Palm Beach Learjet Victims Named by Family Sources as Fact-Checkers Reject AI and Assassination Claims

Since a Learjet 60 bound for the Bahamas plunged into a Palm Beach County road on Sunday, Nov. 1, killing all nine aboard, the names of the dead have begun to emerge, federal investigators have briefed the press, and a pile of false claims about the crash has spread online.

Who was aboard

Sources close to the family told TMZ the passengers were 44-year-old tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife Helen, their two children, their nanny and two close friends. The Robinsons lived in Austin, Texas, where the flight originated, according to those sources.

TMZ's sources also identified the captain as 55-year-old Jeff Gregory. That makes two crew members and seven passengers.

The copilot has been identified as 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, who earned her pilot's license at 17 while still in high school, according to Breitbart News. Her mother, Camila, told the New York Post: "I wanted her to live her dream, but I knew that her dream was going to be the thing that would take her away from me."

The aircraft, tail number N722BD, was registered to a limited liability company based in Wilmington, Delaware, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

What the NTSB said Monday

NTSB board member Tom Chapman told reporters in West Palm Beach on Nov. 2 that the aircraft encountered turbulence and ice. He did not say what caused the crash, and the investigation is open.

Timothy Monville, who is leading the NTSB's investigation, said the agency has "just begun" documenting the scene. "We have a lot of work to do on scene," he said. "This will be a several-day process, and the biggest obstacle that we're going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway."

The flight data and air traffic control recordings fill in the sequence. The jet had climbed to 41,000 feet, eased down to 35,000 near Naples, then reported turbulence, icing and precipitation. The crew asked to climb to 37,000 feet.

The pilot told Miami controllers: "We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence." He said turbulence was jolting the jet by up to 700 feet.

Minutes later the crew declared an emergency. "We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute," the pilot radioed, then: "We're going to crash into the ground." Tracking data show descent rates of 10,000, then 20,000, then up to 30,000 feet per minute, and a sharp right bank before impact.

Learjet-rated captain Dewitt Ingram told CBS12 that storm damage is one possibility, and he stressed that nothing has been established. A stalled frontal boundary had pushed freezing cloud tops far above the flight level that day.

The false claims

The crash happened roughly 6 miles from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, and that proximity fed an online theory that the jet was hacked with AI in a plot to kill the president. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described the crash as "cataclysmic" and said it "looked like a missile going down," which fueled a separate missile theory.

No official has suggested foul play, and there is no evidence supporting either theory. Trump had left West Palm Beach aboard Air Force One about an hour before the crash, according to International Business Times.

A separate set of posts claims the dashcam footage itself is fake. One Nov. 1 X post declared the video "100% Ai Generated" and said "SOMEONE IS LYING TO US." It pointed to a screen recording from Hive Moderation, an AI-detection tool, that flagged the clip.

PolitiFact ran the original footage through the same tool and it was not flagged. The clip came from West Palm Beach digital creator Aki Kuusisto, who posted it to Facebook and wrote, "This was not quite what I had in mind when I installed the dash cam." The AP, CNN, CBS News and the BBC have all carried it, and PolitiFact called Hive an imperfect tool.

Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, said skepticism toward viral video is reasonable as AI improves. But he said some people are now so distrustful that they disbelieve real footage, a pattern known as the "liar's dividend."

A third item is a sharp still image showing the jet with a missing wing and a stripped engine. Lead Stories found a SynthID watermark showing the image was made or edited with OpenAI tools. Frames from the real video show both wings intact.

What comes next

The NTSB's immediate task is getting the main wreckage out of the crater in the roadway, which Monville said will take several days. Investigators will then examine weather radar data, the crew's training and experience, the flight-control systems and recorded flight data.

Palm Beach County said the road near the site will stay closed until further notice. Authorities say about 600 nearby residents were affected, and no one on the ground was reported killed. The cause remains undetermined.