Part 54, page 169

Transcript

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

Cooper, dead or alive?

(Continued from A-1) pilot, settled on flying to Reno, Nev. He gave the pilot precise instructions to fly at 200 m.p.h. with the plane's flaps down — nearly a stalling speed for the jet.

THE PLANE left Seattle at 7:30 p.m. and, precisely at 8:10 o'clock, the pilot noticed that the pressure light came on in the cabin. That pressure light indicated the rear door had been opened and it was thought Cooper was on his way, via parachute, to the ground. When the jet landed in Reno, it was surrounded and there was no Cooper on board nor any of the Raleigh cigarettes a stewardess said he had chain-smoked.

TO LEARN where Cooper may have come down that night, the FBI took the hijacked plane and a sled weighing exactly what Cooper and his money would have and flew it over the Pacific Ocean at the Hoquiam bombing range.

They simulated what would have happened if Cooper's chute didn't open and if it had.

From those computations, they concluded that if the chute didn't open, he would have landed near Bald Mountain, an area cleared at that time by loggers and easily searched.

BUT THE resulting search failed to turn up a body so they concentrated on a 3½-mile square area around Lake Merwin.

Since it was theorized Cooper was dead, the Army lent 450 soldiers and they, together with 50 agents, combed the target area in an arm-in-arm search for 28 days.

Seventeen helicopters and numerous fixed wing craft were used to aid in search efforts, but neither Cooper nor the money were found.

But maybe Cooper didn't die — he might have survived the jump somehow and managed to disappear in the night before his pursuers could pinpoint his location.

The next article examines the possibilities that D. B. Cooper is alive and well and living in . . . [illegible]

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DB Cooper-23098