FD-350 clipping: 'Alive or dead, skyjack pioneer came but loser' by Leverett Richards (The Sunday Oregonian Forum)

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

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Alive or dead, skyjack pioneer came but loser

By LEVERETT RICHARDS of The Oregonian staff

EDITORIALS - LETTERS - SPECIAL ARTICLES - BOOKS

The Sunday Oregonian FORUM

PORTLAND, OREGON, NOVEMBER 14, 1976 - PAGE 1, SECTION E

ON THANKSGIVING EVE five years ago, a man who said his name was Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Airline's flight 305 at Portland bound for Seattle. He displayed a "bomb," de- manded and got $200,000 in $20 bills, then bailed out through the rear stair door of the Boeing 727 at 8:10 p.m. near La Center, Wash., with the money. Cooper, errone- ously described in the press and radio at the time as "D.B. Cooper," was hailed in some quarters as a folk hero who "beat the system" and got away with a small fortune. Some ac- claimed him as a Robin Hood who had committed the perfect crime. Part of the folk lore is that Cooper will be "home safe" Nov. 24, 1976 when the five-year statute of limitations expires. The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't see it that way at all. The FBI agents believe Cooper was a bungling amateur; they think he is almost certainly dead.

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(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) Page E1 TheSunday Oregonian Portland, Oregon

Date: 11/14/76 Edition: morning Author: LEVERETT RICHARDS Editor: Title: NORJAK

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

[checked] Being Investigated

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[handwritten] 11a(4-8)-SubB SEARCHED [stamped] INDEXED SERIALIZED [stamped] FILED NOV 19 1976 FBI - SEATTLE

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Svs. 6

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b6 b7C

And if he or any accomplices have survived, they are still wanted men. There is no statute of limitations for them -- ever, says Ralph Himmelsbach, veteran FBI agent who has lived with the Cooper case for the past five years, literally day and night.

"We are continuing our investiga- tion unabated," said Himmelsbach. "We don't intend to give up. I still give a substantial portion of my time to check- ing out leads. We still get several tips every week. We pledged at the outset to investigate any information we re- ceived from the public."

"We have checked more than 1,000, maybe several thousand, reports alto- gether. We have checked a long list of missing persons. And after five years we still don't know if there ever was a Dan Cooper. We have no more informa- tion on his identity today than we had five years ago."

The FBI bases its rejection of the statute of limitations on three major assumptions: There is no statute of limi- tations in capital crimes and air piracy, or aerial hijacking was a crime punish- able by death in November 1971 and still is.

There is no statute of limitations protecting fugitives from justice, ac- cording to a recent ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court in a similar case. Since Cooper has not turned himself in he is assumed to be a fugitive, if he is still alive. The same rule applies to his ac- complices, if any, Himmelsbach ex- plained.

Seizure of the aircraft with its 36 passengers and crew of six could be considered kidnaping, a crime also ex- empt from the statute of limitations where injury or death is involved.

"Personally, after five years of in- tensive investigation I lean to the con- clusion that Cooper was killed when he jumped from the plane or died soon af- ter landing. That makes it a capital crime. If he had any accomplices, which is not indicated by any evidence so far, they would be equally guilty."

To back up his conclusions, Him- melsbach for the first time, told the detailed story of the hijacking:

"Cooper was given four para- chutes," Himmelsbach said. "He cut the shroud lines on one of the best para- chutes and used them to tie the 10,000 $20 bills to his belt in a bag before he bailed out.

"He left behind the two best para- chutes — a sky diver parachute with a 32-foot canopy and a chest pack de- signed primarily for use as a second parachute.

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"He wore a pilot's seat pack para- chute with a 28-foot canopy. He also took with him a chest pack parachute used for training. It was unusable. The panels were sewn together. If it had been usable he could not have attached it to his parachute harness, which had no D-rings for use with a chest pack. No one who knew anything about para- chutes would have made this many mis- takes.

"He also either took with him or threw out the bag in which he claimed to be carrying a bomb."

Himmelsbach declined to describe the device in detail, for security rea- sons. But it was earlier described as a crude, unsophisticated device apparent- ly consisting of highway flares and a battery.

He left no fingerprints in the plane, but did leave a couple of items which the FBI is not revealing because they could help identify the hijacker or con- found any of the expected phony fame seekers who may claim to be Cooper when they think the statute of limita- tions has expired.

"Cooper could not have known where he was when he jumped," Him- melsbach said. "He did not know the exact route of flight or the altitude. The plane was on instruments in the higher of two layers of clouds all the way from Seattle to the vicinity of La Center.

"There was a radio marker beacon in the general area, but it was out of service. The hijacker could not have seen the ground and could not have de- termined his position by any kind of radio receiver, if he had one, which we don't know for sure. There was no way he could have known within miles of where he was.

"It was a stormy night, with freez- ing rain at his altitude and winds gust- ing from 25 to 45 knots at Portland International Airport, maybe stronger along the Lewis River where he bailed out. He was dressed in a business suit and Oxford type street shoes. He had no hat or goggles.

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DB Cooper-23105

"Parachute experts tell us he [guess: most likely] would have been snapped off his [guess: feet] when he stepped out into a 196-mile-an- hour slipstream; his eyes would have been blacked by the force of the wind and he probably would have tumbled out of control. He would have landed in his stocking feet, blinded by the slip- stream, and the raging storm.

"With that 28-foot canopy he would have descended 26 miles an hour verti- cally. Add a 30 to 55 mile- an-hour wind and he would have hit at a speed of 50 to 70 miles an hour. The experts say it is inconceivable that he could have es- caped serious injury or instant death -- even assuming his parachute opened."

How does the FBI know Cooper bailed out near La Center and landed somewhere along the Lewis River? The two Air Defense Command F106 jet in- terceptors which followed the 727 through the overcast that dark, stormy night, saw nothing. There was no radio transmitter on the parachutes delivered to the hijacker, which would have per- mitted pursuers to follow his trajectory as he bailed out.

But the FBI, with the aid of North- west Airlines reconstructed the whole hijacking six weeks after the crime.

"The first week in January, 1972, we flew a Northwest 727 exactly like flight 305 over the same route with the same load, the same power settings, the same flap settings, same use of landing gear, from Seattle south. We had Will- iam Rataczak, first officer on the hi- jacked plane, at the controls," Himmels- bach said.

"Over the Lewis River, 35 miles north of Portland, the rear stairway was lowered and a 235-pound sled dropped off while a chase plane photo- graphed its trajectory as it parachuted to the ground.

"As the load left the stairway it re- tracted to within eight inches of clos- ing, then dropped back down. The re- sult was a marked fluctuation in the cabin air pressure which caused the crews' ears to pop and registered a rap- id change in the rate of pressurization on instruments in the cockpit.

"Rataczak said: 'That's just the way it was at 8:10 p.m. Nov. 24.' Only the crew didn't know what it meant then. They didn't know he had bailed out until they landed at Reno and found the plane empty."

The same rapid fluctuations in air pressure were noted in three bailouts from 727 airliners in the next few months, before the FAA ordered all rear doors rigged so they could not be opened in flight.

"There has not been a successful hijacking in the U.S since," Himmelsbach emphasized. "And none of the hi- jackers who succeeded in bailing out got away with the money. All were quickly caught and the money recov- ered."

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The re-enactment of the hijacking was conducted in fair weather. But en- gineers fed into their computers es- timated delays in opening the para- chute, known speed of descent, wind velocity and direction and came up with an area 6 ½ miles long and 4 miles wide. The FBI assumes Cooper landed somewhere within this "target area," which barely includes Lake Merwin in its northeast corner.

Cooper couldn't have chosen a [illegible]

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DB Cooper-23106

[worse] night for a bailout. Two layers of clouds covered Oregon and Washing- ton, one [at] bases at 2,500 feet, the other from [5,]000 feet up to 10,000 feet and more over Portland. Winds were gusting from 25 to 45 knots at Portland International Airport.

Lelooska, Indian artist who lives at Ariel, Wash., was driving home along the Lewis River about 8 p.m. and re- ported the wind and rain was buffeting the car so hard that he pulled off the road to wait for a break in the storm.

Himmelsbach, an experienced pilot, took off from Portland International Airport in a National Guard helicopter as the hijacked plane passed overhead.

"We were going to try and follow the 727," Himmelsbach said. "But the air was so rough and the clouds so low that we were called back before we got past downtown Portland."

The next day, Himmelsbach, who holds a commercial pilot rating, flew almost the entire route of the hijacked plane in his own airplane, accompanied by an experienced Civil Air Patrol ob- server.

"We flew directly over the area where we later estimated he had land- ed, but there is hardly a chance of see- ing even a parachute canopy in the dense woods and brush that cover much of the area."

About 200 officers and men of the 3[d] Armored Cavalry from Ft. Lewis, equipped with five helicopters, searched the target area for two weeks in mid-March, poking through brush and blackberry patches and searching farm buildings.

They found the body of a murdered girl. They found some parachute cano- pies, orange and green — attached to weather balloons — but not a single valid clue to the missing Cooper. Coop- er's parachute was all white, snow white.

"It is impossible to conduct a 100 per cent effective search in some of this area," Himmelsbach said. "There are acres and acres of blackberries so dense as to be impenetrable and some of the terrain is too steep to be searched on foot. A man could fall into one of those backberry patches and just disappear. We would have to burn out the under- brush or cut it out by hand to conduct a thorough search."

"I have never thought Cooper went into the lake. From all I've seen I lean to the hypothesis that he landed in the dense woods either dead or mortally hurt. It could be years before he is found. Planes have disappeared in that kind of terrain and been missing for 10 years or more."

When Capt. William Scott, Flight Engineer H. E. Anderson, and First Offi- cer Kataczak landed the 727 at Reno with the rear stair door still dragging, they [and] Tina Mucklow, stewardess, found the cabin empty except for one

chest pack, the good one, and the sky divers' parachute, "the one he should have used." (Flight [Atte]ndant Florence Schaffner and a th[ird] stewardess had been left behind in Seattle.)

The money was missing. So was the attache case in which he carried the crude dummy "bomb." The FBI found two personal items which they are not revealing. That was all. No fingerprints, no clues. The hijacker even reclaimed the hijack note he had written when he first boarded the plane.

Not one of the 10,000 $20 bills Cooper obtained has turned up. The FBI circulated a list of the numbers to po- lice, sheriffs and banks throughout the country. FBI and other agencies have been swamped with calls from people who think they have found one of the bills.

"We are still getting a score or more calls a week," Himmelsbach said. "Ac- tually if everyone who gets a $20 bill gave us a call we would be swamped. We want to check every suspicious bill, but we could eliminate 70 per cent of these calls if people would first take a look at the face of the bill.

"At the lower right hand of the pic- ture of Andrew Jackson you will find a date and a letter — like 1973, with a C under it. That is the date the bill was issued.

"Obviously if it was issued after 1971 it could not be one of the missing bills," Himmelsbach pointed out.

The list of 10,000 numbers has been entered in the National Crime Informa- tion Computer system.

Almost every police station and sheriff's office has access to this com- puter, which can tell in two seconds whether the bill is on the wanted list, Himmelsbach said.

The FBI has not given up. The search goes on. While Cooper has cost the airlines and law enforcement agen- cies millions of dollars, his hijacking — the first one motivated strictly by greed — led to an airport security program which has resulted in the confiscation of thousands of weapons and the arrest and successful prosecution of hundreds of other criminals, Himmelsbach points out.

The Federal Aviation Administra- tion reports five possible hijackings or other crimes against civil aviation were prevented by the security system in the first six months of 1976 and 2,840 fire- arms and seven explosive or incendiary devices were seized and 422 persons arrested.

P.S. If by some miracle Cooper should escape the FBI, he would still be wanted by the IRS. The Portland office of the Internal Revenue Service esti- mates Cooper would owe $217,523 on his $200,000 loot in taxes and penalties for failure to file and failure to pay. A possible civil penalty could raise that figure another $60,000 — all of which goes to show that crime doesn't pay, the IRS says.

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