Lost plane, passenger’s remains found 17 years after plane crash near Mackinac Island

MARQUETTE, Mich. (WJMN) — A private search and recovery company has found the missing wreckage and human remains from a 2007 plane crash in Lake Huron, according to Michigan State Police.

The findings give closure to family members, who have waited 17 years with little evidence.

The crash happened on the afternoon of August 24, 2007 when a pilot and a passenger left in a SOCATA TB-20 Trinidad, a small single-engine aircraft, from an airport from Mackinac Island to Bad Axe. It was a calm, cloudy day in the 70s with wind picking up to 5-10 mph after noon.

The plane was flown by Karen Dodds, a 52-year-old woman from Washington, D.C., according the the Associated Press . With her was one passenger; her 56-year-old fiancée H. Brooke Stauffer Jr.

Another pilot told investigators they were headed to visit the pilot’s parents.

An FAA crash investigation said they also had the goal of touring the scenery and coastline on the way.

Two pilots reported talking over radio with the pilot as they took to the air over Mackinac. Those brief conversations would be the last time anyone heard from the plane’s two occupants.

After the craft was reported missing, a large-scale search as launched for the plane wreckage and any survivors.

One witness directed MSP to the general area they said they heard what sounded like a plane crashing into the water, which became a focal point of the search. Investigators spoke with the pilots who communicated with the Trinidad pilot over radio said they discussed current weather conditions, with one telling the Trinidad pilot that recent reports were incorrect.

After that, there was no sign of the Trinidad or her occupants until October 2007 when human remains matching the pilot and some cushions from the plane washed on shore.

In October of last year, family members of the victims asked Great Lakes Search and Recovery to look for the plane’s wreckage and evidence of the missing passenger.

Nearly a year later in August of 2024, members of their team found a plane down in Lake Huron near Bois Blanc Island and alerted MSP.

MSP divers collected evidence confirming the wreck was in fact the Trinidad—and a set of skeletal remains was verified by forensic anthropologists at Northern Michigan University as having belonged to the 56-year-old passenger.

What happened?

The official investigation into the crash had no definitive explanation of what happened, but in their findings investigators noted how one aspect of the weather could have been a factor.

In aviation terms, a ceiling in the distance between the ground and the bottom of the clouds. If the ceiling is too low, pilots are not legally allowed to fly by eyesight and landscape (Visual Flight Rules, or VFR), or rely on their instruments in low visibility (Instrument Flight Rules, or IFR).

One of the pilots who spoke with the Trinidad pilot was leaving around the same time as them. They reported talking about how the AWOS (Automated Weather Observing System) was incorrect.

For most planes, the Federal Aviation Administration says it is generally unsafe for planes to fly VFR with a ceiling below 1,000 ft.

An inbound pilot noted in their interview that another automated weather system indicated the ceiling was as high as 12,000 ft. When that pilot asked the Trinidad what they were observing, they said it was about 1,000 ft.

I was quite puzzled over [the pilot’s] decision to depart VFR. They did not seem to be in any great hurry to depart – I believe they were going to her parents and I don’t recall any discussion of any event that they needed to reach at a specific time. I stated I was getting a void time clearance off the field as I didn’t think I could maintain VFR long enough to pick up my clearance. I asked her why she didn’t file IFR and she said they wanted to fly down the coastline to show [the passenger] the scenery.

Other outbound pilot in statement to investigators

Investigators also spoke with the Trinidad pilot’s flight instructor, who said she was no stranger to flying in the clouds. “He stated that he believed most of the pilot’s flying was instrument cross country flights. He said that the pilot definitely preferred flying on instruments and being in the system as compared to flying VFR,” said the flight instructor.

No official conclusion was ever reached on a cause, and no new information toward the question has been released since the plane was found.

In 2022, the National Transportation Safety Board prepared a report on low ceiling/visibility accidents, concluding that “low ceilings/visibility conditions is the highest weather cause of fatal weather-related accidents and account for 53% of weather-related fatalities,” and that “a large portion of the low ceiling/visibility accidents, the pilot failed to obtain or received an inadequate preflight weather briefing.”

You can read about how the private search and recovery team found the Trinidad in our latest story.

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