Chicago Sunday Tribune (UPI) article on the unsolved Cooper skyjacking
Document date 23 November 1975
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Id: Cooper-Part-89:123-123
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-89:123-123 Document: Chicago Sunday Tribune (UPI) article on the unsolved Cooper skyjacking Id: Cooper-Part-89:123-123 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-89%3A123-123 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 89 p. 123 (DB Cooper-39549), News clipping, dated 23 Nov 1975 — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-89%3A123-123
PORTLAND, Ore. (UPI)—A little more than a year from now, D. B. Cooper could be home free. Thanksgiving begins a 365-day countdown for Cooper—the nation's only successful parachuting skyjacker—who used highway flares as a bomb threat to extort $200,000 from Northwest Airlines. The statute of limitations on the hijacking charge against Cooper is five years. The phantom figure vanished after parachuting from a Northwest Airlines 727 with his loot on Thanksgiving eve, 1971. Whether he survived the jump or his body is down at the bottom of a deep lake, hung in a tree, or his remains scattered by animals are some of the intriguing questions left unanswered, so far, by an extensive investigation.
"IT'S A VERY MUCH active investigation," said a senior FBI agent who has spent many hours on the case. "We have run down literally thousands of leads and eliminated hundreds of people as suspects." "My personal guess is that there is just a 50 per cent chance that he is still alive." The lack of distinguishing characteristics about the dark-complexioned, middle-aged man dressed in conservative clothing and his ability to move unobtrusively before the hijacking have thwarted the FBI's intense efforts to determine how he arrived at Portland International Airport that wet, squally night. He paid cash for his Portland-to-Seattle flight and then spent 50 minutes in an airport waiting area before boarding without one fellow passenger remembering him.
SHORTLY AFTER takeoff, Cooper handed a note to a stewardess which said, "I have a bomb in my brief case." The FBI agent said that the stewardess described the wires attached in Cooper's attache case to what she thought were eight sticks of dynamite, the same color as her red uniform. "Dynamite is not color coded this way. She was describing highway flares," the agent said. The agent said there was doubt Cooper was an experienced parachutist because he took the two worst possible choices of the four parachutes given him at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, where he obtained the $200,000 in $20 bills.
THE AGENT said the chest chute the skyjacker took was one that was sewn together for use in a parachute assembling class and could not even be used for jumping, and the back chute was much smaller than the large chute he cut up to wrap the money in and tie it to him. A world champion parachutist was quoted by the agent as saying "no amount of money" could induce him to make the jump Cooper did. Jumping from 10,000 feet into heavy rain clouds, there was no way Cooper could have known where he was coming down, according to the FBI man. The FBI says Cooper came down about 12 miles north of Portland in an area four miles by six miles.
DESPITE AERIAL and ground searches, including one the next spring using soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., no clues to his disappearance have been found. None of the 10,000 bills in ransom have shown up either.
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Sketch of man who called himself D.B. Cooper.
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[guess: 1/m] N W [guess: insert] # 3.5 Portland, GRFoun, 11/24/71 Based out schedules Seattle + [guess: PorO] w/m LATIN Appearance [guess: DARK] [guess: Bro'n] B/C HAIR m 1002 40s Eyes Brown 5/10 ~6'0 170 ~185 olive complexion
C - 3
[guess: 1/4 - 297 - 1/3]
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CHICAGO SUNDAY TRIBUNE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DATE: 11-23-75 PAGE: 5 SEC: / EDITION: 4* FINAL EDITOR: WALTER SIMMONS CHICAGO OFFICE
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DB Cooper-39549
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b6 b7C
Serials: C-3