Part 52, page 62
Document date 22 November 2001
FBI 164-81, Vault Part 52 p. 62 (DB Cooper-21668), News clipping, dated 22 Nov 2001 — cooper.theunsolved.net/parts/Cooper-Part-52/pages/62
Transcript
The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.
Page 3 of
---
he Seattle Times: D.B. Cooper [guess: pu]zzle: The legend turns 30
The plane landed in Seattle; passengers were exc[guess: ha]nged for parachutes and ransom money paid by the airline. With Cooper and the flight crew on board, it took off, heading south toward Mexico. About 30 minutes later, a cockpit warning light showed the rear stairway was fully extended. The pilot asked over the intercom, "Is everything OK back there?"
Cooper yelled back, "No," and bailed out the back into freezing darkness.
The plane landed in Reno, where agents found nothing except Cooper's skinny black tie, tie tack, eight of his cigarette butts, two of the parachutes and possibly a fingerprint among the 66 never identified.
Did he survive? Said Hope: "We know there was a blowing storm, the plane was going 170 knots, he was wearing street clothes and street shoes. ... The chance of survival was not good. Possible, not likely."
Yet Cooper's body was never found, and only a portion of the ransom money — whose serial numbers the FBI had recorded — turned up when a child digging in a sand bar on the north bank of the Columbia River west of Vancouver in 1980 unearthed a bundle of $20 bills.
That gives romantics room to fantasize that Cooper is alive, enjoying his riches in some exotic locale.
But the San Diego cabbie and the Florida realtor have no doubts. Not only are they certain Cooper survived the jump, they insist they know who he was.
---
The cabbie's tale
The two men were poker-playing buddies. Sitting in a bar one night in 1984, Rizzo said, he confided to Huddleston that he was a fugitive wanted by the FBI for counterfeiting.
Huddleston replied with his own confession: He had skyjacked an airplane in 1971.
Rizzo said he kept the secret until after Huddleston died in 1986 of an aneurysm brought on by a cocaine overdose at age 52. Rizzo told the FBI his tale. An autopsy of Huddleston revealed his legs were covered with scars, which Rizzo says were caused by the jump from the plane.
Rizzo said Huddleston gave him this account:
After plunging from the plane, he landed near a river, in a tree about 10 feet above the ground, where a sharp limb punctured his knee and ribs. The weather was so bad his shoes blew off, and ice and sleet coated his arms and back.
The strap that held the money tore, and that's how he lost
---
DB Cooper-21668