Part 2, page 2

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

...down. But they wouldn't know if I was planning to take somebody down with. So I asked them for two complete sets of chutes, two chest packs and two back packs, so they would think that if they gave me a bogus chute they would in effect be signing the death warrant for whoever went with me," he said.

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[PHOTOGRAPH]

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He was afraid dogs would spot him and bark when he landed here.

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His logic was sound. The chutes were fine. The only slip-up was over the money. Cooper demanded that it be sent out in a suitcase. He had built a special harness to be attached across his pack. He planned to put his suit jacket and some other items into the suitcase, along with the money, and attach it to his special harness so he could make the jump with his hands free. After all, he couldn't jump carrying the money in his hands. But instead of a suitcase, they sent the money out in a canvas bag, a problem he was brooding about as the plane refueled and took off under his instructions.

He told the stewardess to tell the captain to fly on the normal course to Reno, which he knew would carry him directly over the spot he had selected for his jump. He told the captain to fly at between 7,000 and 10,000 feet, to keep the flaps at 15 degrees (which allowed the plane to fly at a slower speed) and to fly with the rear stairwell open.

The plane took off from Seattle at about 7:30 p.m. It was dark. Cooper ordered the stewardess to go forward to the cabin and lock the door behind her.

As the plane headed southward, Cooper hurriedly got himself together. He put on his luminous stopwatch and compass, donned the black cap and gloves and hurriedly improvised a new means for taking everything he had brought into the plane out with him. Anything he left behind would certainly be evidence.

Therefore, lacking the suitcase he had ordered, he grabbed one of the four chutes, ripped the innards out of it and stuffed the money and his suit coat into...

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...the cavity, and strapped it onto his chest. Then he strapped on his special harness, cut some cord from the discarded chute and tied his briefcase to the harness. Then he strapped on a back chute.

Meanwhile, he was peering out the windows, and could see that the plane was on the correct course southward. About 35 minutes out of Seattle, he could see down between broken clouds and began to pick out familiar landmarks below — the freeway, the power line, the lake. Then he began picking up the radio signals on his walkie-talkie. When he was hearing the signals from all three, he simply walked to the rear of the plane, descended the stairwell, and jumped out.

Free Fall

"I was not vacillating very much," he said. "I remembered why I had come to this point, and all the reasons for it. The long planning. All the research. And the provocation — that was what I was thinking of. It didn't take me long to reflect on this. Just a fraction of a second. Then the die was cast."

When he jumped, his altimeter showed 7,500 feet, and he executed a "free fall" without opening his chute, for precisely 22 seconds which shot him down through a thick cloud bank — thus preventing...