instructed to spread the alarm if anything out of the ordinary happened.

On the day of the flight, Lasker and his personal secretary made their way to the Austrian airfield. Lasker and his secretary boarded the small plane and made themselves comfortable. Minutes later, the pilot took off and flew to the southeast on what should have been an uneventful 150-mile flight. But this flight was anything but uneventful.

As Lasker peered out of the airplane’s small window, a cloth doused with chloroform was pressed over his nose and mouth. Out of surprise, Lasker gasped which drew the powerful anesthetic into his lungs. He had little time to fight back. Within moments, he was unconscious.

Lasker’s brother waited uneasily at the airfield in Budapest. He knew precisely when his brother was due to arrive with the valuable cargo and the time had passed. He watched the skies in anticipation of the arrival of the chartered airplane. As the old idiom goes, “a watched pot never boils.” Lasker’s brother paced, checked his watch, scanned the skies, and paced some more. Minutes felt like hours.

As per his instructions, Lasker’s brother notified the police of the missing plane. Search parties hunted for the missing plane and its occupants along the airplane’s flight path. Five days later, searchers found Lasker’s lifeless body near Sophronia or Shopronia, Austria. Sources vary on the spelling of the town’s name and neither appear on modern maps. Investigators determined that Lasker had been drugged, murdered, and his body had been thrown from the airplane.

The search for the missing plane quickly turned into a murder investigation.

Investigators learned that Lasker’s private secretary and the pilot, whom Lasker’s secretary had hired, devised the plot to steal the diamonds. Greed is a powerful motivator. Once Lasker’s body had been thrown from the plane, the pilot continued flying the plane to the southeast. The pilot landed the plane in a secluded spot somewhere in Bulgaria.

Once again, greed took over.

Police determined that once they landed in Bulgaria, Lasker’s secretary killed the pilot to avoid sharing the proceeds of the robbery and destroyed the airplane. Lasker’s secretary was never captured. Lasker’s secretary had committed the perfect crime and, although his name has been lost to history, he is remembered because he committed the first murder in an airplane.