Steve Fossett, 63; adventurer set 116 world records
Steve Fossett, the multimillionaire aviation and sailing world record holder who has been missing since taking off alone in a single-engine plane from a private Nevada airstrip in early September, was declared legally dead Friday by an Illinois court. He was 63.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Malak ruled that there was sufficient evidence to declare Fossett dead after he heard testimony from Fossett's wife Peggy as well as an expert on search and rescue operations.
Fossett's wife first petitioned the court on Nov. 27 to declare Fossett dead -- a step toward resolving the legal status of Fossett's estate, which was described in court papers as "vast, surpassing eight figures in liquid assets, various entities and real estate." The Fossetts had been married since the late 1960s.
Steve Fossett, who amassed his fortune trading options in the Chicago commodities market, gained his greatest renown for his historic balloon and airplane flights: He was the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world and was the first pilot to circle the globe solo in an aircraft without stopping or refueling.
The exhaustive search on the Nevada and California border for the high-profile adventurer, which was described by the Civil Air Patrol as one of the largest efforts to locate a missing plane in modern history, was formally suspended on Oct. 2.
Fossett was reported missing after taking off on what he had said would be a short morning flight from hotel magnate and aviation enthusiast William Barron Hilton's Flying M Ranch, some 60 miles southeast of Carson City toward Bishop, California.
Before taking off in a Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon -- it was one of the aircraft kept at the ranch -- Fossett reportedly told friends that he wanted to search for a dry lake bed suitable for his next goal: breaking the land speed record in a vehicle powered by a turbojet engine that could reach 800 mph.
British billionaire-adventurer Richard Branson, a one-time rival who partnered with Fossett and Per Lindstrand in a failed 1998 attempt to make the first nonstop around-the-world flight in a three-man balloon, once described Fossett as "a sort of half-android, half-Forrest Gump."
In a first-person appreciation of his missing friend for Time magazine in October, Branson described Fossett as "one of the most generous, good-natured and kind people I have ever met, but also one of the bravest and most determined adventurers and explorers of all time."
