FD-350 clipping: 'More D.B. Cooper cash sought', Seattle Times

FD-350.(Rev. 12-5-78) (Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p.A1 Seattle Times Seattle, Wa. Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Final

Title: NORSAK

Character: or /64-81 Classification: Submitting Office: Seattle

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More D.B. Cooper cash sought

by Richard Zahler and Steve Johnston Times staff reporters

VANCOUVER, Wash. — The Federal Bureau of Investigation brought a backhoe and experts in soil, archeology and river currents to a sandy Columbia River beach west of here today to seek more clues into the 8-year-old D.B. Cooper hijacking mystery.

An 8-year-old boy Sunday uncovered on the beach a small part of the $200,000 the legendary hijacker had strapped to his body when he parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over Southwestern Washington November 24, 1971.

F.B.I. agents yesterday found more fragments of $20 bills while digging at the beach. Paul Hudson, the F.B.I.'s on-site coordinator, said the fragments — the size of nickels and quarters — were found as much as 5 feet away from where the money was found Sunday. Some fragments were 3 feet under the surface.

Hudson said the bureau is trying to determine possible ways the money reached the beach. The river recently covered the beach, he said.

Hudson also noted that the Columbia River channel is dredged periodically and sand from the river bottom is pumped on the shore.

"It's possible that it washed up here a period of time ago . . . not 9 years ago but not necessarily recently," Hudson said.

Got scoop on skyjacker

Discovery of the money "probably raises as many questions as it does answers," Hudson said. "In my own mind I can rule out the possibility that (the money) was buried here."

Hudson said whether searchers might find Cooper's remains in the area is "one of the questions we hope to answer today."

The beach is about nine miles west of Vancouver, adjacent to a dairy farm and a popular spot for steelhead fishing. Today a Clark County deputy sheriff was at the farm gate, turning away fishermen and the curious.

One longtime fisherman, Sidney Tipper, 80, of Vancouver, was admitted to fish. Tipper said, "I've been going up and down this river for 10 years. The money wasn't very deep. If it had been here (a long time) I think we'd have seen it."

The F.B.I. said yesterday it presumes the money had been washed downstream, possibly from a tributary to the Columbia. An Army Engineers hydrologist said that the Washougal River was the only tributary that might have carried the money. The Washougal is the first Washington tributary upstream from Vancouver.

William M. Baker, assistant special agent for the Portland F.B.I. office, said he expected searches would be carried out along the Columbia to the mouth of the Washougal and possibly up the Washougal.

The money recovered Sunday, in three bundles of decomposing $20 bills, was discovered by Brian Ingram, 8, of Vancouver. The boy

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[case number] 64-91-8235 SEARCHED......INDEXED...... SERIALIZED......FILED...... FEB 15 1980 FBI - SEATTLE

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FBI/DOJ b6 b7C DB Cooper-17411

was on a family picnic, helping build a fire, when he discovered the money. He and his cousin, Denise Ingram, 5, dug it from the sand, about 3 inches down. "I thought, 'Wow!' " Brian said. "I saw it was money and went over to my parents. They thought it was counterfeit." The boy's father, Harold D. In- gram, said he called the F.B.I. be- cause "I figured if anybody knew what to do it would be them." He said he did not connect the money with the D.B. Cooper loot. The money was described as looking like a ball of wet pulp. Agents said there could be any- where from $4,000 to $10,000 in the bundle. The serial numbers of the bills matched the numbers of the $200,000 taken by Cooper when he hijacked the plane, which was on a Portland-Seattle flight. The money was put aboard at the Seat- tle-Tacoma Airport. Cooper jumped out through the 727's rear loading steps somewhere in South- western Washington after order- ing the pilot to fly to Reno. Dorwyn Schreuder, an F.B.I. agent in charge of the beach search yesterday, said Cooper probably is not alive today. "If he were, I think he'd be with his mon- ey," Schreuder said. One earlier F.B.I. theory was that Cooper fell to his death in Lake Merwyn on the Lewis River. However, the Lewis River enters the Columbia downstream from where the money was found. Baker said he believes rewards offered in the D.B. Cooper case have expired. "But if there was a reward," Baker said, "I certainly would recommend that the In- grams get it." The discovery was the first ma- jor break for the F.B.I. in the hi- jacking. The hijacking was the first of its kind and the only one that remains to be solved.

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Harold and Patricia Ingram of Vancouver, Wash., sit with several thousand dollars the Federal Bureau of Investigation says was paid to the legendary hi- jacker, "D.B. Cooper." The couple's son, Brian, found the money on a family picnic Sunday.

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