Has Fossett flown the coop?

By David McGrath Schwartz

Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

ELVIS! BIGFOOT! AMELIA EARHART! Make room in your SECLUDED hideaway for MILLIONAIRE adventurer STEVE FOSSETT! Pond-hopping hacks are out to find YOU!

The British press has been scrambling to follow up on a tabloid report that Fossett, 63, the adventurer who disappeared in the Nevada desert in September, may have faked his death.

Before this week, this was the story:

Fossett, the first man to fly nonstop around the world in a hot air balloon, took off from hotel magnate Barron Hilton’s ranch near Yerington on Sept. 3. It was supposed to be a short trip, but Fossett never returned. A massive search — said to be the largest in U.S. history for a missing plane — lasted 17 days and cost Nevada $1.6 million. Neither his body nor his plane was found.

Fossett was declared dead by an Illinois judge Feb. 15. His estate went to his wife, Peggy.

That was the story until Sunday’s speculations in the News of the World — a sensational tabloid that claims to be Britain’s biggest-selling paper. The story quoted an investigator with Lloyd’s of London (on the hook for a reported 25 million British pounds) who said it didn’t make sense that Fossett had not been found.

The second source for the story’s conspiracy theory was a lieutenant colonel with the Nevada Wing of the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. She was quoted as saying Fossett could be alive.

According to the paper, Lt. Col. Cynthia Ryan, spokeswoman for the Air Patrol’s search for Fossett, said:

“Anything is possible. 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 this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.”

The story sent the U.S. Civil Air Patrol into a tizzy. Officials immediately backed off Ryan’s comments and issued a statement:

“Recent comments attributed to Ryan regarding the search for Fossett contain errors of fact, appear to be taken out of context and were not released with the knowledge or approval of CAP.”

The statement did not specify which parts of Ryan’s comments were wrong or taken out of context.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Brig. Gen. Amy Courter, Civil Air Patrol’s interim national commander, said Ryan “was probably as exasperated as anyone else when you can’t find something ... It’s never our intent to hypothesize or any of that.”

In an e-mail message, Ryan declined to comment.

So how are officials dealing with the possibility Fossett faked his death?

“Right now we have no credible evidence suggesting anything other than Fossett’s plane crashed somewhere in Nevada,” said Daniel Burns, spokesman for the Nevada Public Safety Department, which helped coordinate the multijurisdictional search.

The Public Safety Department talked to the insurance investigator and listened to the theories.

“Not a great deal of resources are being focused on this,” Burns said. “We have a couple of people reviewing the material, but they’re not even working on it full time.”

The search area was 20,000 square miles, roughly twice the size of Massachusetts. The terrain has been described as mountainous, with canyons, ravines and areas of heavy brush.

“It’s such a large area, with so many canyons, it could swallow a small airplane pretty easily,” said Robert Norris, an aviation consultant who has flown over Nevada’s desert in commercial and small aircraft for decades.

Then he asked the unanswerable question: “Why would he do this? The wealth he had, the notoriety he had, why go into hiding?” He asked. “He liked the notoriety, he was very much a social individual.”

The News of the World and other British newspapers followed up on last weekend’s story. Some speculated on Fossett’s motive, including other women and losses in the stock market.

The conspiracy was dismissed by Fossett’s wife and friends, including billionaire adventurer Richard Branson.

Although the British press has been full of the speculation, the American press has largely ignored it — even though Fossett was born in Tennessee.

Perhaps the British interest stems from his friendship with Branson, noted a story in Thursday’s Nevada Appeal on British reporters’ arrival in Northern Nevada.

The Carson City newspaper talked to a British reporter who had flown in from Los Angeles. “He writes most of his articles on entertainment, like ‘Brad Pitt’s toothbrush,’ but the British love the Americana that Nevada can offer — brothels, Las Vegas and elaborate conspiracies.”