On FD-350: 'Punk or Paradox, the Legend Lives On' (Seattle P-I, 2/16/80)

FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78) (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p.A1 Post-Intelligencer Seattle, Wa. Date: 2/16/80 Edition: Final

Title: NORJAK

Character: or Classification: 164-81 Submitting Office: Seattle

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Punk or Paradox, the Legend Lives On

By Darrell Bob Houston

I walked into the airport book- store, vowing that this would be my last D. B. Cooper gimmick. I waited until the clerk was busy. Then — at eye level — I placed three copies of my skyjack novel on a dis- play rack. D. B.'s face, masked as al- ways by the world's most famous sun- glasses, stared back from the covers. My heart was pounding. They ar- rest people for ripping books off. But what about ripping them on? D. B. Cooper's picture at a Northwest airport! That's like Jimmy Carter bumper stickers in Tehran! I left the store, then made a new entrance. I wanted to view the books with fresh eyes, see them as a be- tween-planes passenger might. I stared into those Victor Mature goggles. I felt, again, that there was nothing behind them; no eyebrows, no cynical gleam, no madman's wink. As always I was struck by the beauti- ful blandness of D. B.'s face. No, you would not buy a used car from such a man. He'd give it to you, free. His suitcoat was equally intriguing. A dark meshed knit, it had a profes- sorial quality to it. I suspect it had leather elbow patches. The knot of Cooper's tie is about the size of a prune. The tie is meager and black. It is somewhat faded, as if it had sunned for a long time in a pawnshop window. Then I noticed something that had escaped me. There is a faint smile on D. B.'s lips. A quirk of the artist's pen, of course. The likeness is only a fac- simile after all. Still . . . A shrill female voice shattered my reverie. "Sex and skyjacking! And a mon- ster like that awful D. B. Cooper! You should be ashamed." The woman had confronted the clerk. She had a copy of my book in her hand. I noticed that in her anger she was flecking D. B.'s face with spit- tle. She slammed the book down. She passed me on the way out. I was still admiring my literary efforts. Pointing, the woman asked if I was going to buy "one of those." "The Marquis de Sade," I said, "I'm looking for his complete works."

Anticipating her gasp, I added: "And a good clean family cook- book, of course." She was not amused. "Do you mean you actually con- done that Cooper trash?" "Of course not, madame," I re- plied. "All I did was write it." The woman scurried off. I think she went after a security guard. I grabbed my skyjack books and ran.

* * *

When Buffalo Bill Cody fought his duel with Chief Yellow Hand, his combat outfit consisted of a Mexican suit of crushed black velvet. It was slashed with scarlet and trimmed with silver buttons and lace. Cody had so completely blended the real and the theatrical that nobody — least of all Bill himself — could tell where the actual ended and the dime novel be- gan. The same thing happened during my quest for D. B. The facts that I had in my burgeoning Cooper file were not enough. I began to fantasize in the stories I wrote; but the more I fabri- cated the truer they sounded. All I had to do was tap a type- writer key and the skyjacker would jump — any way I wanted him to. Many of the "facts" I propagated were repeated by other writers, and some- times by the authorities. Even the intellectual readers were not immune to D. B.'s magic. Report- ing in a high-brow California magaz- zine, I told how a lot of people up in Washington still think the hijacker was captured by the Sasquatch. The story was illustrated with a full-page color drawing of Bigfoot, looking somewhat bereft without Fay Wray, scattering ransom money to the wind. Behind him the visage of D. B. Cooper — a rocky outcropping formed his nose — was superimposed on the heights of Mount St. Helens. A string of sky-written clouds spelled out $200,000. My province was of the imagina- tion. But it was by no means an exclu- sive domain. Larry Feingold, a Seattle attorney and former FBI agent, had his own fantasy problem. To assuage it, he planned to hold a reunion of the 36 passengers who were aboard Flight 305 with Cooper. Feingold was one of them.

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He wanted to find out how the experience had affected all those lives. Personally, he felt haunted by the memory. "It's difficult now to separate fact from fantasy," Feingold said. "I'm no longer sure what I saw — and I was trained by the FBI. I think I got a good, solid look at Cooper's face. Now I don't know. "It was so quiet on the plane. Peo- ple were sleeping. It was like a subma- rine. Eerie, ghost-like. The whole thing is like some kind of flying dream from which none of us has yet awakened."

* * *

For the past couple of years the D.B. front has been rather quiet. Peo- ple have occasionally asked me where I stashed all those unmarked twenties. I have still registered at hotels as D.B. Cooper and every Thanksgiving Eve I have lifted a glass to my wraith-like benefactor. Then, last Tuesday, came a phone call from a friend. "Take a deep breath, sit down in your chair — and hold onto the edges," he said. "Some kid down in Vancouver just found part of D. B.'s loot." My first thought was: And some diver looking for abalone will find Atlantis. "What did the kid look like?" "Imagine Huckleberry Finn in a pair of run-over Adidas," my friend said. I hardly had to look at Brian In- gram's picture in the papers the next morning. I already knew him. In the movie script I had written, but never sold, he was D. B. Cooper as a lad. Right down to the unruly hair and the gap in his front teeth. One scene still comes through. The boy has been left alone in a boxcar with a band of hobos. His fa- ther misses the train as it pulls out of a bleak wintertime siding somewhere in Oklahoma. The young D. B. sobs. He thinks he will never see his dad again. Sud- denly Old Man Cooper swings through the boxcar doorway. "How'd you do it, Pa?" the boy

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SEARCHED......INDEXED...... SERIALIZED......FILED...... FEB 25 1980 FBI - SEATTLE

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SUB: R-

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[illegible vertical stamp text along right margin]

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DB Cooper-17500