FD-350 clipping, Seattle Times, 'Finding D.B. Cooper hijack loot triggered family troubles'

FD-350 (Rev. 5-8-81)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p. E-14 SEATTLE TIMES Seattle, Washington Date: 2/19/86 Edition: PM

Title:

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

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Finding D.B. Cooper hijack loot triggered family troubles

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man calling himself Dan Cooper captured the attention of the nation on the stormy night of Nov. 24, 1971, when he became the first airplane hijacker in the United States.

A string of family crises has marked the five years since Brian Ingram found $5,800 of celebrated airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper's loot. The Ingrams have yet to receive any of the money.

The former Vancouver, Wash., boy found three bundles of decaying $20 bills on a Columbia River beach, from the November 1971 hijacking in Seattle. He turned up the money while digging a hole for a campfire on a Feb. 10, 1980 family outing.

Through it all, Brian's mother, Patricia Ingram, said recently, the family hasn't gotten a cent of the money. She thinks the money could be worth as much as 50 times its face value to collectors.

The Ingrams turned the cash over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI "just took the money and that's the last we saw of it," Mrs. Ingram said.

That may change, however, thanks to action by the U.S. attorney's office in Portland.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Collins has asked a federal judge to decide who should get the money, which has spent the past five years in the FBI's evidence room in Portland.

The money has been kept as evidence just in case the hijacker, called Dan or D.B. Cooper is ever found, Collins said. An indictment against Cooper remains on the books in U.S. District Court.

After receiving $200,000 in cash and several parachutes in Seattle, Cooper ordered the plane to head to Reno.

Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out of the plane with the money, authorities believe.

Authorities also believe Cooper did not survive his jump into a winter storm that Thanksgiving Eve. None of the marked $20 bills has turned up in circulation, and no clues to Cooper's whereabouts have been found.

The only unsolved hijacking in the United States, it has been the subject of at least four books and hundreds of newspaper articles.

Ralph Himmelsbach, a retired FBI agent who investigated the case, believes some of the marked money was carried by a Columbia River tributary and deposited in the sand near the spot where Brian Ingram found it, nine miles northwest of Vancouver, Wash.

Despite search efforts after Brian's discovery, no other money from the hijacking was found.

Himmelsbach thinks it either rotted away or still lies in some remote area where Cooper probably met his death.

Brian Ingram got a $500 reward from Northwest Orient after his discovery of the Cooper money.

The Ingrams now live in El Reno, Okla., where Brian's father, Duane Ingram, has a job painting airplanes and Mrs. Ingram [guess: babysits] and cleans houses for other people.

The onslaught of media attention created tension among family members, she said, and brought about Ingram's arrest for failing to notify a loan company he had moved to another state while he was delinquent on his payments.

The day before the arrest, the family's rented house caught fire and two bedrooms plus their uninsured contents were destroyed.

The Ingrams, who had moved to Vancouver looking for work, were at first told they might get $45,000 in reward money for finding some of the Cooper money, Mrs. Ingram said in a recent interview with The Oregonian newspaper.

Their hopes were dashed when they learned that all reward offers in the hijacking had been canceled.

When the Ingrams found the money, officials told them it would change their lives, she said.

"It sure did, just not the way we thought it would," she added.

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SEARCHED________INDEXED_FIL___ SERIALIZED___[illegible]___FILED___

MAR 7 1986

FBI — SEATTLE

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164A-81- 8843

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DB Cooper-19835

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b6 b7C

FBI/DOJ

Not long after the discovery of the money, Mrs. Ingram learned that she was pregnant. After Mount St. Helens erupted, the family decided to move on. Once in California, however, Duane and Patricia Ingram separated.

"It was just one thing after another. It was all those things" that drove the couple apart, Mrs. Ingram said.

Since then, she said, she and her husband have reunited, moved again and become Christians. They can now laugh about the whole experience, she added.

"We have a whole new beauti- ful world now."

With the help of a lawyer, the Ingrams have made a deal with a New York insurance company that made up the $200,000 loss to Northwest Airlines after the hi- jacking.

The insurance company has agreed to a 50-50 split with the Ingrams of the money Brian In- gram found — if the court releases it. The government wants to keep 14 of the $20 bills as evidence but is not opposed to releasing the rest of the money, which may be replaced with new bills by the U.S. Treasury Department.

After the government, the in- surance company and their lawyer take their shares the family will get about $1,800, Mrs. Ingram said. However, the agreement with the insurance company requires that Brian Ingram give back the $500 reward he got from the airline.

That leaves the Ingrams with about $1,300, which Mrs. Ingram said is "better than nothing. We're

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not a rich family."

The family hopes to parlay the amount into more, however, by selling some of the bills to collec- tors. Mrs. Ingram said she's heard that a single $20 bill could be worth as much as $1,000.

Whatever the Ingrams recover will be placed in part in a trust fund for Brian, 14, with the rest being used to help with family expenses, she said.

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DB Cooper-19836