FD-350 clipping: Part of Cooper ransom found buried in river bank, Seattle P-I page A1
Document date 13 February 1980
Part of: FD-350 clipping: Neil Modie, 'Cooper ransom found', Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Id: Cooper-Part-63:053-053
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-63:053-053 Document: FD-350 clipping: Part of Cooper ransom found buried in river bank, Seattle P-I page A1 Id: Cooper-Part-63:053-053 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-63%3A053-053 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 63 p. 53 (DB Cooper-26372), News clipping, dated 13 Feb 1980 — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-63%3A053-053
FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78)
(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p. A1 Post-Intelligencer Seattle, Wa. b6 b7C Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Final
Title: NORJAK
Character: or 164-81 Classification: Submitting Office: Seattle
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Found!
D.B.'s
Loot!
Kids Dig Up Hijack Cash
By Neil Modie
More than eight years after D.B. Cooper parachuted into rainy dark- ness from a hijacked airliner, part of his $200,000 loot was found buried in a river bank near Vancouver, Wash., the FBI announced yesterday.
Badly weathered and apparently washed ashore from the Columbia River, the stacks of $20 bills say noth- ing encouraging about the fate of the legendary hijacker.
"It can tell you a number of things — either he dropped the money or he's dead," commented John D. Prin- gle, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle. "We can't tell at this point."
For Ralph Himmelsbach of Port- land, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation since it began, the dis- covery reinforces his opinion that Cooper died after he parachuted from a Northwest Orient 727 trijet on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971.
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Himmelsbach said the find re- duced to "less than 50 - 50" the odds that Cooper is still alive.
The money was found Sunday by an 8-year-old Vancouver boy, Brian Ingram, and his 5-year-old cousin, Denise, as they were digging in the sand with sticks along the river bank during a family outing.
"This clue is the first we've had since the night of the occurrence," said Bill Baker, assistant special agent in charge of the Portland office, which the Ingram family contacted on Monday.
The money was found about 25 miles southwest of the area where the FBI had thought it most likely Cooper landed after he parachuted from the jetliner into a freezing rainstorm on Nov. 24, 1971.
The hijacker, who had used the name "Dan Cooper" to buy his airline ticket, boarded the jet in Portland, threatened to blow it up with what he claimed was a bomb in his briefcase, then forced it to land in Seattle to col- lect the ransom.
Cooper allowed 36 passengers aboard the flight to leave, then or- dered the crew of four to fly it to Reno after $200,000 in marked bills and four parachutes demanded by the hijacker were brought on board.
As the southbound airliner passed over Southwest Washington, the hi- jacker — wearing only a business suit and street shoes — parachuted through a rear stairwell door.
As "Dan Cooper" became a legend, the name "D.B. Cooper" — as an FBI agent had initially identified him — became the name that stuck.
The FBI said his chances of sur- vival were slim because he was lightly dressed for jumping into a howling wind and a freezing rain in a parachute not likely to work.
Agents have theorized that his remains are at the bottom of Lake Merwin, its forest of [guess: under]water snags entangling his parachute or his
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BRIAN INGRAM The money in the sand
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FEB 15 1980 FBI - SEATTLE [illegible sub-text]
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DB Cooper-26372 SUB [illegible] [illegible date/numbers]
Serials: SE 164-81
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