On FD-350: 'Part of Cooper cash uncovered' (Oregonian, 2/13/80)

FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(Indicate page, name of paper, city and state.) p.A1 Oregonian Portland, Wa. Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Final

Title: SEARCHED......... INDEXED........ SERIALIZED........ FILED........ FEB 25 1980 FBI - SEATTLE Character: or Classification: 164/81 Submitting Office: Seattle

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Part of cooper's cash uncovered

By LEVERETT RICHARDS of The Oregonian staff

"Several thousand dollars" of the $200,000 obtained eight years ago by the celebrated airline hijacker who used the name Dan Cooper was found Sunday along the Columbia River downstream from Vancouver, Wash., the FBI reported Tuesday.

Three bundles containing 12 packets of weatherbeaten $20 bills were found in river sand by a picnicking Vancouver family, about nine miles northwest of the city.

FBI agents searching the beach Tuesday afternoon found several more fragments of $20 bills, some of them under three feet of sand.

Harold Dwayne Ingram, his wife, Patricia, and their son, Brian, 8, were preparing to build a fire on the beach when Brian brushed the sand aside and turned up some of the bills, Ingram said.

"We dug around and found three bundles of bills tied with rubber bands," Ingram said.

The bills were wet and badly worn, but the serial numbers were legible. The FBI identified the serial numbers and confirmed that they were part of the loot given Cooper when he hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 jetliner between Portland and Seattle on Nov. 24, 1971.

William M. Baker, assistant special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office, said the Ingrams were relatively new to the Vancouver area, moving there recently from Oklahoma. They had never heard of Cooper, Baker said.

"They took it (the money) home and were talking to some friends about it," Baker said. "The friends pointed out that it might be the money from the Cooper thing. That's when they called the FBI."

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent in charge of the case since the hijacking, said it was the first solid clue to the Cooper mystery since the hijacker bailed out near La Center, Wash., into a winter storm at 8:10 p.m. that Thanksgiving Eve. The first hijacking for money, the Cooper case became a national sensation.

Baker said it was possible the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C., could discern fingerprints on the money.

"That would be a hell of a break," he said.

Baker said the money the Ingrams found had not been counted. At first the amount recovered was estimated at about $4,000, but "we have revised our estimate to several thousand dollars," he said.

Baker said the money was bundled into packages of several sizes at the time of the hijacking, "to make it appear that it was randomly done, as if it was done in a hurry." Because of that, the actual amount could not be estimated, he said.

FBI agents Tuesday were carefully combing the site of the Sunday discovery for further clues. The beach, open to the public, is owned by the New Columbia Gardens Co., a truck and dairy farm.

Cooper was seen on the plane tying a nylon cord around his waist, presumably to tie the money into a parachute bag. The Ingrams said they did not see any sign of a cloth bag, but Himmelsbach said it would be hard to understand how the bundles of bills could have stayed together all these years if they were not in some kind of container.

Baker said the search for Cooper's remains or other clues would be resumed in a new area.

FBI spokesmen concluded that the bills could have been washed down some tributary of the Columbia.

George Holmes, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist, said he would review information about where Coop[er]

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MONEY FOUND — X shows approximately location where part of Dan Cooper aircraft hijacking money was found Sunday, Vancouver, Wash. family found loot while picnicking. FBI is searching area. DB Cooper-27421

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SUB E FBI/POb6 b7C [date stamp partially visible] 1A1-81-[illegible]