Part 50, page 165

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slope in the dark. His shoes had filled with blood; he had broken a rib. "I've never re-covered," he gasped. "It ruined me. I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars."

I was astounded by his allegations, and as I retold them over a year later they seemed as outlandish as they had that night in the Joplin motel. But the allegations would grow im-mensely. In one meeting at the Tropicana Hotel with writers and executives of Universal Studios, I told how Coffelt claimed he had "connections" in Las Vegas, that these persons were going to help him launder that stolen loot through the casino cage of one major Strip hotel. In lighter moments he bragged about his Las Vegas past, once dropping a name and boasting of "taking over a town" and being "the boss's right arm;" how he "always packed a gun then because business was rough" . . . the name was Howard Hughes.

At times I thought he was all blow, for as we drove along the vast western prairies he re-counted fantastic tales like a man hallucinating. But I would discover later that he indeed had connections in Las Vegas, and that the authori-ties had once kept a close eye on his actions here. By having a "trace" placed on his FBI number through a friend in the Las Vegas police department, I found that on October 7, 1959, Jack had registered as an ex-felon in Phoenix, Arizona; and ten months later, on July 18, 1960, he registered as an ex-felon in Las Vegas, both places requiring known mal-contents to so register. But also, registering as an ex-felon implies that Jack stayed in the Phoenix and Las Vegas areas for a fairly long period of time. He wasn't just passing through. I was to discover that he stayed in Las Vegas long enough to find himself a woman compan-ion who remained with him — as a partner and overseer of his various shady activities — for the next 14 years.

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THE COMPANION

Lorraine Thompson was a pretty red-haired woman, pleasant, unassuming, and quiet. One source who knew her thought she had "spent a lot of time in the backwoods of Tennessee collecting antiques." But somehow she migrated west. On September 23, 1955, when she was twenty-eight years old, she married Paul C. Gulas, thirty-three, in Las Vegas. Old timers in town may have heard of Gulas, a man who naturally would have associated with many types of people. Gulas had been previously married and had a son, Paul, Jr. now residing in Las Vegas.

Gulas Sr. was a Las Vegas policeman. He went on to become the Captain of Detectives in 1968, retired from the force in 1974, and died in Texas in early 1976. Lorraine and Gulas were divorced after six years, on July 26,

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1961. Shortly thereafter she was constantly seen in the company of Jack Coffelt. She called herself Tave — Tave Coffelt — although they never married. The couple seemed pros-perous in those years. Jack wore expensive suits and drove a late-model Cadillac. Paul Gulas Jr. told me that he thought "Tave" had been a police dispatcher in Miami, Florida. One reliable source told me "my information is that she's FBI." Whatever her line, she was to introduce Jack Coffelt to a new and different world — a world of political intrigue under-taken in the highest circles. A few months after her divorce from Gulas in Las Vegas, Jack and Tave set up permanent residence in Washington D.C., and Jack entered upon his new career as a government informant. He was to be seen at White House inauguration balls. He hobnobbed with Mrs. Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson. At least twice he entered Nixon's presidential enclave with White House passes. He was often seen in the company of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Indeed, as I myself witnessed in 1974, he carried an FBI identification badge, and one card identified him as an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. From the years 1961 to 1974 Jack Coffelt seemed to

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Coffelt seemed hurt that the true merit of his crime had never been fully appreciated. The whole idea that D.B. Cooper had just "jumped out in the night like Santa Claus" was perversely ridiculous to him.

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play many roles. Sources who knew him in Washington D.C. link him to undercover poli-tical operations in such disparate places as Egypt, Cuba, and Mexico City. One Las Vegas FBI agent told me cryptically, "He may well have been CIA."

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THE INSPIRATION

Bryant "Jack" Coffelt was born February 20, 1916, and grew up in near poverty in the lead and zinc mining area around Joplin, Missouri. As a youth he hung around the gambling halls and brothels of Picher, Okla-homa, a few miles southwest of Joplin. Accord-ing to those who knew him there, he was a "strange" youth, always into trouble.

"He never would mind. He wouldn't mind nobody," said his sister. From the age of

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fourteen on he would always be in trouble with the law, serving a total of over twenty years in reformatories, jails, and prisons. In the late 1940's, while serving a ten-year sentence for auto theft and attempted escape at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, he was working in the print shop as a press operator one day when he met my father, who was editor of the prison magazine.

In 1944, James Brown, the son of a Georgia lawyer, had been commissioned as a second-lieutenant in the U.S. Army-Air Force, a pilot in a transport squadron. He was expecting to be sent to England for the invasion of Europe, but instead found himself facing a court martial, charged with rape. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Atlanta Penitentiary. Brown, who always maintained his innocence, was paroled in 1952 after serving eight years, but during those years he became close friends with Jack Coffelt. The two would often spend hours together on the prison recreation yard. Like many of the inmates, Coffelt often dreamt of the perfect crime, the big job, and was fas-cinated by Brown's ability to fly an airplane. "He would ask me if it would be possible to escape by landing a plane in the prison yard," said Brown, "or if I could fly him to Mexico if he pulled a bank job."

After Brown's release in 1952, the two did not hear from each other for many years. Coffelt was discharged in 1955, after being transferred to Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. But their friendship during those lonely prison years was cemented. Coffelt told me that his admiration for my father's flying ability was in fact the seed which culminated in his planning the skyjacking. And he said when he dropped the money the first man he thought of to help him was James Brown.

The story of the skyjacking grew. According to Coffelt, it was an exceedingly well-planned and thoroughly rehearsed operation. He claimed he had taken Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle "two or three times" before the actual crime in order to perfect the timing of the operation. He had been trained by an engineer who was familiar with the Boeing 727 aircraft, the only plane in commercial operation which had a stairway which opened directly out the rear. He was instructed to order the pilot to fly at 15 degrees wingflaps so that the plane could go no faster than approx-imately 175 knots (200 mph). If it flew any faster than that, Coffelt said, he would have been killed by the tremendous suction effect at the rear opening. Moreover, he ordered the pilot to fly at 10,000 feet altitude. "That bastard flew to 10,500 feet once," he said. "I knew. I was wearing a wrist altimeter. I got on the interphone and ordered him back down."

Coffelt often scoffed at the "lousy" journal-ists who had first reported the crime. "All they did was talk to the FBI," he said. He

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74 OCTOBER 1983/LAS VEGAN MAGAZINE

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DB Cooper-20770