Funeral services are planned today for an Orange County man found dead in a car in a remote area near Warner Springs two weeks after he and his wife went missing after setting out on a trip to the Valley View Casino.
Services for Cecil "Paul'' Knutson, an ex-Marine, are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at Ingold Funeral Chapel in the San Bernardino city of Fontana, and at noon at Riverside National Cemetery, according to Gloria Allred, a Los Angeles attorney for his wife.
The Riverside service will include full military honors. The victim's wife of 27 years, Dianna Bedwell Knutson, will make a brief statement afterward, according to Allred.
Knutson, 79, and Bedwell Knutson, 68, went missing after leaving the Valley View Casino in Valley Center on Mother's Day. Sheriff's investigators said the Fullerton couple got lost while trying to take a shortcut to their son's home in La Quinta.
Their 2014 white Hyundai Sonata was spotted two weeks later in a gully off a dirt road at the Lost Valley Boy Scouts Camp in a little-traveled section of Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. They had been alone in the rugged locale, eating what little food they had with them and collecting rainwater to drink.
Knutson was found dead. His wife was alive, but was severely dehydrated, a private investigator for the family said.
Bedwell Knutson was initially admitted to an intensive care unit at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido. She subsequently was transferred to two other hospitals before entering a care facility in the Palm Springs area, according to Allred.
