Couple Found Dead in Wreckage of Aircraft : Tragedy: Nevada discovery ends two-week search. Investigators say Placentia pair were killed on impact.

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 logged more than 65,000 square miles looking for the couple.

Collins said the damage was so extensive that “there really was no way to identify the remains as an aircraft.” He said the plane’s log book and some pieces of the couple’s personal 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 even years, he said.

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

They were not allowed on the scene, which had been sealed off pending the arrival of Federal Aviation Administration investigators from Reno.

“They were very saddened, of course,” Collins said. “But I think they were also relieved that at last they had been found.”

The search for the couple was launched Nov. 3 when they failed to arrive as scheduled in Nampa, Ida., and was expanded to include U.S. Air Force and Civil Air Patrol crews in both Nevada and Idaho.

The full-scale search was called off Monday after authorities exhausted final leads, which included a transient radio signal and a water tank that a rancher had mistaken for the orange fuselage of the Beechcraft.

Civil Air Patrol officials said the search would have been continued only with new information.

Collins said the demolition of the small aircraft prevented his department from immediately determining the cause of the crash.

“That’s up to the FAA,” he said. “It seemed as if they must have been quite a bit off course, maybe as much as 100 miles off course.”

Family members said that Richards, an experienced pilot, had reported a problem with one of the Beechcraft’s engines just days before the ill-fated flight.

Times staff writer Greg Hernandez contributed to this story.