Part 53, page 180

Transcript

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

He wanted 10,000 $20 bills to be delivered to him at Seattle in a laundry sack, along with two sets of parachutes. Otherwise, he would blow up the plane, he said. Airline officials and FBI agents complied and Cooper allowed the passengers and two of the three stewardesses to disembark at Seattle. Then he ordered the plane to fly south to Reno, Nev., at 200 miles per hour, at 10,000 feet, flaps down. The crew was to stay in the cockpit. After takeoff from Seattle, a red light flashed in the cockpit indicating the plane's rear boarding ramp had been unlatched. Nothing was heard from Cooper for about 20 minutes. At 8:10 p.m., as the plane crossed the Lewis River in southwestern Washington, Capt. William Scott thought the skyjacker was having trouble with the ramp and called back over the plane's interphone: "Anything we can do for you?" There was no answer. Another light flashed showing the ramp was fully extended. A few seconds later Cooper came back on the interphone: "No."

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That was the last ever heard of him. When the plane landed in Reno, the rear ramp was down and Cooper was gone. The 21-pound sack of money was gone. One set of parachutes was gone. The skyjacker, who had carefully reclaimed his note to the stewardess, had left no fin- gerprints. Authorities pinpointed Cooper's jump point near Woodland, Wash. The little town was transformed into a bustling command post for a small army of newsmen, FBI agents, police and soldiers from Ft. Lewis, Wash. With planes, helicopters, jeeps and track dogs, they combed the vast, densely wooded region northeast of Woodland. The skyjacker had left the plane clad only in a light business suit and street shoes. He parachuted into the blackness of a raging thunderstorm, into a 200 m.p.h. wind and 7-degrees- below-zero temperatures. He could not have survived, the police reasoned. They were simply looking for a body and a bag of money and that could wait until the spring thaw. A week later, the searchers went home. Cooper soon became a legend in the Northwest. A hit record- ing lauded him as a Robin Hood who beat the establishment. T-shirts bearing his name sold by the thousands. Then, late in March 1972, 300 soldiers combed the thawing terrain for 18 days and found not a trace of Dan Cooper or his bag of money. Mattson says the FBI is still actively searching for Cooper. "I just wish we had a development, something to go on," he says.

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DB Cooper-22518