But for added clarification, there is no such thing as VFR where you “fly in an IFR sort of way”. In this type of scenario, VFR and IFR are very different paradigms. Under VFR you (generally) want to be low, below the cloud base because you want to remain in sight of the ground. Only under VFR would you fly up a valley below the ridgetops on either side. Under IFR, which assumes no visibility, you want to be high. You cannot rely upon instruments to position you with such precision between two ridges, so you always adopt a much more conservative approach to terrain clearance, you fly high enough that you are above any high terrain in the general area.
That why vacillating in a marginal situation is so dangerous - you need to commit to either staying low enough that you can see and avoid high terrain (VFR) if you believe you can do so, or land immediately if you can, or fully commit to the switch to IFR which means doing just the opposite - accept that you cannot see, maximum rate of climb in the safest direction until you are higher than the ridgetops, at which altitude your precise horizontal position is less critical.
Actually, the difference would be that if no celebrity was aboard we would have heard a lot less about this crash, if we heard about it at all.
This thread is about an accident that happened at my home airport 17 years ago. While many details differ (fixed wing, not SVFR, others) it is another accident that occurred due to pilot hubris and dumbass decisions that wound up getting both the pilot and several other people killed. But most people never heard about it because no one famous or particularly important was involved.
These accidents happen every year. They aren’t very common, but they do happen. It’s sad regardless of whether or not anyone famous was on board.