Part 50, page 194

Transcript

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

memory of this American Robin Hood. It was a rainy day in Washington/When Cooper made his move,/Taking the flight he took before,/Hopin' the weather would improve. Somewhere over Ariel/He made his famous jump./With 200 thou, a parachute:/A wild card and a trump. Well, listen to the people talk,/The FBI is stumped./Some people say he died in the fall,/ Some people say he didn't jump./But of all the possibilities/That are tattered and worn,/No matter what you say, my friend,/A legend has been born. Well, they searched and searched the countryside,/A clue they could not find./The FBI, the State Police,/The Boy Scouts were all blind./Now, D. B., you clever one,/You got 'em on the run./We hope that you survived that jump/Into the settin' sun."

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"Most of us 'round these parts like to think he made it," says Dave Fisher, owner of the Ariel Store and Tavern and organizer of the festival held every year around Thanksgiving time. "And a lot of them don't think of him as a criminal for what he did. He's a hero. And he sure put this part of the country on the map." At a recent festival Fisher sold 108 T-shirts bearing the hero's FBI composite image and slogans like "D. B. Cooper, Where Are You?" Neck-chains, bumper stickers, posters and other trinkets honoring the skyjacker were also popular items. "This year we're expectin' 'bout 500 or 600 people 'cause of the money being found," says Fisher, referring to a $4,000 cache of decaying ransom bills discovered 25 miles from Ariel in February. "Findin' the money didn't solve anything though. We like to think that D. B. got away with the rest of it."

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The daring scheme that would inspire the legend unfolded on Thanksgiving Eve 1971, 30 miles southeast of Ariel at the busy Portland International Airport. Everyone seemed to want to be somewhere else that dark, stormy day, preferably with family and loved ones contemplating the next day's turkey dinner and marathon schedule of televised football games. Shortly before 3:30 p.m. a Northwest Orient Airlines ticket agent sold a one-way fare on Flight 305 to a well-dressed man who paid cash and gave his name as Dan Cooper (later found to be an alias). The agent hastily punched the wrong key, however, and the passenger's name printed out as D. B. Cooper. By 4 o'clock Cooper was seated in the rear of the three-engine Boeing 727, patiently waiting to implement his carefully planned, boldly executed caper. Stewardess Florence (Flo) Schaffner thought it odd that there were so many no-shows on the holiday-season flight. Nearly 80 seats were vacant. She also seemed puzzled when Cooper passed her a handwritten note soon after takeoff. Flo had long been accustomed to amorous travelers. Her small, trim figure and jet-black hair attracted bankers and college football players alike. They were always flirting and passing her little love notes. Some of these messages were cute. Others were funny. A few were sexy. But this one was different. It said nothing about later tonight or I know we're made for each other, sweetie. It didn't even have the man's name and phone number. The words just didn't make sense: Bomb in briefcase... will blow up plane... come sit with me. Schaffner looked again at the swarthy passenger who had handed her the slip of paper. He seemed to be in his 40s, with a receding hairline, about six feet tall and of medium build. Dressed in a reddish-brown business suit, white shirt, flashy alligator shoes, a narrow black tie and a stickpin, he wasn't a bad-looking guy. But he seemed sort of distant. Earlier, when the plane was ready for takeoff, the stewardess had had to go down the ramp to summon Cooper, who was watching the baggage being loaded. He boarded only after the cargo doors were closed, removing his hat and dark glasses while Schaffner served him a double bourbon-on-the-rocks. He quickly gulped it down. Sitting in the window seat with a briefcase in his lap, he looked for all the world like any other businessman. He must be a prankster, Schaffner thought. Some men would do just anything to get her attention. She stuffed the note into her jacket pocket and started to move forward in the cabin to serve the other passengers. But when she looked at Cooper, the fierce determination in his narrow-set eyes stopped her cold. His head jerked, angrily, toward the briefcase he held open. Inside she saw a large battery, several red sticks and a tangle of wires. "Sit down here, please," he ordered in a firm voice. She quickly concluded that the red sticks were dynamite and that the battery was part of a bomb. This wasn't a joke, after all. Her pulse quickened and her stomach churned as she approached Cooper cautiously. Within minutes the stewardess had relayed his demands to the cockpit, and copilot William Rataczak was in communication with Seattle-Tacoma International Airport tower officials. "We have a problem with a passenger," said the experienced flier, his voice cool and controlled. He explained that a man was threatening to explode a bomb

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*By Richard Purdy. Copyright © 1976 by Cabin Fever Music. Used by permission.

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"And then I'm gonna rip off your panties and shove my fist into your cunt up to my elbow...."

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78 AUGUST HUSTLER

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DB Cooper-20799