Full tanks on a Saratoga (107 usg) will knock 600lbs off the useful load. If the aircraft was very light (like my Saratoga, which has a useful load of 1,300lbs) I doubt (given he had eight souls on board) whether that would have left enough lifting capacity for all the pax. So he would have had less on board.
Being conservative (and assuming modest levels of leaning and that he wasn't running around at full-bore, but had a 65% power setting etc.), full tanks would have 6.5hrs range, with 0.5 hrs vfr reserves. you can then work the sums backwards from here.
Last edited by wsmempson; 2nd Sep 2013 at 16:50.