(FD-50): 'Is Cooper Dead? Some Skyjack Loot Found But Trail Still Cold', San Diego Union

50 (Rev. 12-5-78)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

[right side metadata box] Indicate page, name of paper, city and state. San Diego Union, San Diego, Ca.; A-1 Date: Wed., 2/13/80 Edition: Home

Title: D. B. COOPER

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

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—IS COOPER DEAD?—

Some Skyjack Loot Found But Trail Still Cold

From The San Diego Union's News Services

PORTLAND, Ore. — Children digging in the sand during a family picnic uncovered up to $3,000 of the $200,000 taken by D.B. Cooper in a 1971 jet hijacking in which the hijacker escaped by parachute, the FBI said yesteday.

FBI officials said the discovery of the money on a Columbia River beach north of Portland reinforced their long-held theory that Cooper was killed in the daring plunge that has made the aerial bandit a folk hero in the Pacific Northwest.

No trace has been found of the hijacker.

At news conferences in Washington, Seattle and Portland, the FBI confirmed that the money — not counted but estimated at $3,000 or less — was part of the $200,000 in $20 bills given Cooper on demand after he commandeered a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 trijet on Thanksgiving eve 1971.

A man using the name D.B. Cooper boarded the jet in Portland, threatened to blow it up, then forced it to land in Seattle to collect the ransom. He allowed 36 passengers aboard the flight to leave the aircraft, then ordered the crew to fly to Reno. When it landed in Reno, there was no trace of Cooper but the rear exit door under the tail was open.

The FBI theorized at the time that Cooper, dressed only in a business suit and street shoes, jumped from the plane over southwest Washington during a freezing storm.

FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who has been on the Cooper case since the night of the skyjacking, said the discovery of the money reduced to "less than 50-50" the odds that Cooper is alive.

(Continued on A-5, Col.1)

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164-91-168

SEARCHED INDEXED SERIALIZED FILED [illegible date stamp] FBI — SAN DIEGO

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FBI/DOJ DB Cooper-906

(Continued from A-1) The FBI said it was searching the area for more money and clues as to the fate of Cooper. The FBI displayed twelve weathered stacks of $20 bills during a meeting with the press. "This clue is the first we've had since the night of the occurrence," said Bill Baker, assistant special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office. He said wads of the money, bound by rubber bands, were found Sunday while Harold D. Ingram, his wife, Patricia, and their 8-year-old son, Brian, were preparing to build a picnic fire along the Columbia River five miles northwest of the Interstate 5 bridge linking Portland and Vancouver, Wash., where the Ingrams live. Ingram said at a news conference here that the money was found about 20 yards from the river's edge under a thin layer of sand. "My son ran up and said, 'Wait a minute, Daddy,'" Ingram said. "He raked a place out in the sand and there it was. There were three bundles" of money. "I thought it was play money," said Denise Ingram, 5, of Vancouver, Wash., in an interview with United Press International. She said she and her cousin Brian "both found it. It was buried in the sand." Denise's mother, Crystal Ingram, said in Vancouver there was no bag for the money. "We put it in a plastic bag from our bread," she said. "One of us did mention that it might have something to do with D.B. Cooper, but we kept on going with the picnic."

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Harold Ingram later took the money to the FBI. Baker said officials estimated there were several thousand dollars in the wads, but it was impossible to make an accurate estimate because of the deteriorated condition. Officials have called the commandeering of the Boeing 727 jetliner the only known unsolved hijacking. In 1977, just to make sure the hijacker did not escape prosecution via the statute of limitations, he was indicted on federal charges in absentia.

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[PHOTOGRAPH] Caption: MISSING MONEY FOUND IN SAND ALONG COLUMBIA RIVER ... but where has the other $197,000 gone?

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DB Cooper-907