By ERIC HANSON
No usable voices were found on the cockpit recorder of a helicopter that crashed in the Gulf of Mexico last week after leaving Galveston for an oil-drilling ship, federal officials said Tuesday.
The voice recorder was recovered Saturday from the sea floor and taken to Washington, D.C., where experts hoped it would provide clues about the cause of the crash that killed 10 people.
The final two bodies were recovered Monday night by searchers in the area where other bodies had been found, about 70 miles south of Galveston. The bodies were taken to the Galveston County medical examiner's office in Texas City.
Autopsies showed all 10 died from blunt force trauma, said Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, chief medical examiner.
Officials said the bodies of Jason Petitjean, 34, of Rayne, La., and Jeff Langley, 42, of Kountze, were found on the sea floor near the area where aircraft debris had been found.
The bodies of all 10 people on board the Sikorsky 76-A helicopter, owned by Alaska-based Era Aviation, have been found.
The aircraft, carrying two crew members and eight passengers and chartered by Unocal, left Galveston's Scholes International Airport about 6:45 p.m. March 23. One of the eight passengers was a Unocal employee, and the other seven were contractors. They were headed to an offshore drilling ship near South Padre Island.
At 7:23 that evening, a company dispatcher tried to contact the aircraft by radio but received no response.
An air and sea search-and-rescue operation was launched and floating wreckage was found March 24. Later that day, four bodies were found floating in the water about 70 miles south of Galveston. Four more were discovered Friday morning on the sea floor in the aircraft wreckage.