Unexpected ‘Heirs’ of Flight 261

Alan and Helen Clemetson were still mourning the death of their son David on Alaska Airlines flight 261 when an unexpected aftershock of the crash landed on their doorstep.

It was a lawsuit claiming that David B. Clemetson, a respected Seattle-area physician who perished aboard the flight along with his wife and four children, had secretly fathered a Guatemalan girl 10 years earlier. The girl, the suit alleged, was now entitled to a share of his estate as well as any settlement his family might receive.

Around the same time, Dale Rettinger of San Francisco got a similar jolt: A lawsuit claiming his gay partner of 20 years, another Alaska Airlines crash victim named Juan Marquez, 53, had fathered two children with a woman Rettinger had never heard of.

In all, four men aboard the plane that plunged into the Pacific a year ago today--strangers from different cities and completely different walks of life--have been accused of fathering six illegitimate children, all of them from Guatemala.

Survivors found the claims preposterous. Clemetson, 40, was said to have carried on an affair with an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant and traveled to her country to deliver the child. Another crash victim, Terry Ryan, was accused of fathering a girl with a Zapatista rebel fighter who later died in a battle with Mexican troops.

So in addition to spending the last year coming to terms with the sudden loss, the families have united in an effort to clear the names of their loved ones and prove what they consider a conspiracy by people trying to take advantage of the tragedy.

The allegations highlight a little-known and emotionally wrenching byproduct of mass air disasters: the surprising, and sometimes questionable, claims arising in the scramble for damages in wrongful death cases.

Such claims have occurred in a string of recent international airline crashes and can cost air carriers and manufacturers millions of dollars. After a 1996 cargo jet disaster in Ecuador, for example, the father of a boy killed on the ground discovered that another man claiming paternity of his dead son had won a settlement from the airline.

The Alaska Airlines cases, say aviation law experts, stand apart because of the sheer number of children involved and the tireless campaign of family members trying to unravel the mystery.

“It’s the most unusual probate I’ve ever handled,� said Harold Fardal, an attorney representing some of the alleged illegitimate children. “It’s a very unusual story.�

Survivors have forged strong bonds in their quests to disprove the claims. The Ryans and Clemetsons have even pooled funds to send investigators to Guatemalan slums to get the children’s DNA samples. Those results are due back soon.

“It’s so terribly sad that we had to go to these lengths,� said Clemetson’s father, Dr. Alan Clemetson. “They made up the whole damn can of worms when we were already suffering.�

But attorneys representing the girls maintain that the family ties are legitimate. More than 60 wrongful death claims have been filed against the airline so far, they said, and the children’s cases are just as valid as the others. They point out that past airplane crashes have sometimes produced legitimate but unknown heirs.

Federico Sayre, a Newport Beach attorney who filed suit in Orange County on behalf of Clemetson’s alleged daughter, said he got the case from a colleague in Los Angeles with contacts at the Guatemalan Consulate. He said he reviewed the case, including a photograph of the doctor and child together, and believes it is valid.

“We’re not backing off. As far as we’re concerned, we have the right child,� he said.

Families Devastated

Alaska Airlines Flight 261, en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and then Seattle, claimed 88 lives when it plunged into the Pacific Ocean a few miles off the Ventura County coast. Among those who perished were the Clemetson and Ryan families.

Clemetson, 40, a British-trained physician, had traveled to Puerto Vallarta with his wife and four school-age children for a weekend break from his thriving Seattle-area practice. Ryan, 55, a small-business owner, had gone to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate his son’s 30th birthday with his wife, another son and numerous family members.

Their deaths devastated family members. At memorial services, both men were remembered as devoted husbands and fathers with strong community ties. Clemetson was an expert on infectious diseases who often traveled to Africa for AIDS research. Ryan, a gregarious former U.S. Air Force captain from Redmond, Wash., threw weekly pizza parties that drew neighbors far and wide.

A few months after the crash, salvage crews recovered a roll of film showing the Ryan family sunning themselves, lounging on a boat ride and walking the cobblestone streets of the quaint Mexican town.

“They couldn’t have been happier,� said Terry Ryan’s brother, Jay Ryan of Covina.

By then, however, the family was struggling with accusations that Terry Ryan lived a secret life. The suit was filed by Miami-area attorneys representing a 6-year-old, blond Guatemalan girl who they claimed was Ryan’s daughter.

Ryan, according to court documents, fathered the girl with a guerrilla fighter named Carla Maria Lopez. Ryan allegedly sympathized with Mexico’s Zapatista rebel movement and met Lopez during a brief trip to the country in 1993. Lopez died in a skirmish with Mexican Army troops and had left the child in the care of her great-aunt.

“It was ludicrous, completely ludicrous. The whole thing,� said Jay Ryan. “We all laughed.�

He described his brother as a “Rush Limbaugh Republican� who didn’t sympathize with the leftist Zapatista movement. “Not a chance. He was in no way a liberal, and no way interested in the causes of Zapatistas. He probably couldn’t even tell who they were, or what they were.�

The family immediately began gathering evidence to refute the claim, including uncovering ticket stubs of a college football game they say Ryan was attending when the child was supposedly conceived.

During their research, they came across a photo of Ryan’s alleged daughter; next to her in the photo was another girl said to have the last name Clemetson. They soon discovered the second girl was also said to be fathered by an Alaska Airlines victim: Dr. David Clemetson. Soon, they were in contact with his parents.

Court documents claim that David Clemetson met a Guatemalan, Lesbia del Rosario Galindo, at his medical clinic in Seattle. After a brief alleged affair, Galindo got pregnant and went back to Guatemala to give birth to a baby girl, the documents say.

Clemetson’s supposed lover, like Ryan’s, also met a tragic death. She purportedly drowned in a river while attempting to cross back into this country.

The claims’ similarities were echoed in two more lawsuits, the families learned. Renato Bermudez, a decorated San Francisco firefighter, supposedly fathered two Guatemalan children, as did Marquez, of San Francisco.

Determined to unravel the “Guatemalan connection,� the Clemetson and Ryan families mounted an international fact-finding mission that culminated this month in a Guatemala City slum, where teams of investigators, attorneys and court officials met with the two girls and two women presented as their grandmothers.

In a report describing the meeting, the legal guardian appointed by a Seattle court to look after the children’s interests concluded that the grandmothers’ accounts about the alleged relationships were “complete fabrications.�

The grandmothers couldn’t get their stories straight, wrote guardian Carol Bailey Medwell, with one grandmother even confusing the name of Clemetson’s alleged child with that of Ryan’s.

The team also visited the villages where the girls were supposed to have been born but found no birth certificates registered. Convinced that the children were being exploited for financial gain, Medwell decided not to question them.

The link between the two cases, according to Medwell’s report, is a Guatemala City woman who referred the grandmothers to a Miami private investigator. A Miami-area law firm eventually filed suit. The woman told Medwell that she had experience with aviation disasters: She said two of her husbands had been killed in crashes.

That statement strengthened the families’ suspicions that they are dealing with an organized group. The families of the other two men, Marquez and Bermudez, have not yet investigated the allegations but remain in close contact with the Ryans and Clemetsons. They also maintain that the allegations are false.

“All of our friends would laugh . . . because they knew Juan would never have sex with a woman,� Rettinger said. “I think this is going to be tossed out. Everyone knows it’s bogus.�

Alan Clemetson now believes that his son and the other three men were selected because they left no direct heirs and presented the biggest potential payouts.

After a Crash, the Claims Roll In

When jetliners fall from the sky, it only takes hours for the wheels of what some call the “disaster-claim machine� to start moving. Intense competition heats up among attorneys to sign up as many victims’ family members as possible. The stakes are high: Settlements can top $3 million per passenger, and the lawyer’s share can reach 30%.

The vast majority of claims are legitimate. But both insurance industry and plaintiffs’ attorneys say numerous air disasters through the years have produced questionable lawsuits, either from people claiming to be relatives of victims, or claiming injury damages.

Suspicious claims are seen most often in crashes in Latin America, where marriage and birth certificates used to established relationships are easily forged.

In disaster-struck foreign cities, attorneys from the United States often run ads in local newspapers after crashes, and teams of investigators--called case-runners--hunt down claimants for a piece of the action. The race to land the first case is especially intense, experts say, because it can generate a headline that brings in more business.

“In every foreign accident I have been involved with, lawyers descend on the hotels en masse, passing out cards and trolling for cases,� said Robert Alpert, a North Carolina attorney who has represented airline insurers in more than 40 disasters.

After a cargo jet slammed into a small Ecuadorean town in 1996, for example, insurers mistakenly paid $125,000 to a man claiming to be the father of a local boy who died in the crash. The real father showed up later, forcing the insurer to pay another claim, this time for $75,000.

Investigators uncovered other “cooked up� claims in the Ecuadorean crash, said Tom Thornton, a Miami-based attorney who represents the airline’s insurer. Both involved doctored hospital records placing dead or injured people at the scene of the accident. The cases were eventually dismissed, he said.

The Alaska Airlines crash isn’t the first time such claims have cropped up on American soil. Several bogus cases came in the aftermath of a 1970s Florida air disaster. And in 1979, after a plane crashed while taking off from Chicago, the jet manufacturer mistakenly paid a $500,000 settlement to a boyfriend of a stewardess who he said was his wife. Sometimes, however, paternity suits appear to have more legitimacy.

A 1995 American Airlines crash in Cali, Colombia, killed 159 people and generated numerous such lawsuits. In one, the sister of a New York victim challenged legal efforts made on behalf of a child the brother had allegedly fathered in Miami. That case was eventually settled out of court, with the child receiving an undisclosed payment.

“When something like this happens, everybody comes out of the woodwork, and it starts peeling back layers of people’s lives,� said Joseph T. Cook, a former Orange County aviation litigation attorney. “You file a claim thinking you’re the only one, and find out the [victim] had another family of seven children somewhere else.�

The airline industry does not keep records on the cost of fraudulent claims in the wake of plane crashes. But some attorneys believe it reaches into the millions of dollars for a major disaster.

“The terrible thing about a lot of these crashes is that the people who lost loved ones are the victims,� said Alpert, “and then they become the victims again when they are forced through the system.�

It’s a sentiment the Clemetson and Ryan families can relate to as they wait for the courts to review the paternity cases. A judge will review the guardian’s report and determine at a February hearing in Seattle whether the lawsuits can go forward.

Three law firms representing the alleged illegitimate children have either withdrawn from the case or are planning to.

Robert L. Parks, the Miami-area attorney who brought claims on behalf of all six children, did not return calls seeking comment. His secretary, however, said another attorney is now handling the suits. Sayre, the Newport Beach attorney, stressed that his case is separate from those filed in Miami and is based on videotaped interviews with his client’s grandmother that a colleague collected on a trip to Guatemala.

The Clemetson and Ryan families, who met for the first time this week at memorial services, estimate they’ve spent more than $100,000 fighting the claims so far. The Clemetsons have asked in court documents that, if the child is proved not to be their son’s, plaintiff attorneys bear the costs of DNA tests and other expenses related to their Guatemala investigation. Still, they say the emotional toll has been higher than any financial costs.

“It’s been absolutely terrible. I feel scared all the time in what they can do next,� said Helen Clemetson.