Part 50, page 190

Transcript

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

Whatever he tells me to do, I do." What they did was set into operation a bizarre plot to wrest away the fortune from a famous multi- millionaire jet-setter! But this incredible scam which involved an illegitimate child, court- ordered blood tests, hush-money paid to poli- ticians, and sealed court testimony describing activities bordering on the occult, backfired ignominiously.

Jack came under intense pressure by the early 1970's to get out of Washington D.C. or face the threat of another long prison sentence, or even worse punishment at the hands of those who sought to keep a lid on the scam! The beautiful German girl secretly set sail for Europe on an ocean-liner. She would hide out in France and Germany, finally neutral Switzerland where American agents were un- able to bribe that government's politicians into turning her over. Jack, from afar, constantly supplied her with money, draining his own re- sources to the end.

"I never loved anyone like I loved her," Coffelt told me in 1974 as tears welled in his eyes. By 1971 his luck had at last run dry. The days of free spending and high living were over, leaving him more embittered than ever before. More than one person who knew him then recalled, "He said he was going to 'get the government.'" To me, his constant refrain about the skyjacking — "I had nothing to lose" — always became deeply intertwined around the story of his passionate love for the beautiful German geisha!

Henry James once wrote, stretching irony to its furthest limit: "It is far better to be killed than to be destroyed." The colorful and fasci- nating Jack Coffelt was plotting, however, one last way to beat the "system." In November 1971, as Nixon's White House flourished and the Vietnam War raged on, Bryant "Jack" Coffelt became an American legend by para- chuting from an airplane with a bag of stolen money.

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A bland grey stone lying in an obscure corner of a Hawaiian cemetery bears the simple legend: Bryant Coffelt — [born] February 20, 1916; [died] June 19, 1975. But the stone — which may one day prove as cryptic as Rosetta's — tells nothing more about the dark circum- stances surrounding Jack's days in Hawaii, why he went there, or what he did. It is known, however, among other things, that his death certificate has been secretly altered.

In Hawaii, the palm fans sway in gentle breezes, mangos and pineapples fill the air with tropical aromas, and the emerald ocean fades before sunset to what Jack would fondly call "indigo blue." Peaceful surfs splash the sand-swept beaches like time itself coming home to rest. At last, perhaps, Jack has found a serenity that he never knew in life.

The FBI has finally admitted that Jack was a

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THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH CERTIFICATE... "Your nationality and your politics did not show when you were dead." —Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls

#1 The date of Coffelt's death is listed as June 19, 1975.

#2 Tave Coffelt was the "Informant."

#3 Strangely, he was not buried until one week later, on June 24th.

#4 The certificate was altered 11 days after the date of death.

CERTIFICATE OF DEATH [Certificate details partially legible] Bryant Coffelt February 20, 1916 Queen's Medical Center [Various fields with entries largely illegible at this resolution] ORIGINAL RECORD ON FILE [illegible] September 3 1975

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During the course of our investigation my father and I hired a Las Vegas private detective agency to procure a copy of Jack Coffelt's death certificate from the Research and Statistics Office at the Hawaii Department of Health. But we were promptly informed by the detective agency that the Hawaii FBI had been somehow "alerted" by its inquiry there — a very strange occurrence indeed. Why would the Bureau be alerted?

Tave Coffelt, who is listed as the "informant," apparently stated at the top of the docu- ment (item #10) that she and Jack "never married." Note the addition marked "ALTERED June 30, 1975" in the lower right half of the certificate. To alter a death certificate requires at least a number of official signatures from various government agencies, if not a court order. Why was the certificate changed (and by whom?) 11 days after it was issued to show that Coffelt died on June 19 at 12:40 AM rather than on June 18 at 11:25 PM? It is a differ- ence of not quite an hour, but legally it shifts the death one day later. Even though no autopsy was performed (item #19a), the body was not buried until one week after that, on June 24th. Did Coffelt's friends fly in from around the world for an extended wake before the funeral? It seems highly unlikely.

Only weeks before June 19, 1975, Jack Coffelt was seen by old friends of his 5000 miles away — back in Kansas! And in a letter to my father dated September 20, 1976, nearly a year and a half after Jack's alleged death, Tave Coffelt used a strange verb tense in referring to him: "Jack knows," she eerily began, "so many people throughout the world and so many would be interested . . . in information which they think I might provide them, it would only result in their coming here to see me, which I do not want."

Many unanswered questions still linger . . .

In another letter just one week after that, responding to a direct inquiry about whether she knew for certain if Jack was D.B. Cooper, Tave did not deny that he was, but instead replied with the cryptic warning: "The subject to which you referred to [the skyjacking] . . . in my opinion is a can of worms — and could only result in trouble in the future!" B.H.B.

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LAS VEGAS MAGAZINE [illegible] cooper-20795