(FD-50): 'Part of D. B. Cooper Loot Found by Family on Outing', Los Angeles Times

50 (Rev. 12-5-78)

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[upper right box:] Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) LA TIMES, Los Angeles, Ca.; Part I, Pg. 1 Date: Wed., 2/13/80 Edition: Final

Title: D. B. COOPER

Character: or Classification: 164-91 Submitting Office: San Diego

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Part of 'D. B. Cooper' Loot Found by Family on Outing

By RONALD J. OSTROW Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON—A young Vancouver, Wash., family on an outing along the Columbia River last Sunday suddenly stumbled across 12 stacks of moldering money—part of the $200,000 that the notorious airline hijacker "D. B. Cooper" made off with more than eight years ago, the FBI said Tuesday.

With the bills now having been traced definitely to the Cooper loot, 30 agents from the Portland and Seattle FBI offices have begun an extensive search of the area for more of the money—and possibly for some sign of Cooper or, more likely, his remains.

The money—"several thousand dollars," according to one official—was found in Washington about five miles northwest of the Interstate 5 bridge that spans the Columbia and separates Washington from Oregon, FBI agent William M. Baker told a news conference in Portland.

Discovery of the money by Harold [continues — Please Turn to Page 14, Col. 2]

Dwayne Ingram, 27, his wife, Patricia, 26, and their sons, 8 and 3, marked the latest twist in the bizarre saga of the now-legendary Cooper, who parachuted from a Northwest Airlines jetliner on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, never to be seen or heard from again. When found by the Ingrams, the stacks of $20 bills were bound by decomposing rubber bands, the FBI said. But there was "no trace of D. B. Cooper," according to the agency.

Shortly after the hijacking, a cult sprang up around D. B. Cooper, a name that never has been traced to its origins.

A private club was named in his honor, D. B. Cooper T-shirts were manufactured, bumper stickers were run off and anniversary parties were held.

Baker said in Portland that whether Cooper got away with the rest of the money was an open question.

Law enforcement authorities long Please Turn to Page 14, Col. 2

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164-91-168

SEARCHED _____ INDEXED _____ SERIALIZED [illegible] FILED [illegible] FEB 13 1980 FBI — SAN DIEGO [signature/initials]

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FBI/DOJ DB Cooper-904

Continued from First Page have believed that Cooper died in his plunge from the Boeing 727 because he was wearing only a business suit and street shoes when he jumped into a howling wind and freezing rain in an unreliable parachute. It has been estimated that he hit the ground at a speed of 50 to 70 m.p.h.

The saga began when "Cooper" boarded the jetliner in Portland for an evening flight to Seattle. Once airborne, he demanded that the airline have $200,000 in $20 bills and three parachutes on hand when the plane landed in Seattle. He threatened to blow up the plane if his demands were not met.

The airline complied, providing the parachutes and money. However, the FBI said Tuesday that the serial numbers of the bills had been recorded.

Cooper permitted the airliner's 36 passengers to leave the plane in Seattle. He then ordered the crew to take the plane to Reno and told the pilot to fly at a relatively low altitude and to open the plane's rear stairway.

Crew members last heard his voice on the plane's intercom when they were over the Washington-Oregon border. They said they believe he jumped, using the least reliable parachute.

The decomposed money was found 17 to 20 miles from the jump site by the Ingrams' older son, Brian. The bills were partly buried in sand that the Ingrams were scooping out to build a fire.

"Here's some more wood for the fire, Daddy," the father recalled his son as saying.

"It wasn't wood," Ingram said. "He (Brian) thought he had struck it rich."

Ingram said he assumed the bills might be part of the Cooper money. He turned them over to the FBI, adding with a smile that they were so decomposed, "I couldn't have spent it."

In leafing through the rotting bills, Baker said, the FBI made about "nine or 10 immediate hits"—matches with the numbers of the missing money. The bills were flown to Washington for further analysis and tests by the FBI laboratory.

An FBI official said the packaging and number sequence of the recovered bills indicated they had not been separated and "are in much the same order as when they were given to the hijacker."

The initial search, confined to an area several hundred yards long and 40 yards wide, turned up "fragments of more money"—nothing more, Baker said. He said the money appeared to have washed up on the bank.

Once that search is completed, probably by this afternoon, a scaled-down number of agents will move upstream, continuing the hunt.

Law enforcement officials in the Pacific Northwest have theorized that Cooper's body is at the bottom of Lake Merwin, 30 miles north of Portland, or that his bones are so entangled in giant wild blackberry bushes that they will never be found.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent who has worked on the hijacking since it took place, said the money probably had been washed downstream from a Columbia tributary in Washington. But he said he doubted that it came from the Lewis River, the tributary that flows out of Lake Merwin.