PRESCOTT HAD SCHEDULED THE PRESS CONFERENCE for the building’s largest courtroom. Even so, it was jammed. A forest of camera tripods had sprung up around the perimeter and in the aisles, and nearly every seat was taken. On the cameras, as Prescott led Maddox and me to a podium in front of the judge’s bench, I saw logos for CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, E!, and a dozen other cable networks and local stations.
“Good afternoon,” Prescott began briskly. “I’m Special Agent Miles Prescott of the FBI’s San Diego field office. With me are Mr. Patrick Maddox, a crash investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board, and Dr. William Brockton, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Tennessee. Mr. Maddox and Dr. Brockton will brief you on their findings, but before I turn the podium over to them, I’ll start by confirming that we have positively identified the remains of Richard Janus. Mr. Janus was the pilot of the jet that crashed the morning of June 19. He did indeed die in the crash, and he was the only person aboard the aircraft.”
The reporters shouted questions, but Prescott motioned for silence. “Please hold your questions until the end.” He then summoned Maddox to the podium to reprise what he’d told Mrs. Janus, and once Maddox was done, he brought me up to do the same. After I’d finished, Prescott opened the floor for questions. Maddox swiftly dispensed with the idea that the plane had been shot down or sabotaged or bombed, as well as the suggestion that Janus had lost control of the aircraft, and then I answered a few basic questions: yes, I was confident that teeth were as reliable as DNA for purposes of identification; no, I didn’t think DNA testing would be possible, though we would certainly give it a try; yes, it was true that I ran a facility called the Body Farm, where corpses were allowed to rot in the name of research.
Then Prescott himself asked a question—one that he’d told me to expect, asking me to save my final images until he gave me the go-ahead. “Dr. Brockton,” he said, “did you find anything noteworthy at the crash site besides the remains of Richard Janus?” I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, to make sure I understood his cue correctly, and he gave a slight nod.
“Noteworthy? Yes,” I said. “In fact, I’d say it was quite remarkable. Under the wreckage, crushed by the nose of the plane, we found the body of another man—a Mexican immigrant, as best we can tell. We also found the body of a mountain lion, which appeared to be pouncing on the man at the moment of the crash.” The end of my sentence was nearly drowned out by a chorus of gasps, exclamations, and questions as I flashed the image of the two carcasses flattened against the rocks. If Prescott had intended to create a stir, his strategy had succeeded in spades. Catching my eye, he pointed to the screen and spun an index finger in a go-ahead signal. I clicked forward to the close-ups, and the room buzzed again. When the buzz subsided, I described in more detail how we’d found them—man and beast—plastered to the bluff’s bare rock, and how the insect activity confirmed the freshness of their deaths.