Posted on 10/02/2008 4:39:01 PM PDT by Kaslin
Federal investigators say they found body parts amid the wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane in the mountains of eastern California.
The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, said Thursday that searchers found enough at the crash site of Fossett's plane to provide coroners with DNA.
National Transportation Safety Board acting Chairman Mark Rosenker won't say exactly what searchers found. But he says it was not surprising how little they uncovered, considering how long it had been since the crash.
Madera County Sheriff John Anderson told reporters earlier Thursday that searchers "found enough wreckage to determine that it was in fact the aircraft" Fossett was flying solo when he disappeared last September.
Anderson said that it appears that Fossett plowed head-on into a mountainside.
"The crash looked to be so severe that I doubt if someone would have walked away from it," said the sheriff during a Thursday news conference before the body parts were found. The engine was lying about 300 feet from the wings and the fuselage, which disintegrated on impact.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Couple of giant brass balls. Animals got most of the rest.
In August, an attorney for Fossett’s widow pleaded for an end to speculation circulating on the Internet that the millionaire balloonist and pilot may have faked his own death, possibly because he was heavily in debt.
So why were his ID cards found a quarter of a mile away from the crash site?
Men like Fosset don’t fake their own deaths. He craved the spotlight and made a lot of his money by doing spectacular things that drew investors to invest in his ventures.
Carried along with body parts by 4-legged scavengers.
If it was found in terrain as they describe, the updrafts late in the afternoon could have lofted the light bits of debris up and away from the impact site.
You’ve got to understand just how rugged this terrain is. It ain’t at all like the little molehills back east.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/google-earth.html
I had previously thought that the search was taking place in the wrong area - that Fossett had been looking for a new playa for his high-speed land run. I thought the most likely area of his disappearance would have been in Nevada, near NV-722, west/southwest of Austin.
It appears now that he was southwest of Yerington, and in some truly scary terrain. The mountain wave, thermals and turbulence in that area for a light plane is truly pucker-factor 11 stuff.
I went to high school a couple thousand feet further down the mountains, but even at 4000 feet there was lots of wildlife that would make fairly short work of a body.
It is assumed that animals got some of the body, so perhaps one carried his wallet off, if you know what I mean
That's pretty low for a Democrat to carry off a dead guys wallet.
Exactly.
I agree ... and there appear to be tooth marks on one of the cards on the Foxnews site.
BUMP!
It’s his body. Now the family can have complete closure and properly bury what remains. RIP.
Or even if he did momentarily survive, somehow ... he was in no condition to defend himself against animals ... .
Carried along with body parts by 4-legged scavengers.
Exactly.
RIP.
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