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Figuring backward from Ankers’ time, Normans Cay’s reception was thus just about 30 minutes before Spector should have run out of fuel. This was 3 hours and 19 minutes after the earlier distress heard by Schmiedeknecht. Ankers' reception was 2 hours after fuel starvation. The brevity of each signal and the unexpected nature of the call can account for the fact that Ankers called the plane a twin Beech instead of a single engine plane, which Spector’s C-35 Bonanza was. The color scheme though was the description of the missing plane. The plane was Spector’s.
The U.S. Coast Guard, somewhat befuddled as to where to look for the plane, concentrated their efforts in the northern Exuma area where the SOS signals had been heard all throughout the day. This continued until January 12th. The search concentrated on finding any identifiable flotsam, such as the yellow life jackets Spector said he had on board. Perhaps even the plane might be found on a deserted island’s cove. The latter almost seems a necessity to account for an SOS to be sent long after fuel consumption.
In the end, there was no trace to be found. There was no debris, there was no twisted fuselage or a dark silhouette below the aquamarine hues. The fate of
Robert Spector, Armando Milenes, Sandra Williams and Marcelo Cookley remain undecided to this day.
But there’s more. NTSB investigators contacted Opa-Locka Airport to inquire
of "Robert Spector." Yet those questioned at Hangar One denied any knowledge
of any Robert Spector. Another dead-end was encountered when the factual
information on the aircraft was pulled from FAA records in Oklahoma. These showed the plane was registered to a Frank Depinto of Opa-Locka. Once again, returning to Hangar One, there was no success at contacting this man either, all people at Opa-Locka denying any knowledge of such a man as well.
Nevertheless, the reason for Spector's flight to Nassau was discovered. On the day of the flight, Spector and Milenes were due to appear in a Bahamian Court to face charges of being in possession of controlled substances and illegal weapons.
Did they intentionally disappear? One might think that a masquerade of crashing at sea, complete with an ambiguous SOS, could be a sure-proof method of making authorities think they were lost at sea and drowned. However, from where was the SOS sent hours after the fuel was gone? The mystery has no explanation. The messages sped across the radios, in this case over a 5 hour and 19 minute interim, but the distance and location could never be obtained, and the plane and occupants, we must assume, then passed into a void permanently.
But this is hardly the first incident of this nature. . .or the most sensational.
Yet there is something else here as well, and we’d be naive not to follow it.
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