FD-350 clipping: AP feature 'D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?' on approaching statute of limitations

FD-350 (Rev. 11-11-75)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?

By JOE FRAZIER Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. — A miserably wet, windy, cold Thanksgiving eve in 1971. Passengers waited at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at Portland International Airport to book space on Flight 105 to Seattle. Many thought ahead to family reunions, turkey dinners, long relaxed conversations and perhaps a traditional game of bridge or Monopoly later. But one didn't. Dan Cooper paid cash for his ticket, then, clutching a paper sack, boarded the Boeing 727 for the 30-minute flight. A few minutes after the plane nosed into the storm, he made his move. He showed the stewardess what he said was a dynamite bomb and demanded four parachutes, $200,000 in $20 bills, and "no funny stuff." All the passengers but Cooper got off at Seattle, unaware that anything was amiss. The money and parachutes were put on board and the jet, with only the crew and Cooper aboard, headed for Reno on Cooper's orders. Then somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper, with the 21 pounds of money strapped to him, bailed out. He hasn't been heard from since. If he's alive, and that's a big "if," the five-year statute of limitations runs out this Thanksgiving eve, Nov. 21.

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(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)

B-4 HERALD EXAMINER LOS ANGELES, CA

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Date: 11/21/76 Edition: Sunday Latest Author: Joe Frazier Editor: Donald Goodenow Title: UNSUB; AKA D.B. COOPER

Character: or SKYJACKING Classification: Submitting Office: Los Angeles ☐ Being Investigated

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16H-4092-875 SEARCHED _____ INDEXED _____ SERIALIZED ___ AND FILED ____ NOV 2 2 1976

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b6 b7C

DB Cooper-25470

"Or does it?" "We're going ahead on the assumption that the statute doesn't apply, because when he did what he did, capital punishment was a possibility. Say, you might find a scrap or two of bone, if that. There's no statute on capital crimes," says FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach.

Anyway, he says, chances are good that Cooper is dead.

"Not one of the 10,000 bills has shown up, and we know the serial number of every one of them," he said. And Cooper apparently knew nothing about skydiving.

In a business suit and street shoes, he jumped from the rear door of a jet going 197 m.p.h. at 10,000 feet. At that elevation it was seven below zero that night, with a wind-chill factor of 69 below zero.

The plane was in clouds. "Up looked like down to him. He had no visual reference. He couldn't have possibly known where he was."

Cooper picked some of the roughest country in the Pacific Northwest.

He took two of the four parachutes with him when he jumped. One was a small emergency chute of the type used by stunt fliers. Under ideal conditions, someone who knew what he was doing might break an ankle or leg with it.

The other was a training chute used for demonstrations. The panels had been sewn shut. It wouldn't have opened.

The next night the FBI re-enacted the skyjacking using the same plane, crew, fuel load, speed and altitude. The test helped flight engineers and meteorologists to compute the probably drop zone to be a trapezoidal area covering about 25 square miles.

It has been searched and researched in vain.

What would it take to find Cooper's remains, assuming [they] are there?

[I]'d say it might take 5,000 [or] [guess: five] years. I mean, how [do you] search a blackberry [thicket] [guess: bigger] than your

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[guess: hikers] who work in the [guess: areas] that coyotes, [guess: or] lions or wild dogs [guess: make] quick work of a body. After five years, they [guess: say], you might find a scrap or two of bone, if that. Nevertheless, for a while Cooper was a folk hero of sorts. He was macho. He was daring. He didn't hurt anybody, but he ripped off a big corporation. And he beat the fuzz.

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DB Cooper-25471

There were imitators. Around the world, there were more than a dozen skyjacking attempts patterned after Cooper's. Cooper is the only one not known to have failed. With increased airport se- curity and modification of the Boeing 727 so the rear door wouldn't open in flight, the fad stopped. The flow of clues, hints, and tips from the public about Dan Cooper has slowed to a trickle now. After checking out more than 1,000 suspects, the FBI says it knows little more about Cooper than it did on that stormy night when he leapt into history. Himmelsbach said the whole thing was probably put together with minimal plan- ning and that the bomb was a bundle of relatively harmless highway flares. The bomb was red. Dynamite isn't. If the crew members had re- alized that, they might have called his bluff at the time, Himmelsbach said. "He's lucky he got as far as he did with a plan like that." Even if the statute holds up, Cooper will have problems. The Internal Revenue Ser- vice computes his tax debt, including penalties and in- terest, at about $198,000. And the Globe Indemnity Co., which had to pay $180,000 to the airline, may want to talk to him. So now, what? "We have to accept the possibility that we may never know," Himmelsbach said. "I guess we can live with that - we have to."

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DB Cooper-25472