Hustler magazine article on the D.B. Cooper skyjacking and Jack Coffelt

THE SEARCH FOR D.B. COOPER

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The hundreds of anxious spectators assembled near the small logging town of Ariel, Washington had been [guess: tilting] their heads skyward for almost an hour. Standing in a wide clearing on the east bank of Lake Merwin and sipping cans of Olympia Lite while awaiting a break in the misty overcast, they had come for the occasion from as far away as California, Texas and Maryland.

Suddenly a red-and-white Cessna 172 pulled out of a banking turn and leveled off at 6,000 feet. Then, one by one, sky divers began plunging from the plane, each of them wearing a conservative business suit and carrying an attache case. As their colorful parachutes opened, onlookers cheered this symbolic reenactment of a legendary jump performed eight years before by D. B. Cooper—the absent guest of honor.

In November 1971, Cooper had been the focus of a headline-making drama that captured the public's imagination. He had threatened to blow up an airliner, held angry FBI agents at bay, parachuted from the plane with $200,000 in ransom money and disappeared into the night.

Despite the largest manhunt in FBI history, Cooper was never found. His hazardous escapade remains today as the only unsolved skyjacking in American history. Since then the gutsy adventurer who got away, with one of the most daring crimes on record, has achieved the status of popular folk hero.

That accounted for the exuberant spectators, [guess: now] singing along with a bluegrass band's rousing version of The Ballad of D. B. Cooper—a tune honoring the

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ARTICLE BY BRUCE HENDERSON Illustration by John Andrews

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memory of this American Robin Hood. It was a rainy day in Washington/When Cooper made his move,/Taking the flight he took before,/Hopin' the weather would improve. Somewhere over Ariel/He made his famous jump./With 200 thou, a parachute:/A wild card and a trump. Well, listen to the people talk,/The FBI is stumped./Some people say he died in the fall,/ Some people say he didn't jump./But of all the possibilities/That are tattered and worn,/No matter what you say, my friend,/A legend has been born. Well, they searched and searched the countryside,/A clue they could not find./The FBI, the State Police,/The Boy Scouts were all blind./Now, D. B., you clever one,/You got 'em on the run./We hope that you survived that jump/Into the settin' sun."

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"Most of us 'round these parts like to think he made it," says Dave Fisher, owner of the Ariel Store and Tavern and organizer of the festival held every year around Thanksgiving time. "And a lot of them don't think of him as a criminal for what he did. He's a hero. And he sure put this part of the country on the map." At a recent festival Fisher sold 108 T-shirts bearing the hero's FBI composite image and slogans like "D. B. Cooper, Where Are You?" Neck-chains, bumper stickers, posters and other trinkets honoring the skyjacker were also popular items. "This year we're expectin' 'bout 500 or 600 people 'cause of the money being found," says Fisher, referring to a $4,000 cache of decaying ransom bills discovered 25 miles from Ariel in February. "Findin' the money didn't solve anything though. We like to think that D. B. got away with the rest of it."

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The daring scheme that would inspire the legend unfolded on Thanksgiving Eve 1971, 30 miles southeast of Ariel at the busy Portland International Airport. Everyone seemed to want to be somewhere else that dark, stormy day, preferably with family and loved ones contemplating the next day's turkey dinner and marathon schedule of televised football games. Shortly before 3:30 p.m. a Northwest Orient Airlines ticket agent sold a one-way fare on Flight 305 to a well-dressed man who paid cash and gave his name as Dan Cooper (later found to be an alias). The agent hastily punched the wrong key, however, and the passenger's name printed out as D. B. Cooper. By 4 o'clock Cooper was seated in the rear of the three-engine Boeing 727, patiently waiting to implement his carefully planned, boldly executed caper. Stewardess Florence (Flo) Schaffner thought it odd that there were so many no-shows on the holiday-season flight. Nearly 80 seats were vacant. She also seemed puzzled when Cooper passed her a handwritten note soon after takeoff. Flo had long been accustomed to amorous travelers. Her small, trim figure and jet-black hair attracted bankers and college football players alike. They were always flirting and passing her little love notes. Some of these messages were cute. Others were funny. A few were sexy. But this one was different. It said nothing about later tonight or I know we're made for each other, sweetie. It didn't even have the man's name and phone number. The words just didn't make sense: Bomb in briefcase... will blow up plane... come sit with me. Schaffner looked again at the swarthy passenger who had handed her the slip of paper. He seemed to be in his 40s, with a receding hairline, about six feet tall and of medium build. Dressed in a reddish-brown business suit, white shirt, flashy alligator shoes, a narrow black tie and a stickpin, he wasn't a bad-looking guy. But he seemed sort of distant. Earlier, when the plane was ready for takeoff, the stewardess had had to go down the ramp to summon Cooper, who was watching the baggage being loaded. He boarded only after the cargo doors were closed, removing his hat and dark glasses while Schaffner served him a double bourbon-on-the-rocks. He quickly gulped it down. Sitting in the window seat with a briefcase in his lap, he looked for all the world like any other businessman. He must be a prankster, Schaffner thought. Some men would do just anything to get her attention. She stuffed the note into her jacket pocket and started to move forward in the cabin to serve the other passengers. But when she looked at Cooper, the fierce determination in his narrow-set eyes stopped her cold. His head jerked, angrily, toward the briefcase he held open. Inside she saw a large battery, several red sticks and a tangle of wires. "Sit down here, please," he ordered in a firm voice. She quickly concluded that the red sticks were dynamite and that the battery was part of a bomb. This wasn't a joke, after all. Her pulse quickened and her stomach churned as she approached Cooper cautiously. Within minutes the stewardess had relayed his demands to the cockpit, and copilot William Rataczak was in communication with Seattle-Tacoma International Airport tower officials. "We have a problem with a passenger," said the experienced flier, his voice cool and controlled. He explained that a man was threatening to explode a bomb

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*By Richard Purdy. Copyright © 1976 by Cabin Fever Music. Used by permission.

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"And then I'm gonna rip off your panties and shove my fist into your cunt up to my elbow...."

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78 AUGUST HUSTLER

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if he didn't receive $200,000 and four parachutes as soon as the plane landed at Seattle.

Tense airport personnel notified Northwest Airlines officials and the FBI, who decided to meet the skyjacker's demands. When Flight 305 reached Seattle, it circled in the vicinity for two- and-a-half hours while airline represen- tatives gathered the money from four banks—all in $20 bills—and recorded the serial numbers.

"We were told there was a minor me- chanical problem," remembers Seattle attorney George LaBissoniere, who was seated two rows in front of Cooper. "I walked to the bathroom a couple of times and passed him, but at no time did we know there was a hijacker aboard. Everyone remained calm, and the drinks were on the house."

When the plane finally landed at Seattle, Cooper's 36 fellow passengers and Flo Schaffner and another steward- ess disembarked. Cooper had demanded that one stewardess remain on board as a hostage. Tina Muchlow didn't consid- er herself especially brave, but some- body had to volunteer. Now she was on her own.

Also remaining on the plane was the three-man flight crew, headed by Cap- tain William Scott. Four sport parachutes were delivered and left just inside one of the cabin doors. A short time later an FBI agent walked slowly up the ramp and silently handed Muchlow a heavy canvas mailbag containing the ran- som money.

Struggling to get a better grip on the 46-pound moneybag, she turned into the darkened cabin. The shades had been pulled shut on all the porthole- shaped windows. Cooper was too smart to let himself be picked off by police sharpshooters. Behind Muchlow, in the cockpit, the flight crew waited for fur- ther instructions now that the plane had been refueled. In front of her, hidden somewhere in the shadows of the empty seats, was D. B. Cooper—and his bomb.

As she walked slowly down the aisle, Muchlow's foot struck a strange object. For a frightening instant she thought she might have kicked the bomb. She lost her balance and was starting to fall when Cooper caught her from the side. As the bag fell to the floor, she found herself steadied in his strong arms.

One reporter has learned that he held the woman for several seconds, but she didn't back away. She could feel his warmth, power and confidence. He wasn't sweaty or nervous. Days, weeks, even years later, whenever Muchlow remembered this scary night, she would recall this moment—when she first (continued on page 86)

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THE FLIGHT OF D.B. COOPER

[Map annotations, top to bottom:] $200,000 ransom and four parachutes supplied at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

SEATTLE

WASHINGTON

Route of Flight 305.

CASCADE RANGE

Cascade Mountains. Oregon. Jack Coffelt says he landed here.

COLUMBIA RIVER

Lake Merwin, Washington. FBI says Cooper bailed out over this eight-mile- long body of water.

Site of annual D.B. Cooper Festival

Brian Ingram discovers $4,000 in decomposed ransom money.

Willamette River Valley. Primary wilderness search area.

PORTLAND

Cooper buys a ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305.

OREGON

CASCADE RANGE

Flight 305 flies on to Reno, Nevada, after Cooper bails out.

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D. B. COOPER (continued from page 79) sensed the man was somehow going to get away with his bold plan. Still holding the stewardess, Cooper's hand slipped down to the swell of her hips. She sucked in her breath and remained motionless as his fingers explored the shape of her round, firm ass. His other hand started to reach for the proud peaks of her bosom. But suddenly he seemed to change his mind. Releasing her, he bent down and picked up the mailbag. "Yep, it's all here," Cooper said, plopping the satchel onto the nearest cushioned seat. "Aren't you going to count it?" Muchlow asked, straightening her skirt and jacket, relieved to be free from him. "I trust 'em," he smiled. Opening the bag, he pulled out a fistful of twenties and offered them to her. "Here," he said. "Call it a tip." "Oh, no," she stammered, "we're not allowed to accept gratuities." Cooper shrugged, and dropped the money back into the bag. "Are the chutes aboard?" "They're up front." "Bring them back here, then shut the door. We're getting outa here. Fast!" Grabbing a microphone at the stewardesses' station, Cooper ordered the crew to fly him to Mexico City. Pilot William Scott explained that that destination was outside the aircraft's range; they would have to stop to refuel. "Then make it Reno," the skyjacker snapped. "And let's get this motherfucking show on the road!" Shortly after takeoff he ordered the pilots to unlock the 727's rear passenger ramp, remain at exactly 10,000 feet altitude, fly at a 200-mph cruising speed with wing flaps down at a 15-degree angle and maintain a particular compass setting. Obviously, Cooper knew exactly what he was doing. After instructing the pilot to fly the direct course to Reno, he gave the stewardess a final smile and closed her inside the cockpit with the flight crew. The last thing she remembers seeing was Cooper removing his street shoes and putting on a pair of heavy work boots, which he had taken from a paper bag. Cooper monitored the flight with a compass and wrist altimeter. Since the rear exit door had been left open on his orders, the cabin pressurization was broken, and an altimeter could thereby function. At one point, when the plane drifted slightly above the instructed altitude, he barked to the cockpit over the intercom: "You son of a bitch, you better keep on 86 AUGUST HUSTLER

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WAS THE D.B. COOPER?

The FBI composite sketch of the alleged skyjacker (above), drawn from eyewitness descriptions supplied by Flight 305 crew members, was widely circulated in 1971-72... to no avail. Three years later, mystery man Byron (Jack) Coffelt—shown in a 1953 photograph (below)—provided believable evidence that he was the elusive D. B. Cooper. Before his 1975 death, Coffelt enlisted the aid of a former convict friend, but failed to find the missing $200,000 ransom money.

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course!" He also ordered the pilot to tell three Air Force jets trailing behind to back off; he could see their lights. What happened next only D. B Cooper knows for certain. Just as Northwest Flight 305 was passing over Lake Merwin, instruments in the cockpit indicated that the rear exit had been

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opened. No personnel entered the cabin until the plane landed in Reno three hours later. By then Cooper, two parachutes, the mailbag and the attache case had vanished. All he left behind were some lengths of cut-up parachute shroud line—and reams of speculation concerning his fate. The FBI claims it expended thousands of man-hours tracking down leads on some 900 suspects, without success. Its conclusion is that Cooper, or whatever his real name was, probably perished in the jump. Official line aside, many observers familiar with the case suggest that Cooper was actually an ex-convict named Byron (Jack) Coffelt. They cite, in part, convincing evidence supplied by James Brown—a former Army officer who shared a cell with Coffelt at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. At various intervals from June 1973 until his death in June 1975, Coffelt told Brown intimate details of the skyjacking and its aftermath that nobody except someone with firsthand knowledge of the incident could possibly have known. Until then Brown knew surprisingly little about his old cellmate's past history. Coffelt, a hard drinker who stood six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds, was always shrouded in mystery. And undoubtedly that's the way he wanted it. Born in 1916, he spent much of his first 30 years in Midwestern jails for a variety of minor crimes. In 1949 he received a ten-year sentence for interstate transportation of a stolen automobile. Over the years his cellmates in the Atlanta and Leavenworth federal prisons reportedly included Colonel Jack Durant, who was convicted of stealing the Hesse crown jewels during World War II, and James Earl Ray, who is presently serving a life sentence for killing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During those prison years Coffelt apparently made contact with the FBI. A source who requests anonymity mentions a letter signed by J. Edgar Hoover asking the prison warden for information about Coffelt. The source also says that the agent in charge of the Atlanta FBI office was Coffelt's sole visitor for five years. Some believe that he became an FBI informant in prison, secretly turning over information damaging to his cellmates. To Brown, Coffelt described his time behind bars as a "revolving door"—meaning that he would be let out for a few days of weeks at a time to carry out "hit jobs" for the government. Years later Coffelt was known to carry FBI and Department of Agriculture credentials, as well as passes for the White House and the Pentagon. A college professor reports that he was once riding DB Cooper-20801

with Coffelt in Washington, D.C., when Coffelt picked up General Creighton Abrams—then U.S. Army Chief of Staff—and drove him to the Pentagon. The professor says he saw Coffelt flash FBI credentials.

Naturally, the FBI refuses to comment on these revelations or on any other aspect of Coffelt's life.

Records show that he was paroled from Leavenworth in 1955 after serving just six years of his ten-year sentence. Then, in the mid-1960s, he became the trusted aide of wealthy Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith—the great-grandson and last living relative of Abraham Lincoln. Beckwith has heavily financed several right-wing causes, such as the John Birch Society.

In 1974 Coffelt boasted to Brown that he had "helped kill a nigger" in Memphis, Tennessee. He mentioned being in "one of the white cars" that had deliberately caused traffic congestion immediately after Dr. King was assassinated.

* * *

Where much of the preceding may seem rather sketchy, Coffelt's story of the Northwest Airlines skyjacking—as recounted by James Brown—is detailed and believable.

From the outset of the meetings that began in 1973, Brown played a determined devil's-advocate role with Coffelt—asking tough questions. At

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times Coffelt would be cooperative and come forward with more details. Other times Coffelt would shut off completely, saying he was tired of talking about it all. But inevitably, during the days they spent together searching for the missing money and at Brown's home in Oregon, they would come back to the skyjacking.

Coffelt said he had first planned to steal several million dollars, which he thought would be aboard Flight 305, headed for the Federal Reserve Bank in Seattle. But after watching the loading of the plane and realizing the bank money had failed to arrive, he carried out an alternate plan to demand the $200,000 ransom.

He told Brown he had called the airline numerous times to make phony reservations for Flight 305 so there would be fewer people on board. He saw no sense in creating unnecessary problems.

Before jumping from the plane's rear exit door, Coffelt said, he put the moneybag and an electronic receiver inside a green plastic bag he had carried aboard in his briefcase. After throwing the briefcase overboard, he tied a line around the moneybag and made a loop for his arm.

Coffelt said his bail-out point was not the Lake Merwin vicinity, as stated by the FBI. He claims to have landed 70 miles farther southeast, in the Cascade

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Mountains of Oregon—on almost a direct line from Seattle to Reno. An accomplice with a Jeep waited for him in the brush. The four-wheel-drive vehicle was equipped with an electronic "beeper." Another vehicle, a white Cadillac, was hidden close to a paved road.

Spotting a beacon on Mount Hood, Coffelt was able to sight a triangle of three small runway lights located east of the mountain, set in place by his accomplice. He put his arm through the moneybag and waited for a signal from the Jeep beeper. Preparing to jump directly over the beacon lights, he was suddenly swept off balance by swirling winds and sucked down into the darkness.

At the 10,000-foot altitude Coffelt figured it would be safe to count to 50 before opening the chute. But as he freefall into the black night, he counted only to 30 before instinctively pulling on his chest-pack rip cord. Nothing happened.

Desperately, he pulled at the D-ring on the seat-pack chute. It opened with a jolt. At that moment, relieved that he wouldn't hit the earth at more than 100 miles per hour and die, he made the mistake of relaxing his grip on the moneybag. It slipped off his arm and disappeared beneath him.

He would never see the $200,000 again.

The combination of a strong wind and the early chute opening caused him to drift far from the target meadow. Coffelt hit the ground hard at more than 30 mph, was dragged along by the parachute and smacked into a dead tree.

Despite the pain from injuries to his rib cage, genitals, feet and legs, he managed to remove the chutes. To avoid possible detection, he melted them with an aerosol can of solvent spray. Then he buried what was left of the chutes—mostly metal snaps and buckles—next to a large rock, on which he scratched large X's and O's.

Coffelt now considered his very real dilemma. He could hear the signals from the beepers in both the Jeep and the lost moneybag, but the latter was weak and beginning to fade. He thought about going after the money, but quickly dismissed the plan when he realized he would have a difficult enough time reaching the Jeep from this steep, inaccessible area. Resignedly, he mustered his remaining strength and began his trek through the pitch-dark forest, homing in on the Jeep beeper.

When the sun came up, Coffelt was still miles away from the Jeep. At one point he crossed a road and was astonished to see a bulldozer at work nearby. He turned his face so the driver couldn't (continued on page 124)

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D. B. COOPER

(continued from page 88) identify him later. Around noontime, some 15 hours after his landing, he reached the Jeep. Then he and his accomplice drove to near where the Cadillac was hidden. Eventually they loaded the Jeep with an explosive charge, rolled it into a lake and blew it up. Coffelt said he then entered the back-seat of the Cadillac, and his partner drove him to Kansas City, where he received medical attention. Eleven days after the skyjacking, Coffelt began working as a surgical technician at a northern Virginia hospital. His superior there says that he had difficulty walking and at one point showed her his "badly discolored legs"—injuries that some believe he sustained in the parachute jump. The following spring, after the snow had melted, Coffelt said he chartered a helicopter and returned to the area. But when the pilot became unduly curious about the object of the search, Coffelt abandoned his efforts to locate the moneybag. A few years later he told James Brown that he wanted to go back into the Cascades and look for the small fortune, but that he needed help. In July 1974 the two men and Brown's muscular 17-year-old son made a week-long trek into the mountains where Coffelt said he landed. Coffelt was then in ill health, and at one point he nearly collapsed on a steep grade. For the entire week they made themselves as invisible as possible, blending into the forest, keeping campfires low, meticulously picking up after themselves. But they found no money in the rugged terrain. Meanwhile, Brown had been writing down every scrap of information Coffelt told him. He began working on a manuscript following Coffelt's death in 1975. To sell the story, Brown found producer Dirk Summers in Las Vegas, where he was supervising a Kenny Norton heavyweight fight for CBS Sports. Summers says that he had Brown take a lie-detector test concerning the time he spent with Coffelt in northern Oregon. "He passed with flying colors," claims Summers. "But all that meant was that Brown believed Coffelt's story. I kept thinking, if this story is true, it's the story of the century." So Summers began his own investigation. In 1977 he and Brown organized an expedition into the Cascades, back to where Coffelt had taken Brown three years earlier. This time, thanks to a metal-detector and energetic digging, the search party unearthed a solid piece of physical evidence: a one-and-a-half-inch piece of cording that proved to be synthetic nylon of the type used in parachute shrouding. "We had a lab report confirming that the cording came from a parachute and was five to seven years old," says Summers. "We were very careful uncovering it. I took soil samples, which I turned over to the lab so I would know whether something hadn't just been buried there. It's a strong piece of circumstantial evidence. "The area where we found this was very primitive, remote wilderness—Big-foot country. We had to lower ourselves down a cliff to get to the site. There was a dead tree that Jack told Brown he hit. And this enormous, two-story-high rock with markings on it: X's and O's that Coffelt said he had scratched into the rock the night he landed there. That was where we dug. You could even see the narrow trenches where his feet had hit the ground and he had been dragged by the parachute." Summers became a believer in the story, and he too is convinced that Jack Coffelt was D. B. Cooper. He has finished a book on the subject, and claims to have interested actors Robert Mitchum and Telly Savalas in a TV project. Summers and Brown also believe that the FBI went to great lengths to cover up and otherwise derail the Coffelt/Cooper connection. The producer suspects that the FBI may have known all along that Coffelt was the skyjacker, but didn't go after him because they realized he had stories to tell about his earlier cooperation with the agency. "Assistant and deputy FBI directors are involved in the Coffelt story," says Summers. "It's a string of middle-level officials covering up and protecting their own asses." Many observers closest to the case are still perplexed by the way it was handled. According to reliable sources, Flo Schaffner and Tina Muchlow—the two stewardesses on board Flight 305 who could identify Cooper—said the FBI released a composite of the skyjacker that looked nothing like him, even though they had worked closely with an FBI artist. Both Summers and Brown were interviewed extensively and gave agents copies of Coffelt photographs. Summers says the stewardesses told him the FBI never showed the Coffelt pictures to any of the airline crew. He also says the FBI threatened [guess: him] with legal action and possible prosecution if he continued with his Coffelt investigation. Worse yet, Summers says FBI agents contacted persons who had talked to him and warned them against cooperating further. Even 60 Minutes' intrepid Mike DB Cooper-20803

[allace had difficulty dealing with the 31. Despite telephone conversations ith agents working on the case and a eeting with Bureau Director William ebster, he unearthed no new informa- on, and reached a frustrating dead end. If Wallace had chosen to dig deeper, e might have uncovered strong evi- ence that Coffelt was telling the truth rom two eyewitnesses aboard Flight 05—stewardess Tina Muchlow (now ina Muchlow Larsen) and attorney eorge LaBissoniere. In the past year oth have identified a photograph of Coffelt as the skyjacker. Interestingly, LaBissoniere says he previously iden- tified an FBI photo of Coffelt a month fter the incident. As far as he knows, nothing more ever happened as a result of the identification. He tried contacting the FBI several times, but no one at the Bureau ever returned his calls.

Also supporting Coffelt's story are unusual details of the skyjacking that he told Brown, facts that have never been released by lawmen or published by newsmen.

Coffelt said he "petted and touched" the stewardess in an intimate way and offered her some of the ransom money. The "groping" has been confirmed by a member of the flight crew. Larsen verifies Coffelt's claim that he changed into boots on the plane. To this day, all news reports have echoed the FBI's claim that he jumped in street shoes.

Earlier this year the D. B. Cooper sto- ry stormed back onto the front pages when some of the ransom money was recovered—not by any of the hopeful treasure-hunters who have prowled the jump region for years, but purely by ac- cident. On February 12, during a family outing on the northern bank of the Co- lumbia River, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was scooping out sand for a campfire site. Suddenly he shouted: "Daddy, I see money!" His father dug further and found 12 packets of crum- bling $20 bills wrapped in worn rubber bands. "It didn't look like I could spend it," says Harold Ingram. "I thought it was counterfeit."

The discovery was made about 50 miles downstream from where Coffelt said he landed and some 20 miles away from where the FBI searched for Cooper's landing spot. If the money had dropped at either location, it would have had to work its way down a tribu- tary and eventually into the wide river. Although the bills apparently did just that, the landing spot or exact route the money followed in the river will prob- ably never be determined, since earth was freely moved from one river to an- other during a massive dredging oper- ation in 1977 and 1978.

The currency's serial numbers did, however, match those on some of the bills given Cooper in 1971. Despite massive digging by the FBI and local police during the next several days, no more ransom money was found.

Those who believe that Jack Coffelt may have been D. B. Cooper feel that finding the money did nothing to con- tradict his version of the skyjacking. "After all, Coffelt did claim he lost the money," one journalist familiar with the case points out.

The FBI agent in charge of the case from the beginning, Ralph Himmels- bach, declines to discuss details of Coffelt's story or his alleged connections to the Bureau. Besides, he thinks it unlikely that D. B. Cooper ever pulled through.

"The aircraft was flying at 10,000 feet at nearly 200 mph," says Himmelsbach. "The air temperature outside was minus-seven degrees. Winds in Portland were gusting at ground level up to 40 mph. He was plunging straight down at 26 mph, the normal rate of vertical de- scent in sport parachuting. Add those two numbers together, and he had to strike the ground at nearly 70 mph. It's hard to conceive how he could have landed without being badly injured. Also, he lacked the necessary equipment to make such a jump. He should have had a hard hat, goggles, a leather flight jacket, a flight suit and some tools and cutters so he could free himself from whatever trees or bushes he might have gotten hung up in.

"It was an incredible gamble. Yet he was dressed in a suit, with a tie and stickpin, alligator shoes, a raincoat and dark glasses and carrying a briefcase. He seemed to be saying, 'If I make it, okay. If I don't, that's okay too.'"

And what about the report from stewardess Muchlow that she saw him change from his street shoes to boots be- fore the jump? "That's news to me," Himmelsbach says gruffly.

A tough, old investigator, he retired from the Bureau a month after the Ingrams found some of the ransom money. Nevertheless, Himmelsbach's compulsion with solving his biggest-ever case has not ended. A private pilot, he still flies his single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza over the rugged terrain that he hopes hides the decaying parachutes and bones of D. B. Cooper. Clearly, he does not relish the prospect that the sky- jacker survived the jump and lived to spend most of the money.

And he has nothing but contempt for the townspeople of Ariel, Washington, who commemorate the famous skyjack- ing. "They're making fun of a deadly serious matter," Himmelsbach declares.

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HUSTLER AUGUST 125DB Cooper-20804

SHE GOT THE HOUSE, CAR AND ALL MY MONEY — BUT I GOT THE HUSTLER HUMOR!

No wonder this guy is happy. He's lost everything except his copies of HUSTLER HUMOR. You see, he knows that every other month he will read and laugh at the most hilarious, irreverent and outrageous cartoons and jokes being pub- lished. Wouldn't you like to laugh along with him? Then pick up a copy or subscribe to HUSTLER HU- MOR today. HUSTLER HUMOR—a Larry Flynt Publication.

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126 AUGUST HUSTLER

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"He [Cooper] was nothing but a com- mon criminal. He terrorized people, threatened their lives, threatened to blow up a plane. I don't like to see some- one like that celebrated."

But someone who has attended Ariel's annual D. B. Cooper Day sees the sky- jacker differently: "This wasn't just a simple rip-off. We're not honoring an antihero because he got away with a crime. We do it because we all think of our own reasons why we would have done the same thing."

Undoubtedly, Himmelsbach wouldn't care to see the skyjacker glorified in a movie either. But that's exactly what famed director John Frankenheimer (Seven Days in May, Black Sunday, The Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate) is doing for PolyGram Pic- tures, which owns the film rights to J. D. Reed's novel Free Fall. In this fast- paced yarn—retitled Pursuit for the screen—a character similar to D. B. Cooper survives his plunge from an air- liner. Then he's pursued across most of the country by a determined federal agent. Yes, the skyjacker gets away.

"D. B. Cooper pulled off a stunt that everyone would love to pull off," says Frankenheimer, describing what at- tracted him to the story. "It's the old Robin Hood guy screwing the Establish- ment. The Cooper character [played by

actor Treat Williams] will be portrayed as an obsessed human being who be- comes a folk hero... much like Bonnie and Clyde." The film will be released next year.

Says author Reed, who spent more than two years researching the Cooper/ Coffelt story and another year writing his fictionalized version of the facts: "Sometimes I think Coffelt didn't do it. But then some mornings I wake up, and I'm sure he was D. B. Cooper.

"Whichever is true, the motivation is what makes this case so interesting. Here's a guy who held a plane for no political or personally disturbed reason. He did it straight-out for money. His was the ultimate victimless crime. After the whole thing was over and the FBI interviewed Tina Muchlow Larsen, the stewardess came to the conclusion that D. B. Cooper actually was carrying railroad flares in his briefcase. The guy didn't even have a real bomb. He never intended to hurt anybody."

Reed has his own favorite theory about the enduring D. B. Cooper legend. "There have since been a num- ber of skyjackings bearing a resem- blance to the D. B. Cooper job," he says. "I'd like to think the guy is still alive and ripping off the Establishment. They don't hardly make them like him anymore."

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TERRORISM

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tions found that an attacker could quickly infect millions of people up to 20 miles away. To this day the Army denies it was responsible for an extreme- ly rare outbreak of Serratia marcescens- linked pneumonia that hospitalized 11 individuals and killed one patient.

Nor did the Army limit its testing to the common man. On March 15, 1962, Chemical and Biological Warfare re- searchers carried out a simulated assasi- nation of President John F. Kennedy by planting vapor-emitting items in the tourist sections of the White House. These vapors were then carried into the air-conditioning system, past guards and into the Oval Office. And the CIA has since admitted plotting the germ- weapon assassination of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but these plans were not carried out.

Then there were the two members of a neo-Nazi organization called RISE ar- rested by Chicago police in 1972. One, who worked in a local hospital, had aroused suspicion by his preoccupation with gaining access to deadly disease specimens. When caught, he was found to have brewed up "a quantity"—about 80 pounds—of typhoid bacteria. RISE

members, according to Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan, had planned to inoculate themselves, then to inject the lethal germs into the water supplies of Chicago and other Midwestern cities. When the expected epidemic killed the present population off, the RISE madmen believed, they would repopulate the land with a "mas- ter race" bred from their own superior seed.

The commissioner of the Chicago Water and Sewers Department assured citizens that chlorine in their drinking water would have killed the typhoid germs. We can hope this is true, but such protective chemicals would not necessarily have killed germs (such as those that cause anthrax) created by the Army's CBW program.

Using germs supplied by or stolen or purchased from research-supply houses, terrorists with the basic skills of a biology sophomore could cook up batches of botulism germs able to kill millions of people. "It scares the shit out of me," said one Pentagon specialist. "Hell, a crazy could stir up enough germs in his bathtub to wipe out New York City! And it doesn't require any special skill or any secrets...just a twisted mind."

But terrorists armed with more-

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