California man wants to dive for bin Laden’s corpse

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Bill Warren isn’t among the hordes who demanded to see photographs of fallen al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. No, he wants to see the body itself.

Warren intends to dive into the Arabian Sea and search for bin Laden’s corpse as soon as he raises enough money to afford it — up to $400,000, by his estimation, with a cost of around $10,000 per day.

The body “will look like a cigar at the bottom of the ocean,” Warren, a 30-year veteran of salvage diving, told TIME.

“I want to prove to myself and probably 50% of the world that he was killed,” Warren said.

If he finds the body, Warren said, he plans to take hair samples as well as photographs and video, for DNA testing and visual proof of bin Laden’s death.

Retired Navy Captain Bobbie Scholley, a salvage diver who has helped recover plane wreckage from the bottom of the ocean, told TIME that she doubted Warren would complete his mission.

“I have to say it would be a real long-shot, more than a needle in a haystack,” she said.