Close friend believes Steve Fossett 'had death wish because of guilt over marriage and finances'

Adventurer Steve Fossett crashed his plane into a remote Californian mountainside in a ‘subconscious death wish’, one of his closest confidants said last night.

American author and screenwriter Will Hasley, who co-wrote Fossett’s 2006 memoirs, claims the 63-year-old daredevil and financier had lost the will to live after becoming guilt-stricken over tensions in his marriage and anxious about his finances.

The discovery last week of the wreckage of Fossett’s small plane on a 9,700ft granite
ridge in California’s remote Sierra Nevada mountains has mystified experts who concentrated their year-long search for him around a ranch 120 miles to the north, where he was believed to be hunting for flat terrain to break the land-speed record.