For one week, in the summer of 1971, Philo dominated the headlines of the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette.
The story centered around the mysterious disappearance of an airplane and the deaths of five people, including a world class jockey and a wealthy horse trainer.
Locally, at least, the story began late on the evening of Sunday, July 4, just before midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Sutton, who lived about a mile north of Philo at the time, heard a large "thud", strong enough to shake the walls of their house. They searched their property, and even drove up and down their road, but weren't able to determine the source. Mrs. Sutton called the Sheriff's Office, alerting them of the disturbance, and even suggested that it might've been a plane crash. A Sheriff's car was sent to investigate, but nothing unusual was discovered.
Piper Comanche Aircraft
Earlier that same evening, at around 9:00 p.m., a single-engine Piper Comanche aircraft left Sioux City, Iowa, en route to Cincinnati, Ohio. The five people on board included a successful 22-year old jockey from Rapid City, South Dakota, and a 40-year old horse trainer from Cincinnati. At 11:15 p.m. just over two hours into the flight, the pilot contacted the airport tower in Quincy, asking for updated weather conditions. At this time, the plan was to refuel the plane in Indianapolis before continuing on to Cincinnati. It was the last time anyone heard from the pilot. Less than an hour later, the plane was buried in a Philo cornfield, with no survivors.
The whole thing was fouled up...
Mrs. Sutton's assertions that a plane may have crashed just 300 yards from her house were originally dismissed. Even though FAA officials had determined, early on, that the plane had likely crashed, word was not disseminated to law enforcement officials until mid-afternoon on Monday. When the news was broadcast on local television, Mrs. Sutton revisited the cornfields surrounding her house and discovered the crash site. 19 hours after her original phone call, the Sheriff's Department officially reported the wreckage. A local law enforcement official lamented "The whole thing was fouled up from beginning to end." Had it not been for the local television reports, the Sheriff's Office would not have even known about a plane being reported missing.
There was wreckage everywhere...
The severity of crash was evidenced by the fact that debris was strewn over one-half of a mile. A good portion of the plane was buried in the ground. Philo Road Commissioner John Godsell used township equipment to extract the plane. So little fuel was on the plane at the time of the crash that there was very little burning. Unsurprisingly, recovery of the bodies was problematic and incomplete. Local residents visiting the crash site found remains weeks after recovery operations had ceased. The victims' families were unhappy with the operation. One family asserted that a large sum of money aboard the plane was never reported to have been recovered.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash and ruled the cause was attributable, in part, to the fact that the pilot was using VFR (Visual Flight Rules) despite the stormy weather. They further cited "spatial disorientation" of the pilot as a cause. There was a lot of finger pointing after the crash. The owner of the plane, Lester Lloyd of Cincinnati, was quoted as saying that the pilot had been explicitly told that the plane was not to be used for charter or commercial purposes. He informed the NTSB investigators that he was not even aware that the plane was being used that day.
Now where exactly did this happen?
The crash site is located along the north side of County Road 1000 North, approximately one-half west of Route 130. At the time, the 80-acre parcel was owned by Jim and Judy Hughes, and contained a single home occupied by the Suttons. The parcel was prone to flooding, and the persistent water there earned it the nickname "Sutton's Pond". The Sutton house was torn down long ago. The low spot was filled in, and two other houses have since been constructed on the site.
Crash site location, approximately one-half mile west of Unity East Elementary School
Crash site shown today
(The information in this story was pulled from the News-Gazette articles, as well as from interviews with John Sutton, nephew of Tom and Marion Sutton, and with Dick Miller, a local farmer whose grandparents lived in the house immediately east of the crash site.)
