FD-350 clipping, Arizona Republic: 'Late con man may have been D.B. Cooper' (Jack Coffelt)

FD-350 (Rev. 5-8-81)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)

Date: 11/24/83 Edition: Arizona Republic K1

Character: 80-307A or Classification: 164-571-5 Submitting Office: Phoenix

Indexing:

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Late con man may have been 'D.B. Cooper'

Government informer, skyjacker same person, magazine claims

By Robert Macy Associated Press

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LAS VEGAS, Nev. — A dozen years ago today, "D.B. Cooper," laden with two parachutes and 10,000 $20 bills, inched his way down the rear stairway of a Boeing 727 jetliner and plunged into stormy Oregon skies, history books and oblivion.

Now a Las Vegas magazine writer says Cooper actually was a Missouri con man and purported government informer named Jack Coffelt who took the secrets of that chill November night to his grave four years later.

The writer, Byron Brown, says he and his father, James Brown, a cell mate of Coffelt at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta in the 1950s, accompanied the self-proclaimed hijacker to Oregon in 1974 in a futile search for the $200,000.

FBI agents discount Brown's story, although they admit Coffelt ranks "in the top 20" among 933 Cooper candidates they have developed over the years.

Brown contends the FBI has ignored the Coffelt theory because Coffelt spent half of his adult life in prison and the other half in gray areas working for the government.

Cooper has been something of a romantic hero to the public since he tied a sack of money around his waist, strapped parachutes to his chest and back and plunged off the rear stairway of Northwest Airlines Flight 305 on Nov. 24, 1971.

The incident remains America's only unsolved hijacking.

It began in the twilight hours at Portland International Airport when a man listed on the manifest as Dan Cooper boarded the Boeing 727 with 36 other passengers and a crew of six.

Brown, writing in this month's issue of the Las Vegan magazine, said the craft was only one-third full on the busy holiday eve because Coffelt had made numerous reservations, knowing the no-shows would leave the back of the plane empty for him.

As 305 began its 30-minute hop to Seattle, Cooper gave stewardess Florence Schaffner a note saying he had a bomb in his attache case. He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. She rode next to the hijacker on the brief flight and has said 1954 prison photos of Coffelt, plus later photos taken by Brown, bear a striking resemblance to the man.

Seattle lawyer George LeBissoniere sat three rows from Cooper. He said Coffelt's pictures are "the closest thing I'd ever seen" to the mystery man on Flight 305.

Both had viewed scores of FBI photos in the weeks after the hijacking.

In Seattle, Cooper let the 36 passengers and two stewardesses disembark. Three crewmen and stewardess Tina Mucklow were told to stay. Once the money and parachutes were on board, Cooper demanded the plane take off with the rear stairway down. The captain said that could not be done. The plane lifted off, stairway up, heading south toward Cooper's announced destination — Mexico.

Retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach of Portland, who spent thousands of hours in pursuit of Cooper,

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164-571-11 SEARCHED INKED SERIALIZED [handwritten: circle] DEC 8 1983

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[recounted] what happened next in a recent telephone interview.

"I think he wanted to get out of the plane as soon as it took off, as soon as the plane was high enough to jump," he said. "But he had trouble getting the stairway open. He had to get Tina to help him. Then he was looking out in the dark, the wind blowing like Billy Hell. It took a lot of time to work up his guts."

It took 35 minutes, in fact, for Cooper to depart the craft.

According to Brown, Coffelt recounted to him that as he descended the rear staircase in cold, blinding rain, turbulence jolted the plane and pitched him off before he could sight a beacon marking the location of a waiting partner.

Coffelt talked of tumbling through the stormy sky, trying frantically to open a faulty parachute on his back, then dropping the money as he grabbed for a chute on his chest, Brown said.

Himmelsbach said one of the four chutes was sewn up and given to the hijacker by accident. He denied claims the faulty chute was designed to foil the hijacker, emphasizing that authorities had feared Cooper planned to take a hostage with him.

"We don't have the right to sentence someone to death," the retired agent said.

Coffelt told Brown he crashed to the ground in a canyon miles from his planned landing spot, severely injuring his legs. He eventually was able to rendezvous with his unidentified partner, but he, his partner, the Browns and an army of authorities never were able to find the loot.

About $5,000 in bills with serial numbers matching those on the money given to Cooper was found on a sand bar near Vancouver, Wash., in February 1980, but the remainder is believed to be moldering in the rugged Cascade Mountain foothills.

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Himmelsbach said years of searching for Dan Cooper — who mistakenly was dubbed D.B. when a reporter wrote a story using hearsay information from police — have convinced him Cooper was "a loser, an ex-con who was reaching the end of his string."

The description fits Coffelt, who was born in Joplin, Mo., in 1916, raised in Picher, Okla., sentenced to a reformatory when he was 15, winding up in federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and Leavenworth.

After leaving Leavenworth, he attended the Univer- sity of Kansas at Lawrence, then lived in Lawrence off and on afterward.

Robert Hoyt, a Lawrence resident and technical writer for the CIA, said he knew Coffelt for years.

"Jack was full of stories, some of which were true and some of which weren't," Hoyt said. "Sometimes he had stories about the FBI. I don't know that he was ever seriously involved with them, but they knew every time he came to town."

Coffelt bragged of working with the FBI and CIA and flashed FBI identification, according to both Brown and Hoyt.

In Portland, FBI agent Dorwin Schreuder said that he had "heard of Coffelt's alleged participation" in the hijacking through Brown's work but when asked whether Coffelt ever had worked for the agency, he replied, "The FBI never comments on the use of its informants one way or another."

Reached in Hawaii, where her husband died of a heart attack in 1976, Tave Coffelt refused to discuss his past.

Robert L. Dobbs, a Memphis attorney who had represented Jack Coffelt, said the ex-con had claimed to do undercover work for the FBI. He said Coffelt once boasted, "With my reputation, I can get in with any criminal that they might want to check on."

Dobbs said he knew Coffelt had been in Portland shortly before the hijacking. Could his client have been the elusive Cooper?

"He was the type of person who wanted to do something daring and original before he left this Earth," Dobbs responded. "He'd come up with the spectacular, that's for sure."

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