Part 50, page 199

Transcript

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[allace had difficulty dealing with the 31. Despite telephone conversations ith agents working on the case and a eeting with Bureau Director William ebster, he unearthed no new informa- on, and reached a frustrating dead end. If Wallace had chosen to dig deeper, e might have uncovered strong evi- ence that Coffelt was telling the truth rom two eyewitnesses aboard Flight 05—stewardess Tina Muchlow (now ina Muchlow Larsen) and attorney eorge LaBissoniere. In the past year oth have identified a photograph of Coffelt as the skyjacker. Interestingly, LaBissoniere says he previously iden- tified an FBI photo of Coffelt a month fter the incident. As far as he knows, nothing more ever happened as a result of the identification. He tried contacting the FBI several times, but no one at the Bureau ever returned his calls.

Also supporting Coffelt's story are unusual details of the skyjacking that he told Brown, facts that have never been released by lawmen or published by newsmen.

Coffelt said he "petted and touched" the stewardess in an intimate way and offered her some of the ransom money. The "groping" has been confirmed by a member of the flight crew. Larsen verifies Coffelt's claim that he changed into boots on the plane. To this day, all news reports have echoed the FBI's claim that he jumped in street shoes.

Earlier this year the D. B. Cooper sto- ry stormed back onto the front pages when some of the ransom money was recovered—not by any of the hopeful treasure-hunters who have prowled the jump region for years, but purely by ac- cident. On February 12, during a family outing on the northern bank of the Co- lumbia River, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was scooping out sand for a campfire site. Suddenly he shouted: "Daddy, I see money!" His father dug further and found 12 packets of crum- bling $20 bills wrapped in worn rubber bands. "It didn't look like I could spend it," says Harold Ingram. "I thought it was counterfeit."

The discovery was made about 50 miles downstream from where Coffelt said he landed and some 20 miles away from where the FBI searched for Cooper's landing spot. If the money had dropped at either location, it would have had to work its way down a tribu- tary and eventually into the wide river. Although the bills apparently did just that, the landing spot or exact route the money followed in the river will prob- ably never be determined, since earth was freely moved from one river to an- other during a massive dredging oper- ation in 1977 and 1978.

The currency's serial numbers did, however, match those on some of the bills given Cooper in 1971. Despite massive digging by the FBI and local police during the next several days, no more ransom money was found.

Those who believe that Jack Coffelt may have been D. B. Cooper feel that finding the money did nothing to con- tradict his version of the skyjacking. "After all, Coffelt did claim he lost the money," one journalist familiar with the case points out.

The FBI agent in charge of the case from the beginning, Ralph Himmels- bach, declines to discuss details of Coffelt's story or his alleged connections to the Bureau. Besides, he thinks it unlikely that D. B. Cooper ever pulled through.

"The aircraft was flying at 10,000 feet at nearly 200 mph," says Himmelsbach. "The air temperature outside was minus-seven degrees. Winds in Portland were gusting at ground level up to 40 mph. He was plunging straight down at 26 mph, the normal rate of vertical de- scent in sport parachuting. Add those two numbers together, and he had to strike the ground at nearly 70 mph. It's hard to conceive how he could have landed without being badly injured. Also, he lacked the necessary equipment to make such a jump. He should have had a hard hat, goggles, a leather flight jacket, a flight suit and some tools and cutters so he could free himself from whatever trees or bushes he might have gotten hung up in.

"It was an incredible gamble. Yet he was dressed in a suit, with a tie and stickpin, alligator shoes, a raincoat and dark glasses and carrying a briefcase. He seemed to be saying, 'If I make it, okay. If I don't, that's okay too.'"

And what about the report from stewardess Muchlow that she saw him change from his street shoes to boots be- fore the jump? "That's news to me," Himmelsbach says gruffly.

A tough, old investigator, he retired from the Bureau a month after the Ingrams found some of the ransom money. Nevertheless, Himmelsbach's compulsion with solving his biggest-ever case has not ended. A private pilot, he still flies his single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza over the rugged terrain that he hopes hides the decaying parachutes and bones of D. B. Cooper. Clearly, he does not relish the prospect that the sky- jacker survived the jump and lived to spend most of the money.

And he has nothing but contempt for the townspeople of Ariel, Washington, who commemorate the famous skyjack- ing. "They're making fun of a deadly serious matter," Himmelsbach declares.

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