FD-350 clipping, The Columbian: 'Mystery skull will return to Northwest' (serial 9361)
Document date 19 December 2000
Also filed at: Part 51 p. 342
Copies may differ in what was redacted.
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Id: Cooper-Part-51:341-341
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-51:341-341 Document: FD-350 clipping, The Columbian: 'Mystery skull will return to Northwest' (serial 9361) Id: Cooper-Part-51:341-341 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-51%3A341-341 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 51 p. 341, News clipping, dated 19 Dec 2000, serial SE 164-81-9361 (as read from the transcript) — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-51%3A341-341
FD-350 (Rev 5-8-81)
(Mount Clipping in Space Below)
(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)
Date: 12/19/2000 Edition: COLUMBIAN
Title: SE 164A-81-9361
Character: or Classification: Submitting Office:
Indexing:
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Mystery skull will return to Northwest
FBI analysis showed it's not D.B. Cooper's
By GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer
A skull discovered in an attic in Nebraska last June and briefly suspected of belonging to the infamous 1971 airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper is coming back from whence it originated: the Northwest.
But it's anybody's guess who will ultimately end up with the skull, unearthed in Klickitat County near the Columbia River in the early '80s and stored in the attic of a Cozad, Neb., home.
The skull was examined last summer at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington., D.C., where scientists concluded that it in no way could belong to the man who hijacked a Northwest Airlines plane and parachuted out over Cowlitz or Clark County with $200,000 in cash.
There are at least two reasons: It's the wrong sex and way too old.
The skull has been returned to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C.
That Thanksgiving Eve 1971 crime is the nation's only unsolved skyjacking. The male perpetrator, widely presumed to have died in the jump, never was found, although $5,800 of the cash was discovered in the sand along the Columbia River nine years later. But that's another story.
As for the skull from Klickitat County, Smithsonian scientists determined it belonged to an American Indian woman who lived and died long before airplanes were even invented, the FBI says.
Last week, the Seattle FBI office said it will be getting the skull back from the FBI lab to dispose of as it sees fit. Ray Laurer of the agency's Seattle office said the skull might go to the Klickitat County Sheriff's Office in Goldendale, not far from where it was found by Elsie Rodgers of Cozad during a trip through the area in the early '80s with her husband.
She brought it home and put it in a box in her attic. After she died in May this year, family members discovered it and notified authorities. At some point, as word spread among police and the press of the skull's discovery in Nebraska, someone in authority speculated aloud that, gee, it might belong to the highjacker known as D.B. or Dan Cooper.
Well, that got the attention of TV networks and other media for a few days, until authorities said it appeared to be far too old and the wrong sex. Now, that's the final scientific conclusion and the Smithsonian has sent it back to the FBI.
The only question remaining is where the skull will end up once it is shipped back to Washington state.
"Given that we no longer need it, we will determine whether to give it to the (American Indian) people or the sheriff," said Laurer. "If they (Indians) want to claim it, they'd have first priority."
He said both the Yakama and Umatilla nations have history in the area.
GREGG HERRINGTON covers state and local issues and may be reached at 360-759-8025, or via e-mail at [email protected].
Serials: SE 164-81-9361