Searchers find Fossett's plane and human remains

Searchers find adventurer Fossett's plane in Calif. along with human
remains for DNA testing

TRACIE CONE and MARCUS WOHLSEN
AP News

Oct 02, 2008 22:50 EST

More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of millionaire
adventurer Steve Fossett, searchers found the wreckage of his plane in
the rugged Sierra Nevada, along with enough remains for DNA testing.

A small piece of bone was found amid a field of debris 400 feet long and
150 feet wide in a steep section of the mountain range, the National
Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference Thursday. Some
personal effects also were found at the site.

Officials conflicted on whether they had confirmed the remains were human.

"We don't know if it's human. It certainly could be," Madera County
Sheriff John Anderson said late Thursday, hours after the leader of the
NTSB had said the remains were those of a person. "I refuse to speculate."

Asked about the sheriff's assessment of the physical evidence, NTSB
spokesman Terry Wiliams reaffirmed NTSB acting Chairman Mark Rosenker's
earlier statement.

"We stick by that. It's human remains," said Williams, who declined to
say how the NTSB had arrived at that conclusion.

Fossett, the 63-year-old thrill-seeker, vanished on a solo flight 13
months ago. The mangled debris of his single-engine Bellanca was spotted
from the air late Wednesday near the town of Mammoth Lakes and was
identified by its tail number. Investigators said the plane had slammed
straight into a mountainside.

"It was a hard-impact crash, and he would've died instantly," said Jeff
Page, emergency management coordinator for Lyon County, Nev., who
assisted in the search.

NTSB investigators went into the mountains Thursday to figure out what
caused the plane to go down. Most of the fuselage disintegrated on
impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an
elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.

"It will take weeks, perhaps months, to get a better understanding of
what happened," Rosenker said before investigators set off.

Search crews and cadaver dogs scoured the steep terrain around the crash
site in hopes of finding at least some trace of his body and solving the
mystery of his disappearance once and for all. A sheriff's investigator
found the 2-inch-long piece of bone.

The remains are enough for a coroner to perform DNA testing, Rosenker said.

"Given how long the wreckage has been out there, it's not surprising
there's not very much," he said.

Fossett vanished on Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off from a Nevada ranch
owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton. The intrepid balloonist and pilot
was scouting locations for an attempt to break the land speed record in
a rocket-propelled car.

His disappearance spurred a huge search that covered 20,000 square
miles, cost millions of dollars and included the use of infrared
technology. Eventually, a judge declared Fossett legally dead in
February. For a while, many of his friends held out hope he survived,
given his many close scrapes with death over the years.

The breakthrough — in fact, the first trace of any kind — came earlier
this week when a hiker stumbled across a pilot's license and other ID
cards belonging to Fossett a quarter-mile from where the plane was later
spotted in the Inyo National Forest. Investigators said animals might
have dragged the IDs from the wreckage while picking over Fossett's remains.

The rugged area, situated about 65 miles from the ranch, had been flown
over 19 times by the California Civil Air Patrol during the initial
search, Anderson said. But it had not been considered a likely place to
find the plane.

Lt. Col. Ronald Butts, a pilot who coordinated the Civil Air Patrol
search effort, said gusty conditions along the mountains' upper
elevations hampered efforts to search by air, as did the small amount of
debris that remained after the plane crashed.

"Everything we could have done was done," Butts said.

Searchers had concentrated on an area north of Mammoth Lakes, given what
they knew about sightings of Fossett's plane, his travel plans and the
amount of fuel he had.

"With it being an extremely mountainous area, it doesn't surprise me
they had not found the aircraft there before," Lyon County Undersheriff
Joe Sanford said.

As for what might have caused the wreck, Mono County, Calif.,
Undersheriff Ralph Obenberger said there were large storm clouds over
the peaks around Mammoth Lakes on the day of the crash.

Fossett made a fortune in the Chicago commodities market and gained
worldwide fame for setting records in high-tech balloons, gliders, jets
and boats. In 2002, he became the first person to circle the world solo
in a balloon.

He also swam the English Channel, completed an Ironman triathlon,
competed in the Iditarod dog sled race and climbed some of the world's
best-known peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

"I hope now to be able to bring to closure a very painful chapter in my
life," Fossett's widow, Peggy, said in a statement. "I prefer to think
about Steve's life rather than his death and celebrate his many
extraordinary accomplishments."