Part 53, page 142

Transcript

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

FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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Amateurs hunt dollars, not hijacker

WOODLAND, Clark County — (UPI) — A parade of autos, pickup trucks and motorcycles wound through the rolling foothills of the Cascade Mountains yesterday, carrying people seeking a fortune that might never be found.

No one readily admitted he was looking for some or all of the $200,000 ransom a hijacker collected Thanksgiving Eve before he bailed out somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nev.

In fact, although the Federal Bureau Investigation was using the Southwest Washington foothills as their operations base in searching for the hijacker, they were merely working on a hunch—no solid evidence—that he had bailed out in the area.

BUT THEY came anyway, 1971-style gold rushers tempted by the lure of easy money and undaunted by the long odds against their success.

In a gas station, three Portland-area girls home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday admitted they entertained fantasies of finding the hijacker's loot.

One girl identified herself only as Anita. She and her two companions had driven to this area "just to have a look around." That was the initial reason.

"You start thinking about it," Anita said, "and you realize maybe he didn't live through the fall and there's $200,000 sitting all alone in the woods."

Would she turn it in? Anita smiled.

"It would be tempting to keep it," she said, "even if they offered a reward for its return."

A YOUNG farmer in a battered pickup truck stopped at a combination gas station-general store at one of the many crossroads in the search area.

As he manned the gas pump himself, his two children smiled and waved from the cab of the pickup. At first his story was that he was "headed into Battle Ground for a few things at the grocery."

But as the conversation covered the hijacking and the unusually heavy traffic on the North Clark County roads, his talk turned to "what a man could do with that kind of money."

He removed an old rag from the cab, carefully wiped some spilled gas from the side of the truck and commented how "even a good Christian man" would be tempted to keep the money.

"A lot of people in Clark County are having to go on welfare because they lost jobs," he said, "and a man could buy himself a pretty nice farm with that kind of money... even if he had to go to Australia."

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(Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.)

p. A1 Seattle Times Seattle, Wash.

Date: 11/27/71 Edition: Sunset Final Author: Editor: Henry McLeod Title: UNSUB;Northwest Airlines, Flight 305, Portland to Seattle, Character: 11/24/71 or CAA-HIJACKING; EXT Classification: 164-81 Submitting Office: Seattle [✓] Being Investigated

COPY SENT TO BUREAU

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[illegible] 1971 FBI—SEATTLE

DB Cooper-22480