Sat, Oct 30, 2004
Aircraft went down in 1998, found by a bear hunter this
week
The search for a pilot missing for six years after he crashed in
the mountains of North Carolina is finally over, and Walter
Parker's family has finally found the closure they sought for so
many years.
The single engine aircraft left Portsmouth (OH) almost exactly
four years ago, on November 4, 1998, on a trip to Andrews-Murphy
Airport, to visit his son on his birthday. Parker was 72 at
the time. The aircraft never arrived at its destination, and the
CAP began the search along with several law enforcement agencies.
It was never found, but Parker's son, an FBI agent, never gave up
trying to find his dad, taking vacations in the area to continue
the search.
This week, a bear hunter found the wreck and the remains of Mr.
Parker in the Joyce Kilmer Slickrock Wilderness area of the
Nantahala National Forest, according to Rick Schwein, the
supervisor of the Asheville FBI office. "This family has literally
come and walked these mountains and searched for him for the past
six years. They never gave up on it," said Schwein. "We can finally
give closure to this family."
Schwein added that finding the wreck of the aircraft in a
national forest is not unusual, and pointed out that they found one
when they were looking for wll-known fugitive Eric Rudolph in
2003.
(Senior Contributing Editor Kevin O'Brien did some research
on this story after we pulished it on 10/30/04 and found the
link to the NTSB report (below), which reveals additional
information, such as the fact that the aircraft was a Piper
PA-28-180 Cherokee.)
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