FD-350 clipping: "'Wait a minute Daddy' jolts Cooper story", Daily News, Longview WA

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) p.B3 Daily News Longview, Wa. Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Final

Title: NORJAK

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

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Wait a minute Daddy jolts Cooper story

By Thomas Ryll Vancouver Columbian

VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — It started as a Sunday picnic on a chilly river beach for a Vancouver, Wash., family and became a new chapter in the legend of D.B. Cooper.

With one sweep of his arm, 8-year-old Brian Ingram discovered Sunday what thousands of searchers failed to find — a bundle of $20 bills, now deteriorated, demanded by the infamous, parachuting skyjacker in 1971.

Tuesday night in an interview with the Vancouver Columbian, Brian, his father, H. Dwayne, and his mother, Patricia, recounted the events of a casual outing that unearthed what one official called the "most important discovery" in the 8½-year-old case. At the same time, the elder Ingram described finding several thousand dollars of soggy cash as "heartbreaking" without a penny of reward money in sight.

The family and two relatives were walking along the Columbia River near a sand company about 3:30 p.m. Sunday. They decided to gather wood for a fire to take the chill off the 40-degree temperature.

"I gathered an armload of firewood," said Ingram, 28, a painter for U-Cart Manufacturing, a Vancouver firm. "He (Brian) was doing his part, happy and enthusiastic. I was about ready to set the wood down and he said, 'Wait a minute, Daddy.'"

Brian, a second-grader at Hough Elementary School, knelt beneath his father to smooth a spot for the fire. He swept the river sand only once, uncovering three worn bundles of $20 bills.

"I seen that money, I thought 'Wow!'" recalled the slender, towheaded youngster, who said it was the first money he ever found. "I went over to my parents and they thought it was counterfeit."

Unknown to them, Brian had uncovered part of a $200,000 ransom handed over to a man calling himself Dan Cooper on Nov. 24, 1971. Cooper demanded the cash as ransom and hijacked a Northwest Airline Boeing 727 jet in Seattle.

As the plane flew south to Reno, Nev., Cooper bailed out from the jet's rear-stairway with the bundled money wrapped in a parachute and tied to his body.

Authorities believe he jumped over southwest Washington.

The Ingrams, who moved here from Oklahoma less than a year ago, said they were aware of the D.B. Cooper saga but did not connect it to their find.

Neither did the buried treasure put a damper on the afternoon activities. "We had a picnic," said Ingram. "We forgot about the money and had a great time."

Back home about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, the bills, erroded into lozenge-shaped piles, were placed unceremoniously atop a kitchen cabinet to dry.

"I was thinking about decoupaging them and putting them on a board," said Mrs. Ingram, 26.

"I thought it might have been mob money or lost money. I just didn't know what to think, but it was just money that looked useless to me."

Monday, during his 10 a.m. coffee break, Ingram called a local bank to see whether the battered bills could be exchanged for new ones. A bank employee told him it could be done if the serial numbers were intact, but added a check would be made of the numbers.

Ingram said he brooded on that the rest of the day and called the Portland FBI office Monday evening, reading several serial numbers to an agent.

When Ingram called back 30 minutes later, "they said they'd like to talk to me."

It was not until Tuesday morning that he learned the money was part of the Cooper caper.

Tuesday evening, the couple watched themselves on national television. By then, they had grown weary of the day's hectic activities and exuded disappointment in learning that apparently no reward awaits their honesty.

"It's just heartbreaking that nothing may come of this," Ingram said.

"I went from a rich man to a poor man without hardly making a move."

Supporting a family of four and making the $200 a month rent payment for their ragged westside home is tough at times, Ingram said, adding "If all this fame came with a little fortune, I would talk to everyone in the world about this story."

He abruptly ended the interview minutes later, turning his eyes to the television set, saying, "If you don't mind, I've waited five years to see this movie (The [Exorcist]) on television."

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SUBS: B[illegible] b6 b7C INDEXED SERIALIZED. FILED FEB 9 1980 FBI - SEATTLE

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DB Cooper-26376