From: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060914-9999-1n14copter.html

Despite new clues, mystery still shrouds '92 copter crash

Wildlife expert vanished during Baja assignment

By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 14, 2006
For more than 14 years, there have been no answers, only questions: What happened to Lloyd Kolbe, a well-respected Texas wildlife specialist, on assignment in Baja California to survey the bighorn sheep population?

Kolbe, 51, took off in his three-seat Hiller 12E helicopter on the morning of April 21, 1992, from a remote campsite on the Gulf of California. He and his passengers, two Mexican government officials, headed inland toward the rock-and-cactus studded mountains of the central Baja California peninsula and were never heard from again.

The lack of information led to rampant speculation, and the questions have haunted Kolbe's grieving friends and family members. Were the three killed by poachers or drug traffickers after stumbling onto illicit activity, or was other foul play involved? Or did they simply perish in a helicopter crash, their remains lost in a remote ravine?

Now Kolbe's helicopter has been located, along with some human remains in the Sierra de Calamajué, southwest of San Luis Gonzaga Bay, where they had taken off that morning. The chance discovery, by local cowboys, offers the first clues to their mysterious disappearance – but no explanation.

“It's been a very heavy burden to bear,” said Kolbe's son, Darren, 45, reached by telephone in Laredo, Texas. “Hopefully we have found his remains – that's our biggest hope.”

Baja California government officials announced the aircraft's discovery Tuesday, after sending a team of investigators to the mountainous area. The ranch hands found the wreckage late last month while searching for stray cattle. They reported their finding to Alberto Tapia Landeros, a Mexicali professor who has written books about the bighorn sheep and never stopped asking questions about the helicopter's disappearance.

“I always knew that sooner or later we'd find out what happened,” Tapia said. “I'm not losing faith that it will be cleared up completely.”

Baja California Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther has spoken to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, assuring him that the investigation “has from the start . . . been undertaken with the utmost seriousness,” according to a statement from the Baja California Attorney General's Office.

The wreckage is about 29 miles southeast of San Luis Gonzaga Bay and a few miles inland from the Gulf of California. The ranch hands led state officials to the site from the tiny community of Cataviña on the Transpeninsular Highway, a nine-hour trek by four-wheel drive and on foot.

The helicopter apparently landed upright but caught fire, said Francisco Javier Alcázar Jiménez, head of the Attorney General's Office in Ensenada. A skull was found about 20 feet from the aircraft, and fragments of another skull were found inside. The skull had a perforation, “but we can't say it is a bullet,” Alcázar said. Other pieces – a jaw bone, molars, two thigh bones – were scattered about, Alcázar said.

Darren Kolbe and Lloyd Kolbe's brother James flew by private plane to Mexicali yesterday, where they were met by Baja California authorities. Later, they flew to Ensenada, and Darren Kolbe provided a blood sample, which will help authorities determine whether any of the bones are his father's. Family members of the two other victims still were being located.

“The first thing we want to do is identify the remains,” Alcázar said. “The next thing is determining whether this was an accident.”

Kolbe, a resident of central Texas, was well known in hunting and wildlife circles. His friends called him Coon Dog, and for a time he owned and operated a radio station. The gregarious and divorced father of four was popular and commanded much attention, his oldest son said.

“He could take care of himself,” Darren Kolbe said. “He always liked to be heard.”

Kolbe owned the helicopter, using it to round up sheep or conduct aerial surveys of wildlife. In April 1992, Mexican federal environmental officials hired him to take a census of bighorn sheep on the peninsula. Two employees of the environmental ministry, known at the time as Sedue, were on assignment to accompany him: Gonzalo Medina González, a biologist, and Rafael Rebollar Bustos, a former federal highway patrolman.

The population of bighorn sheep on the peninsula long has been a contentious subject, with hunting advocates saying the number is larger, and those who favor a ban on hunting arguing that it is smaller.

Between 1980 and 1990, the Mexican government sold 625 bighorn sheep hunting permits, mostly to U.S. hunters, charging $12,000 each. In 1990, hunting was banned by presidential decree.

Tapia, the professor, said officials from Mexico's environmental ministry, which sold the permits, opposed the ban. They wanted to prove that large numbers of the sheep roamed the peninsula and that the species would not be threatened by hunting.

Soon after Kolbe arrived, he became confused about his assignment, his son said.

“There was another group conducting a survey at the same time, hired by the Baja California government,” the son said. “It's like they were overlapping each other.”

Kolbe decided to call higher-ups at Sedue in Mexico City for clarification. On April 21, he and his two Mexican companions took off from Alfonsinas Camp. They were heading toward the nearest telephone, on the Pacific side of the peninsula, Darren Kolbe said.
They never turned up.

U.S. authorities, including the Air Force and the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, sent aircraft to the area to help Mexicans search hundreds of square miles, Darren Kolbe said. “Nothing was found.”

The family persisted, and in 1995, James Kolbe led a horseback expedition to the region, but once again they came away empty-handed.

“We never had any sort of substantive proof or realistic leads or anything,” Darren Kolbe said.

The helicopter is on the side of a mountain, near a ravine, he said.

“You could literally walk within 100 yards of this site and not see it, because of the cactus and growth and change in elevations,” the son said.

A family representative who traveled to the site over the weekend found a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and small binoculars similar to ones that Kolbe used, the son said.

If some questions have been answered, others persist.

“It may be that they landed extremely hard, and everybody perished,” Darren Kolbe said. “But then again, what if somebody survived it, had malicious intentions, and the helicopter was burned on purpose? Maybe somebody was shot on purpose. Something that involves someone important to you, you don't want to leave a stone unturned.”

Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com

From: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=cbf33...34-a087-1f926e367899

A 14-Year-Old Mystery Might Be Solved
Fri, 15 Sep '06

Lloyd Kolbe's Helicopter Found In Baja California

Fourteen years ago Lloyd Kolbe, a respected and well-known Texas wildlife specialist, took off from a campsite on the Gulf of California headed towards the inland mountains of Baja California. He and two Mexican government officials were flying in his Hiller 12E helicopter -- and they weren't seen or heard from again.

Finally, Kolbe's family may have the clues they need to find out just what happened that day. Kolbe's helicopter has been found with some human remains nearby.

Kolbe's son Darren, 45, told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “It's been a very heavy burden to bear. Hopefully we have found his remains -– that's our biggest hope.”

Kolbe, 51 at the time, had contracted with the Mexican government to survey the bighorn sheep population of Baja California. His family and authorities have been left to wonder all these years if Kolbe and his passengers were the victims of an accident, or perhaps had ran afoul of smugglers or poachers.

The wreckage of the helicopter, which apparently landed upright but caught fire, is some 30 miles southeast of San Luis Gonzaga Bay. Ranchers, riding a trail a few miles inland while looking for lost cattle, found the crash site with human remains, and informed local authorities.

The Mexican government sent a team of investigators and announced the discovery Tuesday.

According to Francisco Javier Alcázar Jiménez, head of the Attorney General's Office in Ensenada, a skull was found about 20 feet from the aircraft, and fragments of another skull were found inside. He said the skull had a perforation, “but we can't say it is a bullet," adding that other pieces -- a jaw bone, molars, two thigh bones -- were also scattered about.

Some personal effects found at the scene -- Ray-ban sunglasses and a pair of small binoculars -- are similar to those used by Kolbe on his expeditions.

“It may be that they landed extremely hard, and everybody perished,” Darren Kolbe said. “But then again, what if somebody survived it, had malicious intentions, and the helicopter was burned on purpose? Maybe somebody was shot on purpose. Something that involves someone important to you, you don't want to leave a stone unturned.”

From: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4191187.html

Sept. 16, 2006, 9:29AM
14-year mystery may be solved
The remains of an adventurer from Texas are believed found in Baja crash

By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

HARLINGEN - After 14 long years, Lloyd Kolbe may be coming home to Texas — at last.

The charred human remains scattered around Kolbe's crashed helicopter, found in a remote desert canyon in Baja California, may finally solve a mystery that has tormented the Houston wildlife expert's family since he vanished without a trace in April 1992.

Kolbe's family and friends in Houston and across the state had searched by land and air. They had hired private investigators. They had wondered and worried about his fate since the gregarious pilot, filmmaker, and big-game hunter disappeared along with two Mexican wildlife officials while conducting an aerial survey of desert bighorn sheep.

Now Kolbe's relatives are awaiting DNA tests that would confirm that the remains found in Mexico are his.

But they've already made up their mind — and say it's him.

''We've got to get his remains back to Texas and bury him in Houston with his father," Darren Kolbe, the pilot's son, said Friday after returning from Baja California along the Pacific coast.

''This has been a very dark cloud over our family for 14 and a half years. It's difficult to deal with, and there's a sense of guilt. You sit year in and year out, and say, 'Did I do enough? Did we let him down? Did he get kidnapped? Is he alive? Did we just not do what we had to do to rescue him?' "

The discovery of the remains is "a great relief," said Kolbe, a Laredo businessman.


Wreckage located
Ranch hands looking for strays found the helicopter wreckage by chance late last month. They passed the news along to Alberto Tapia Landeros, a Mexicali professor who had researched bighorn sheep. He wrote a story about it for Mexicali's La Cronica newspaper. Journalists from the newspaper traveled to the site with a Kolbe friend, Cesar Cuellar, earlier this week and published a story about the discovery.

''We found the helicopter, and we confirmed it was his right down to the serial numbers," Kolbe said. ''That in itself is bringing a tremendous amount of closure. These other things will generate conspiracies, but we're not going to let it weigh us down anymore."

The "other things" he's talking about are the many questions swirling around the helicopter crash.

The helicopter appeared to have landed upright but hard, ripping off the right landing skid and bursting into flames.

Some people believe Mexico's central government covered up the crash, trying to conceal from Baja California officials its interest in the lucrative sale of permits for hunts of the rare mountain sheep.

The sale of hunting permits, which fetched from $12,000 to $100,000, ended with a 1990 ban on the hunting of bighorn sheep after populations were thought to have dwindled. But in 1992, the U.S. Foundation for North American Wild Sheep financed a $54,000 survey to prove the sheep were plentiful enough to resume hunting, and Kolbe was evidently hired by the Mexican government to monitor that survey, his relatives say.

According to another theory, the helicopter was shot down by drug traffickers operating in the rugged Baja mountains.

Tim Wilson, a Houston private investigator who investigated Kolbe's disappearance, traveled to Mexico City to interview Mexican ecology officials who had hired Lloyd Kolbe. He was not allowed to examine records relating to his employment.

''I have always thought there was foul play that was covered up by the government of Mexico," Wilson said. ''Deep down in my heart, I think he might have flown on an area controlled by a drug lord and they may have thought he was with the army or police and they shot the helicopter down."


Remains of 3 people
On Friday, Baja California assistant state prosecutor Francisco Javier Alcazar said the remains of three people were recovered from the crash site. He said forensic experts have identified a nearly complete skull, charred fragments of a second skull, and an eye socket from a third. Also found was part of sunglasses identified as belonging to Lloyd Kolbe, and binoculars. Alcazar said a DNA test of the remains is being conducted by the San Diego Police Department's forensic laboratory and could take six to eight weeks.

Kolbe said his father, who was 51, lifted off from San Luis Gonzaga on the morning of April 21, 1992.

On board his three-seater Hiller 12 E helicopter were two employees of Mexico's ecology agency — conservation assistant director Gonzalo Medina Gonzalez, 49, and Rafael Rebollar, 30, an ex-federal policeman hired four months earlier as a wildlife inspector.

Since then, there have been rumors that the former policeman, Rebollar, had been spotted in Mexico and the U.S.

''If Rebollar was not in that helicopter, then a major investigation has to be done to find out where he is, and why isn't he there," said Darren Kolbe.

Alcazar said the reported sightings of Rebollar were ''rumors," and said they had been hurtful to the ex-officer's family. He said DNA tests were collected Friday from Rebollar's mother, Maria Eugenia Rebollar de Bustos, who resides with her husband in Houston.

Kolbe said he's doing his best to move on and cherish the memories of his father.

''He was doing what he loved, and didn't want to be hamstrung by the normalcy of life. He was on a great adventure, and died doing it and would have wanted it that way."

The pilot ''lived large," his son said.

"He didn't like to follow in anybody's footsteps. He like to create his own path. He was extremely capable in everything he ever did. He owned a radio station. He loved to be heard. He like to talk — listening kind of bored him. If you were in a room with him, you were going to hear him."

james.pinkerton@chron.com