Part 51, page 258

Transcript

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

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11. 25-96

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Tips trickle in 25 years after D.B. Cooper's skyjacking

FBI checks reports, keeps case open

By GEORGE TIBBITS Associated Press

SEATTLE — It's been 25 years since he took that big step out of a Boeing 727 at 10,000 feet, yet tips on D.B. Cooper still come in. [guess: Some] of the most daring — or best — criminals ever remains at large, having either flouted the laws of society or been foiled by the law of gravity.

"It's still a pending investigation," says Seattle-based FBI agent Ray Lauer, who adds that the case will stay open "probably forever."

The FBI here still stores 60 volumes of interviews and other documents telling how Cooper hijacked a jetliner, demanded and received $200,000, then jumped from the plane over the Cascade Mountains of southwestern Washington and into legend.

He hasn't been heard from since, although $5,880 of his loot was found by a boy playing on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980.

A few taverns and restaurants mark the anniversary of the nation's only unsolved skyjacking case. And now and then someone calls the FBI with a tip or suggestion.

"Surprisingly, yeah, we still get quite a few of them," Lauer says. "They tend to come in spurts, when they might get two to four in a week, then might not get any more tips for several months."

The FBI dutifully checks them out.

You're being hijacked

Wherever Cooper is, it's a safe bet his skydiving days are over: If he survived, he'd be 70 or older now.

On Nov. 24, 1971, the night before Thanksgiving, a man in his mid-40s wearing dark glasses boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines plane in Portland.

He bought a ticket under the name Dan Cooper — a law enforcement official later erroneously referred to him as "D.B." and the initials stuck — and took seat 18F in coach. He ordered a bourbon and water and handed flight attendant Flo Schaffner a note.

He apparently lacked a strong criminal presence; the busy Schaffner stuck the paper in her pocket.

Not until takeoff did she bother to read the message: "Miss, I've got a bomb, come sit next to me — you're being hijacked."

Fellow cabin attendant Tina Mucklow Larson recounted how she and Schaffner relayed dozens of messages from Cooper to the cockpit — including his demands for $200,000 in used $20 bills and four parachutes.

He had no unusual characteristics, Larson recalled. He wore a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt and the sunglasses, which he never took off, and chain-smoked.

He also had a black briefcase, which he opened for Larson, showing her a couple of red cylinders, wires and a battery.

He collected the money, provided by the airline, during a stop at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the 36 passengers and two flight attendants were released. Larson and the two pilots remained on board. Cooper demanded the plane be flown to Mexico, agreeing to a refueling stop at Reno.

Missing with parachutes

Just after takeoff, Larson said, Cooper asked how to lower the rear stairs of the 727, the only jetliner equipped with that feature. When the jet landed in Reno, the stairs were down and Cooper was missing, along with the money and parachutes.

Cooper dove into a freezing rainstorm at 10,000 feet, wearing only a business suit and loafers. The temperature was 7 below zero, not counting a wind chill estimated at minus 70 because of the plane's speed of 200 mph.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent assigned to the case before his retirement in 1980, has long maintained Cooper was a bumbler and a fool. If the cold didn't kill him, if he withstood the powerful turbulence, Cooper was still parachuting into dense forest at night, at the onset of winter, with no food or survival gear.

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