Searchers found a small aircraft that crashed in Michigan’s Lake Huron 17 years in the past, in addition to the stays of a long-missing passenger, state police mentioned Wednesday.
The stays have been recognized as H. Brooke Stauffer Jr., 56, who lived in Washington, D.C. He was a passenger in a aircraft that had departed Mackinac Island for a small city in Michigan’s Decrease Peninsula in August 2007.
Stauffer and the pilot, his fiancee Karen Dodds, have been in a Socata TB-20 Trinidad when the aircraft disappeared. Her stays have been discovered two months after the crash, east of the Mackinac Bridge, however there was no signal of the aircraft or Stauffer.
“In October 2023, Nice Lakes Search & Restoration, a non-public firm, resumed the search efforts on the request of members of the family,” state police mentioned. “In August of 2024, members of the search crew found aircraft wreckage close to Bois Blanc Island.”
Dental Data
State police divers subsequently discovered skeletal stays, and the Heart for Forensic Anthropology at Northern Michigan College confirmed Stauffer’s id with assist from dental data, authorities mentioned.
Stauffer was director of requirements and security for the Nationwide Electrical Contractors Affiliation.
“He was a prolific author, and the writer of a number of technical books, quite a few journal articles, a youngsters’s novel and a guidebook for Washington, D.C.,” his obituary mentioned.
Dodds, 52, had her personal enterprise, Dodds Design, a graphic internet design and advertising and marketing firm in Washington.
