Part 43, page 255

Transcript

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

er was believed to have jumped and, where the money was found. He said the Washougal River was the only Co- lumbia tributary that might have car- ried the cash. Even that, he said, "is a remote possibility. But I can't say until I see more information."

FBI agents sifting the sand at the picnic site Tuesday had found a few more $20 bills, but no evidence of a container. The bundles of bills were [guess: badly] worn, as if eaten away by contact with rocks and gravel while drifting downstream.

"The packaging and the numbered sequence of the bundles indicated that they had not been separated, and were in much the same order as when deliv- ered to Cooper at Seattle-Tacoma Air- port the night of the hijacking," Baker said. He said they would be sent to the FBI laboratory immediately for further examination.

Ingram, 28, and his wife, 26, will get no reward so far as is known, FBI agents said. Northwest Airlines' reward offer has expired.

"If there is one, they deserve it," Baker said. Ingram works as a painter in the U-Cart factory in Vancouver.

Brian Ingram, who is in the second grade at Hough School in Vancouver, does not yet know that he is a hero, his mother said at Tuesday's press confer- ence. He was still in school when his parents took the bills to the FBI office in Portland.

Himmelsbach, who said soon after the hijacking that Cooper had less than a 50-50 chance of having survived, said Sunday's find confirmed his earlier con- clusion.

"This is strong evidence that Cooper didn't survive," he said, "but we have no proof of that."

Himmelsbach said all the evidence points to Cooper's having bailed out over La Center. But he may have drifted farther east than the experts computed. He may have landed in the Washougal watershed, where the money could have found its way into the stream and been washed down to the Columbia by successive floods.

Himmelsbach discounted the possi- bility that the bag full of money could have torn loose from Cooper's waist when he stepped off the rear stairway

---

HIJACKER — Sketch of airline hi- jacker known as Dan Cooper was re- leased by FBI after hijacking, based on witness descriptions.

---

of the plane into a 200-mile-an-hour slipstream.

"But we don't know," he empha- sized.

Baker said detailed plans for a fur- ther search had not been formulated, but said he would expect to search up the Columbia to the Washougal — the first tributary to flow into the river above Vancouver — and may extend the search up the Washougal itself.

---

DB Cooper-17471