(FD-350) Seattle Post-Intelligencer front page on ransom money found near Vancouver

FD-850 (Rev. 12-5-78)

SUBS: B,E,G,M,[blank]

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(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 darkness 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 nothing 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. Pringle, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle. "We can't tell at this point."

For Ralph Himmelsbach of Portland, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation since it began, the discovery reinforces his opinion that Cooper died after he parachuted from a Northwest Orient 727 trijet on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971.

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BRIAN INGRAM The money in the sand

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Himmelsbach said the find reduced 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 collect the ransom.

Cooper allowed 36 passengers aboard the flight to leave, then ordered 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 hijacker — 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 survival were slim because he was lightly dressed for jumping into a howling wind and a freezing rain in a [guess: 7] parachute not likely to work.

Agents have theorized that his remains are at the bottom of [guess: Lake] Merwin, its forest of [guess: underwater] snags entangling his parachute [guess: or his] [illegible]

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FEB 15 1980 FBI - SEATTLE

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DB Cooper-27446 [illegible] -91- [illegible]