Published Feb. 2, 2005, in the Kirksville Daily Express

Story by Matthew Webber

MILLARD, Mo. - In a field and woods about two miles south of Kirksville Regional Airport, itself about four miles south of Kirksville, Timothy Doyle searches in vain for a global-positioning-system signal.

On a freezing Saturday morning in January, more than three months after the Oct. 19 crash of AmericanConnection Flight 5966 that killed 13 of 15 people aboard and almost a month after the city of Kirksville received notice it might be sued, Doyle - a pilot, aviation instructor and crash investigator - is struggling to pinpoint his exact location.

Finding the exact spot of the only fatal commercial airplane crash of 2004 is part of Doyle's job. On this trip, as well as on flights he plans to take in the next couple months both in his own plane and on Corporate Airlines, the investigator's goal is to gather information, to reconstruct what happened as closely as he can, and to at least see for himself the place where the plane crashed and burned.

Doyle, who teaches at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Mich., is the type of expert "you're going to see for every attorney, every law firm" whose purpose is "to come out and start the process of then trying to figure out what's going on," as Doyle defines it.

More investigators like Doyle will soon visit the region - if they haven't already - to do what Doyle is doing now: take measurements, ask a lot questions and request copies of files from local authorities. These experts will "figure out what's going on" for their employers, the lawyers who represent the estates of crash victims.

Without the work of experts like Doyle, lawyers and their clients would have to wait several months or even years for any technical information about the crash. Even with this information, these types of cases often take up to three or four years to go to trial.

"While the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] does a great job, it takes a long while to get that report in public hands," says Doyle, who will not reveal the name of his lawyer or the estate his firm is representing. "[The lawyers] are interested in starting their own investigation so they can start the process of recovery on behalf of their victims."

Doyle stresses he is not here to assign blame. This part comes later, in court.

"The attorney is an advocate," he says. "The expert is not an advocate. The expert's job is not to tell a story the way the attorney wants it told or to agree with the attorney with what happened but to advise the attorney about his or her opinions about what happened and the attorney goes from there."

The GPS device is one of several tools Doyle brought for the trip, along with a compass, measuring tape and camera, as well as the AP photographer, from whom Doyle's lawyer will purchase pictures both of the crash and of this trip.

"What I need to do is document the site," he says. "I need to know where [the wreckage] is in relationship to the published approach of the airport, whether the fellow was right underneath the approach he's supposed to be on or whether he's to the right or left of it."

If you didn't know there was a plane crash here, there's not much evidence left to tell you otherwise.

The few reminders of the fiery crash are the trees: the topped trees, charred trees, trees with orange and yellow spray-painted code numbers.

In the snow, in spite or because of the fallen trees, the site looks more like an idyllic farm setting than the location of such a disaster.

On the four-mile drive back to the newspaper office, Doyle answers whether he found what he was looking for.

"Well, I came to find out where the accident scene is and to get, to take a look at the manner in which it happened, and that's the new information I have," he answers. "I'll take this information home and file it with whole bunches of other information that's coming. At some point a picture emerges about what may be the most likely or probable scenario, but it's nowhere close to happening yet.

"Now, someone else may come to a perfectly legitimate differing view about that, but, in the case of the experts, their view is backed by whatever facts they have at their command," Doyle continues. "The jury looks at those facts and decides whether the facts substantiate the view."

In an accident involving 15 people aboard, an airport and an airline from several different states, Doyle explains at length how his research might be used in court.

He stresses this is all hypothetical, and there are additional research trips to the region and several years to come before any of this will be used in a trial. He uses an automobile-crash lawsuit as an example:

"I'll give you a hypothetical," he says. "If the jury is convinced someone is responsible, and four theories are given why that person is responsible, the jury is not going to pay a whole lot of attention to those details, right? ...

"This issue usually occurs [when] one or another may say somebody else was also guilty. That's where you get into really high-profile attorney stories where hospitals get sued, police chiefs and newspaper people and the automobile manufacturer, and you think, 'What are they doing in the case?'

"Well, there you have attorneys who have a different thought about why it happened and maybe everybody agrees the driver was drunk, let's just start there. ...

"But somebody else may say, 'Yeah, but, the car also helped this.' Then you get into these huge settlements on behalf of a manufacturer for terrible injuries to a person, where you think, 'Why, is the manufacturer responsible for this? The guy was drunk.' ...

"You have a system which, in the end, people allege is deficient or not perfect or not totally just. Unfortunately or fortunately, it's simply because it's [a] human [system]."

In other words, neither he nor anyone really knows what happened Oct. 19, if they ever will.

But, when any of these cases go to trial, it's very possible, if not probable, "money will change hands":

"Folks have every reason to worry, folks who operate the airline have every reason to worry about this one," Doyle says. "My guess is, and it's just a guess, that down the road, money will change hands. It's sort of in that direction. I don't know, and I'm not predicting anything, nor am I making any allegations now.

"The issue might be, should money change hands in another direction? Is there somebody else that may have been involved here? That may not come out for a long time."