The search for Steve Fossett

The millionaire businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett was declared legally dead by a Chicago court a few days ago. He had been missing for five months since his single-engine plane disappeared over the Nevada desert. (More from the BBC.)

But there was one striking outcome of the extensive search for Fossett. Back in September last year the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

The search for Fossett across a 17,000-square-mile swath of the Sierra Nevada has revealed the wreckage of eight other small planes that had never, until now, been discovered.

And each of those crash sites holds clues to the fates of other fliers who went missing in what is starting to look like the Bermuda Triangle of the western United States.