FD-350 clipping: Neil Modie, 'Cooper ransom found', Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Document date 13 February 1980
Also filed separately as sections:
- FD-350 clipping: Part of Cooper ransom found buried in river bank, Seattle P-I page A1
- (FD-350) Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page on ransom money found near Vancouver
- (FD-350), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ransom money found in Columbia River bank
- (FD-350), Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page on ransom money discovery
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Id: Cooper-Part-43:186-188
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-43:186-188 Document: FD-350 clipping: Neil Modie, 'Cooper ransom found', Seattle Post-Intelligencer Id: Cooper-Part-43:186-188 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-43%3A186-188 What is wrong (title, date, type, which pages belong together, copies)? What does the scan show?
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FBI 164-81, Vault Part 43 pp. 186–188 (DB Cooper-17391–17393), News clipping, dated 13 Feb 1980 — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-43%3A186-188
FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78) (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p.A1 Post-Intelligencer Seattle, Wa. Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Final
Title: NORJAK
Character: or 164-81 Classification: Submitting Office: Seattle
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Found— D.B.'s Loot!
Kids Dig Up Hijack Cash
By Neil Modie -
More than eight years after D.B. Cooper parachuted into rainy darkness from a hijacked airliner, part of his $200,000 loot was found buried in a river bank near Vancouver, Wash., the FBI announced yesterday.
Badly weathered and apparently washed ashore from the Columbia River, the stacks of $20 bills say nothing encouraging about the fate of the legendary hijacker.
"It can tell you a number of things — either he dropped the money or he's dead," commented John D. Pringle, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle. "We can't tell at this point."
For Ralph Himmelsbach of Portland, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation since it began, the discovery reinforces his opinion that Cooper died after he parachuted from a Northwest Orient 727 trijet on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971.
BRIAN INGRAM The money in the sand
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Himmelsbach said the find reduced to "less than 50 - 50" the odds that Cooper is still alive.
The money was found Sunday by an 8-year-old Vancouver boy, Brian Ingram, and his 5-year-old cousin, Denise, as they were digging in the sand with sticks along the river bank during a family outing.
"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 office, which the Ingram family contacted on Monday.
The money was found about 25 miles southwest of the area where the FBI had thought it most likely Cooper landed after he parachuted from the jetliner into a freezing rainstorm on Nov. 24, 1971.
The hijacker, who had used the name "Dan Cooper" to buy his airline ticket, boarded the jet in Portland, threatened to blow it up with what he claimed was a bomb in his briefcase, then forced it to land in Seattle to collect the ransom.
Cooper allowed 36 passengers aboard the flight to leave, then ordered the crew of four to fly it to Reno after $200,000 in marked bills and four parachutes demanded by the hijacker were brought on board.
As the southbound airliner passed over Southwest Washington, the hijacker — wearing only a business suit and street shoes — parachuted through a rear stairwell door.
As "Dan Cooper" became a legend, the name "D.B. Cooper" — as an FBI agent had initially identified him — became the name that stuck.
The FBI said his chances of survival were slim because he was lightly dressed for jumping into a howling wind and a freezing rain in a parachute not likely to work.
Agents have theorized that his remains are at the bottom of [guess: Lake] Merwin, its forest of [guess: underwater] snags entangling his parachute, [illegible]
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# 5 [illegible] FBI - SEATTLE FEB 1 [illegible] FBI/DOJ
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DB Cooper-17391
bones are deeply enmeshed in giant blackberry bushes in the remote area 30 miles north of Portland and never will be found.
Regardless of Cooper's fate, Sun- day's discovery was the first of any trace of the hijacker, the parachutes or the money.
The long frustrated FBI made simultaneous announcements of the find in Seattle, Portland and Washing- ton, D.C., yesterday.
The crumbling stacks of $20 bills, and members of the Ingram family who dug it out of the sand, were put on display at an FBI press conference in Portland.
"An examination of the badly de- composed $20 bills reveals that they bear serial numbers identical to a por- tion of those given to the hijacker," Paul L. Mack, special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle office, said in a statement.
"Because of the decomposed na- ture of the bills, an exact estimate of the recovered money is not possible pending a laboratory examination. However, it appears to be several thousand dollars.
"The packaging and the numbered sequence," Mack added, "indicate that the bills have not been separated and are in much the same order as when given to the hijacker."
The money was still held together with a rubber band, FBI agents said.
The bills are being sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., for further examination.
"It appears logical that the pack- age of bills could have been carried downstream on one of the Washing-
ton tributaries of the Columbia River to the site where they were found," Mack said.
The money was found on the Washington side of the Columbia about five miles downstream from the Interstate 5 bridge at Vancouver, where the river makes a sharp north- ward bend.
The discovery will probably steer agents away from the vicinity of Lake Merwin, which until now they had considered the most likely area for Cooper to have landed in his jump.
Lake Merwin is behind a dam on the Lewis River, which empties into the Columbia about 15 miles down- stream from where the money was found. So it appears to mean the loot couldn't have washed down the Lewis River.
Agent Himmelsbach said the money could have washed down the Washougal River instead. If so, the agent said, Cooper's landing spot would have been about 25 miles far- ther south than the FBI had believed.
About 33 FBI agents from Portland and Seattle swarmed over the area where the money was found with shovels and rakes last night. An agent said they'd be back at work there to- day.
Treasure hunters and curiosity seekers were being kept away.
"We've got the area secured and it will be secured until we're through with it," Bill Williams, a spokesman for the Portland office of the FBI said.
The site is in a swampy dairy farm- ing area, frequently flooded by the Columbia River.
During spring runoff, Williams
said, the money could have been car- ried down a stream into the Columbia, "and then come downstream a little more every year."
Bits of $20 bills were found buried in as much as three feet of sand, Wil- liams said. But he added that the depth wasn't remarkable considering the amount of flooding.
In the increasingly unlikely event that Cooper turns up alive, he will still face a federal charge of airline hijack- ing — and a possible death penalty.
As a precaution, a federal grand jury in Portland indicted "John Doe, also known as Dan Cooper," on Thanksgiving Eve 1976 — the last day before a five - year statute of limita- tions would have run out.
Agent said in Seattle yesterday that the FBI doesn't believe the stat- ute of limitations would have applied anyway because it considers the crime a capital offense, for which there is no time limit.
The person happiest about the dis- covery of the ransom money may be Agent Himmelsbach, who is scheduled to retire from the FBI Feb. 29 after more than eight years of frustration with the hijacking investigation.
"I'm delighted," he said yesterday.
"We haven't gotten him off the ceiling yet," Williams said of Him- melsbach.
Williams said the second - happiest person may be a dairy farmer on whose property the money is believed to have been found. In the past, the agent said, the farmer has posted a sign charging fishermen and picnick- ers 25 cents to use his property.
"He'll probably be charging five dollars now," Williams said.
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DB Cooper-17392
HOWARD AND PATRICIA INGRAM tell how their child and niece found some of Cooper's money (in foreground).
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AN ARTIST made sketch of D.B. Cooper.
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DB Cooper-17393
Serials: SE 164-81