Part 42, page 307

Transcript

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

More than a personality emerged. So did a play, "The D. B. Cooper Pr[oject]," lect," which opens Friday night at the Cricket Theater. Orlock cautions that the play is not simply about sky-

jacking. "I just tried to write good characters. The skyjacking is just a hook. It's not about that. It's about people and how they respond under certain circumstances."

The circumstances here are those of failure. "Cooper is a man for whom [nothing] was terrific turbulence. Cooper nothing has ever gone right. His mar[riage] couldn't have picked a worse night. riage went down the drain. His gas station folded. He's been passed over by the American dream. He's not a folk hero. He's a negative personal- ity. But he has a transformation. He becomes D. B. Cooper." [illegible]

But what if the letter was a fake? What if John Orlock was inspired by the contrivance of a prankster?

"No!" says Orlock firmly. "There is a feeling here that is right for me. The flow in the letter is thought-by- thought. It COULD have been a fake. But as a playwright, I would have had a hard time writing a better let- ter than this [illegible]

The article about the letter was pub- lished six days before Christmas. And it ran a little short. So somebody at the New York Times stuck in a holiday slogan to bring that column of the newspaper to its proper length.

It reads, "Remember the neediest." Right there on John Orlock's clip- ping.

The reporter:

Leverett Richards thinks the D.B. Cooper letter was a fake.

"It just didn't seem to jive with the facts in the case," Richards explains.

Richards certainly has the facts. They fill one full drawer of his desk in the newsroom at the Portland Or- egonian. He's been following the case since the night it happened.

"Besides, Cooper couldn't have sur- vived. It quickly became evident to me that he landed in Lake Merwin. That's up in Washington state, about

35 miles north of Portland, where the FBI figured he made the jump. It's my bet that Cooper's body is still down there.

"I'm a pilot. And I've talked to pilots who were flying that night. There was terrific turbulence. Cooper couldn't have picked a worse night.

"If this fellow Cooper could organize a letter, he would have organized the skyjacking too and he didn't. Every- body I've talked to—pilots and para- chutists—they all feel his chances for survival were pretty grim."

But Richards will concede one thing. It's a hell of a mystery. Last January, somebody found a plastic placard from the rear stairs of a 727 jet in the suspected drop area. But aside from that, there have been no other clues.

[illegible] about Cooper's character? He was a born loser? Richards snaps. He had no upbringing. That's no way to do things. I don't have much patience with those who think they can get rich at the expense of others.

"But you asked me about his charac- ter. Well, he was from a broken home or he had no family. Because no one has ever been reported miss- ing that matches his description.

"Obviously, he has no military expe- rience as a parachutist or a pilot. Otherwise," Richards rasps in disbe- lief, "he would have known you couldn't bail out there. It's rough country. It was overcast. And I don't see how he could have known the elevation."

Leverett Richards won't be coming to see "The D. B. Cooper Project." He can't get away from work. But his son—a research scientist at the 3M Company in St. Paul—has promised his father he'll see the show and re- port back.

The son is named Durkee B. Rich-

ards. Abbreviated, of course, that's "D. B. ..." [illegible]

The storekeeper: [illegible]

Just as firmly as Leverett Richards talks about D. B. Cooper in the past, then storekeeper Germaine Tricola describes him in the present.

"Of course, he's alive!" she says with a smile. "Cause nothing's ever been found. We've lost folks before, but we've always found the remains."

Until recently, Tricola ran the Ariel Store & Tavern. It's tucked into the foothills of Washington's Cascade Mountains, at a point directly below which Cooper is calculated to have hit the silk. Up the road lies Lake Merwin.

"Fell into the lake? He couldn't have. With the drought we had two years ago, something would have shown up. Body, parachute, money [illegible] bag—something. You could even see the tree stumps then.

For several years, Tricola—who moved to Washington from Hugo, Minn., 30 years ago—has staged a D. B. Cooper party on Thanksgiving. The party has drawn guests from as far away as Toronto and as near as the local FBI office in Portland. Tri- cola just sold the store, but the new owners plan to continue the tradi- tion.

The Ariel Store & Tavern caters to the logging crowd. Rough men doing rough work, clearing away tall pines, fir and cedars clustered together so thick that the sunlight has a hard time getting through.

(A man on a parachute might have a hard time getting through, too. But there are plenty of "clear cuts" where the logging companies have toppled the timbers and taken them out on trucks.)

"We've had jumpers land right next