Zvonko Bušić (23 January 1946 – 1 September 2013) was a Croatian emigrant, responsible for hijacking TWA Flight 355 in September 1976. He was subsequently convicted of air piracy and spent 32 years in prison in the United States before being released on parole and deported in July 2008.
Zvonko Bušić was born in 1946 in Gorica, FS Bosnia and Herzegovina, DF Yugoslavia. He finished high school in Imotski, graduating in Zagreb, and emigrating at age 20 to Vienna to pursue history and Slavic Studies at university. In Vienna, three years later, in 1969, he met an American student, Julienne Eden Schultz, who was studying German and thereafter became involved in Bušić's political activities. The couple and a friend traveled to Zagreb and threw anti-Yugoslav leaflets from the Ilica skyscraper on Republic Square (now Ban Jelačić Square), after which they were arrested and imprisoned. After her release, Julienne returned to Vienna and in 1972, Julienne and Zvonko married in Frankfurt, and later relocated to the United States, where he became a member and leader of the Croatian terrorist group called Croatian National Resistance.
On 10 September 1976, Zvonko and his wife, Julienne, along with Petar Matanić and Frane Pešut, hijacked a commercial Trans World Airlines plane, Boeing 727, Flight 355, heading from New York to Chicago.
Bušić committed suicide at the age of 67 on 1 September 2013 by gunshot at his home in Rovanjska near Zadar; he was discovered by his wife. Thousands came to his burial in the Alley of the Defenders on the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb.
