by Pissed Off Cabbie » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:26 am
Michael A. Dornheim, who spent 22 years covering the super-secret multi-billion-dollar aerospace industry in California, vanished on June 3 after having dinner with friends.<br><br>On Monday, the journalist was found dead at the bottom of a ravine inside his crushed Honda Accord. Police had been searching for Dornheim since his mysterious disappearance a week earlier. Dornheim met friends at the Saddle Peak Lodge the night of June 3, a rustic restaurant in the mountains above Malibu.<br><br>"A friend said that Mr. Dornheim was planning to take the back road home, Cold Canyon to Mulholland Highway to the 101 Freeway," the Los Angeles Police Department announced on its website last week.<br><br>From the 101, it was a quick drive to his home in nearby Westlake. But within minutes of leaving the restaurant, his car plunged over a cliff and crashed 500 feet below -- off the winding Piuma Road, which means Dornheim's car was going in exactly the wrong direction, into Carbon Canyon toward Malibu Beach -- than the route he'd announced to his friends moments earlier.<br><br>Beyond the mystery of why Dornheim's car crashed on a road he had no intention of driving on, police are baffled by the crash itself.<br><br>California Highway Patrol Officer Leland Tong said he and his fellow officers were "scratching their heads" over how the editor's car got in the ravine at all.<br><br>"He navigated the turns just fine, and then, in a straightaway, for whatever reason, he went off the cliff," Tang told the Los Angeles Times.<br><br>"Not a rock was disturbed. Not even the brush was disturbed."<br><br>As for how the crash scene was missed for more than a week -- a helicopter pilot finally spotted the Honda on Monday -- the CHP says there was nothing to indicate a car had gone off the road beyond "a slight rubber scuff mark on one of the guardrails," the Times reported.<br><br>Carbon Canyon winds through the rugged Santa Monica Mountains, but it's also a busy road lined with the multi-million-dollar estates of Hollywood celebrities.<br><br>Dornheim's Honda is jammed so tight at the bottom of the ravine that cops are just going to leave it there; they say it's too heavy for their helicopter to lift it out.<br><br>Billion-Dollar Secrets<br><br>Michael Dornheim, 51, was the acclaimed West Coast editor of Aviation Week, the industry's bible.<br><br>His last cover story for the aerospace journal was a June 5 article on the Pentagon's "lunatic fringe" technology unit, DARPA, and its new Orbital Express space mission. The roving robotic spacecraft will reportedly repair and refuel Defense Department satellites while in orbit.<br><br>In recent years, Dornheim has covered DARPA taking over the X-37 space plane program from NASA and the remarkable story of Burt Rutan's SpaceShip One. He even traveled with the UFO hunters outside Area 51 in Nevada.<br><br>An engineer and private pilot, Dornheim used his expertise and skills to get outrageous scoops, such as the time he rented a single-engine plane in order to photograph the Stealth Bomber from angles the Pentagon attempted to block at the B-2's limited unveiling for aerospace reporters in 1988.<br><br>"Dornheim, who served as the magazine's senior engineering editor, was renowned for the depth of technical understanding his articles displayed on aeronautics, propulsion, avionics, systems engineering and safety," Aviation Week & Space Technology reported in Dornheim's obituary. "In addition to his work for the magazine, he often was called on to explain developments in aviation and space on television."<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/06/cops_baffled_by.php">www.sploid.com/news/2006/...led_by.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
