Investigators Suspect Suicide in Plane Plunge

Dec. 17, 2000 -- Investigators believe a San Francisco woman’s 2,000-foot fall from a corporate plane over northern California was a suicide.

The FBI has ruled out foul play or a mechanical malfunction inthe death of Elisabeth Mathilde Otto.

The 29-year-old woman plunged from a Hewlett-Packard company shuttle after apparently opening an emergency exit Thursday evening.

Pilots didn’t know it until they landed.

A passenger tried to save Otto, agent Andy Black said on Friday. With other passengers watching, the man held on to her as long as he could, but finally had to let go to avoid being sucked out as well.

A source close to the investigation tells The Associated Press that family had urged Otto to seek counseling. Friends described Otto as despondent after a recent move to San Francisco from Europe.

The FBI says two passengers who saw Otto fall from the plane were so distraught they could not tell pilots what had happened. Police were not notified she was missing until 45 minutes after the plane landed in San Jose.

Sacramento police said late Friday they found Otto’s body in a community vegetable garden.

Unlocked Door

The twin-engine turboprop plane, leased by Hewlett-Packard for use as an employee shuttle, was carrying five passengers and two crew members when it took off from Lincoln Regional Airport, which serves the town of Roseville north of Sacramento. The plane had 18 seats, so it was far from full.

The plane flies regularly between Roseville and San Jose, two California cities where Hewlett-Packard has offices, the FAA said. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, near San Jose.

Police spokesmen and the FBI offered this re-creation of the event, based on initial reports: Shortly after departing the Lincoln airport, the pilot noticed a warning light indicating an unlocked door.

The plane made an emergency landing at Sacramento Executive Airport to check on the door, then took off again.

But at 5:23 p.m. local time, about 5 miles southeast of Sacramento, at an altitude of 2,000 feet, the door opened again and Otto apparently jumped out.

The co-pilot emerged from the cockpit and quickly closed the door to keep the other passengers out of danger. The man who tried to save Otto, and other passengers tried to tell the co-pilot what had happened, but he did not hear them because of the loud whooshing sound generated by the open plane door and the chaos of the situation.

“It’s a very dangerous situation when a door flies open in a moving plane,” said Black. “The co-pilot came to the back of the plane and immediately secured the door so that no one else would be in danger. What happened was that the other passengers tried to tell him he lost a passenger, but in the confusion of the situation and the loud noise of the wind rushing into the plane, he apparently didn’t hear them.”

The pilots did not realize they had lost a passenger until the plane landed at San Jose International Airport at 6:05 p.m.

Based on the accounts of the male passenger and others who saw the woman fall out of the plane, Black said, murder was ruled out.

Human-Caused Problem?

According to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jerry Snyder, the initial report to the FAA was that woman jumped. Snyder said the FAA ruled out the possibilitythat a mechanical malfunction caused the door to open.

Keith Holloway, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said authorities weren’t sure how the emergency exit was opened.

“At this point there doesn’t appear to be any mechanical issues involved,” he said.

Hewlett-Packard, in a statement, said it was “deeply concerned and [is] helping authorities to determine what happened,” but declined to provide any additional information.

The aircraft was a Canadian-built De Havilland DHC-6-300, a twin turboprop plane also known as a Twin Otter, said Bruce Nelson, an operations officer with the FAA in Los Angeles.

No longer manufactured, but still sold on the secondhand market, the Twin Otter is an extremely popular small aircraft currently in use by businesses, commuter airlines and the U.S. military. Manufacturer De Havilland is now owned by Canadian transportation giant Bombardier.

ABCNEWS’ Kevin Wing in San Francisco, ABCNEWS.com’s Sascha Segan and Bryan Robinson, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.