Part 6, page 1

Transcript

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

By Allen Nacheman Portland, Ore. —AP— Two years after parachuting from a Northwest Airlines jet with $200,000 in ransom money, the plane hijacker known as Dan Cooper re- mains a folk hero and a mys- tery.

He is, according to the US Department of Transporta- tion, the only person ever to hijack a domestic airliner who has not been killed or brought to justice. He may be dead, but...

"We really know nothing more about him today than we did at 11 p.m. Wednes- day, Nov. 24, 1971" says Ju- lius Mattson, special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office.

Authorities said this is what happened on that Thanksgiving Eve:

A man who gave his name as Dan Cooper bought a one way ticket at Portland Inter- national Airport to Seattle aboard Northwest Airlines' Flight 305 which originated in Washington, D.C.

No antihijacking measures were in operation as the 36 passengers boarded the Boeing 727 for the 25 minute flight.

Handed a note

Once in the air, Cooper handed stewardess Tina Mucklow a note saying he had a bomb. Following Coop- er's orders, Miss Mucklow sat beside the skyjacker and wrote down instructions to the pilot.

He wanted 10,000 twenty dollar bills to be delivered to him at Seattle in a laundry sack, along with two sets of parachutes. Otherwise he

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threatened to blow up the plane.

Airline officials and FBI agents complied with his requests and Cooper allowed the passengers and two of the three stewardesses to disembark at Seattle.

Then he ordered the plane to fly south to Reno, Nev., at 200 miles per hour, at 10,000 feet, flaps down. The crew was to stay in the cockpit.

After takeoff from Seattle, a red light flashed in the cockpit indicating the plane's rear boarding ramp had been unlatched.

Nothing was heard from Cooper for about 20 minutes. At 8:10 p.m., as the plane crossed the Lewis River in southwestern Washington,

Capt. William Scott thought the hijacker was having trou- ble with the ramp and called back over the plane's inter- phone:

"Anything we can do for you?"

There was no answer.

Light flashes again

Another light flashed showing the ramp was fully extended. A few seconds lat- er the hijacker came back on the interphone: "No."

That was the last ever heard of him.

When the plane landed in Reno, the rear ramp was down and Cooper was gone. The 21 pound sack of money was gone. One set of para- chutes was gone. The sky- jacker, who had carefully reclaimed his note to the stewardess, had left no fin- gerprints.

Authorities believed Coop- er jumped from the plane near Woodland, Wash. The [area] was transformed into a bustling command post for a small army of newsmen and dozens of FBI agents, police, and soldiers from Ft. Lewis, Wash.

With planes, helicopters, jeeps and track dogs, they combed the vast, densely wooded region northeast of Woodland. Much of it was rugged terrain, thick with freshly fallen snow, and vir- tually impassable.

The hijacker left the plane

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clad only in a light business suit and street shoes. He par- achuted into the blackness of a raging thunderstorm, into a 200 m.p.h. hour wind and temperature of minus 7 de- grees.

He could not have sur- vived, police reasoned. They said they were simply look- ing for a body and a bag of money and that could wait

until the spring thaw. A week later the army of searchers was disbanded.

In the ensuing months, Cooper became a legend in the Northwest — pictured as a lone Robin Hood who stole from a giant corporation, hurt no one and got away. A song extolling his feat be- came a hit. "D. B. Cooper, Where Are You?" T-shirts sold by the thousands.

The media had erroneously identified the skyjacker as D. B. rather than Dan Cooper.

Then, late in March 1972, 300 soldiers from Ft. Lewis searched the thawing terrain for 18 days. They found not a trace of Cooper. "Although we did find a body and cleared up a local murder," says FBI agent Mattson.

No evidence

"We have no physical evi- dence to go on except the $20 bills," he said, adding the numbers of all 10,000 bills were circulated to banks in a 34 page booklet. None has turned up.

Northwest Airlines, which offered a $25,000 reward!

Turn to page 3, column 1

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[Hijack] From page1

for recovery of the ransom has canceled the offer.

But last week, on the sec- ond anniversary of the hi- jacking, the Oregon Jour[nal] [offered] $1,000 [to] anyone who could produce one of the $20 bills. There have been no takers.

Mattson says a number of FBI agents have worked on the case, to no avail.

Is he convinced Cooper is dead?

"No! The terrain is just too rugged . . . to be thoroughly searched. And there is still the possibility he may have landed in Lake Merwin, which is 30 miles long, a mile wide and too deep to drag or be searched by divers."

"We are keeping an open mind for lack of evidence either way — that he is dead or alive. We are still working as hard on the case now as we were two years ago."