Arizona Daily Star clipping 'Skyjacker's fate still debated 20 years later'
Document date 25 November 1991
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Id: Cooper-Part-50:055-056
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-50:055-056 Document: Arizona Daily Star clipping 'Skyjacker's fate still debated 20 years later' Id: Cooper-Part-50:055-056 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-50%3A055-056 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 50 pp. 55–56 (DB Cooper-20650–20651), News clipping, dated 25 Nov 1991 — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-50%3A055-056
Tucson, Monday, November 25, 1991 The Arizona Daily Star NATION
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Skyjacker's fate still debated 20 years later
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Sketches made in 1971 are of man believed to be the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper
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By Hal Spencer The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Yesterday was D.B. Cooper's 20th anniversary. But was it the 20th year of the legendary skyjacker's death or 20 years since he began a new life with a bagful of stolen greenbacks?
As is their annual custom, Cooper fans from Seattle to San Jose, Calif., to Salt Lake City organized celebrations to honor their hero, who they believe melted into society after committing the perfect crime — parachuting from an airliner over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom money on Nov. 24, 1971.
Two decades after the unique exploit, which a retired FBI agent calls stupid and almost certainly fatal, Cooper's real identity is still a mystery. Nobody knows if he's a pile of bleached bones in the mountains of Washington or the guy next door.
Cooper's crime seems almost quaint in today's violent world. And his $200,000 in marked money would hardly make him a rich man.
The story began Thanksgiving eve, when a man wearing dark glasses boarded a Northwest-Orient Airlines Boeing 727 at Portland International Airport. He used the name Dan Cooper to purchase his plane ticket. The name became popularized as D.B. Cooper after a law enforcement official erroneously referred to him that way.
Once airborne, "Cooper" handed the stewardess a note saying he had a dynamite bomb in his attache case. The man, who chain-smoked Raleigh filter-tipped cigarettes and who appeared to be in his middle to late 40s, demanded $200,000 in used $20 bills.
He collected the money — provided by the airline — during a brief stop at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the 36 passengers were released and the four crew members were kept aboard.
Airborne again, Cooper parachuted into a freezing rainstorm at 10,000 feet near tiny Ariel in southwestern Washington, wearing only a business suit and loafers. The temperature was 7 below zero, not counting the wind chill factor at the plane's speed of 200 mph.
"It was obviously not well-thought-out. . . . It was stupid," said Ralph Himmelsbach, the retired FBI agent who spent nearly a decade investigating the crime.
If Cooper didn't freeze to death on his way down, he probably died when he hit the ground, said Himmelsbach, reached at his home in Redmond, Ore.
"And he came down right smack dab in the middle of the woods in really rugged country," he said. "There are steep, up-and-down ravines in really heavily wooded country. It was a bad place to land, and it is doubtful we would ever find the body."
The very fact that Cooper's identity has never emerged tells Himmelsbach the man was probably an ex-con.
Himmelsbach said he was further convinced that Cooper was dead after boys playing on the Columbia River in February 1980 found $5,800 in crumbling $20 bills that turned out to be from Cooper's loot. He speculated that either Cooper landed in the Columbia and drowned, or died in the mountains and the money was washed out.
As usual, Cooper believers are having none of that. Each year, anniversary celebrations are held at taverns named D.B. Cooper in Salt Lake City and San Jose, and at a little bar in Ariel, where, legend has it, Cooper paid an anonymous visit during an earlier party in his honor.
At the Salt Lake City tavern, where a celebration is set for Thanksgiving eve, the customers have a new explanation of Cooper's fate, said bartender John Nicolaisen.
A recently published book argues that Cooper was actually Richard F. McCoy, a Provo, Utah, man arrested and convicted of a similar hijacking in 1972. McCoy was later killed after a prison escape.
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DB Cooper-20650
Page Six — Section A The Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Monday, November 25, 1991
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John Sununu and his son Peter await President Bush's return The Associated Press
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Sununu gets a thumbs-up from Bush
WASHINGTON (AP) — A smil- ing John Sununu was waiting to greet President Bush as he re- turned to the White House yester- day from Camp David. The presi- dent gave a thumbs-up when asked if he intended to keep his combative chief of staff.
Sununu is not normally on ha[illegible] when the president returns from weekends at the mountaintop re- treat.
This time Sununu was waiting at the door with his wife and son as the Marine One helicopter ap- proached.
"What brought you in?" a re- porter asked Sununu.
"Just catching up," he said.
There has been a spate of re- cent reports of bickering between Sununu and Bush's political ad- visers, including prospective lead- ers of Bush's impending re-elec- tion campaign.
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Cost of emission control devices on cars has oil, auto industries pointing fingers
By H. Josef Hebert The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — There's no dis- pute that toxic and smog-causing fumes spew out of automobile tanks with every fill-up. But there's no agreement on how to control them.
Technology isn't the issue; there already are two proven methods for stopping the emissions.
But the debate has pitted Big Oil against the Big Three automakers. Neither wants to foot the bill for any new controls to stop the emissions.
against installing yet another pollu- tion control device in new cars. It says the oil industry ought to pay this time by capturing the releases at the pump.
The controls at service stations "represent a more timely, efficient and less expensive method of meet- ing the nation's clean air goals," argues Thomas Hanna, president of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association.
Cost estimates for the so-called "on-board vapor recovery canis-
erful political interest groups has put the EPA's regulatory effort on hold, although Congress last year directed the agency to issue a regu- lation by mid-November.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental advocacy group, informed the EPA this month it planned to file a law- suit soon charging the agency has failed to comply with the 1990 Clean Air Act by not issu[illegible]DB Cooper-20651 on-board canisters. The 1990 law re- quires they be phased in by 1996[illegible]
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DB Cooper-20651