FD-350 clipping, Minneapolis Tribune 2/13/80: ransom money found near Portland

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

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) 1A Minneapolis Tribune Minneapolis, Minn. Date: 2/13/80 Edition: Morning

Title: D.B. Cooper Character: or Classification: 164-63 Submitting Office: Minneapolis

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Case of D.B. Cooper continues: Part of loot found near Portland

Associated Press

Portland, Ore. Part of the $200,000 given to legendary airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper has been found, the FBI said Tuesday.

Packets of badly deteriorated $20 bills were shown at a press conference yesterday.

But agents said they found no trace of Cooper, who parachuted from a Northwest Airlines jet more than eight years ago.

The money was found Sunday by a family preparing to build a picnic fire along the Columbia River, 5 miles northwest of the Interstate Hwy. 5 bridge linking Vancouver, Wash., and Portland.

"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 FBI office. He said wads of the money, bound by rubber bands, were found by Harold and Patricia Ingram and their 8-year-old son, Brian.

Ingram said the money was found about 20 yards from the river's edge under a thin layer of sand. "My son ran up and said, 'Wait a minute, Daddy.'" Ingram said. "He raked a place out in the sand and there it was. There were three bundles of money.

Baker said officials estimated that there were several thousand dollars in the wads but that it was impossible to make an accurate count because of the deterioration of the bills.

Ralph Himmelsbach, agent-in-charge of the Cooper case, has speculated that Cooper died after he parachuted from the plane over a densely wooded area along the river.

"I think we can only presume at this time that because the money was found clumped together tightly, in what we believe was the manner in which it was originally packed, lends credence to the theory that at least the money did not make it out" of the area where Cooper was believed to have dropped, he said.

"And from there, I would really leave it to conjecture," he added.

(An FBI spokesman in Washington said the money was found 20 miles downstream from the point where Cooper is believed to have bailed out. He added that, because of floods along the river, it was likely that in nine years the money had been carried some distance.)

Serial numbers of the money were recorded before being given to the hijacker on Nov. 24, 1971.

The man known as D.B. Cooper boarded the jet in Portland, then displayed what a flight attendant said looked like dynamite. He demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills. He ordered the pilot to fly to Seattle, where the plane circled for 2½ hours while authorities gathered the parachutes and money.

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At Seattle, the passengers and two of [SEARCHED] [INDEXED] b6 b7C

FEB 1 3 1980

FBI/DOJ

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164-73-625 DB Cooper-34263

[MAP: Shows Pacific Northwest with Canada, Washington, Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Oregon labeled]

the three stewardesses were allowed to leave the plane. The money and parachutes were loaded and the plane took off for Reno, Nev. The pilot was ordered to fly as slowly as possible.

Somewhere over southwest Washington, the hijacker opened the rear door of the plane, and he, the money and one of the parachutes disappeared into thin air.

Officials say it is the only unsolved hijacking in the country. In 1977, just to make sure Cooper didn't escape prosecution because of the statute of limitations, he was indicted in absentia on federal charges.

Cooper has become somewhat of a folk hero. T-shirts ask: "D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?," at least one song has been written about him, and residents of Ariel, Wash., near where Cooper was thought to have leaped from the plane, have commemorated the hijacking with an annual "D.B. Cooper Day."

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Associated Press

These deteriorated $20 bills were among the money identified by the FBI as part of airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper's loot.

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DB Cooper-34264