Chicago Area Local News

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. (CBS) ― A fascinating discovery has everyone wondering again about adventurer Steve Fossett. Some of his things were found by a hiker in California.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports that the hiker is talking after literally stumbling on evidence last year's multimillion dollar search failed to uncover.

On Wednesday, that discovery has led to renewed home of solving the mystery of the Chicago adventurer's disappearance.

The search teams were brought in within hours of Preston Morrow telling authorities he'd found Steve Fossett's ID's.

"I was coming down again way, way off trail, and I came across the ID card and the other cards and the $100 bills in the dirt, in the pine needles and stuff," Morrow said.

They were found over the weekend about five hours from the nearest road in what's known as the San Joaquin River Basin, just northwest of the town of Mammoth Lakes, California. It is about 100 miles from Barron Hilton's private airstrip near Yerington, Nevada, which Fossett left from and was due to return to.

The rough and remote area where the items were found is well within the area searchers had scoured during an intensive, multi-million dollar ground and air search for Fossett. When Morrow first found the items, he didn't know what he'd found.

"Money was the first thing – that's all we thought he had. But then Tuesday morning when we go, the Fossett guy, the pilot guy who got lost, that's the guy. That's how we put it all together," Morrow said.

"They have authenticated two of the documents – one is a pilot's license and one is a National Aeronautics Association card," said Sheriff John Anderson.

A major search effort is getting underway Wednesday night. By Thursday, there'll be 30 searchers combing the remote wilderness just below a 10,000 foot ridge - an area so dense that one search says tonight that the wreckage of the plane could be as close as 100 yards from where they were today, and remain hidden.

Sophisticated airborne technology had come up empty. Dedicated civil air patrol pilots couldn't find him. High-tech computer mapping didn't help. In the end, it was a local hiker, who didn't even recognize the name, who he found Fossett's ID, some cash and a jacket last weekend. It was only after he showed them to a friend that he was told they appeared to belong to the world-famous adventurer who'd disappeared just over a year ago.

There was no sign of either Fossett's remains or the wreckage of the single engine aerobatic plane which he'd taken for a spin the morning he was supposed to leave his friend's ranch for his home in Colorado.

While friends tried to find Fossett's wife, Peggy, or her attorney to tell them what had been found, the hiker who stumbled on Fossett's things returned to the area a second time Tuesday, to see if he could find anything else such as the wreckage of the small plane. That search came up empty.

Peggy Fossett, Stephen's widow who had the 63-year-old declared legally dead by a judge in Chicago in February, said she was "grateful to all of those involved in this effort. I am hopeful that this search will locate the crash site and my husband's remains."

So are those who are on the ground.

"You would think if they could find documents this small, that they could certainly find an aircraft," Anderson said.

It won't be that easy, combing the roughest of rough terrain with steep slopes, dense brush and a loose, rocky surface that slides away underfoot. But tonight, it appears that the search has narrowed significantly, from the initial 10,000 square miles to just a few.

Fossett made a fortune trading futures and options on Chicago markets.

He set records in airplanes, balloons, gliders and boats. He was the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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