Whatever became of Steve Fossett?

Did the adventurer and explorer Steve Fossett fake his own death? This seems like an incredible question to find posed in a national newspaper, even in August. You feel that an editor would want some pretty decent sources before running a story of this sort, that is potentially so upsetting to the deceased’s loved ones.

Yet, here is The Independent running just such a story. And it has some pretty good sources:

Into thin air: Did Steve Fossett fake his own death?

Of course, all fishy business has naturally (and stridently) been denied by those close to Fossett, who dismiss it as distasteful speculation by journalists in search of a silly-season story.

Yet the rumours of wrongdoing are not limited to the media. Military people are not prone to hyperbole, and Lt-Col Ryan’s comments about the Fossett case (in an interview with the News of the World last weekend) were far from understated.

“Anything is possible,” she said. “There are a lot of raised eyebrows; even more so now. I know very few people here, friends in law enforcement, that buy this story like the rest of the world has. I’ve been doing search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found. It’s not like we didn’t have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We’re pretty good at what we do.”

Comments made by [Robert Davis, a life insurance loss adjuster], who seems to have been employed for a broker who sold a policy backed by Lloyd’s of London, were even more damning. “What I’ve striven to find out is; what happened to this man in the run-up to his disappearance? Why did he disappear?” he told reporters. “I spoke to people who were on the scene, people who were helping out with the search efforts, anyone whom I thought could shed some light on this. And what I discovered is that there is absolutely no proof that Steve Fossett is actually dead.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m a man who deals in facts, and I don’t really care if he is alive or dead; it makes no difference to me. What I am interested in is the truth – and a proper criminal investigation of this man’s disappearance was never undertaken by law enforcement or officials in the state of Nevada.” Read full story here…