FD-350 clipping, Longview Daily News: 'Cooper mystery clue: Sarsparilla'

FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p. 31 Daily News Longview, Va.

Date: 2/15/80 Edition: Final

Title:

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

---

Cooper mystery clue: Sarsparilla

By Jay McIntosh The Daily News

Sioux City Sarsparilla, a potent root, beerlike beverage in a can with a cowboy on it, is the latest clue in the muddled story of skyjacker D. B. Cooper.

Leonard Palmer, a Portland State University geologist, said today that two cans of the soft drink — along with a Nesbitt's Orange can — were found in the same sandy soil where a boy unearthed part of Cooper's sloot last Sunday.

The clue may not mean much to FBI agents, who on Thursday called off their search there for more evidence. But it adds a Maltese Falcon-air to the already mysterious story of America's only unsolved skyjacking.

Theories of what happened abound, and Palmer has constructed his own. He thinks Cooper survived his sky jump and was injured. Palmer winds a detective story around what he sees as geologic evidence of how the $3,000 or so came to be deposited on a Columbia River beach in Washington, three miles northwest of Vancouver.

A "Dan Cooper" parachuted from a 727 jet over Southwest Washington on Thanksgiving Eve 1971. But Palmer said the money was found in soil deposited on the beach after a 1974 dredging. It may have been deposited within the last year, he said.

"Sioux City Sarsparilla was lodged in the same level that the money was found," Palmer said. If the FBI can trace when the pop cans were manufactured, it could provide more evidence of when the money was deposited.

The cash, part of the $200,000 in $20 bills that was strapped to Cooper's waist, was found bundled in a bag.

The pop cans and most of the money were found six to eight inches below the surface, but fragments of the money reportedly were as far down as three feet.

Palmer could not explain how the money might have been buried that deep. He said there was "no conclusive evidence" that money was in fact found three feet down, and surmised that it may have been deposited there in digging actions.

Palmer said the money was worn the same way driftwood is worn. And the bills had not decayed as much as they would have if they had been exposed to air, he said.

What that leads us to believe is that the money has been in the water all the time since it has been lost," he said.

Like the FBI searchers, Palmer dismisses the theory that the money may have washed upstream from the Lewis River. Authorities had

---

Lewis River reservoir, but were rethinking that assumption after the discovery of the money.

Palmer said it looks like Cooper landed in the Washougal River drainage area. But after computing stream surface area, he said it was a 1,000 to 1 shot that the hijacker landed in water.

"It's likely that the guy survived (but was injured), got to a stream and dropped some of the money because he was hurt and couldn't hold onto it. So that leaves him injured and somewhere in the Washougal drainage area nine years ago."

Only educated guesswork is behind the theory, of course. The FBI may or may not search for more evidence, said Jack Pringle, assistant agent in charge of the bureau's Seattle office.

"We'll have to talk to the searchers who were down there and then we'll decide if any further searches will be undertaken," Pringle said this morning.

He didn't mention the Nesbitt's Orange or the Sioux City Sarsparilla. The Daily News managed to trace the sarsparilla to White Rock Products Inc., a soft drink manufacturer in Brooklyn, N.Y. Company spokesman John Cloney said he didn't think the beverage had ever been distributed on the West Coast north of California.

A woman at the Portland bottler of White Rock beverages said she had "never heard of it."

---

SEARCHED.......... INDEXED.......... SERIALIZED.......... FILED.......... FEB 2 2 1980

b6 b7C

FBI/DOJ DB Cooper-18858