Part 43, page 149

Transcript

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When the pilots attempted to talk to the hijacker by intercom, they got no response.

The FBI believes it is at that point — over La Center, Wash., about 25 miles north of Portland — that Cooper strapped on the bag of money and the satchel containing the supposed bomb, and leaped out.

He tumbled into the heart of a Pacific Northwest storm, with temperatures at the 10,000-foot altitude at the minus end of the thermometer. Authorities estimated Cooper experienced a headwind of up to 200 miles per hour.

He would have landed on the ground at a speed of 50-70 miles per hour, authorities calculated.

The FBI conducted numerous reconstruction flights over southwest Washington and employed complicated computer calculations to help determine where Cooper might have landed.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent who has invested the past eight years on the case, concluded shortly after Cooper's jump that the daring man was killed in the attempt.

Exhaustive searches by the Washington National Guard and the FBI produced only one clue — a placard from the jetliner's rear door.

Hundreds of treasure hunters have prowled southwest Washington environs hoping to find the missing cash of Cooper.

Until the Harold Dwayne Ingram family made its discovery of a dozen packets of tattered $20 bills, those efforts had failed.

Cooper's daring and unorthodox air hijacking — which came to be known as "skyjacking" — provoked other efforts to extort money from commercial airlines. That increase in airline piracy triggered the installation of beefed-up security systems at the nation's airports to spot potential hijackers.

Over the years, many people refused to believe that Cooper had died in his effort, and a few even claimed to be the mysterious skyjacker.

In one case, Byron "Jack" Coffelt, an ex-convict who claimed to be the mysterious hijacker, told a friend that he landed after parachuting from the airliner.

However, the site of the discovery of the D.B. Cooper ransom money is some 70 miles northwest of the area where Coffelt said he touched down.

The distance involved tends to belie Coffelt's story of the hijacking, which he told over a period of months in 1974 to an old friend who helped him search for the lost money. Coffelt died of apparent natural causes in Hawaii in 1975.

Further weakening Coffelt's claim of being Cooper is his assertion that he landed just east of Mt. Hood, which is about 25 miles south of the Columbia River.

Experts agree that even if the money entered the river at that point, it would be unlikely that it could wind its way down the wide waterway some 60 miles to where it was found on the north bank of the river.

"The money would have had to float through locks, reservoirs, spillways and power units on the Columbia," said a geologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Portland. "I don't think it could have done that and been intact."

Robert Wagman, a producer for "60 Minutes" who has spent more than a year investigating Coffelt's claim to the D.B. Cooper legend, said, "Based on conversations I've had with FBI agents and engineers who know the river, it doesn't seem possible that the money could have washed up (where it was found) from where Coffelt said he lost it. It actually defies belief."

And some people still refuse to believe that Cooper is dead.

Journalist J.D. Reed, the author of the recently released fictional book "Free Fall," dealing with the Cooper adventure, said he disagrees with the FBI that finding the money tends to support the probability that D.B. Cooper did not survive the jump.

"It doesn't rule out that Cooper got away," said Reed.