Part 52, page 64

Transcript

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

he Seattle Times: D.B. Cooper [guess: puzzle]: The legend turns 30 Page 5 of

Jo Weber once found an old airline ticket from Por[guess: tland] to Seattle in a box of records. She came across it a second time when she was cleaning out clothes, but her husband said it didn't mean anything, and the ticket got lost again.

"I've offered to do anything I have to to prove I'm telling the truth," she said. "Now, I have to let God take care of the rest. I've given it five years of my life ... but I'm not going to use up the rest of my life trying to do the FBI's job for them."

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Investigations 'just burn out'

The FBI has investigated a litany of stories like those from Rizzo and Weber but rejected them because there is simply no proof, Hope said. Except for the sodden bills along the Columbia, the forests have held Cooper's secret.

"Every so often one would come along, and I'd get the rush of adrenaline," said Himmelsbach, the retired FBI agent and author. "There's a guy in a bar with a bunch of $20 bills, he's limping on one leg and someone asks where he got the roll, and he says he might of hijacked an airplane. You track those things down, and they just burn out."

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Another who discounts Weber's deathbed confession is Thomas, the retired Army infantryman who has spent the past three decades searching the thick forests of Southwest Washington for signs of Cooper.

"There's no way," said Thomas, 50, a survival expert. "... A lot of what (Jo Weber) is claiming came right out of a book."

Thomas pulls out a well-worn map and traces the forests around Washougal, Clark County. This, he believes, is where Cooper's remains rest.

But he is willing to entertain the notion that Cooper survived, so he walks the woods, sometimes with his grandchildren, searching for signs under branches and along creek banks.

"Unsolved cases really intrigue me. This is my life," Thomas said.

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Some clues still kept secret

When Cooper commandeered the Northwest jet, skyjacking was hardly a novel crime. More than 25 were attempted in 1971 alone, but he alone did not get caught.

The following year, screening devices became mandatory in airports, and Himmelsbach said exit doors on airliners were modified with a device named the Cooper Vane so they could not be opened in midflight.

The FBI won't talk about suspects in an open case. But

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DB Cooper-21670