FD-350 clipping, Minneapolis Tribune, D.B. Cooper feature with John Orlock and David Hubbard

FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78) (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) 12G, 20G TRIBUNE Mpls. MN Date: 4-8-79 Edition: Sunday Title: D. B. COOPER Character: or Classification: 164-73 Submitting Office: MINNEAPOLIS

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Northwest 727 hijacker Cooper made a quantum leap into mists of mythology

By John Kerans

You can't tell a book by its cover. Nor a crook by the crime he's com- mitted. But if you can't read the book, or you can't find the crook— then surely some speculation's per- mitted.

Take the case of D. B. Cooper, who 7½ years ago used a bomb threat to take command of a 727 jet, then par- achuted to freedom with $200,000 ex- torted from Northwest Airlines. No trace of Cooper was ever found. And since it's the only such unsolved crime in American history, you could say Cooper wrote the book on skyjacking. But he took the book along the night he made his quantum leap. And that's where the specula- tion begins.

The playwright:

John Orlock began to wonder about D. B. Cooper a few weeks after the crime was committed. Orlock found a letter purportedly from Cooper re- printed in the New York Times and he clipped it out. Orlock still has that clipping, though it's yellowed with age.

(In the letter, "Cooper" said in part that he had only 14 months to live and that "I knew from the start that I wouldn't be caught.")

"I read it and got the feeling of a man who finally decided to do some- thing with his life. There was a great sadness and a great courage here," says Orlock, his fingertips touching the clipping.

"If this was indeed the case, that he was dying—and I am sure that he is now dead—then there was a certain justice here. It was a haunting piece of writing. Most importantly, I could feel a 'personality' emerging."

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FBI/DOJ DB Cooper-17036 164-81-8100

More than a personality emerged. So did a play, "The D. B. Cooper Pr[oject]," lect," which opens Friday night at the Cricket Theater. Orlock cautions that the play is not simply about sky-

jacking. "I just tried to write good characters. The skyjacking is just a hook. It's not about that. It's about people and how they respond under certain circumstances."

The circumstances here are those of failure. "Cooper is a man for whom [nothing] was terrific turbulence. Cooper nothing has ever gone right. His mar[riage] couldn't have picked a worse night. riage went down the drain. His gas station folded. He's been passed over by the American dream. He's not a folk hero. He's a negative personal- ity. But he has a transformation. He becomes D. B. Cooper." [illegible]

But what if the letter was a fake? What if John Orlock was inspired by the contrivance of a prankster?

"No!" says Orlock firmly. "There is a feeling here that is right for me. The flow in the letter is thought-by- thought. It COULD have been a fake. But as a playwright, I would have had a hard time writing a better let- ter than this [illegible]

The article about the letter was pub- lished six days before Christmas. And it ran a little short. So somebody at the New York Times stuck in a holiday slogan to bring that column of the newspaper to its proper length.

It reads, "Remember the neediest." Right there on John Orlock's clip- ping.

The reporter:

Leverett Richards thinks the D.B. Cooper letter was a fake.

"It just didn't seem to jive with the facts in the case," Richards explains.

Richards certainly has the facts. They fill one full drawer of his desk in the newsroom at the Portland Or- egonian. He's been following the case since the night it happened.

"Besides, Cooper couldn't have sur- vived. It quickly became evident to me that he landed in Lake Merwin. That's up in Washington state, about

35 miles north of Portland, where the FBI figured he made the jump. It's my bet that Cooper's body is still down there.

"I'm a pilot. And I've talked to pilots who were flying that night. There was terrific turbulence. Cooper couldn't have picked a worse night.

"If this fellow Cooper could organize a letter, he would have organized the skyjacking too and he didn't. Every- body I've talked to—pilots and para- chutists—they all feel his chances for survival were pretty grim."

But Richards will concede one thing. It's a hell of a mystery. Last January, somebody found a plastic placard from the rear stairs of a 727 jet in the suspected drop area. But aside from that, there have been no other clues.

[illegible] about Cooper's character? He was a born loser? Richards snaps. He had no upbringing. That's no way to do things. I don't have much patience with those who think they can get rich at the expense of others.

"But you asked me about his charac- ter. Well, he was from a broken home or he had no family. Because no one has ever been reported miss- ing that matches his description.

"Obviously, he has no military expe- rience as a parachutist or a pilot. Otherwise," Richards rasps in disbe- lief, "he would have known you couldn't bail out there. It's rough country. It was overcast. And I don't see how he could have known the elevation."

Leverett Richards won't be coming to see "The D. B. Cooper Project." He can't get away from work. But his son—a research scientist at the 3M Company in St. Paul—has promised his father he'll see the show and re- port back.

The son is named Durkee B. Rich-

ards. Abbreviated, of course, that's "D. B. ..." [illegible]

The storekeeper: [illegible]

Just as firmly as Leverett Richards talks about D. B. Cooper in the past, then storekeeper Germaine Tricola describes him in the present.

"Of course, he's alive!" she says with a smile. "Cause nothing's ever been found. We've lost folks before, but we've always found the remains."

Until recently, Tricola ran the Ariel Store & Tavern. It's tucked into the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains, at a point directly below which Cooper is calculated to have hit the silk. Up the road lies Lake Merwin.

"Fell into the lake? He couldn't have. With the drought we had two years ago, something would have shown up. Body, parachute, money [illegible] bag—something. You could even see the tree stumps then.

For several years, Tricola—who moved to Washington from Hugo, Minn., 30 years ago—has staged a D. B. Cooper party on Thanksgiving. The party has drawn guests from as far away as Toronto and as near as the local FBI office in Portland. Tri- cola just sold the store, but the new owners plan to continue the tradi- tion.

The Ariel Store & Tavern caters to the logging crowd. Rough men doing rough work, clearing away tall pines, fir and cedars clustered together so thick that the sunlight has a hard time getting through.

(A man on a parachute might have a hard time getting through, too. But there are plenty of "clear cuts" where the logging companies have toppled the timbers and taken them out on trucks.)

"We've had jumpers land right next

[cut off] to the store. Last year, a professional parachutist from Portland and two of his students came right down. I think that's what Cooper did.

"He was a man who liked a challenge. A loner. I don't think he needed the money. Maybe he didn't have anything to do on Thanksgiving."

If this is where D. B. Cooper landed with the $200,000 ransom, then he fell in with good company. A long time ago, before reforestation programs, the loggers had a slogan.

Simply put, it read: "Get yours and get out."

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The psychiatrist [illegible] David Hubbard cursed the idea of a musical about D. B. Cooper when he learned of it.

"I'm of the opinion that this type of thing doesn't need to be perpetuated. Cooper represented no ideals and no values. He's not a folk hero. He was a man acting selfishly. The number of people who can be harmed by men who think they'll be immortalized is innumerable."

In 1971, Hubbard wrote a book called "The Skyjacker." It's the only psychiatric study of the "skyjacking personality," and it's based on dozens of interviews with men who committed the crime.

Hubbard's premise is that we are bound together by twofold gravity. One part is physical—which holds us to earth. Another is emotional— which holds us to each other. Skyjacking, he concludes, is a defiance of both realities.

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Hubbard also believes in "mutations." One man commits the crime; another emulates it. Cooper—he points out—was not the first to get together parachutes, bombs and disguises. A Canadian tried the same trick in Calgary three weeks before. Hubbard assumes Cooper read about it and tried to go the Canadian one better. He did—the Canadian was caught and Cooper was not.

"Cooper created nothing," says Hubbard. "He was an imitative creature like all the rest who followed."

There certainly were plenty to follow—though none succeeded. Eventually, the back stairs on 727 jets were modified to lock in flight. And that was the end of that.

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"I took the notorious and made it commonplace," says Hubbard. "You want to take the commonplace—and D. B. Cooper was commonplace— and make it notorious. I don't buy that."

Psychiatrist David Hubbard does all his work at the Aberrant Behavior Center in Dallas. He lives nearby. Back in 1971, Hubbard—like Cooper—received $200,000.

But Hubbard's money came from a private benefactor. It was given to finance a study on skyjacking.

John Kerans is a free-lance writer.

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