A JUNGLE MYSTERY

May 27, 2018 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

– will the Mazaruni ever reveal its secret about the three men who vanished nine years ago?

By Michael Jordan

Flying over Guyana’s interior in one of those tiny, flimsy-looking planes, you look down on that vast jungle so far down below, and you can’t help wondering: What would happen if this plane went down? Will I survive, slamming into trees and hurtling down like a stone?
And if I were to survive, would I ever be found? Or will I wander through square mile upon square mile of jungle, lost forever? For sure, looking for that tiny plane would be like searching for a needle in a large green haystack.
And you would be right, because that has been the fate of many an unfortunate pilot who has ventured into Guyana’s rugged interior.
The old-timers will tell you that one pilot crashed in the Mazaruni area over two and a half decades ago.
Neither plane nor man was found.
They will reminisce that another plane, with its pilot and about six European passengers, vanished without trace while flying between Anna Regina and Mount Roraima.
A third disappeared while flying to Kaieteur.
And that would bring them to speculating about the fate of three men who ventured into the Mazaruni in a plane over nine years ago and were never seen again.
At around 14:14 hrs on Saturday, November 1, 2008, a Beechcraft King Air plane departed the Cheddi Jagan International Airport for the interior.
On board were pilot, Captain James Wesley Barker, 28, First Officer Chris Paris, 23, both US citizens, and Canadian Patrick Murphy, a Geophysics technician.
Their mission: to conduct aerial surveys on behalf of Prometheus Resources (Guyana) Inc., a Canadian Company that was hoping to locate uranium deposits in the vicinity of Chi Chi, Cuyuni/Mazaruni. The aircraft had enough fuel for five hours 30 minutes and the crew was scheduled to conduct their survey in the Chi-Chi/Imbaimadai area for approximately four hours 30 minutes before returning to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
At 15:06 hrs, the crew reported to the Control Tower at the airport that they were commencing normal operations over the survey area. No further reports were received from the aircraft.
When the plane failed to return at the scheduled time, or report on their whereabouts, Air Traffic Control staff alerted other aircraft in the vicinity to try to establish contact with the Beechcraft.
The US MCC Southern Command was also contacted for any reports of distress signals from the area.
But no one had heard from the crew and by afternoon, there was no doubt that they were missing.
Officials from the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) were alerted to the crisis, and one of the longest and most intense searches for a missing aircraft in Guyana began.
The initial search team included the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Air Corps and Special Forces, along with two British helicopters also involved along with five other planes. These were supported by two aircraft chartered by GCAA from Air Services Limited and two private aircraft.
But cloud cover and bad weather caused the search to be delayed until the following day.
Ground searches were also conducted by the army. Officials of Prometheus Resources (Guyana) Inc., the company, which had sent the men on the survey expedition, also organised its own search party.
But no trace of the plane was found the following day, or the next.
At first, the rescue team had been picking up signals from the missing plane’s Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT).
An expert in locating ELT signals arrived in the country with sophisticated equipment. But he was unable to locate the area from which the ELT signals were emanating.
After seven days, the ELT signals ceased, and hope of finding the men alive began to fade.
Veteran Guyanese pilot Captain Gerald ‘Gerry’ Gouveia who had survived a crash some miles from Timehri, knew that hope was running out for the crew.
The Mazaruni area where they had disappeared was harsh terrain. Even uninjured survivors would be exposed to cold, to inclement weather, and a shortage of food and water.
And they would also be running out of hope.
On November 16, 2009, some two weeks after the Beechcraft King Air plane disappeared, the then- Minister of Transport, Works and Communication Robeson Benn reluctantly announced that the aerial search had been called off.
“As difficult as it may seem, we have expended all the resources, the time and the effort that we could at this stage. There is nothing more that we can do…We aren’t in a position to recover them. We have no specific knowledge of their whereabouts. The basis of our calling off the search is that we believe that they have perished.”
Nevertheless, officials from Prometheus Resources (Guyana) Inc. decided to continue the search, even if that meant merely recovering the wrecked plane and the bodies of its crew.
Flyers were distributed to residents of the Middle Mazaruni, where the plane was believed to have crashed.
Pilots took aerial pictures, which were later posted online and scrutinized by a barrage of other pilots.
This was backed up by a team conducting ground searches.
In late November, the search shifted to an area in the Kurupung after a Brazilian miner claimed to have heard an explosion in the location shortly after seeing a plane flying overhead. But they found nothing.
Hope rose again in December 2008, when some pilots examining aerial photographs identified what appeared to be the tail of the Beech King aircraft protruding from trees in an area in the Middle Mazaruni jungle.
This information led to suggestions that the pilot had crashed while flying over the escarpment, which borders the Middle and the Upper Mazaruni.
According to this theory, the pilot underestimated the steepness of the escarpment and was forced to climb faster than he actually could. But the aircraft stalled and then dived down into the dense vegetation. It had most likely plummeted nose-first, hence the failure to create any significant clearance in the vegetation and so make the crash site easily visible.
However, to their immense disappointment, when the search party reached the suspected crash site, they discovered that the “tail” of the aircraft was actually part of a dead tree.
Undaunted, the team continued searching into the new year.
In August 2009, aided by specially trained cadaver dogs, a US search-and-rescue team of ex-army personnel ventured into the Mid-Mazaruni area for one final attempt to recover the victims.
But, like others before them, they found no trace of the plane or victims. They finally acknowledged that the victims may never be found. The team then dropped wreaths over the area where the plane is believed to have disappeared. That was acknowledgment that the treacherous Mazaruni jungle would be their final resting place.