Missing Placentia Pair Dead; Plane Wreckage Found

ELY, Nev. — The search for a Placentia couple missing since Oct. 29 on a flight from Nevada to their ranch in Idaho ended Thursday with the discovery of the wreckage of their plane on a rugged mountainside eight miles east of here.

Pilot Larry Richards and passenger Barbara Keating, both 56, had been “killed instantly, absolutely,” said White Pine County Undersheriff Harry Collins. “From what we saw, the aircraft hit with tremendous force and slammed right into the mountain. It’s in pieces.”

The grim discovery followed more than two weeks of searching by the Civil Air Patrol, which scoured more than 65,000 square miles looking for the couple.

Collins said the damage was so extensive “there really was no way to identify the remains as an aircraft.” He said the plane’s logbook and some pieces of the couple’s identification scattered about the crash site provided investigators with the only confirmation that it was the missing aircraft.

The crew of a Nevada State Fish and Game helicopter surveying deer population in the area made the discovery, Collins said. The location is so remote that the wreckage might have gone undiscovered for months or years, he said.

Three of Richards’ four daughters, who had been in Ely, Nev., since their father’s plane left there and disappeared, made the trek to the canyon site with authorities, Collins said.