Part 46, page 261

Transcript

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

living a smug life of anonymity somewhere, enjoying the profits of his air piracy.

The case remains the FBI's only major unsolved skyjacking — and his disappearing act is celebrated in twangy song, T-shirts, an annual celebration in the tiny town of Ariel, Wash., and a new movie.

TO PUBLICIZE the movie, "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper," Universal Studios offered $1 million for informa- tion leading to the arrest and convic- tion of Cooper, who's name probably wasn't even Cooper. The studio still has the money.

His start as a folk hero began when a "Dan Cooper" bought a one-way ticket on Northwest Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Ore., to Seattle.

Moments after takeoff, Cooper handed a stewardess a hand-written note, announcing the skyjacking and demanding $200,000 and four parachutes. He also opened his brief- case and showed her what she later said looked like a bomb.

Instructions were radioed to the ground and, while the plane circled Seattle-Tacoma Airport, money and parachutes were rounded up. Cooper chain-smoked filter-tipped cigarettes and bought and sipped two bourbon- and-water highballs during the negotiations.

In Seattle, the 36 passengers and two stewardesses got off, while one stewardess and three cockpit crewmen stayed aboard. Cooper became fidgety as refueling took too long and told the stewardess, "Let's get this circus on the road."

THE PLANE took off for Reno, Nev., at 7:37 p.m., while a storm raged outside. Cooper was alone in the passenger section and the crew re- mained in the cockpit. At 8:11 p.m., the crew noticed a drop in cabin pressure, indicating the plane's rear door was opened.

FBI agents who scrambled aboard in Reno found no trace of Cooper — and a legend was born.

In February 1980, an 8-year-old boy picnicking with his family along the Columbia River west of Vancouver, Wash., unearthed packets of rotting $20 bills from the sand, which turned out to be $5,880 of Cooper's loot.

A hunter on a road near Castle Rock found a placard which wind had ripped from the wall of the plane's stairwell when Cooper jumped, Himmelsbach said.

He said Cooper bailed out while the plane was traveling at almost 200 mph at 10,000 feet, where the temperature was minus 7 and the wind chill factor a minus 69 on a raw and stormy night.

COOPER JUMPED with two parachutes — an emergency chute in front that was "by simple, honest error" defective, and a small sport chute in back that would land a novice sky-diver "fast and hard," Him- melsbach said.

He insists the FBI did not plot to sabotage the jump because "we don't have the right to sentence anyone to death and what would have happened if he took a hostage?"

Some people like to think Cooper lives, such as sponsors of the annual D.B. Cooper Festival" in Ariel, a town of two buildings near where Cooper is thought to have jumped. Once a year hundreds of people crowd into the Ariel Store and Tavern to buy T-shirts, swill beer and trade Cooper theories.

"I think he got away because they didn't find anything but the money and who's to say he didn't drop it to lead them off the trail," says Laural Fis- [guess: her], who owns the store-tavern with her husband, Dave, president of the D.B. Cooper Fan Club.

Who's to say, indeed? After 10 years of searching, "We know 1,000 people who he isn't and 1,000 places where he didn't land," says Dave Hill, FBI spokesman in Seattle.