Part 53, page 240

Transcript

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FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63) (Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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FBI man vows to hunt down America's parachute skyjacker

By BARRIE WATTS

AN FBI man has sworn he will never stop trying to solve one of America's most baffling mysteries—where is sky pirate D.B. Cooper?

Cooper, whose real identity has never been discovered, is believed to have parachuted from a hijacked Northwest Airlines Boeing 727, $200,000 in ransom strapped to his body, as it flew over rugged terrain in Washington State on Nov. 24, 1971.

But military jets tailing the plane did not see him bail out. He and the money vanished without trace despite a massive, computer-coordinated manhunt.

Even so, Ralph Himmelsbach, an FBI special agent who has worked doggedly on the case since the beginning, told THE STAR he will never give up the search.

"I dearly want to get him," he said. "Someone, somewhere, must know who Cooper really is. Sooner or later a clue must come to the surface."

To Himmelsbach, the Cooper affair is the greatest unsolved puzzle in modern-day piracy. But he has no respect or admiration for the man who hijacked the Northwest flight between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., on that fateful day.

The flight began like any other for stewardess Florence Shaffner. She was checking that passengers had fastened their seatbelts when a tall, dark-complexted man with black hair and sunglasses [text partially cut off]

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Sketches of D.B. Cooper made after the hijack show him as ordinary-looking. At left, he is pictured in sunglasses he wore during hijack.

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remained aboard with the hijacker. As Cooper had ordered, the plane was refueled for a flight to Mexico, with one stop in Reno. Then a technical problem developed in the refueling truck. As time dragged by pilot Scott radioed ground control in a trembling voice. The man in back, he said, was getting "awful nasty."

Finally, when the jet was ready to go, a Federal Aviation Administration official chose that moment to go aboard and call on the skyjacker to surrender.

Cooper looked at him bleakly and growled: "Let's get this show on the road." The FAA man left fast.

When the jet was back in the air, Cooper told Tina Mucklow to "go forward, pull the curtain and don't come back."

It was the last anyone ever saw of Cooper. From that moment until he vanished into limbo, he communicated with the crew by phone.

Three Air Force jet fighters lurked above and behind the plane, anticipating that Cooper might jump. Radar followed the plane from the ground.

The jet lumbered at low speed as Cooper called the flight deck. He told Scott to open the jet's rear door. Scott did as he was told. From the rear exit, which extended beneath the tail, debarkation stairs led below and away from the fuselage. Cooper was going to walk into space.

Intensely cold air rushed into the cabin as the rear door was lowered. The plane was becoming

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