By Te-Ping Chen
KUALA LUMPUR-- Sarah Bajc is holding on to her mementos of life
with Philip Wood, an American executive who took off on Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370 more than nine months ago and never came
home.
They include a gold-painted Agamemnon mask, adorned with a knit
hat from Mr. Wood's childhood, and a photo of the trim 51-year-old
Texan on a trip in Thailand, shot in the low light of a mountain
shrine where they once sheltered during a typhoon warning.
Now, Ms. Bajc rises early and has coffee alone on the balcony of
the Malaysian apartment the two picked out in January. On a recent
day, she scrolled through a spreadsheet with some 300 tips about
the plane submitted by the public.
One was from a person claiming to have seen an object flaming in
the sky the day Flight 370 disappeared. Another alleged there has
been a coverup, with proof in a laptop in London.
"I haven't grieved yet," said Ms. Bajc, who says she is
determined to find out what happened to her partner, a smiling man
with salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes. "I haven't accepted that
he's dead....I owe it to him to find out the truth."
Since Flight 370, carrying 239 people, vanished on March 8 en
route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, its fate has remained a
mystery. A costly search effort that mapped thousands of miles of
ocean and involved some 100 days of scouring for debris has yielded
nothing.
That has left the field open for family members, independent
analysts and conspiracy theorists to pursue their own inquiries. It
is also making it hard for people to let go.
Like many with loved ones aboard the doomed flight, Ms. Bajc--a
49-year-old schoolteacher and divorced mother of three who was born
in Utah--is deeply skeptical of the official investigation, which
says Flight 370 crashed in the Indian Ocean after running out of
fuel. With no debris yet found, she said she is confident the plane
isn't in the water.
Ms. Bajc isn't alone in pushing for answers. One volunteer group
has set up a website called The Hunt for 370 to gather clues.
Another group of family members, Voice 370, has pushed for Malaysia
to release more information on the plane's cargo, which they hope
might contain insights.
Steve Wang, a Beijing IT salesman whose mother was on board,
said he still thinks there might be survivors, and that many
Chinese family members feel similarly.
The families remain in communication via groups on the
social-messaging application WeChat. They also maintain a public
account with news about the plane on Sina Weibo, a Chinese
Twitter-like service. Its main image is a plane flying, with the
words: "You come back soon."
"I could accept [the plane] is missing, but I cannot accept it
has crashed," Mr. Wang said. "It is still just like a dream."
Malay Mukherjee, whose son and Chinese daughter-in-law were
aboard Flight 370, said he and his wife have been busy trying to
care for their orphaned grandsons, ages 3 and 8, who now live with
them in Mumbai.
Since losing his son, Mr. Malay, 67, has had to navigate a
bureaucratic maze to assume guardianship over his grandchildren and
obtain a death certificate, a process that required three trips to
Chicago, where his son once lived.
"There are so many theories and it's very difficult for
laypeople like us to make any informed conjectures," he said.
Robert Brotherton, a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths,
University of London who studies conspiracy theories, says it is
normal for people to look for alternative explanations when there
is an information vacuum.
But that doesn't make them true.
"Conspiracy theories resonate nicely with our intuition:
Something big and shocking happens, like a plane full of people
disappearing," he said, "and our brains are biased towards thinking
it's because of something big and intentional."
Others are just hoping to help improve the odds the plane is
found. The Independent Group, a collection of some 20 interested
amateurs, aviation experts and scientists, has produced multiple
reports offering its own analysis of data tracking the plane.
In October, the group felt vindicated when the search area
designated by authorities off the coast of Australia was redirected
into an area it had recommended.
Duncan Steel, a New Zealand-based member with an astronomy
background said it isn't surprising debris hasn't been found, given
the remoteness of where the flight is thought to have ended, and
the sparsely populated nature of the nearest Australian
coastline.
"I understand Sarah is hanging on to the last straws of
hope--that indeed the plane was hijacked and landed somewhere and
passengers are alive," he said of Ms. Bajc. "We can't get anything
from the satellite data that's anything but a terminus in the
ocean....I'm not going to argue with somebody who's lost a loved
one."
Still, Mr. Steel, who doesn't have a personal connection to
Flight 370, is critical of Malaysian authorities for what he
described as their failure to release full satellite logs of the
plane's movements, as well as other data such as details on engine
performance.
A Malaysia Airlines official said the carrier has done "its best
to share all information available" to people affected by the
tragedy.
Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, which is leading the
government's investigation, didn't respond to requests to
comment.
Ms. Bajc said her relationship with Mr. Wood--a scuba diver and
outdoor adventurer who she says radiated warmth and calm--changed
her life, opening her eyes to the possibility of a happy
relationship after a rocky marriage that ended in divorce.
The two met in 2011 in Beijing, at a local music venue called
Nashville. Ms. Bajc hadn't initially planned to join friends there,
but the pleasantness of the air on an October evening as she rode
her bike prompted her to stop by.
On encountering each other inside, the two felt an immediate
pull, she said.
They took holidays across Asia, with Mr. Wood often plugging
away at his laptop on the beach. They were obsessive about being
prepared: When they traveled, they took an emergency bag with
different currencies, insect repellent and other supplies.
Early in their relationship, they bonded over a shared affinity
for the same kind of flashlight.
On the day Flight 370 disappeared, Ms. Bajc was waiting for Mr.
Wood to arrive in Beijing to help pack their apartment. They were
moving to Kuala Lumpur, where Mr. Wood planned to take a job with
IBM. Ms. Bajc had lined up a job teaching in a high school.
These days, Ms. Bajc, a former Microsoft executive accustomed to
working long hours, is channeling much of her energy toward the
search.
As she peered at the spreadsheet of tips on her computer, a
newly adopted kitten--named Bourbon, for the drink she was sipping
when she first met Mr. Wood--scampered by her feet.
"This appears to be aircraft wreckage [in] the Cambodian
jungle," she read out, as she scrutinized tips collected from the
Hunt for 370 site. Ms. Bajc marks such tips on a scale of one to
five, based on her assessment of credibility.
"This is a three--a satellite image isn't proof, but it could be
validated," she said.
Ms. Bajc said her campaign has helped keep her going since March
24, the day she got a text message from Malaysia Airlines saying it
had concluded Flight 370 crashed in the ocean. She sank onto her
couch, sobbing.
After about an hour, her then-17-year-old son came home. He told
her, "They're just trying to close the case," she recalled.
The next day, lying in bed, Ms. Bajc grew steadily more
convinced her son was correct. "I got mad. Anger is a motivating
feeling."
Ms. Bajc's efforts have included a Facebook page, Finding Philip
Wood, which she has used to appeal for tips. She has made numerous
media appearances, attracting notes from psychics to
astrologists.
In September, Ms. Bajc and a handful of others hired a private
investigative firm to do additional sleuthing.
The firm, which Ms. Bajc declined to identify, is conducting
interviews in multiple countries, funded by an Indiegogo campaign
Ms. Bajc and others launched that raised about $100,000.
The firm hasn't yet made findings, Ms. Bajc said.
In the absence of evidence, Ms. Bajc said she is convinced
authorities are covering up aspects of the case, and that the ocean
search may be a distraction.
One of the more plausible conspiracy theories, she said, is that
the pilot was trying to extract demands from the government and
Malaysian authorities shot the plane down over the jungle on the
Malay peninsula, covering up the evidence.
Malaysia Airlines has denied any coverup.
Ms. Bajc said she understands the odds of passengers'
survival--perhaps on a remote Indonesian island, cut off from
communication--have faded. But that doesn't mean that authorities
shouldn't be held to account, she said.
Most important, she said, she wants to bring Mr. Wood home, in
"whatever form that is."
She said she is slowly building a new life in Kuala Lumpur. The
tide of tips coming in regarding the plane's location has slowed to
more of a steady drip.
But she isn't not giving up.
"Once you take hope away, it's like turning off the siren on the
ambulance--it's an admission there's no hope anymore," she said.
"So we have to just keep pushing."
Write to Te-Ping Chen at te-ping.chen@wsj.com
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