Search for Plane Missing 10 Days Turns Up ’83 Crash

A search for an Orange County plane missing for 10 days with five aboard turned up the wreckage of another plane containing the remains of three people who had been missing for more than eight years in the Mojave Desert, authorities said.

Crews from the Civil Air Patrol, who had been scouring the desert floor on Friday for a missing Cessna aircraft that had been bound for Fullerton, spotted a single-engine Mooney a few miles off Interstate 40, about 35 miles west of the California-Arizona border, officials said.

The four-passenger Mooney had gone down en route to Fullerton from Grand Canyon Airport in Arizona. A 12-day search over 124,000 square miles in August, 1983, failed to find the wreckage.

The skeletal remains in the Mooney were believed to be those of Robert Wakeman, 60, his son-in-law Jim Huffman, 41, and Huffman’s son Grant, 5. Wakeman’s wallet and other identification were found in the wreck, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy John McMahon.

Family members, including Wakeman’s son Brian, 36, and daughter April, 44, who was Huffman’s wife, gathered Saturday afternoon at the Fullerton home of Wakeman’s widow, Carol, after authorities informed them of the discovery.

Mrs. Wakeman said Sunday that Brian had captured their feelings when he described the eight years as being “like an unfinished book: You really know what the ending is going to be but you’re not to it yet.”

Still, she said, “I don’t think you ever accept it until you know what the ending is. Every time you hear of a plane that’s been found you are alert, and you have to find out where it was found.”

The discovery of the 1983 wreckage alarmed the families waiting for news of the Cessna that disappeared Nov. 14 en route from Bullhead City, Ariz., to Fullerton Municipal Airport. “Thank God it wasn’t them,” said Norma Draeger, mother of Kathy Bird, one of the missing. “But if it had been them, at least we would have had an answer.”

The Cessna was flown by Richard Niemela, 27, of La Mirada. His passengers were believed to be Jeff Bird, 32, and wife Kathy Bird, 33, of Fullerton; Jeff Bird’s brother Bradley, 33, of Placentia, and Natalie Erickson, 19, of Placentia.