Part 53, page 181

Transcript

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

Horsey alias

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Four-legged namesake of D. B. Cooper at 'Acres

By BETTY HOPPER RENTON -- (AP) -- D. B. Cooper is alive and well and running at Longacres Race Track, where his bag is full of oats instead of cash.

The four-legged D. B. Cooper was named after the man who used that name before he hijacked a Northwest Airlines plane and parachuted into the Thanksgiving Eve darkness with $200,000 ransom two years ago and disappeared.

How did they become connected? There by hangs a tale . . . or perhaps a tail.

ACCORDING TO D. B.'s owner, Joe Shabaz, the colt was foaled about the time D. B. parachuted, possibly in the area of the Shabaz ranch, near LaCenter in southwest Washington.

Law-enforcement agencies and military teams

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searched the area for weeks. The helicopters, swooping low over the farmlands, and the constant ground parties engraved the name of D. B. Cooper on the minds of the residents.

"We got to thinking," says Shabaz, "We were trying to get a name for this guy. He was always an active little colt that was always jumping here and jumping there, always all over the place. So one of the hands said, 'Why don't we call him D. B. Cooper? If he had a parachute, he'd probably try to bail out of something.'

"So we named him D. B. Cooper, and when the wife sent the name in, the Jockey Club wrote back and wanted to know if we'd get permission from D. B. Cooper to use his name.

"She explained to them that he was a hijacker of an airplane and she didn't think there'd be any repercussions from him about using his name, so they approved D. B. Cooper and that's how we would up with that name for him.

"I doubt if he's ever going to be a big horse, but he's a nice, good-looking colt and he's got a good body on him. If he just runs a little bit that's good enough for me.

"I'm not out to make a killing. It's just a lot of fun, although not a very [guess: lucrative] [guess: operation] with the price of hay and grain these days."

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So far, D. B. hasn't tested his legs competitively. He's been getting used to the changes from farm life to racing life, the difference in food, the noise of the starting gate, the sounds of the crowd, but Shabaz says he expects to start racing the 2-year-old next month.

Shabaz, who races nine horses, says his wife does all the naming. "She gets the good names but I can't get the run out of them so there's something wrong somewhere. But maybe D. B. Cooper will do the the running for us."

A police sketch of the other D. B. hangs beside his stall to spur him on.

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SEARCHED _______ INDEXED _______ SERIALIZED ____ FILED ____ JUL 1 0 1974 FBI -- SEATTLE

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164-81 - Sub B

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DB Cooper-22519