FD-350 clipping: 'D.B. Cooper' feature, Seattle Times Sunday magazine

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

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D.B. COOPER

[Is] he at the bottom of Lake Merwin or walking the streets?

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

— Sub B

p.9 Seattle Times Seattle, Washingt[on] — (Magazine Section)

Date: 10/3/76 Edition: Sunday Author: Robert Hawkins Editor: Jim King Title: NORJAC

Character: 164-81 or Classification: 164-81 Submitting Office: Seattle ☐ Being Investigated

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164-81-9114 SEARCHED.............. INDEXED.............. SERIALIZED.............FILED...............

OCT 6 1976

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COPY SENT TO BUREAU DB Cooper-14875

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ROM THE beginning, it had a kind of ee- rie, hypnotic charm. Despite all the best pre- cautions, the man on board the jet had a bomb. And there were 41 other persons sitting around him. For Northwesterners, the scene had a special kind of horror. Friends and family were on board Northwest Flight 305, now sitting ominously mute and isolated on Runway 16R with no visible signs of activity on board. The atmosphere at the Seattle- Tacoma International Airport was heavy with a suspended, time-in- slow-motion feeling, even as telev- ision cameras covered the "event" live from the distant pas- senger terminal. The runway lights, dimmed on demand to a faint glow, helped very little in defining the lines of the sleek 727, parked in the cold night in front of the airport's ad- ministration building. Even the squatty truck, disgorging the aro- matic jet fuel, was almost a sil- houette, its lights and rotating bea- con extinguished. Inside, the man in the dark rain- coat sitting in the last seat on the starboard side was served up an unusual offering. A white cloth sack and four squat parachutes. The sack held a six-inch-thick rec- tangular package weighing 271/2 pounds. It contained 10,000 $20 bills.

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A minute later, the front cabin door opened slowly and 36 passengers, many puzzled over the delay, were herded away from the plane in small groups, then into a bus which sped toward the terminal. It was November 24, 1971. The next day was Thanksgiving.

AIRLINE OFFICIALS referred to the flight later as a "puddle- jumper" — routinely racing the sun from the East Coast with its last two scheduled stops Portland and Seattle. Today, however, Flight 305 would make one addi- tional stop. Earlier that afternoon, a middle- aged, ordinary-looking man waited in line at the Portland ticket coun- ter, paid cash for a tourist cabin seat, and sat quietly for 50 minutes in the airport waiting room until boarding time. Later, no one re- membered seeing him.

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Just after 3 o'clock, Capt. Bill Scott of Minneapolis eased the plane out of a shallow, climbing right turn toward a northerly heading. The seat-belt signs were still on. . In the aft cabin, the swarthy man who had never removed his dark sunglasses beckoned to a stewardess, Tina Mucklow, and quietly handed her a note. It said he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes: two backpack type and two front packs. For added incentive, he opened his ordinary-looking attache case a few inches and showed her the contents: several red cylinders connected by wire. The long-haired, blond steward- ess nodded understandingly and began to make her way up the still sloping aisle toward the locked cockpit door. Mr. D. B. Cooper had announced his arrival. As the plane neared, then passed Seattle, passengers began to get

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nervous for the first time, but for the wrong rea- son. "People began to be concerned when it circled around Whidbey Island for an hour or so," Robert Gregory of Puyallup, who sat four seats away from the icy-nerved skyjacker, re- called. "They thought something was wrong with the plane," he said. About 5:45, Captain Scott touched the plane down and rolled it smoothly to a stop, but in front of the airport's administration building, a half mile from the pas- senger terminal. At the same mo- ment, the stewardesses stood up, squarely blocking the aisles and Scott spoke emphatically over the loudspeaker, ordering passengers to please remain in their seats and not to move until told to. They fidgeted in their seats, muttering. Gregory's seat on the port side was blocked by the stew- ardess, Tina Mucklow, standing very still. "What's the problem?" Gregory asked her. "Don't look back," she cau- tioned, keeping her eyes fixed on the other stewardess in the for- ward cabin. Both girls looked "a little green," Gregory recalled.

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No announcement was made that anything was wrong, but the plane's back door, for exiting pas- sengers, remained bolted and the passengers remained in their seats, fixed under the glare of the seat-belt sign. No one had seen any weapons.

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TWENTY MINUTES dragged by. The crew conferred frequently over the plane's intercom. Then, heads looked up as Ms. Mucklow walked slowly toward the rear of the plane carrying a large white cloth sack. Everyone knew it was a money bag and everyone knew what it meant. Then, at 6:50 p.m., the passen- gers and two remaining steward- esses were directed off. Gregory, who had noticed the man earlier on a trip to the restroom, turned as he left and got a good look at Cooper. "No, he didn't look calm," Gre- gory recalled. "He was very wary, watching everybody that moved very intently." It was suddenly very quiet on the airplane. Cooper had told Scott he "wanted fuel out here right now" and he was assured that the airline would cooperate com- pletely. The silver-haired pi- lot was playing it slowly and calmly. So was airline headquarters in Minneapolis. The company had requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation not to take any action in trying to board the plane or capture the sus- pect. J. Earl Milnes, then special agent in charge of the bureau's Seattle office, agreed to comply with the request in every way. The minutes oozed by. Finally, the plane was fueled but with only 2,300 pounds. Cooper extinguished the last of a series of Raleigh fil- ter-tip cigarets, then ventured cau- tiously over to the plane's inter- com. "He just told me he wanted to go to Mexico City," Scott remem- bered. "He didn't specify the route. He just wanted to go at 10,000 feet." The skyjacker also ordered that the 727 fly with flaps down 15 per- cent, and the landing gear low- ered. "He seemed very rational," Scott said. "Calm and self-as- sured."

The plane, flying with the wheels and flaps down, would burn a tremendous amount of fuel and could never reach Phoenix, the normal first stop.

A Seattle-to-Reno route would be "a wise choice for a wise hijack- er," the tower proposed. Everyone agreed.

The pilot set a commonplace Victor 23 flight plan over Portland, Eugene, Klamath Falls, then southeast toward Reno.

Dinners were cautiously placed on board, Tina Mucklow was or- dered to leave her seat next to Cooper, where she had ridden most of the flight, go into the front section and close the curtain. The aft cabin lights were turned off.

At 7:30 p.m., the tower cleared Flight 305 for takeoff, and quietly advised Scott he would "have company" all the way down to Reno with "one plane above and one plane below."

WHEN THE 727 lifted off to be- come a tiny dot in the sky, radar operators tracked a total of eight additional planes shadowing the three-engine jet. Six jet fighters, one jet trainer and an H-130 rescue plane with emergency gear and jumpers were launched from bas- es in Washington, Idaho and Cali- fornia. No one was able to main- tain constant visual contact.

The 727 was lumbering along at its slowest possible cruising speed, and the other ships kept shooting past and had to backtrack.

The weather was worsening. Rain clouds quilted the ground. As soon as the plane was level, Coop- er ordered Scott to open the rear cabin door, which on the 727 was under the tail section, and had stairs. Red lights winked in the cockpit as the pressure dropped,

then adjusted. No more instruc- tions: Just the subdued rush of air.

Then, at 8:13 p.m., slightly more than half an hour after the plane took off from Sea-Tac, one of Scott's panel gauges flopped a few times, then settled.

Passenger Cooper had debarked Flight 305.

"YEAH, I packed his para- chutes," said Earl Cossey, 35, of Seattle.

Cossey, a long-time sports jump- er, provided the authorities with two of the four chutes delivered.

"They were just emergency backpacks. Really, they're just used for aerobatic pilots or glider pilots or someone who would use a single parachute for a lifesaving event only. It wouldn't be like a sport parachute."

Was Cooper an experienced sky- diver?

"Heck, no," said Cossey, "at least, not as far as sports jump- ing."

Cossey theorized that the hijack- er may have been a military para- trooper since he at first turned down parachutes coming from Mc- Chord Air Force that would open too soon after jumping. The other factor was his selection of which parachute to use.

"One was more of a sports-type chute with a harness that was real- ly, really comfortable," Cossey ex- plained, "and the other was a mili- tary-type with a very uncomforta- ble harness. And he picked the one that was not comfortable. But they were both equally safe."

In appearances only, as it hap- pened, for one of the other two chutes, hastily borrowed from Linn Emrick of Sky Sports, Inc., was a nonfunctional ground train- ing chute with the canopy com- pletely sewn together.

Cossey said his remaining chute, left on the floor of the plane, was returned to him and is now a treasured souvenir. Officials fig- ured, he said, that Cooper had stripped the nylon from the two other parachute containers, packed them full of money, walked out on the undulating rear stairway of the 727, and dropped into the rain-blackened sky.

Could he have made it?

"Oh, yeah," Cossey insists, firm- ly. "In fact, there was a time that I had high hopes of making a du- plicate jump. The airline wanted to take that same model airplane and go over in the Spokane area where it's very open and let a jumper prove that it could be re-

done. It was all set up but then fell through due to insurance prob- lems. But it's easily done."

Cossey, who has looked at a lot of equipment turned up in the woods by the F.B.I. over the years, feels he can identify his hand-assembled chute if it's found.

"I have a little secret deal with the F.B.I.," he said, with a smile. He told them, "if you ever catch him, I get to talk to him about how he accomplished it."

THE SEARCH AREA was pin- pointed with surprising precision from a combination of recording instruments on board the plane, its speed and altitude, the suspect's weight, and the 23-mile-an-hour wind blowing that night from the northwest. The figures were all fed into a computer at Fort Lewis.

"We were able to fix a 'ground zero'," Tom Manning, F.B.I. resi- dent agent at Longview, said.

"Looking at the possibility that the parachute did not open, and allowing for trajectory of the body from the plane and of the free fall and so on, we started at ground zero and then proceeded in a southwesterly direction, angling toward St. Helen's (Oregon)."

The search started off pretty big, Manning recalls, with dozens of agents, sheriff's deputies from both Clark and Cowlitz Counties, volunteers with fixed-wing search planes, and helicopters from Bonneville Power, the National Guard and even The Weyerhaeus- er Co.

A diamond-shaped area, rough- ly 150 square miles, was divided into six sectors for the search teams. It centered in the Merwin Dam area, about 20 miles south- east of Kelso.

The terrain was mainly low hills with heavy underbrush and a lot of first- and second-growth timber. There was some flat terrain along the river bank, but mostly the search concentrated for almost a week in the rugged country be- tween Vancouver and Kelso.

"If a guy isn't too well versed in hitting into those tall trees, he'd get hung up real easy," a Weyer- haeuser forester, Dick Bohlig, said.

Even though the land is cruised occasionally, "you could walk al- most right underneath it and un- less you weren't looking straight up, you'd never see it," Bohlig said. "If you ever go out and start looking for people in the woods, about the only time you ever find

them is if you practically walk hand in hand."

THE SEARCH subsided, then flared up countless times, with Manning's agents checking out an endless supply of leads. At the be- ginning, tantalizing rumors began to unfold concerning several uni- dentified aircraft, landing and tak- ing off in the hijack area that day. The F. B. I. painstakingly checked out all the planes and pi- lots and cleared them all. Residents of the two nearby communities of Ariel and View were busy watching each other, sometimes with a smile, and any stranger in the area, especially spending $20 bills, was sure to be watched closely. Information sheets were distrib- uted to hunters and campers fre- quenting the area, detailing the items the F.B.I. was interested in finding. The word flashed to Seattle. A body had been found just outside Woodland. "Two sisters looking for antique bottles found it," J. Earl Milnes, then heading the case, said. The women, poking in an aban- doned cistern, uncovered what ap- peared to be a foot and human limb and deputies were called. Officials cut an opening in the bottom of the cistern with a chain saw and began to remove the body. When it was identified as a woman, Milnes returned the case to the local authorities. "I was just waiting for some smart alec to come back with: " 'How do you know D. B. Coop- er wasn't a woman?' "

WHERE HAD the elusive Coop- er gone? Seemingly, every place was searched. South of the Lewis Riv- er the stretches of flat, open land had been gone over meticulously. To the north, even the heavy blan- ket of trees had failed to diminish virtually a foot-by-foot search. The Federal Aviation Adminis- tration in Reno pointed out that the plane, on landing, had taxied slowly enough for someone to es- cape. This possibility was investi- gated, but finally was dropped. Letters, purportedly written by Cooper, turned up in various news- papers across the West. One "confession" said he, Coop- er, had committed the crime be- cause he was "in a rut." Another insisted that he was Cooper, and that he only had 14 months to live.

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In late 1972, two Kitsap County men were convicted by a federal grand jury of extorting $30,000 from a former Newsweek editor for a phony "interview" with the skyjacker. Northwest Airlines offered a $25,000 reward for all the money, or 15 per cent of any lesser amount recovered, and The Ore- gon Journal promised $1,000 for the first $20 bill from the loot. Back in Clark County, one psychic reportedly offered de- tailed theories to the F.B.I., and even a "water witch" joined the hunt with a forked stick. Through it all, the real D. B. Cooper never stood up. Then, last January 12, it seemed the big break had come. Two hunt- ers found a weathered skull 10 miles east of Estacata, Ore. What's more, clothing, human re- mains and a parachute were found with the skull. A medical examiner announced the deceased was a male, all right, but at least ten years younger than the suspect.

SO WHAT'S the answer? A grown man just doesn't vanish into nothingness. Or does he? The opinions of those who ought to know, the people who "knew him best," are as far-reaching as the boundaries of the search map. Here are some: A senior F.B.I. man: "I think he made it. I think he slept in his own bed that night. It was a clear night. A lot of the country is pretty flat. He was flying low and slow and all he had to do was walk out on those stairs, and jump. "He just could have walked out. Right down the road. Hell, they weren't even looking for him there at that time. They thought he was somewhere else. He could just walk down the road. There's noth- ing suspicious about that." Agreeing that no body was ever found, nor any parachute or shrouds, he explained simply, "he could have carried that with him."

Earl Cossey, veteran parachu- tist: "I have a hard time speculating. I have to divide it into he's either a very small hole in the ground, which means he didn't get the par- achute open, or he's laughing at us all. I can't decide which."

Dick Bohlig, forester: "It could very well have been

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possible for him to land south of the Lewis River. There's quite a bit of flat, open ground. He could have easily landed in that. And if he did, then he'd be home free."

Pilot William Scott: "Nothing's turned up so I don't have the slightest idea."

Tom Manning, the F.B.I.'s Long- view resident agent: "This is strictly a theory. I have no foundation that I can back it up with, but I feel that he's in the lake. Lake Merwin." Manning explained that prior to the skyjacking, two fishermen cap- sized their boat in the middle of the lake and their bodies were never recovered. One reason for this, he said, was that the bed of the two-mile-long lake was never clear-cut of heavy timber prior to the valley being flooded during construction of Ariel Dam at Lake Merwin. Area residents report that heavy windstorms frequently bring up a lot of floaters and snags from the fairly good-sized trees that were left in there. "My theory—strictly a theory, understand—is that he did hit the lake, and because of the weight of his body, the money, parachutes, and the force of the landing, he went down and is hung up on a snag." And the parachute's nylon fab- ric, being underwater, would not deteriorate, as it would under full sun. Moreover, Merwin is an "extremely cold lake," Manning said, which he felt would prevent the generation of body gases. "Body gas, as you know, is the thing that forces (the body) to the surface" because of the creation of buoyancy. But Lake Merwin, Manning said, "would be like put- ting a man into one of those deep freezes."

Stan Pitkin, United States attor- ney: "I don't think there's any rational conclusion but that the man is long dead. And both he and the money are probably decom- posed."

DOES THERE come a time, then, when you finally give it all up?

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DB Cooper-14878

Apparently not. John Reed, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Seattle of- fice reports the total number of persons investigated so far on the Cooper caper has exceeded 800. How many are they investigat- ing now? "I would estimate," he said, "that around 20 to 30 suspects are involved." The D. B. Cooper file, he con- cluded, "is still very much open."

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band," Pitkin said, "and it doesn't belong to anyone other than Northwest Air Lines." Besides, he explained, the long-sought money would be subject to being held as evidence, so any such windfall "would be ill-gotten, and a very seri- ous offense."

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Robert Hawkins is a Seattle writer.

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What about reports of the statute of limitations on the "D. B. Cooper" skyjacking being five years and running out this November? John Reed, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Seattle office says: "If a person leaves the jurisdiction for the crime, and it's a capital offense, the statute never 'tolls'." Stan Pitkin, United States attorney in Seattle, agrees, adding: "Although at the time of the offense, there was an uncertainty on the imple- mentation of a death pen- alty, this is, by act of Con- gress, a capital offense and the statute of limita- tion does not apply to capital offenses." What if Cooper is dead, and some hunter one day runs across the $200,- 000? "The money's contra-

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DB Cooper-14879

The Seattle Times magazine

Five ye[ars lat]er, where is the 'chute [sky]jacker?

COOPER

DB Cooper-14880