Wreckage of Lost Plane Located : Search: Man finds aircraft piloted by his son that disappeared Nov. 14 en route to Fullerton. Bodies of all five victims are recovered.

Dawayne Niemela’s tireless search for the body of his son, Richard, finally ended Monday.

After nearly eight months of hunting for the wreckage of the Cessna 336 airplane piloted by his son, Niemela spotted the crashed aircraft Sunday while in a rented helicopter hovering above a mountainside about 13 miles from here.

On Monday, Niemela, of La Mirada, was allowed to join search-and-rescue members who removed his son’s body and those of four passengers from the long-lost aircraft.

“I felt strange seeing my son’s plane, his things and his clothing,” Niemela said Monday after returning from the crash site. But he added that finding the place where his son died and recovering his body “is like closing the chapter on a book.”

The plane flown by Richard Niemela, 27, of La Mirada took off Nov. 14 from Bullhead City, Ariz., and vanished en route to Fullerton Municipal Airport. There were four passengers aboard: Jeff Bird, 32, and his wife, Kathy, 33, of Fullerton; Jeff Bird’s brother, Bradley, 33, of Placentia, and Natalie Erickson, 19, of Placentia.

An extensive search by the Civil Air Patrol last fall found no trace of the aircraft.

The wreckage was found in a remote, tree-covered area on a mountainside. San Bernardino County authorities made it to the wreckage site and removed the bodies, all of which were still inside the plane. The search party journeyed by four-wheel vehicles and on foot.

Until Sunday, it had been presumed that the plane had crashed and that all aboard had died. But in the absence of finding the wreckage, family members suffered from not knowing for sure. Thus, when the official search for the plane ended last fall, Dawayne Niemela and other relatives of the missing kept searching at their own expense.

On Sunday afternoon, using the last of the money he had available for a private search, Dawayne Niemela hung out of a helicopter he had rented in Corona. Spotting the wreckage, he notified officials.

When investigators got to the site on Monday, they found evidence that the plane had flown into the tops of trees and then into the mountainside, probably because of bad weather.

Richard V. Childress, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the Cessna apparently had clipped two tall trees, then smashed into a third tree on the steep mountainside. He added that the impact sheared away the left wing, which was found about 150 feet downhill from the fuselage.

Dawayne Niemela told reporters that the positioning of the bodies in the plane indicated that all aboard died instantly on impact.

For the Niemelas, it has been a frustrating eight months. Family and friends have spent hundreds of hours in air searches, not to mention thousands of dollars for fuel and other expenses.

During that time, they held fund-raisers to help augment money they spent on the search.

Dawayne Niemela said the families have spent about $10,000 on the private search.

He and his wife, Maria, sharply criticized the Civil Air Patrol, saying officials had not searched the Big Bear area as the family had requested early in the hunt.

“They didn’t listen to us,” Dawayne Niemela said. “They kept saying that since he didn’t file a flight plan, they needed to search from a wide general area, and they delayed going into this area.”

He and his wife said they were 90% sure their son had flown a northern route from Bullhead City, as he had on numerous other occasions. They said their son flew that route to skirt the San Bernardino Mountains.

But Maj. Lloyd Stevens, director of operations for the California Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, vehemently denied that his patrol had failed to check the northern route through the Cajon Pass during the original search.

“We searched both of them,” he said, referring to the northern and southern routes. “And that was in considerable detail using our fixed-wing aircraft.

“I think the wreck was in a very obscure place,” Stevens said. Dawayne Niemela and the helicopter pilot “were almost stopped directly overhead in a helicopter that had been searching from one bush to the next.”

Noting that Richard Niemela had ignored storm warnings and failed to file a flight plan before taking off from Bullhead City, Stevens said: “Under those conditions, a prudent pilot would have come in from the south.”

Stevens said the search was hampered by bad weather for two or three days and that even CAP pilots had trouble with the weather during the search.

“Nevertheless, the search of the northern route was never delayed operationally. . . . We devoted more resources to this search than any in recent memory,” he said.

Dawayne Niemela said that the search Sunday was the last day for which the relatives had money for hiring private aircraft.

Describing how he spotted the plane, he said: “I had leaned out, and I mean way out, and spotted the wreckage. I saw the white wing and blue trim down there, but I couldn’t see the numbers. . .

“All the while my pulse was racing in anticipation,” he said. “I wanted it to be the plane, and then I didn’t want it to be.”

Other family members who waited while search-and-rescue officials brought back the bodies included Maria Niemela and Richard’s sisters, Chris, 25, and Jill, 21.

Richard’s brother, Edward Niemela, 30, a Los Angeles County firefighter who lives in Newport Beach, initially was the only family member allowed to go to the crash site. Later, however, his father also was allowed to go to the scene.

“For my dad, it really has been an eight-month ordeal,” Edward Niemela said.

Maria Niemela lauded her husband’s tireless search efforts. She noted that he has flown every weekend since November looking for the wreckage, never giving up.

“It takes a brave man to do that,” she said.

For Dawayne Niemela, the trek to the scene of his son’s death brought back memories of their relationship.

“This is the windshield cover that my son used on his plane,” he said, holding a piece of the wreckage he brought back. “I can remember when he and I measured it together.”

Times staff writer Jeffrey A. Perlman in Orange County contributed to this story.