Linn County Sheriff's Office transcript of 1/5/96 interview re D.B. Cooper identification

LINN COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE Albany, Oregon

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This is Detective [redacted]. The date is January fifth, nineteen ninety-six. The time is twelve fifty-five p-m. We're currently at the Linn County Courthouse in the polygraph room. Present in the room with me is [redacted] birthdate is [redacted] and his [redacted], her birthdate is [redacted] They both reside at [redacted] [redacted] Albany. Home phone number is [redacted]

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You both are aware that we're tape recording this?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

And do you have any objection to that?

No.

Okay. Uh, now bear in mind that we are tape recording, so uh, try to keep your hand gestures down to a minimum and explain you know?

Oh yeah.

Right. What are we here to talk about today?

Okay. We're here to talk about D-B Cooper. A friend of mine back in nineteen sixty-one. I lived in Yreka, California, well, sixty, it was sixty actually when I lived there, in nineteen sixty I met this guy. Had just gotten out of the service he said and I thought he said he was from Los Angeles, now I'm not sure about that, he was from Los Angeles, we had parties together and stuff, he was always there at the parties, never drank, much, occasionally, uh, he was older than we were, I was [redacted] at the time, and we figured, I figured at the time he was five, six, seven years older than I was and what we find out now he could have even been older, but like I say he was at different parties with us and he never joined in with us on anything, you know he stood back and watched us, laughed, joked, you know he was that kind, but he was not a rough and tough guy. He was not a fighter or you know, bragged about fighting like we did, see we was pretty into that stuff, that's what made him so different see, he was, you know, more grown up than we were, you know, but he still hung around with us and he lived there at uh, at Yreka in the [redacted] [redacted] and one day I went to get my check and I was walking by and he went with me, I think we went to the post office to get our checks and uh, we got to talking and uh, he cashed his check and

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[redacted/obscured marks and dots]

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he wanted to uh, he was telling me that uh, well he ca, everytime he got his check every week, the one thing that you know, he made sure he got was a crab louie, he had to have this crab louie, that was his reward you know, every week, and then he told me he had so much money for rent, so much money for this and you know, then he was just about broke then, you know, but he had everything laid out pretty much there, but he, so we went in one of the restaurants and now I can't remember which restaurant, whether it was in the hotel or the little restaurant down the street, and sat and I think I just had coffee and he had his crab louie whichever restaurant was it and that's when I asked him, you know, uh, where you from and I remember it was a big town and I thought Los Angeles and uh, you know, I asked him where his relatives, you know, who, you know, his dad, mother, he said that uh, he was [REDACTED] and that the people that [REDACTED] him were older people, they were quite a bit older, they were way up there and they never seen eye to eye on anything and they wanted him to be something else and he didn't want to be this, whatever they wanted him to be, so he just left them, he said he didn't care about them, you know, he had nothing in common with them, cause they were older people and he didn't really care about even finding his mother and dad, he had no idea who they were, and that's all I can remember right there, then

He was drawing unemployment

Yeah, he, well that's what he told me, he was drawing unemployment out, what I gathered from the service, I was drawing because I worked, you know in the saw mills and then in the winter, and this was kind of in the winter time, towards it, I think, because I remember at the time he was different dress than we were, we were in the black leather jackets and levis like and uh he wore turtleneck sweaters a lot, and I always got the impression that he was in the air force for some reason because of the turtleneck sweaters, I don't know why, whether they're, cause I was never in the service, so I didn't, you know, know that much about the service and we never talked much about the service

And he said he was a paratrooper.

Yeah, well, that's what he said, in the service he was a paratrooper and that's what he did and I don't know how long he'd been out of the service, drawing, I always thought drawing the unemployment he much have just got out in the, in the, in with that year or something, I don't know, uh, cause I'm not really sure if that's where he, you know that's what he told me, that's all I know is what he told me, and then we went on and uh, me and my wife went back together in the meantime, in uh,

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This was the previous wife.

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Yeah, a previous wife, we went back together in Dec, around December and moved back to Oregon and uh, let's see, we partied with him then and stuff and then, you know, I knew him good enough to talk to him, I liked him, he was the kind of guy that he just grew on you real, you know, he was just a good guy, as far as you know, and considerate, he was always considerate to the women and everything, but you never seen him with that many women, he went with a couple of them, but uh, uh, he was no, you know, the other type like the rest of us were,

Or a loner.

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He was a little more of a loner, but reserved, but yet, would stay in the middle of us, you know, and laugh and set back and watch us a lot, and then so we come back in the first part of December, I come back up and that's the last time I seen him, well I've got pictures and stuff of him now, with the dates on them, in sixty-one the girl that went with him and everything, or was with him, you know, and the boyfriend, her boyfriend and then we didn't see him again until nineteen seventy-one, it was in July of nineteen seventy-one, he called from Canada, right on the border of Canada, I believe Langley and I'll tell you why I believe Langley, but uh he called and wanted to know if uh, me and my wife wanted to go to Reno with him and his girlfriend, he wasn't married, we never knew him to be married, it was his girlfriend, and we said sure, come down, so we set a date I remember and he came down right after that to pick us up in the airplane, he flew from Langley to Albany in the airplane and got a taxi, I think from the airport and came to our house on [REDACTED] over in south Albany, I lived there at the time and we was all in the room there getting ready to go and it was in the morning like before ten o'clock I believe somewheres in there and we had a baby-sitter, woman to baby-sit that we had gotten for the kids cause I had five kids and they were, her and women were all, you know, telling the baby-sitter what remember what to do and you know, this and that, he'd been it the bathroom and he come out and he stood in the doorway and it was one of his favorite sayings all the time, well let's get the show on the road and then he'd go oh, oh, oh, he had a voice, if he was in back of you talking, when you turned around and seen who was talking to you, you'd think that the guy was bigger than what he was, he was about five ten to five eleven, maybe six foot, he wasn't taller, much taller than I was at about the same and I was about five eleven, but he had a voice that deep, you know, he, he and he, you'd look at his mouth especially his mouth cause it was small, but that big a voice coming out of that small mouth, I always remembered that, and when

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he called me up on the telephone from Canada, I knew right away who it was because he had a, that much of, I thought a distinctive voice, but the other ones I've talked to said they didn't never catch it, but I, I do and uh, so like I say he said let's get this show on the road, we got in my car, went out to the Albany airport and got in the plane, he went in and filed a thing on the flight plan, I guess you call it, and we flew from there to Klammath Falls and it seems that we stopped in Klammath and ate or got a sandwich or something there, and I think he gassed up, I'm not sure, then we went from Klammath to Reno and it was starting to get dark as we was approaching Reno, that's why I thought we stopped, because we must have killed some more time cause knew that it would probably get dark around eight o'clock or something at night and he was, you know, flying the plane and uh, like I say it was starting to get dark and he handed me the map and he said uh, something about we should pass a lake and then we should see the lights of Reno, and I looked down at the map and I said well there's a lake here but it's dried up well no, I said yeah the lakes here, and when I looked out I could see what looked to be like a lake, but it was all dried up and he thought well, then I don't know I said well it's what it looks like and, and he didn't evidently have time to you know, take his eyes off the plane of something to look at the map real good, but then all, cause that's when I thought oh my God it's getting dark and you know, there's no lake, there's no Reno, we kept a going, we kept a going, and I'm scared of heights anyway, I'm scared to death, so I remember that and then all of a sudden he had this beeper or something that went beep, beep told him to turn and I said well the map says this and he said well my beeper, I got to go by it, I said okay, do whatever you got to do, so we made the turn I remember and went for another five, ten minutes, nothing and then all of a sudden we seen the water, you know, real light, we could tell it was a lake, a big lake there of some kind and then we went by it and then we see the lights of Reno and that's when he got on the, on the C-B or whatever they carry in there and called in and they brought us in on radar, so we flew on in to there and it was say nine o'clock at night, somewheres in there, dark, we took the cab from the airport to Reno, we got us a room, we went up and ate, he won fifty dollars there on the dime jackpot standing in line, I remember that, and we gambled that night, probably I would say till two, three o'clock in the morning, maybe later, got up the next morning, went to the airport, got a cab went to the airport, and uh, it could have been later, cause the women were real sleepy so we could have gambled, I don't know how long we gambled but we went back to the airport, got in the airplane, he did all his thing about the flight plan and all this, we got out on the runway and was taxying down the runway, if, at whatever miles an hour, you know just starting to taxi, he said I feel a vibration, he said do you feel a vibration I said no, let's just go, let's get

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out of here, you know, let's get this over with, I want to get back home anyway, I said it feels fine to me and uh, so he turned to the women in the back and uh, he said do you guys feel any vibration and they said yes, it's vibrating bad back here and then he said oh, oh, oh you guys just want to go back and gamble some more, I said well let's go he said no, I got to go back and have this checked, so he turned the plane around, took it back to the wherever he took there and they run it in and had them work on it and look at it and in the meantime we went inside and I think we was gambling, I don't remember, we did something in there and come to find out it was a stuck valve and so that held us up for another couple hours and they got the stuck valve fixed and then we took off, cause I remember taking off out of Reno, going over that mountain there was big hill there or something, and we was, to me we wasn't fifty feet from over the top of that sucker, but from there seemed like we went to Redding or somewheres down around Redding and came back up, because I remember going over, well that's, anyway we stopped in Yreka, Yreka, California, we stopped there, got a cab, went to Yreka, that's where we all knew each other, see and he kind of wanted to see if there was anybody there he knew and we kind of did too, see cause we hadn't been back there in ten years, we ate and did this and that and then we went and got back in the plane and is why I know that uh, well everytime we would gas up, you know, we had to, he always stressed the point that it was hot, the hot, you know the heat was so hot, and full of gas with four people in that little bitty plane and I think it was a sesna one twenty-five, I'm not sure, it was a small plane, just two, the people, you know pretty close in the backseat when they sat back there and when we took out of Yreka, I didn't think we was gonna make it there, because you come right to the end of runway, it was a short runway and he knew that and he knew the runway and he said you know, it looked like we might go off, you know, plop off the end, but we got, you know he had everything full power and all this gas and oh god, I was, anyway we made it and then we was flying over wherever we was flying over the rocks, what'd you say that place was where the big rocks?

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Castle Craig.

Castle Craig just out of Redding, cause I remember that we was right on top of them and how pretty it was and I thought man if we hit in there you know what would happen you know, and then later we flew a little further and it was all forest I remember, all trees, everywhere you could see was just trees, and I said man, I said what would you do if that engine quit right now, what would we do, we'd go down wouldn't we, yes, he said yeah, and he said here, he said he looked out and he said see those two big trees over there, he said uh, we'd fly right into those two big trees, shear off the wings and then we would go down, that would slow us

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