Oregonian clipping 'Does FBI have D.B. Cooper?' on FD-350 mount re John E. List

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

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) The Oregonian Portland, Oregon Date: 7-1-89 Edition:

Title: NORJAK

Character: 164-41 or 80-715 Classification: Submitting Office:

Indexing:

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Does FBI have D.B. Cooper?

☐ The FBI is tracing the path of a man who disappeared at the same time as the hijacking to see if he committed the crime

By ROBERTA ULRICH of The Oregonian staff

The FBI is investigating the possibility that a man recently arrested in the 1971 killing of his family is the elusive airline hijacker known as D.B. Cooper.

The man, John E. List, vanished Nov. 1971, the day authorities believe his mother, wife and three children were shot to death in the family's home at [guess: Westfield], N.J. That was just 15 days before [guess: Cooper]

hijacked a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 at Portland International Airport and parachuted into the dark and subzero temperatures over Southwestern Washington with $200,000 in cash.

No trace of Cooper was ever found, but about $6,000 in tattered, water-soaked $20 bills from the hijack ransom turned up along the Columbia River near Vancouver, Wash., in 1980. The case remains the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history.

List "is no more of a suspect than any of the other people who come up from time to time," John Eyer, assistant agent in charge of the FBI office in Seattle, said Thursday. "We are investigating to see if he is a viable suspect."

List waived extradition and was flown Thursday from Richmond, Va., to New Jersey, where he was held in the Union County Jail at Elizabeth charged with five

counts of murder. Authorities there said Friday they do not know where List was at the time the Cooper hijacking occurred. Eyer acknowledged that List had been

considered a possible suspect shortly after the hijacking because of the New Jersey killings and the fact that he had disappeared.

"Our interest in him as a potential suspect has been rekindled" as a result of his arrest, Eyer said.

However, Ralph Himmelsbach, the retired FBI agent from Portland who sought Cooper from the night of the hijacking until he retired in 1980, said Friday "I would say he's a major suspect or, at least, I would consider him a major suspect."

After first hearing about the new development Thursday, Himmelsbach said "He definitely looks good to me. He fits the profile, the description. He's the kind of a guy with nothing to lose. ... He does bear a

Please turn to COOPER, Page A15

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[large circled mark or initial]

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1O64A-SE-81 -13 [guess: b-4-1] 1992 SEARCHED... INDEXED... FILED.... [date stamp] 1980 FBI — PORTLAND b6 b7C

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DB Cooper-43751 FBI/DOJ

Cooper: Investigator thinks Cooper most likely perished when he parachuted

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■Continued from Page One resemblence to the composite" drawing made of Cooper at the time of the hijacking. List was 46 at the time, and Cooper was described as "about 48." Himmelsbach, like nearly everyone else connected with the case, believes Cooper died in the snow-sprinkled woods when he landed or soon afterward. He lacked cold weather gear and was probably shoeless, investigators believe. "I still think it's most likely he perished," Himmelsbach said "but you have to keep an open mind." He added, "I'd dearly love to see the case reach a conclusion, especially one in which the guy is identified." That conclusion could be a long way off. Eyer said the FBI has not made an effort to interview List and will not until it has further investigated List's movements as a fugitive.

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The search for List, an accountant and insurance salesman, began Dec. 7, 1971, when neighbors noticed that lights that had been burning for a month in the Lists' 19-room Victorian mansion had started going out. They called police, who found the bodies of List's mother, Alma, 85; his wife, Helen, 45; and their three children, Patricia, 16, John Jr., 15, and Frederick, 13. Police also found a .32-caliber revolver and 9mm pistol used in the shootings and a five-page confession addressed to the Rev. Eugene A. Rehwinkel, pastor of the Lutheran church where List sometimes taught Sunday school. No one had seen any members of the family since Nov. 9, 1971, when List called Westfield High School to say he was taking the children on an extended vacation. He also asked the post office to halt mail delivery. List's car was found a few days

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when a man who had given the name "Dan Cooper" handed a note to a flight attendant on Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. He demanded $200,000 and two parachutes and said he had a bomb. After the plane landed in Seattle, he got what he wanted. The passengers left the plane and Cooper ordered the crew to fly to Reno, Nev. When it landed there, he was gone

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and investigators eventually determined that he most likely had bailed out over the Washougal River watershed. That was the last real trace of the man, who became a legend as D.B. — rather than Dan — Cooper. The FBI, however, still gets tips that someone could be the shadowy hijacker, and an agent in the Seattle FBI office is still assigned to the case.

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later at Kennedy International Airport in New York. His name went on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, but no trace of him was found until someone who saw details of the killings and List's photo May 21 on the television show, "America's Most Wanted," tipped the FBI to a man living in the Richmond, Va., suburb of Midlothian under the name Robert P. Clark. He

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was arrested June 1. Clark denied that he was List, but the FBI said he had been positively identified through his fingerprints. Police have determined that List-Clark moved to Colorado sometime during the year after he disappeared and lived in the Denver area most of the time he was a fugitive. The Northwest Airlines hijacking began on Thanksgiving Eve 1971

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DB Cooper-43752