FD-350 clipping, West Linn Tidings 12/11/85, 'Skyjacking saga continues' Himmelsbach profile

FD-350 (Rev. 5-8-81)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) West Linn Tidings West Linn, Oregon

Date: December 11, 1985 Edition:

Title: NORJAK

Character: or Classification: 164-41 Submitting Office: Portland

Indexing:

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SKYJACKING SAGA CONTINUES

D.B. COOPER

Fourteen years after crime, chase goes on

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164-41-1927 SEARCHED _____ INDEXED _____ SERIALIZED _____ FILED _____ DEC 27 1985 FBI/GORZ AN[illegible] FBI/DOJ

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[illegible handwritten notation, possibly a date or initials]

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Every year about this time it happens and West Linn resident Ralph Himmelsbach is getting accustomed to the phone calls and the tips that often are dead ends for investigators. But this year it was different. The certified letter that arrived at his Marylhurst-area home three weeks ago and the phone call the next day from the letter writer all had the markings of something more interesting than a routine dead end. After years of chasing the notorious sky- jacker known to law enforcement agencies only as "Dan Cooper," Himmelsbach might have a real suspect in the case. Although some of the information about the latest in what seemed like thousands of Dan Cooper suspects was a bit sketchy, Him- melsbach was obviously interested. A former criminal investigator not given to false hopes or empty encouragement, Himmelsbach said last week that the most recent suspect had some "very compelling" features that seemed to match a profile of the skyjacking suspect. "I don't know who D.B. Cooper was, but I have had several very attractive suspects in the past few years," Himmelsbach said. In mid-November, almost 14 years to the day of the skyjacking, a registered letter arrived at Himmelsbach's home outlining a suspect who, he said, seemed to fit many parts of the description of D.B. Cooper.

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'I don't know who D.B. Cooper was, but I have had some suspects in the past few years'

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The letter was followed by a telephone call from the same person, saying that he or she had a close relative who fit the D.B. Cooper description, Himmelsbach said. The suspect lives in the Portland area, but Himmelsbach declined to identify either the suspect or the person who brought the suspect to his attention. Himmelsbach said he turned the information over to the local FBI office, which investigates each new lead to the case. "It does look pretty good," Himmelsbach said. "The person fits some very compelling parts of the person we think was D.B. Cooper." The tip was one of about 100 Himmelsbach and the local FBI office receive every November when the area media focus on the infamous event. Nearly all the tips are in- vestigated, and people pointed to as suspects usually are cleared by the FBI, Himmelsbach said.

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Dan Cooper dropped into criminal folklore Nov. 24, 1971, when he hijacked a Nor- thwest Airlines' jet on a routine flight between Portland and Seattle. Cooper said he had a bomb in a briefcase that he would detonate if he was not paid $200,000 in ransom. (Himmelsbach speculated that the bomb was actually highway flares wired to a 1.5-volt bat- tery. The bomb was never found.) Cooper demanded that the ransom be paid in $20 bills. A hundred bundles of the bills -- 10,000 in all -- were paid through a Seattle bank that kept up to $240,000 on hand as a humanitarian fund to pay kidnappers and other extortionists. After a quick 30-minute flight to Seattle, Cooper allowed three dozen passengers to get off the plane and asked that it be refueled to fly to Mexico City. Cooper also asked for four parachutes and that the pilot leave a rear "airstairs" door open during the plane's takeoff from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The pilot, Capt. William A. Scott, convinced

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RALPH HIMMELSBACH

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Cooper that the plane would not be able to take off with the door open, so Cooper agreed to open it after the plane was in flight. He ordered Scott to fly the plane at 10,000 feet, no faster than 170 knots (195 miles per hour) and with the plane's flaps lowered by 15 degrees. After takeoff at about 7:45 p.m. from Seattle, the plane flew for about 28 minutes when Cooper apparently parachuted into the cold and rainy night over Washington with the bank bag of $20 bills strapped to his waist. No trace of Cooper was ever found and he has never been identified.

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According to Himmelsbach's profile, Dan Cooper was a man of medium build, described by airline employees as being in his "mid-40s (probably 48)," with slick black hair and "sparkling, piercing, and very dark eyes. He also was a man with a criminal background who probably suffered a severe leg or lower- body injury when he landed in the mountains of southwestern Washington. Because of the type of parachute he used, and because Cooper did not have adequate equipment to make a jump at night in minus-7 degree weather against winds of up to 200 miles per hour, Himmelsbach said Cooper probably hit the ground "going about 55 miles per hour."

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'I don't have a shred of admiration for the hijacker. He was not bold or courageous'

If that did not kill Cooper, Himmelsbach said it more than likely injured him severely. Although he calls his observations "just speculation," Himmelsbach said the recent suspect was 56 years old (D.B. Cooper would be about 62 this year), had come into a large amount of money in the early 1970s, had a "serious injury contemporaneous with the hijacking," and disappeared for a long period of time in late 1971.

The suspect also had a long criminal history and was "a loner," Himmelsbach said, which made him all the more attractive. "I have felt for years that most likely we are looking for an ex-con, maybe someone has been involved with the law most of his life," Himmelsbach said.

"There are some suspects who come your way with only one fact that makes it appear they should be a suspect. You have got to be willing to look at anybody, but if you get a guy who turns up with a limp, a lot of money, and he's been missing for a long time around (the time of the hijacking), then it looks pretty good."

Himmelsbach, 59, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from the Portland field office, spent the last nine years of his FBI career chasing down leads to Dan Cooper. He retired from the bureau in February 1980, but Himmelsbach did not retire from the chase. He has worked with Clackamas-area author Tom Worcester on a 15-chapter, 190-page book on the case, and, at the same time, Himmelsbach has fielded hundreds of inquiries about the event that captured the romantic fancy of Americans.

Himmelsbach's book should be published next year, Worcester said. A draft of the book is being edited, and several publishers have been contacted, but no offers have been made, he said. "We may just have to publish it ourselves."

Continued on page A8

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Story by Kevin Harden Photos by Kirk Hirota

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SKYJACKING SAGA CONTINUES D.B. COOPER

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Continued from page A1

Himmelsbach was an investigator and training officer with the Portland FBI field office until he retired. From February 1981 to this September, Himmelsbach was an investigator with the Oregon Department of Justice.

Besides investigating organized crime, fraud and extortion for the state attorney general, Himmelsbach also uses his skills as a pilot to fly police officers across the state looking for patches of marijuana. Himmelsbach said he and other officers had spotted hundreds of fields of the bright green plants from his private plane as he flew missions for various police agencies in the state.

Himmelsbach is a handsome and polite man whose smooth voice booms with authority and excitement as he recounts with stunning accuracy names, dates, physical features and other attributes of suspects he has faced and interesting tidbits of information on cases he has investigated.

He is clearly a man who enjoyed his 28 years and 10 months as an FBI agent and his four years as an investigator for the state Justice Department.

He is also a man who is clearly annoyed at the glamour given to D.B. Cooper's escapades — the same glamour that produced a number of books, magazine and newspaper articles, and even a Hollywood movie, about the incident.

It's unfortunate, Himmelsbach said, but because Americans tend to cheer for the underdog, Dan Cooper has become a symbol of an air pirate who got away with $200,000 in ransom money and who has yet to be identified or prosecuted for the crime.

It's that mystique that has people in the Pacific Northwest marking the November anniversary of the skyjacking each year with parties and speculation. It's also that mystique that has made Himmelsbach famous for what he called his "biggest failure."

"It's the only unsolved skyjacking case of its kind in the world," Himmelsbach said. "Here's a guy who reaches up and tweaks Uncle Sam's nose and steals $200,000 and possibly gets away with it. People are looking at it from the standpoint that nobody got injured. Everyone on that plane escaped whole, maybe some with some psychological scars."

Even after all these years, does Himmelsbach feel he has chased a worth opponent?

"I don't have a shred of admiration for the hijacker," he said. "He was not bold or courageous. I think he was stupid and desperate, and criminal.

"I would like to see the case solved. I would like to see it concluded. As a practical matter, I have become famous because of my biggest failure."

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Dan Cooper, whom the Portland-area media dubbed "D.B. Cooper" after a Portland Police Bureau check of an area man by that name who police thought was the hijacker, was [partially illegible] not the type of person to be considered a hero, Himmelsbach said.

In fact, if the truth ever comes out, Himmelsbach said the real D.B. Cooper probably was a man with a lengthy criminal history who was a loner and only committed the most famous skyjacking after he saw someone else try a similar parachute escape plan in the hijacking of a Canadian airliner only weeks before Northwest Airlines' Flight 305 out of Portland was taken hostage that day in late 1971.

The parties, the celebrations and the odd tips about possible suspects could all come to an end if, Himmelsbach said, the FBI could only get a break that would lead to the capture — or recovery — of D.B. Cooper and the missing loot.

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I didn't catch him, but I think he's still lying close to where he fell because that's where he died

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The statute of limitations on Cooper's crime has not run out because a federal Grand Jury in Portland indicted Cooper in 1976 on two counts of air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act, which deals with extortion and hindering interstate commerce.

D.B. Cooper might not ever be captured, however, because Himmelsbach does not believe he survived the 10,000-foot plunge with an Army parachute that could have failed dur- ing the jump. --

"I didn't catch him, but I think he's still lying close to where he fell because that's where he died," Himmelsbach said.

Only two pieces of evidence have ever been found in the case -- a plastic sign explaining the operation of a rear door on the Boeing 727

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jet from which Cooper parachuted, and $5,800 in $20 bills (294 of them) that was uncovered in Feb. 10, 1980, on the bank of the Columbia River near Vancouver -- and numerous sear- ches of mountainous and wooded areas between Portland and Ariel, Wash., about 30 miles north of Portland where Cooper was believed to have landed, have yielded few clues about the sky- jacking.

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Speculation about the case led author Max Gunther to write the book "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," in which he said a woman who identified herself only as "Clara" told him that Cooper was actually a man nam- ed Dan Laclair who died recently of a heart at- tack.

Gunther's book, which was published this fall, told the story of how Clara found Cooper/Laclair injured in her tool shed in a rural area of southwestern Washington and nursed him back to health. Clara and Laclair then took the money to Nevada where they "laundered" it by gambling in casinos, Gun- ther wrote.

In his book, Gunther also claimed that Laclair called him on the telephone from New York where he was living.

"I do not believe that story," Himmelsbach said.

When Himmelsbach met with Gunther two years ago to discuss the proposed book, he believed Clara's story was a hoax, and his opi- nion has not changed.

"I do not accuse Max Gunther of perper- trating a hoax, but I do think the story is false, for a number of reasons," Himmelsbach said.

In another book, published in 1984, former FBI agent Richard Tosaw claimed that Cooper drowned after he plunged into the Col- umbia River. Tosaw has spent several years searching for Cooper's remains in or near the river.

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Tosaw also offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could produce one of the ransom's $20 bills. His 180-page book includes 56 pages of serial numbers taken from photocopies of the ransom money that the FBI keeps on file.

No one has claimed the reward money.

Himmelsbach said the search for Cooper probably would go on, no matter what the evidence pointed to. Last week, Himmelsbach received a telephone call from a reporter for the "Star Magazine" in New York City who said a man in jail in that state claimed to be D.B. Cooper.

The man's attorney, to whom Himmelsbach has spoken, said the suspect was in his 40s, which would have made him too young to be the real Cooper, Himmelsbach said. "I think he's angling to get some kind of advantage to ease his current situation. It s unds phony to me."

After all these years, Himmelsbach said he did not regret the chase because it was just another chapter in the D.B. Cooper story.

"It has been a very, very interesting invest- ment, and the jury's still out," he said. "There are still a lot of questions unanswered."

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Cooper case was most notorious, not best

Ralph Himmelsbach may think the Dan Cooper case is his biggest failure, but he had several successful cases during his 28 years and 10 months as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Himmelsbach, 59, was the FBI agent assigned in 1971 to the most famous hijacking case in the nation. He has chased Dan Cooper — or "D.B. Cooper," as the Portland-area media dubbed him — for about 14 years, listening to hundreds of tips on suspects and tracking down thousands of dead ends in the investigation. Although he is known mostly for his work on the D.B. Cooper case, Himmelsbach was the FBI agent who gathered evidence to convict "Frosty" Forsberg in 1966, and to convict Carl Cletus Bowles in the early 1970s. Forsberg and Bowles were wanted on separate federal warrants for bank robbery. "The Cooper case was one of my most notorious cases, not my most successful," Himmelsbach said. Forsberg was convicted in August 1966 of bank robbery after Himmelsbach's investigation. Bowles was convicted of kidnapping and bank robbery in an unrelated incident. The convictions were marred, however, when both men killed people while not in custody. Forsberg was paroled in 1973 and killed a 20-year-old California woman in 1975. Bowles escaped from prison in the early 1970s and killed a Eugene couple. More recently, Himmelsbach worked on state investigations in which a juvenile parole officer was convicted of fraud, and the Sisters police chief was convicted of stealing government property.

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