FD-350 clipping, Herald Examiner: 'Search for 1971 hijacker leads to mysterious ex-con' (Jack Coffelt)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) A-1 HERALD EXAMINER LOS ANGELES, CA Date: 12/16/79 Edition: Sunday Latest

Title: NEWS FOCUS

Character: or Cri.

Classifi[cation]: b6 Submitting Office: Los Angeles b7C

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Search for 1971 hijacker leads to mysterious ex-con

The year was 1971. It was a dark, stormy Thanksgiving Eve in Portland, Ore., and at the busy Portland International Airport, everyone seemed to want to be somewhere else this night, preferably with family and loved ones preparing for the next day's feast. A middle-age man, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and thin black tie and wearing a hat, walked up to the Northwest Airlines counter. The man, who was about 6 feet tall and of medium build and carried a briefcase, gave his name as Dan Cooper and paid cash for a one-way ticket on Flight 305 to Seattle. The ticket agent punched the wrong key and the name came out "D.B. Cooper" A few minutes after takeoff, the misnamed passenger handed a stewardess a note threatening to blow up the plane with a hidden bomb if he didn't receive $200,000 cash and four parachutes. The plane went to Seattle, where an FBI agent brought the ransom to the cabin door and handed it to a stewardess. Then, as the plane continued on toward Reno, Nev., with its rear door open, as the hijacker had instructed, D.B. Cooper jumped into the night — and became a legend in American crime. The massive manhunt that began the next day in the mountainous terrain that Cooper jumped into was only the beginning. In the eight years since the famous incident, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has expended thousands of man-hours tracking down leads on some 900 suspects. Yet, the official line is still that an unknown man hijacked Flight 305 that night and probably died in the parachute jump — though his body, the chutes and the money were never found in the wild, uninhabited Cascade Mountains.

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But that may not be what happened. There is at least some evidence that D.B. Cooper was an ex-con named Byron "Jack" Coffelt who survived the jump and escaped. The FBI and various media outlets have spent considerable time investigating the Coffelt-Cooper connection, yet his story [guess: has] never before been published.

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SEARCHED___INDEXED___ SERIALIZED___FILED___ DEC 20 1979 FBI — LOS ANGELES

ORIGINAL TO THE BUREAU FBI/DOJ

DB Cooper-25919

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164-497-1010

[n]It is a mystery story — though an investigation has turned up some evidence suggesting that Coffelt was Cooper, including two passengers on the hijacked airplane who saw photos of Coffelt and identified him as the hijacker.

The story also has intriguing characters — including alleged bungling, FBI agents, a rich right-wing recluse who is the last living relative of Abraham Lincoln and the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., James Earl Ray.

Much of Jack Coffelt's life is shrouded in mystery, and that's undoubtedly the way he wanted it. This picture of his life was pieced together from interviews with various knowledgeable sources, including journalists and lawmen.

Coffelt, who was born in 1916, spent the first 30 years of his life in and out of jails throughout the Midwest for a variety of minor crimes. In 1949, he hit the big time: He received a 10-year sentence for interstate transportation of a stolen automobile, and served time in Atlanta and Leavenworth federal prisons. Over the years, his cell mates reportedly included Col. Jack Durant, who was convicted of stealing the Hesse crown jewels during World War II; James Earl Ray, who is presently serving a life sentence for killing Martin Luther King Jr.; and James Brown, an Army officer convicted of serving time on an assault charge.

Sometime during those prison years, Coffelt and the FBI apparently made contact. A source, who requested anonymity, says there is a letter signed by J. Edgar Hoover asking the prison warden for information about Coffelt, as well as evidence that the agent in charge of the local FBI office in Atlanta was Coffelt's sole visitor for five years.

Some persons who have studied Coffelt's past suspect that he became an FBI informant in prison, perhaps secretly turning over information damaging to his cell mates. Certain sources add that Coffelt himself described his days in the pen as a "revolving door," claiming that he would be let out for a few days or weeks at a time to carry out "a job" for the government.

The FBI refused to comment on any of this or on any other aspect of Coffelt's life.

In 1955, after serving only six years of his 10-year sentence, Coffelt was paroled from Leavenworth.

In the mid-60s, he began a mysterious association with Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the last living relative of Abraham Lincoln.

Beckwith — Lincoln's great-grandson — is the scion of rich industrialist Warren Beckwith, and he lives on a sprawling 300-acre estate in Virginia. The land came from the Lincoln side of the family: Beckwith inherited it from his mother, who acquired the estate from her father, Lincoln's son.

Beckwith had not been idle with his wealth, a six-figure annual income from a lifetime trust left by his father. He has reportedly financed several right-wing causes.

Coffelt became Beckwith's aide-de-camp and got control of more than one Beckwith-financed bank account. But little else is known about this mysterious relationship, which Beckwith himself declines to clarify.

Other bits and pieces have emerged about this period of Coffelt's life:

In 1974, Coffelt boasted to an old friend, former Atlanta cell mate James Brown, that he had "helped kill a nigger" in Memphis, Tenn. Then, elaborating slightly, he said that he had been in "one of the white cars" that caused confusion around Memphis immediately after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

In 1978, James Earl Ray was shown a picture of Coffelt by someone investigating the Coffelt-Cooper connection, and reportedly identified his old prison mate — but only after being shown Coffelt's death certificate. Ray gave no further information, according to a source close to the investigation.

Coffelt allegedly carried a number of official credentials: FBI, Department of Agriculture, passes for the White House and Pentagon. A college professor reported that he was riding in an automobile with Coffelt in Washington, D.C., when Coffelt picked up Gen. Creighton Abrams, U.S. Army chief of staff (now deceased) and took him to the Pentagon. This professor has claimed that he saw Coffelt flash FBI credentials.

Sometime around 1970, Beckwith fired Coffelt. It was a bitter parting. In 1973, Beckwith settled a suit filed by Coffelt reportedly by giving his former aide a sum equal to $750 per month, retroactive to 1963. (The settlement papers are sealed by court order.)

Beckwith is still alive at about 80 years of age. But he lives in seclusion, and has declined repeatedly to be interviewed on his relationship with Coffelt.

After the break with Beckwith, Coffelt spent the next couple of years in Washington, D.C., and, for brief periods of time, in Lawrence, Kan. He held a string of odd jobs during this time and was described as being ill and drinking heavily during 1971.

Some who have investigated Coffelt theorize that his deteriorated financial situation after his break with Beckwith may have driven him to try the desperate hijacking of Flight 305.

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DB Cooper-25920

Eleven days after the Cooper hijacking, Coffelt [guess: began] a job as a surgical technician at [a] [guess: northern] Virginia hospital. His superior there, a woman, told sources that Coffelt had difficulty walking and at one point showed her his "badly discolored legs" — injuries which some believe he sustained in the parachute jump. He worked at the hospital through most of 1972, then in June of 1973 he contacted his old cell mate, James Brown, for the first time in years.

A year later, in May 1974, Coffelt told Brown for the first time that he was D.B. Cooper and disclosed some details of the crime that, if true, presumably only the hijacker could have known. For example, according to Brown, Coffelt described changing into boots before jumping and boasted of flirting with one of the stewardesses. Coffelt also said that he dropped the $200,000 ransom during the parachute jump and had never recovered it.

Coffelt told Brown that he wanted to go back into the Cascades and look for the small fortune, but he needed help. Brown agreed to accompany him, and in July of that year, the two men and Brown's muscular, [guess: 6]-foot-plus, 17-year-old son, Byron, made a weeklong trek into the mountains.

According to Brown, Coffelt was then so ill that at one point he nearly collapsed on a steep grade. However, after a week in which they made themselves as inconspicuous as possible, they found no money and quit.

Still, to this day, James Brown remains unshaken in his conviction that his old cell mate was D.B. Cooper.

After the Cascades trip, Coffelt moved to Hawaii and died there in June 1975. Brown, who did not learn about Coffelt's death for more than a year, had written down everything Coffelt told him, and began writing a book manuscript. But he knew he needed help, preferably from a promoter familiar with Hollywood wheeling and dealing.

Brown found free-lance producer Dirk Summers, who was in Las Vegas while producing a Ken Norton heavyweight title fight for CBS Sports.

Summers said in an interview that he subsequently had Brown and his son take lie-detector tests concerning the five weeks they spent with Coffelt. "They passed with flying colors," Summers said. "But all that meant was that Brown believed Coffelt's story. I kept thinking, if this story is true, it's the story of the century."

Summers began his own investigation, and he and Brown organized an expedition into the Cascades in 1977, back to where Coffelt had taken Brown three years earlier. This time, thanks to a metal detector and energetic digging, the search party unearthed a solid piece of physical evidence: a 1½-inch piece of cording that [guess: appeared] to be synthetic nylon of the type used in parachute shrouding — and it was 5 to 7 years old.

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"It's a strong piece of circumstantial evidence," said Summers. "We had a lab report confirming that (the) cording ... was from a parachute and several years old. No one has ever asked me, but I'll be happy to take a lie-detector test about where we found it, and how we dug it up. We were very careful uncovering it. I took soil samples which I turned over to the lab so I would know something hadn't just been buried there."

"The area where we found this was very primitive, remote wilderness," Summers explained. "This was Big Foot country. We had to lower ourselves down a cliff to get to the site. There was a dead tree that Jack (told Brown) said he hit. And this enormous, two-story high rock with markings on it. "Xs" and "Os" that Coffelt said he had scratched into the rock the night he landed there. That was where we dug. You could even see the narrow trenches, where his feet had hit the ground."

Summers became a believer in the story, and he, too, is still convinced that Jack Coffelt was D.B. Cooper.

In addition, Summers believes that the FBI has gone to great lengths to cover up and otherwise derail the case.

Summers added he suspects that the FBI may have known all along that Coffelt was the hijacker, but didn't go after him because they knew he had stories to tell about his earlier cooperation with the agency.

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DB Cooper-25921