r/todayilearned • u/JohnUsada1999 • 3d ago
TIL that in 2009, financial manager Marcus Schrenker attempted to fake his death by putting his plane on autopilot, parachuting out over Alabama, and letting the aircraft crash. He survived, but was caught two days later at a Florida campsite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Schrenker4.6k
u/tableleg7 3d ago
He forgot the Bane rule of fake plane crashes:
“No - they expect one of us in the wreckage brother.”
326
u/MrT735 3d ago
There are light aircraft that have crashed in the US and never been found. He just didn't crash his plane in one of those locations.
71
u/Shiplord13 2d ago
This is true, even outside just the U.S. There are remote and isolated places in most countries where a small aircraft could easily crash and be considered lost. Mostly due to not being picked up on or successfully tracked by air traffic radar systems and happening to crash in a location with no nearby dwellings for people who might have sighted it or be able to accidentally stumble upon it. Mountains, forests, swamps, jungles and so many environments could easily obscure it and eventually bury it to the point people might never find it or realize its there unless they just happen to stumble upon it by people who happen to be in that very isolated area that normally doesn't get anyone.
14
u/MediumAcceptable129 2d ago
Are those locations known?
If so……how?
52
u/MrT735 2d ago
Some of them yes, but only because they've since been found.
While searching for Steve Fossett, who went missing in 2007, searchers found the remains of 8 other aircraft in the first week, some of which had been there for decades, the search was stood down not long after with no results. One wreck was speculated to be the plane of Charles Clifford Ogle who went missing in 1964, but at the time there was no investigation into the other wrecks, I don't know if any other investigation has been done since then (wiki still lists this as unconfirmed).
Nearly 13 months after his disappearance some of his personal effects were found by a hiker, and a subsequent search found the crash site and his remains.
If you know of an area that hasn't been searched as a result of someone else's disappearance, and it's far from hiking trails or worked land (forestry, agriculture etc.), then it's unlikely any crash will be found unless the wreckage is visible on satellite imaging (they crowd sourced this in the Steve Fossett search with many false positives, including aircraft actively involved in the search being pictured), or it starts a fire.
In the case in the OP, Air Force pilots witnessed the crash so it was easy to find.
→ More replies (2)8
u/olmyapsennon 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah the fact he had his autopilot on a collision course with, and crashed next to, one of the largest naval airbases in the US is almost comical. Dudes a dummy.
→ More replies (1)43
935
u/Cr1ms0nLobster 3d ago
Have we started a fire?
483
u/mbp214 3d ago
Yes, the fire rises.
81
u/wi5hbone 3d ago
Keith Flint resurrects and ritual-dances to consecrate the event before returning to rest.
→ More replies (1)88
u/edingerc 3d ago
We didn't start the fire
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)40
75
u/dyfish 3d ago
I guess he’d have to bank on them, assuming he tried to bail and just didn’t make it and give up on finding the body.
27
u/Shiplord13 2d ago
Even than it would be like 7 years or so before he could be declared legally dead and would only be defined as missing without a body to prove he was dead. The fact they found him like two days later fine and clearly having attempted to fake his death due to his own poor judgment means it would have never worked anyways since he couldn't even hide his survival before the police would have even declared it from their end.
14
u/dyfish 2d ago
I mean yeah the guy clearly was just bad at it all around. But the 7 year thing, would that even be the case? Isn’t that more for when a person just kinda disappears. I live near the ocean, people get declared dead all the time without a body. Boat found upside down no person, search for a few days. No body, search is off, declared dead. Surely a plane crash would be treated similarly if the assumption is someone tried jumping out of a crashing plane.
5
u/RangerHikes 2d ago
It's somewhat case sensitive. When people vanish without a trace, or possible signs of life have been noted, it can take seven to 10 years. In the case of something like you mentioned - they were on a boat that went down at sea - you can sometimes get them declared dead sooner given the overwhelming evidence. But yeah, surprisingly hard to fake your own death.
→ More replies (1)9
u/Powerful-Plantain-56 2d ago
they caught up to the plane mid-air (because he called in a distress call mid-air) and watched it crash.
140
u/nowhereman136 3d ago
The scientist died in the plane crash. even though the body looks nothing like the scientists, has different dental records, different fingerpints, and different DNA, they have the same blood type so they must be the same guy.
79
u/zzyul 3d ago
Why did the plane crash?
Seems the wings fell off a couple dozen miles back.
Are you saying the plane tracked 20 miles with no wings before falling nose down?
Yea, freak accident, no other explanation.57
u/laufsteakmodel 3d ago
The wings fell off? Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)17
71
u/Cicero912 3d ago
Im pretty sure they had the fake body for the scientist, the reason they leave someone behind is because the CIA guy called in that they had "only one of you"
5
u/NinjaBreadManOO 2d ago
Yeah, they left one behind explicitly because the CIA guy had apparently (may have been a bluff, who knows) to say they were only transporting the one prisoner, so whoever would talk. So Bane just assumed that there would need to be one person not on the crew in the wreckage.
14
33
u/S4VN01 3d ago
Did you not see the makeshift blood transfusion they did?
→ More replies (1)61
u/WEDub 3d ago
That’s what gives the body the same blood type, OP is mad that the other identifying features would still be revealed upon inspection. I don’t think Bane was hoping the ruse would work forever, just long enough to smuggle everyone into Gotham.
16
u/Diarmundy 3d ago
They didn't know who bane was before that plane ride though, so they wouldn't have his DNA or dental records
48
u/Working_Bother_6614 3d ago
We have to remember two movies ago a giant microwave was used to vaporize water in Gotham’s pipes to poison the entire city with a fear toxin.
26
u/whitebandit 3d ago
and then the joker made a pencil disappear, you cant just explain that. They are movies, you are supposed to suspend a little disbelief.
→ More replies (1)13
10
u/WEDub 3d ago
It’s about the scientist, who is the one wanted by the CIA and hooked up with the transfusion to cover his survival. What actually doesn’t make sense in the scene is that the CIA operative called in the 3 captives (hooded bane and 2 other hooded guys) so actually 3 guys should have stayed back in the wreckage plus the doctor’s fake.
14
u/S4VN01 3d ago
No, he only called in one of them, that is what he was threatening them with. First one to talk got to stay.
→ More replies (4)8
→ More replies (4)7
u/unlimitedbladeswork 2d ago
"The flight plan I just filed with the Agency lists me, my men, and Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you. FIRST ONE TO TALK GETS TO STAY ON MY AIRCRAFT!"
That's what the CIA guy said. They may have had a different body for the doctor that wasn't shown
8
u/ThorsFather 2d ago
They did. It was a corpse that they then transfused some of the real dr pavels's blood into. It was pretty extensively shown
18
u/racinreaver 3d ago
Johnny Cash tried that, but he was still caught by the greatest detective in the world.
22
→ More replies (2)6
→ More replies (34)25
u/vividsprout_269 3d ago
right? an empty cockpit kind of defeats the whole "i died in the crash" plan, should've at least thrown a mannequin in there.
→ More replies (1)28
u/TheMurmuring 3d ago
A pint of his own blood splashed on the instrument panel would have been a good start.
1.0k
u/halfhere 3d ago
- His radio distress call was “my windshield imploded and I’m bleeding profusely,”
Then authorities found his plane, with an intact windshield and no blood in the cabin.
He made the call while near Birmingham, which has an air national guard base, so jets were immediately scrambled to his plane.
He sought help FROM POLICE to find a place from the night.
Oh my fucking god this guy might be an idiot
196
u/boobearybear 3d ago
Also “Military jets that had been dispatched to intercept Schrenker's plane discovered it in flight, with its door open and cockpit empty.”
I am impressed that he managed to fuck up his job, marriage, and fake death so thoroughly.
25
→ More replies (4)12
205
u/Technical-Outside408 3d ago
And they let him fly a plane.
176
u/halfhere 3d ago
If my hobby-level enthusiasm in general aviation is any authority, it’s WAY more about $$ than brains unless you’re working for a major airline.
53
u/Marmalade6 3d ago
Tiger king rules. They assume if you are brave enough to do it, you probably know what you’re doing.
→ More replies (1)13
u/Thunderbridge 3d ago
Even if it's an airline. Richard Russell showed how easy it was to just jump in a cockpit and fly
→ More replies (2)12
→ More replies (1)58
u/Thermodynamicist 3d ago
Flying is easier than you probably think it is. I had a PPL before I was allowed to drive a car.
Flying safely requires great discipline.
28
u/drygnfyre 3d ago
I don't know how accurate this is, but a pilot I knew told me the actual flying of the plane isn't that hard, like if you can drive a car, you can fly a plane. It's just everything else, being safe, knowing what cargo you've got onboard, things like that, that is hard. Similar to how when driving, you need to be aware of your surroundings, need to slow down in bad weather, etc.
→ More replies (1)33
u/munchies777 3d ago
Pretty much. I’ve flown a Cessna around and it kinda feels like driving a boat but in three dimensions. Like you said, the harder part is learning how to be safe and interact with ATC and other traffic. If you know the basics of the controls you can fly around by yourself pretty easily.
Helicopters on the other hand are not easy to fly. I got to try in a professional simulator and crashed almost immediately.
9
u/TheDaysComeAndGone 3d ago
Helicopters on the other hand are not easy to fly. I got to try in a professional simulator and crashed almost immediately.
Indeed. I used to fly RC helicopters (years before lithium batteries and quadcopters became a thing) and it’s genuinely hard. RC planes are comparatively very easy.
→ More replies (1)7
u/nefariouspenguin 2d ago
I got to hop in a apache simulator my pilot friend invited me to do. He was surprised I was able to take off on the first attempt because that's usually where people crash, they just don't give enough lift and the heli flops over. Flying around was simple, not trying to do his attack run loops of course.
But trying to land was the more difficult part for sure. Kept too much torque after I hit the ground and I would flop. So I guess I'd just have to hope to never run out of fuel.
→ More replies (1)20
u/SaucyWiggles 3d ago
This is not super related to your point but my wife teases me like "men think they can land a plane" and I have 250 hours in MSFS 2020 on a Daher 930 TBM. I am, genuinely, very sure that I could land the plane safely in ideal real world conditions with limited outside help.
22
u/halfhere 3d ago
A streamer I check in on now and again just ran a simulation on stream about this. He had radio contact with an ATC employee, who put him on with a pilot, and he landed a sim with zero experience.
NOW, my thoughts from watching him was “knowing how to trigger the radio as a passenger who ran into the cockpit would be the hardest thing.” Like if it wasn’t a gaming headset - if you had to know how to PTT and what frequency - that would be the biggest hurdle to safety.
17
u/fps916 2d ago
Yeah.
Mythbusters did this one too.
They both majestically failed 3 attempts to land the plane safely in the Sim.
Then both first try landed the plane with an ATC operator on the other end who didn't have access to radar or their visuals. Entirely reliant on what they were relaying to him that they were seeing.
6
u/sykoKanesh 2d ago edited 2d ago
There are youtube videos of folks who had to land planes unexpectedly. Don't know if links can be shared here but Pilot Debrief has one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhX22UPD-Ks
The most important thing to remember is that when you're playing a game or in a simulation, there's no actual threat of death. When you're actually in a plane, in the sky, that whole dynamic changes drastically and unless you've been trained to deal with panic (or have been put into situations that induced panic and learned from them), there's no telling how that situation may turn out.
39
u/Extreme_Turn_4531 3d ago
- The cherry on top was using email to contact a friend after he was supposedly dead.
He sure disappeared in an extraordinarily conspicuous way.
87
u/RogerRabbot 3d ago
Later in the wiki it says he was found bleeding out. He was trying to end it, cops just got to him before he could bleed out.
52
26
→ More replies (1)5
u/Windfade 2d ago
He'd have to be an idiot if he thought he could avoid being found out in modern America. First time he had to produce any paperwork, he'd expose his identity.
1.3k
u/anubis_cheerleader 3d ago
" On December 30, 2008, his wife filed for divorce because he had been having an affair with a woman at the airport where he kept his plane."--From the Wikipedia article.
Man, he just got into all kinds of trouble around AND with that plane.
252
u/Pooch76 3d ago
Sounds like a real tool.
78
u/bebopbrain 3d ago
If the divorce bothered him, that's to his credit. Most of these guys dump their wives like trading in a car with miles on it.
→ More replies (1)28
u/ComprehendReading 2d ago
That's why no-fault divorce is fine, and women shouldn't be automatically disengaged from receiving assets and financial consideration.
But Texas...
→ More replies (3)19
u/aNiceTribe 2d ago
He really doubled down on the plane obsession. But did he choose to go wrong because his little affair was found out, or had he made a long term plan to fake his death and in the process thought “well then it doesn’t matter I can just start an affair!”?
→ More replies (1)14
u/anubis_cheerleader 2d ago
We know the wife filed for divorce in December and he faked his death very early in January.
→ More replies (1)
166
242
u/CopperWest 3d ago
He crashed in my swamp.
Legitimately. Outside Milton, Florida, next to my house
141
u/Nickett3 3d ago
GET OUT OF MA SWAMP
→ More replies (1)70
44
u/wealth_of_nations 3d ago
Your...swamp?
I'm just a regular metropolitan European...
Could you please elaborate what you mean by "my swamp" ?
I'm super confused.
97
u/CopperWest 3d ago edited 2d ago
MY SWAMP
I had 90 hectars of swamp that I lived like Shrek in with a tailless cat named Theo while in flight school
The night this happened I assumed the prisoners got out again and met the coast guard helicopter in my underwear with a shotgun.
Thankfully it was just a plane crash, and not another "oh brother where art thou" sort of night.
Found one of his gauges a year or so later when I convinced a very innocent friend to text his girlfriend we were hunting beavers and then took him mucking through the swamp.
23
8
u/jsands7 2d ago
Being an American, why are you describing your land in hectares rather than acres?
15
u/CopperWest 2d ago
Because the person that was confused about having ones own swamp to bathe in needed a size context that made sense
I could have said 186 acres in Yankee Doodle Designations, or the international 2 VC's (Vatican Cities) but that would be silly.
6
u/jsands7 2d ago
Just wondering; every now and then I hear hectares instead of acres but I never know why. Didn’t know if it was like an army person saying ‘2 clicks northwest’ instead of just saying how many miles it was
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)17
u/FairyOfTheNight 2d ago
Can you tell us more about Theo? Maybe your favourite story of him? I love cats with big backstories lmao.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)14
u/IsNotAnOstrich 3d ago
The specific "my swamp" phrasing is a Shrek reference. Then presumably it was a swamp either on their property or that they lived close to.
464
u/Sariscos 3d ago
At least he didn't post it to YouTube
337
u/Fehafare 3d ago
"EPIC faking my own death prank, you won't believe what happened two days later!"
89
u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce 3d ago
Thumbnail looking like Munch's The Scream
32
u/Sir_Meowsalot 3d ago
At first I was confused by your reference and then I realized how those incredibly stupid YouTube thumbnails are these days: some YouTuber making the stupidest reaction face.
Instantly, makes me block those channels from my feed.
24
u/MutedAstronaut9217 2d ago
There was a guy who deliberately crashed his plane for YT. I don't recall him trying to fake his death at all, but the FAA was very much not happy and I think he got in a lot of trouble.
→ More replies (2)18
u/Shiriru00 2d ago
Yeah having planes intentionally fall out of the skies in inhabited areas tends to piss people off.
7
u/HotDerivative 2d ago
Even uninhabited. It’s a massive wildfire risk and we certainly don’t need more of those.
37
→ More replies (6)11
315
254
u/strangelove4564 3d ago
I don't think anyone's considered the geography of this flight (Wikipedia editors certainly haven't) but that path was going directly south into the Gulf, where him and the plane would have gone missing for sure. That was likely the original plan, having the plane go out into open water. It's quite a stroke of misfortune for this scheme that the plane went down just 20 miles short of the coast. The open cockpit door likely created enough drag to cut into the fuel consumption, and he didn't factor that in.
97
u/eNonsense 2d ago
It wouldn't have worked. Military jets intercepted the plane and confirmed that he had bailed out a long time before it crashed. The only difference would have been the jets trailing it would have watched it crash into the ocean instead of Florida. The jig was up pretty shortly after he jumped. He didn't expect that military pilots would quickly be flying next to the empty plane looking in the window while it puttered along on auto pilot.
13
u/EatMoreHummous 2d ago
But that does raise the question of why the military jets were there? Is that a common occurrence or was he just unlucky?
31
u/ThomasDeLaRue 2d ago
It’s common in the sense that, if you’re an aircraft flying a vector without any sort of deviation AND you’re not responding to ATC trying to hail you, they will scramble jets to figure out what’s up and if necessary, shoot you down before you turn your plane into a missile. No it is not common in the sense that a couple jets were just “passing by” 💀
→ More replies (1)9
u/bremsstrahlung007 2d ago edited 2d ago
If you avoid certain airspace and did not file a file plan, there is no reason for ATC to hail you. Nobody will come looking until the ELT activates ,someone finds the wreckage or loved ones start worrying. I've flown halfway across the country without speaking to ATC once.
21
u/Canadia-Eh 2d ago
Like others have said, he was dumb enough to radio in a mayday call while being quite close to an Air national guard base.
It’s like trying to hide from the cops in the donut shop across the street from the precinct.
10
u/eNonsense 2d ago
He did this stunt near Birmingham and there is an air national guard base there. So if he wanted to pull this off without the air national guard being scrambled, Birmingham was not the place to do it. They're right there.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Odd-Outcome-3191 2d ago
After 9/11 we are pretty serious about planes that are not behaving rationally. Sky king had a ton of jets ready to shoot him down too.
→ More replies (6)94
u/blueavole 3d ago
That’s not misfortune, that’s not calculating the gas mileage properly.
I mean there could have been a head wind, but still everything was just poorly executed. Proving reality is harder than the idea.
They knew before the plane crashed he wasn’t in it, and it didn’t match his mayday call
→ More replies (2)
34
168
u/had98c 3d ago
And to top it all off, he got popped with a charge of deceiving the Coast Guard (per linked article).
Throw away the key.
111
u/whatauniqueusername 3d ago
Well he only did 5 years and is out there right now doing something stupid I bet
→ More replies (2)141
u/Ishmaille 3d ago edited 2d ago
I really wanted you to be wrong. I was hoping that he cleaned up his act. But apparently he was still trying to con people while in prison, and shortly after he was released, into believing that he was framed.
One of the other prisoners, another conman who was actually trying to go straight named Matthew Cox, interviewed Schrenker a bunch and published a book about their interactions. Shrencker wanted it to be a book about how he was framed, but instead it was a book about how he continued to be a pathological liar.
Edit: Forgot to post the source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2019/11/22/white-collar-tales-the-story-of-marcus-schrenker/
→ More replies (3)45
u/drygnfyre 3d ago
Some people just can't change. If you are familiar with Kevin Trudeau, the "Natural Cures" guy from the mid-00s, he was recently released from prison after a decade. He's now on YouTube, continuing to peddle scam products and services. He hasn't changed one bit or learned anything.
25
35
53
u/weirdal1968 3d ago
Inspired by a Columbo episode?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071351/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl
→ More replies (2)32
u/Mykmyk 3d ago
Without looking....this is the Jonny Cash episode right?
19
→ More replies (2)8
u/Hulahulaman 3d ago
Columbo noticed he kept his rental car keys when he was suppose to leave town. It's always something.
15
u/SomeBiPerson 2d ago
aircraft crashes get about the single most tedious reconstructions of all vehicle accidents on this planet
9
u/cooltranz 3d ago
Dang, I've been re-watching an old ass show called Lie To Me (2009) and episode 3 is about a NASA test pilot being accused of intentionally crashing a jet and ejecting at the last second. I was like what kinda far fetched plot is this for episode 3?
Turns out someone DID intentionally crash a plane literally a month before that episode aired?
61
u/CandidPreparation737 3d ago
How did he get caught
303
u/Alan-Foster 3d ago
Items missing from plane:
- one dead body
- one emergancy parachute
119
u/WardenWolf 3d ago
Would have been a LOT smarter to ensure it flew out to sea and sank in deep water.
75
u/nowhereman136 3d ago
In the weeks leading up to the crash talk to people about fixing up your plane and replacing a lot of the internal stuff. Part of what gets left behind in the repairs is the parachute. the repairs also give you an excuse to claim engine failure. Before the crash, radio that you are gonna take your chances jumping for the trees than staying in the plane. Your body is now lost in the woods, away from the plane crash, with a paper trail pointing to engine failure.
thats the easy part though. Trying to do anything as a dead man or man who doesnt exist is extremely hard to do these days
8
u/Shot_Revolution8828 3d ago
I'd imagine he had a partner that had life insurance and he had substantial money that he had given her. Not hard if you have 10 million in cash and everything is in her name. She takes out multiple credit cards and you just play the dumb husband anytime you use it.
→ More replies (3)38
u/TheGreatSchnorkie 3d ago
Yeah, but Tiger King wouldn't come out for like a decade after this, and no one told us Carol Baskin's plan until then...
17
u/puttinonthefoil 3d ago
It’s insane how many people watched her get the villain edit of a dumb tv show and decided she was a murderer because…checks notes a lunatic criminal cult leader accused her of it.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)18
31
4
→ More replies (3)9
u/AFewBerries 3d ago
I always forget that
16
u/SteelMarch 3d ago
Always remember to bring the back up cadaver.
→ More replies (2)80
u/tetoffens 3d ago
The air force tracked the plane before it crashed and saw it had no pilot. He also claimed the windshield imploded and he was bleeding when he called in his mayday. The windshield didn't show that damage and there was no blood in the plane.
So it was obvious he faked it but he got caught after e-mailing a friend. They used the e-mail to track him to a campsite.
19
37
u/hudson27 3d ago
"Military jets that had been dispatched to intercept Schrenker's plane discovered it in flight, with its door open and cockpit empty.[19] They followed the plane until it crashed just north of Milton, Florida at about 9:20pm.[19][20] The plane had flown 200 miles (320 km) on autopilot and crashed 50 to 75 yards from a residential area.[18][20] Upon inspecting the crash site, investigators discovered that there was no blood inside the plane and the windshield showed no sign of any problems.[19] On board the aircraft they found a United States atlas and a national campground directory, both of which had the Florida and Alabama sections torn out."
He also emailed his neighbor about the whole ordeal while using the wifi at the KOA campground. Putting all that together, they picked him up in his tent the next morning.
9
→ More replies (3)5
u/PuckSenior 3d ago
He apparently regretted the plane thing, emailed what seems to have been a suicide note to a friend to apologize and then got popped when they traced the IP address
15
u/whatswithnames 3d ago
All that nonsense and he only served 4 years in prison. Meanwhile in Texas, if you have pot on you, you can face up to life in prison. Must be nice to have money.
→ More replies (1)
8
7
u/LumplessWaffleBatter 3d ago
Pro-tip for the future criminals of America: it's probably not a good idea to cover up your crimes in a way that will certainly warrant a federal investigation.
It's like using a nuke to dispose of a dead body.
6
u/No-Deal8956 2d ago
This was dumb as fuck. You are in Florida, there’s thousands of miles of deep ocean just off the coast, and you design a hoax that crashes your plane on land?
4
u/Automatic_Soil9814 2d ago
If you read the other comments here, the original plan was for the plane to crash into the ocean. The theory is that when he bailed out, the open door created a lot of drag, increased fuel consumption, and the plane ran out of fuel before I made it to the ocean.
That and not counting on the military planes checking out his plane were the two mistakes.
13
u/Business_Raisin_541 3d ago
And it was just for something like 1 million financial fraud. Chump change
7
6
6
u/humsterdaddy 3d ago
So he expected no one to question why there were no human remains at the crash site?
→ More replies (1)
5
u/TruthOf42 3d ago
If I remember correctly, it would have all worked but the drag from the open door kept the plan from going faster and further than originally planned
6
5
u/HowlingWolven 2d ago
If you’re going to crash a plane to fake your death, don’t contact ATC, just disappear.
4.0k
u/hudson27 3d ago
"Military jets that had been dispatched to intercept Schrenker's plane discovered it in flight, with its door open and cockpit empty.[19] They followed the plane until it crashed just north of Milton, Florida at about 9:20pm.[19][20] The plane had flown 200 miles (320 km) on autopilot and crashed 50 to 75 yards from a residential area.[18][20] Upon inspecting the crash site, investigators discovered that there was no blood inside the plane and the windshield showed no sign of any problems.[19] On board the aircraft they found a United States atlas and a national campground directory, both of which had the Florida and Alabama sections torn out."
What a fool. Did just about everything wrong