Alfred Loewenstein was one of the richest people in the world. He was flying over the English Channel on a plane. But suddenly, he vanished, which surprised everyone on the plane. This event became a big mystery. He was born in Belgium and worked as a banker. He was famous for his wealth during a time called the Gilded Age. However, just before the stock market crashed in 1929 and caused the Great Depression, he disappeared. It’s said that he fell out of the airplane, but nobody knows for sure what really happened.
Alfred Loewenstein was a very powerful financier in the early 1900s. He made his wealth by helping different industries work with banks. He also invested in many businesses in Europe and came up with the idea of a “holding company.”
The story starts on July 4, 1928, in the evening. Alfred and his team got on a private plane (the Fokker FVII, a small monoplane) at Croydon Airport. They were going to Belgium, Alfred’s home country, as they did often. The weather was good, and the flight was going as planned. Everything seemed normal until, somewhere over the English Channel, Alfred got up and went to the flight bathroom at the back of the cabin. This bathroom was small and had two doors: one inside the plane, and one outside, which was the only way to get in or out.
Alfred Loewenstein was on a plane with six other people. The pilot, named Drew, was at the plane’s door as everyone got on. Along with Alfred, there were Fred Baxter, Loewenstein’s valet, and Arthur Hodgson, his male secretary. Two women, Eileen Clarke and Paula Bidalon, who were his stenographers, were also there.
In the cockpit, there were Drew and Robert Little, who was the plane’s mechanic. The cockpit was closed off from the rest of the plane, with only a small window connecting it. Once the plane took off, Drew and Little couldn’t go into the cabin.
Alfred Loewenstein’s pilot, mechanic, and four passengers supposedly didn’t know what had occurred until his secretary, Arthur Hodgson, noticed the back door was open. However, the true events leading to Alfred Loewenstein’s disappearance remain a mystery to this day. He never left that flight bathroom, and no one has seen him alive since.
Alfred Loewenstein was born in Brussels, Belgium. His father, Bernard Loewenstein, was a banker who changed his religion from Judaism to Catholicism. His mother was the daughter of Chrétien Dansaert, a stockbroker from Brussels who was Catholic. Alfred started his own bank and became wealthy by 1914. During World War I, he offered $50 million to the Belgian government to help stabilize their currency, but they said no. After the war, he lived in England and ran a successful investment business with Sir James Dunn. Together, they made a lot of money from investments, especially in a company called British Celanese.
Alfred also owned racehorses that won important races in 1926 and 1928. He built his wealth by establishing electric power plants in different countries through his company, SIDRO, based in Belgium. By the mid-1920s, he was so well-known that leaders from many countries asked for his advice. The British government even gave him a special honor.
In 1926, Alfred started a new company called “International Holdings and Investments Limited.” Many rich people invested in it because they wanted to be part of his success. That same year, he bought a beautiful house in Biarritz, France, with a great view of the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Alfred Disappearance
Alfred Loewenstein spent the first part of the flight writing notes. Then, when the airplane was flying over the English Channel at an altitude of 4,000 feet Alfred left to use the bathroom at the back. Later, Baxter noticed that Alfred did not return to his seat for ten minutes. So, Baxter got worried and knocked on the toilet door, but no one answered. Thinking Alfred might be sick, Baxter opened the door. But the toilet was empty. Alfred Loewenstein had vanished.
The obvious thing to do would have been for the plane to go to the airstrip at St Inglevert, between Calais and Dunkirk. There, the pilot could have told the coastguard about Alfred’s disappearance. But instead, Donald Drew landed the plane on what he thought was an empty beach near Dunkirk.
In reality, the beach was being used for training by a local army group. When the soldiers spotted the Fokker plane landing, they rushed along the beach to inspect the situation. It took them six minutes to reach the plane, but by then, the passengers and crew had already gotten off.
Lieutenant Marquailles tried to question them, but couldn’t understand what had happened. Pilot Drew acted strangely, avoiding questions for thirty minutes before admitting they had lost Alfred Loewenstein somewhere over the English Channel. Drew was then questioned by Inspector Bonnot, a professional detective. The inspector was very confused by what he heard. “A most unusual and mysterious case,’ he said. ‘We have not yet made up our minds to any definite theory, but anything is possible.”
No one was arrested, and the plane was allowed to continue its flight to St Inglevert and then back to Croydon.
On July 19, they found a body floating near the French shore. It was wearing clothes that helped identify it as Alfred Loewenstein’s. His widow, Madeleine, arranged for an autopsy. It showed no signs of foul play or suicide, but there was some alcohol in his blood, which was strange because he did not drink.
The strangest part of how they dealt with the situation was that they did not try hard to find out what happened. A formal investigation said Alfred Loewenstein’s death was an accident, but nobody was sworn in. They mainly relied on what the pilot, Donald Drew, and the mechanic, Robert Little, said. They claimed the door was easy to open, so Alfred might have opened it by mistake. But this idea was later questioned.
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A post-mortem revealed he had a partial fracture of his skull and several broken bones. Forensic scientists concluded that he had been alive when he hit the water. But was it really just an accident? It seems unlikely. Tests showed that the airplane door was not as easy to open as they said. Some tests involved people pushing on the door at high altitudes. The door held up fine. So, it’s unlikely someone could have fallen out accidentally.
So… was it suicide? Again, the facts do not fit. Alfred Loewenstein was not depressed, and he was ambitious about the future. Even if we think he did it on purpose, he couldn’t have opened the door alone. So, it seems someone forced Alfred out of the plane. But who did it? How did they open the door while flying? And who planned it? Donald Drew and Robert Little are the main suspects. They lied to the Belgian authorities.
In 1987, Author Williams Norris wrote about Loewenstein’s life in a book called “The Man Who Fell From the Sky” (published by Viking in New York in 1987). Norris argues that there’s evidence suggesting that Alfred Loewenstein’s death might not have been an accident caused by his business rivals and associates. He also talks about how there seemed to be some advantage taken of Loewenstein’s death and his insurance money. Norris mentions some events that happened later, like Alfred’s son Robert shooting one of their family servants under unclear circumstances not long after his father’s death.
Robert himself died in a plane crash in 1941 while working with the Air Transport Auxiliary. Norris suggests that the pilot, Donald Drew, might have thrown Loewenstein out of the plane under the instructions of Madeleine Loewenstein, possibly to take control of Alfred’s wealth.
Norris speculates that the plane’s rear door might have been removed while flying, and then replaced later on a beach in St. Pol. The original door might have been hidden in the luggage compartment. After landing, they swapped the doors. This might explain why the pilot chose to land on the beach instead of the nearby airfield. They didn’t want anyone to see the switch.
So, who planned it? Some suspects are:
Henri Dreyfus, a business rival. Loewenstein threatened to sue Dreyfus over a bad article in the Belgian press. Did Dreyfus kill him to avoid a lawsuit? Alfred’s business partners, Albert Pam and Frederick Szarvasy. Loewenstein’s death made their company’s shares go up. Norris found out they took out anonymous insurance policies on Loewenstein before he died.
Norris did a good job gathering evidence, but many questions remain. Was the body found in the channel really Loewenstein’s? Why did French and Belgian authorities close the case so quickly? Who took out the life insurance policies?
