page_title: May 1981
section_title: May 24, 1981 (Sunday)
hierarchical_section_title: May 1981 / May 24, 1981 (Sunday)
caption_attribution_description: English: Stamps of Ecuador, 2014
context_page_description: The following events occurred in May 1981:
context_section_description: Jaime Roldós Aguilera, the 40-year-old President of Ecuador, was killed in a plane crash, along with his wife, the nation's Defense Minister, and six other people.  President Roldós was on the way to the town of Zapotillo for a ceremony when the Avro 748 crashed into the side of a mountain.  Vice President Osvaldo Hurtado was sworn in as the 34th President of Ecuador and would serve out the rest of Roldos's five-year term until 1984.  In his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, author John Perkins would state his belief that the crash was an assassination carried out after Roldós threatened the oil companies that operated in Ecuador.
  The body of Heather Scaggs, the last victim of "The Trailside Killer", was found in a remote part of the Big Basin State Park in California.  Scaggs had last been seen alive on May 2, when she got in a car with her coworker, David Carpenter, and he became the prime suspect.  Investigators would link Carpenter's .38 caliber revolver to the murder of Scaggs and to six other hikers who had been murdered over the previous seven months.
  Spanish commandos rescued all 70 hostages taken in the takeover of the Central Bank of Barcelona.
  Died: George Jessel, 83, American actor
caption: President Roldos commemorative