FD-350 mounted magazine article 'The skyjacker who vanished into thin air' with sketch, photos and cartoons
Title revised to match the document’s own text.
Original title: FD-350 mounted LIFE magazine article 'The skyjacker who vanished into thin air' with sketch, photos and cartoons
Document date 16 September 1972
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Id: Cooper-Part-59:389-395
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-59:389-395 Document: FD-350 mounted magazine article 'The skyjacker who vanished into thin air' with sketch, photos and cartoons Id: Cooper-Part-59:389-395 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-59%3A389-395 What is wrong (title, date, type, which pages belong together, copies)? What does the scan show?
A person reads every report. Corrections are made by hand, to the data — titles, dates, names, which pages belong together — never to the scans, and they can take a while to appear.
FBI 164-81, Vault Part 59 pp. 389–395 (DB Cooper-24556–24562), News clipping, dated 16 Sep 1972 — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-59%3A389-395
above Merwin Dam, then why hasn't his body or the money been found? Have the searchers been looking in the wrong place?
No answers. The prospect of all that money sent fortune hunters racing into the woods last fall. And even today campers keep an eager eye out for the skyjack- er's loot. Meanwhile, the North- west has eulogized D.B. Cooper in song and verse. Promoters have capitalized on Cooper's [guess: shinanigans]. Bumper stickers. Two men were ar- rested and charged with fleecing a writer of $30,000 by promising an interview with Cooper. An un- derground newspaper in Seattle published another "interview" with the skyjacker, but it was promptly debunked by authorities. With the passage of time Cooper has as- sumed a certain Jesse James qual- ity. At the Angel store, an auto- graph party was held this month to celebrate publication of Anna Friday's whimsical book on the skyjacking, entitled Skyjacker's Guide--or Please Hold This Bomb While I Go to the Bathroom. "The people are all kind of proud that it happened here," observes Mrs. Friday, whose house looks down on long, frigid Lake Merwin. Ev- eryone breathed a sigh when the wasn't found. They feel the glory --and the money--belong to us."
In Mrs. Friday's book, which her brother-in-law, Bill, illustrated with cartoons (right), the skyjacker meets an ignominious end. In- deed, the FBI informed residents that Cooper may have been de-
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voured by animals, and asked them to look for remains. But like most of her neighbors, Anna Friday doesn't believe that Cooper died. "It was too carefully planned for him to flub up at the last minute," she says, fixing a thoughtful gaze out through the low-lying fog. "And remember, there were just enough odd things that happened around here that night."
Like down the road at [guess: legless] Hat- field's place, Old [guess: Less] heard a thumping on his roof, but by the time he got out there, rifle at the ready, there was nothing. In the nearby community of View, it was black and blustery--hardly a night for small planes--but at a seldom- used airstrip near the cemetery, there were strange goings-on. Emil Neiger's wife recalls seeing an air- craft circling for nearly an hour. She doesn't know if it landed, but Mrs. Melvin Andersen, who lives across the way, says that it did.
Five miles to the west at La Center, there is another strip adjacent to Donald Haun's black- berry farm. On the preceding night, also in forbidding weather, Haun's wife remembers that a plane ren- dezvoused with a car. The aircraft took off with the aid of the head- lights. It returned 45 minutes later and then both car and plane left. Was this a rehearsal for Cooper's getaway? The Hauns don't know. On the night of the crime, like just about everyone else in La Center, they were attending a wedding at the Evangelical church.
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DB Cooper-24556
This spring the army sent 300 men in for a three-week search, but they turned up nothing except a little local hostility. The folks in Etna are still angry at the disturbance that the soldiers and their helicopters caused. Clarence Anry's horse disappeared for three days and two frightened cows ran themselves to death. A few days after the searchers left, Shir- ley Free and Howard Pearson's wife were out collecting old bot- tles at the grist mill on Cedar Creek when they stumbled upon a woman's hand in the underbrush. Then yet another body was dis- covered over on Studebaker Road. It wasn't Cooper. And now Cow- litz County has two unsolved mur- ders on its hands, as well as a phantom hijacker. RICHARD WOODBURY
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DB Cooper-24557
DB Cooper-24558
DB Cooper-24559
With a make-believe bomb, a pas- senger using the name D. B. Coo- per (in FBI sketch, far left) hijacked this Northwest jet, then bailed out into the dense woods of south- western Washington state (below).
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DB Cooper-24560
COPYRIGHT 1972, W. R. FRIDAY
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DB Cooper-24561
"SKYJACKER? No, CAN'T SAY THAT I REALLY HAVE!"
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"BUMP? MUST HAVE BEEN YOUR IMAGINATION!"
[text to right:] ...cently published book by Anna ...riday (below, right) includes some cartoon speculation as to what may have happened to Cooper after he parachuted to earth...
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DB Cooper-24562