Part 50, page 173

Transcript

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

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found these bales of hay, and some others along the edge of the field, piled up and smoldering. I thought smugglers were running drugs in here and using the fires as ground- pattern lights for a small airplane."

But the forest trails surrounding the huge field provided impenetrable refuge for who- ever was there, and the deputy sheriff captured no one. After the skyjacking, he recalled, the mysterious fires ceased. According to Jack Coffelt, who led me to the field in 1974, the bales of hay had been set afire to help guide him to a safe landing in the parachute in the dark. He and his accomplice, he explained, had practiced their escape maneuvers during the nights immediately preceding the sky- jacking.

But the scene on those vast tundra ranges grows even more compelling. A few miles south of the field, near an Indian reservation, lies a small man-made lake called Pine Hollow Reservoir. On one shore of the tiny lake stand a few small, dilapidated, privately-owned cabins which have been rented out to wayworn travellers for as long as people can remember. The place is secluded and peaceful, and amidst the little group of weather-beaten buildings, with the austere peak of Mount Hood reflected in the crystalline lake nearby, one feels utterly anonymous. But there is an extraordinary and baffling curiousity here: on the porch of one of the ancient structures stands a Navy battleship beacon capable of emitting a beam of light which can be seen well over a hundred miles!

The day I discovered it the beacon's glass face — nearly three feet in diameter — was resting on a steel swivel plate that was frozen solid with rust. Strangely, it was aimed on the compass reading which directed it towards Coffelt's landing field in the hills a few miles to the north! None of the locals recalls how the huge beacon came to arrive there, but Jack Coffelt told me in 1974 that he ordered the pilot of Flight 305 to "home in on a huge beacon" located south of the landing field — even though he never took me to where the beacon was eventually found.

The real reason I went to Pine Hollow Reservoir was because Jack informed me cagily, "The getaway car — my Cadillac — was parked beside a lake near an Indian reservation," as he pointed to the plains south of the landing site to indicate the general area. But he distinctly appeared to want to avoid that area, as if he thought someone there might recognize him. When I finally found the beacon there I was immensely impressed by the clear — indeed beautiful — design which its secret location revealed. As I gazed at the small enclave of cabins huddled together in that remote hideaway on the plains, it seemed the perfect place for his accomplice to have waited, with walkie-talkie in hand, for Jack to radio him that he had finally touched down in the

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The wheat field where Coffelt intended to land. He missed the field by one mile, landing in the canyon at upper right. His jeep was parked in the forests directly above the wheat field.

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Coffelt suspected chase planes would follow the skyjacked jetliner, and his hunch was right. Military fighter jets from McChord Air Force Base tailed the aircraft, but kept overshooting it and finally had to turn back.

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parachute. The confederate would then merely shut off the signal light, drive the few short miles to the landing site where he would pick up Jack, and from there the two would speed east across the plains.

In case something fouled up, however, there was an alternate plan. Coffelt suspected chase planes would follow the skyjacked jetliner, and his hunch was right. Military fighter jets from McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington tailed the aircraft, but kept over- shooting it and finally had to turn back. Also, a C-130 cargo plane loaded with paratroopers lumbered behind hoping to see the skyjacker bail out — at which point the paratroopers planned to follow suit and try to capture him on the ground. But the cargo plane's radar

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failed to pick up the falling skyjacker. Nevertheless, in anticipation of possible ground pursuit, Coffelt had stashed a World War Two Army jeep in the woods. The jeep was equipped with food and water, and was stationed high in the foothills a few miles west of the landing field. In case he was pursued on the ground he would bury the money, make his way to the jeep and from there maneuver the vehicle far down obscure forest trails to a cave-like hideout, lying low until the heat was off. The accomplice operating the Cadillac would stand by, passing the days quietly as just another tourist at the lonesome but tranquil cabins at Pine Hollow Reservoir — until the time was ripe for their escape. Then the two would rendezvous, retrieve the buried money, discard the jeep into a nearby river and set out in the Cadillac for their Midwestern haven. "It was the perfect crime," Coffelt told me. "We planned for every possibility."

Accordingly, the Army jeep served a dual

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At Pine Hollow Reservoir, James Brown sits beside the beacon which directed the plane to the remote landing site.

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purpose. In addition to serving as a back-up getaway vehicle, the jeep was stationed strate- gically to aid in the jump itself — it carried an electronic beeper which emitted a signal on a special radio frequency. As the skyjacked plane headed south from Seattle, Coffelt, listening through a receiver strapped to his wrist for the signal coming from the jeep, planned to jump when it was two or three pitches from its loudest intensity — a point at which he would be roughly a mile due north of the jeep itself, and from there he could easily float down-wind in the parachute to a pin-point landing on the field at the edge of the plains.

No trace of the jeep has ever been found. The Deschutes River, where according to Coffelt it was plunged into the waters and de- stroyed with dynamite, is extremely treacher- ous to divers due to its raging currents and rocky bottom, so the possibility of finding its remains there is remote. But a fascinating shred of evidence that such a jeep existed and was used in the skyjacking has been uncovered like a rare archaeological find.

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LAS VEGAN MAGAZINE/DB Cooper-20778