[JohnFiorentino]

ALLEGED IMPOSTOR APPARENTLY IDENTIFIED

David Williams of Bay Shore, N.Y., entered the TWA Flight 800 crash site claiming to be an Army Reserve colonel. He was sentenced separately in 1996 to six months in jail for impersonating a doctor.



Authorities search for bridge collapse impostor
2002-06-07
By Clayton Bellamy
Associated Press Writer


TULSA - The man who called himself Capt. William Clark wore a green beret, camouflage fatigues and shiny boots. And he didn't hesitate to give orders after the deadly interstate bridge collapse.
But even as emergency workers followed his orders, they began to suspect something was not quite right about Clark, who claimed to be with U.S. Army Special Forces.

Maybe it was his paunchy stomach, or how he hot-rodded an all-terrain vehicle, kicking up rocks on the riverfront near a boat ramp used to launch rescue missions.

Indeed, authorities Friday continued searching for Billy Clark, an ex-convict from Tallapoosa, Mo. They say he impersonated an army officer to take command of the launch site for nearly two days after 14 people were killed when an Interstate 40 bridge fell in eastern Oklahoma.

Clark is just the latest in a string of alleged impostors who have bluffed their way into restricted areas after national disasters.

Jerome Brandl, who posed as a volunteer firefighter to gain access to the collapsed World Trade Center, was sentenced in March to one to three years in prison.

David Williams of Bay Shore, N.Y., entered the TWA Flight 800 crash site claiming to be an Army Reserve colonel. He was sentenced separately in 1996 to six months in jail for impersonating a doctor.

Catherine Felicitas, who pretended to be a doctor to meet relatives of victims of TWA Flight 800, was also removed from restricted areas after the crash of Swissair Flight 111 in New York in 1998.

Relatives and investigators say Clark, 36, has a history of assuming false identities to gain free meals, free rooms or merchandise.

"It's just a big ego trip," said Lt. Brent Grill, lead police investigator in Van Buren, Ark, where Clark is accused of renting rooms and not paying. "It's a fantasy of his, which becomes a reality when he gets to play the part."

Clark arrived in Webbers Falls just two hours after the May 26 bridge collapse and told Mayor Jewell Horne that he was in charge. He even gave media interviews.

What made him more convincing was that he already knew about one of the victims - Army Capt. Andrew Clements - before any bodies had been pulled from the river, Horne said.

He asked Horne for Clements' briefcase and laptop computer, which had been found in the water, Horne said. He searched them.

"He knew way too much way too early," nurse Melanie James, who had volunteered to help at the riverfront, told the Muskogee Phoenix. "He had the military thing down to a T. He was clean-shaven. He fit the part. His boots were even shined."

Authorities are not sure how Clark knew about Clements, his briefcase or his laptop.

Crawford County, Ark., authorities issued an arrest warrant for Clark Thursday on one charge of felony theft of services, alleging he didn't pay for eight rooms he rented at a Super 8 motel on May 28.

Clark told the motel clerk the rooms were for bridge collapse volunteers and put "Do Not Disturb" signs on seven of the rooms, which were never occupied, Grill said.

He said Clark approached Van Buren police officers who were at the motel on an unrelated call and told them he was a captain with U.S. Special Forces on leave from Pakistan.

The FBI is also investigating the impostor, but won't confirm they're searching for Clark. But Oklahoma Highway Patrol Capt. John Harris said the FBI told him that Clark is their suspect, too.

Grill said police in Searcy, Ark, have seen Clark's car, a powder blue 1985 Ford Mustang with New Mexico license plates. The car's registration gives a Las Cruces, N.M., residence, Grill said.

Clark left the car at a dealership and drove off in a truck he was test-driving, Grill said.

Clark was released from the Central Missouri Correctional Center in Jefferson City on December 11, after serving three years for felony stealing, said Tim Kniest, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

He was paroled in Sept. 1999 but absconded two months later before returning to prison in January 2001 to complete his sentence, Kniest said.

Clark was also placed on two years probation in 1999 for passing bad checks in Butler County, just north of his bootheel hometown of Tallapoosa, Kniest said.

[eno_]

This is an incident that is much more readily accounted for by delusional people listening to their scanners than by anything more sinister. I bet you will find the same people at every big fire or wreck, too. All the more annoying to have to weed them out from Al Quaida's recon.

[_Jim]

Per John Smith's work on this subject:

Trans World Airlines Flight 800:

News Reports from Associated Press, Reuters, major newspapers, press releases from NTSB, FBI

The engines on the right side of the plane both suffered more damage than those on the left, Investigators have said the right side of the Boeing 747, near where the wings meet the fuselage, suffered the most smoke and fire damage.

The right inboard engine was relatively intact but suffered ``foreign object damage'' from debris sucked in while it was apparently still running.

A computer simulation of the final moments of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 has placed the blast that downed the plane in a small site on the jet's right side, The New York Times reported Friday. The simulation shows that almost everything in the first spray of metal, luggage and other material blown from the plane came from a confined area above and ahead of the right wing.

A safety board official told CNN Friday that investigators found "striking damage" to two seats in Row 23 on the right side of the plane; the two rows behind them -- 24 and 25 -- were missing. The row 26 seats were found. "There's no question that's interesting, but it does not get us to the end game," a federal investigator said.

A separate source identified the damaged seats as Nos. 9 and 10, the far right seats nearest the wing and over the center fuel tank. He described the damage as fist-sized holes in the steel-plated back supports. "There are holes in those seats," the source said. But, "there is no conclusion to be drawn from that evidence at this time." Rows 17 to 28 in the coach section of the doomed jetliner have been under intense investigative scrutiny for the past week or so because of fire damage where the passenger cabin meets the right wing.

Meanwhile, the mystery of what happened to TWA Flight 800 deepened Monday. Investigators who have examined the center wing box -- the area between the wings -- say it shows fire damage in some areas but not in others, sources told CNN's Carl Rochelle. Some of the fractures in the wing box have soot in them, while others do not, according to the sources. They said the finding suggests that a portion of the Boeing 747 may have broken before it burned in the July 17 explosion that brought down the jetliner.

Damage in the center section, where the metal bulges outward in some areas and dips inward in others, further puzzled investigators. Only one of the jumbo jet's three recovered engines shows fire damage, the sources said. Fans on the other two engines were intact when found and were not turning when the engines hit the water, the sources said. They said those two engines hit the water at a relatively "flat" angle, meaning they were moving forward -- not straight down.

Two rows of missing seats from the center of the jumbo jet could help pinpoint the location of the explosion that brought down the plane off New York's Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. As recovery efforts in the Atlantic Ocean continue, rows 24 and 25 on the right side of the Boeing 747 are still missing, a source who has seen wreckage recovered so far told CNN.

The missing rows are located just a few feet behind the front edge of the right wing, where the wreckage shows the greatest amount of fire damage. In rebuilding the jumbo jet in hopes of finding the cause of the crash, investigators have been concentrating on the midsection, from rows 17 to 28.

Referring to the seats in those 12 rows, Robert Francis, vice chairman of the NTSB, said Thursday they were more heavily damaged than other parts of the plane.

Two seats on the farthest right side of row 23 had fist-sized holes punched into their sheet metal back supports, sources told CNN Friday. Row 23 is directly in front of the missing rows.

Computer simulation Investigators are working with a computer simulation to try to recreate what happened when the plane was blown apart shortly after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, an NTSB official confirmed. Such a simulation is standard in most crash investigations.

Investigators are looking closely at the engines, especially the third engine, which reportedly showed evidence of fire damage. In the Long Island hangar, investigators began tearing apart the No. 3 engine, the only one of the three recovered so far that shows fire damage. It's the engine closest to the fuselage on the right side.

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Comment:

The distinct crash similarities of aircraft type, radar returns, wreckage plot, sudden short loud sound, abrupt power cut, fodded engines, inflight damage, missing bodies, torn off noses, and start place of damage qualify three aircraft into one class from which the deduction may be made that one unifying cause had the same effects.

Another accident with the same similarities except for a torn off nose and less wreckage may also be included in that class. The unifying cause for all four accidents is the inadvertent opening of the forward cargo door inflight. 27 Mar 97