Part 54, page 170

Transcript

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

The Case Of The Missing Skyjacker

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By JOE FRAZIER PORTLAND, Ore. — It was a miserably wet, windy, cold Thanksgiving eve in 1971. Passengers waited at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at Portland International Airport to book space on Flight 105 to Seattle. Many thought ahead to family reunions, turkey dinners, long relaxed conversations and perhaps a traditional game of bridge or Monopoly later. But one didn't. Dan Cooper paid cash for his ticket, then, clutching a paper sack, boarded the Boeing 727 for the 30-minute flight. A few minutes after the plane nosed into the storm, he made his move. He showed the stewardess what he said was a dynamite bomb and demanded four parachutes, $200,000 in $20 bills and "no funny stuff." All the passengers but Cooper got off at Seattle, unaware that anything was wrong. The money and parachutes were put on board and the jet, with only the crew and Cooper aboard, headed for Reno on Cooper's order. Then somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper, with the 21 pounds of money strapped to him, bailed out. He hasn't been heard from since. If he's alive — and that's a big "if" — the five-year statute of limitations runs out this Thanksgiving eve, Nov. 24. Or does it?

"WE'RE GOING AHEAD on the assumption that the statute doesn't apply, because when he did what he did, capital punishment was a possibility. There's no statute on capital crimes," says FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach. Anyway, he says, chances are good that Cooper is dead. "Not one of the 10,000 bills has shown up, and we know the serial number of every one of them," he said. And Cooper apparently knew nothing about skydiving. In a business suit and street shoes, he jumped from the rear door of a jet going 197 mph at 10,000 feet. At that elevation it was 7 degrees below zero that night, with a wind-chill factor of 69 degrees below zero. The plane was in clouds "Up looked like down to me, and no visual reference. He couldn't possibly have known where he was." Cooper picked some of the roughest country in the Pacific Northwest. He took two of the four parachutes with him when he jumped. One was a small emergency chute of the type used by stunt flyers. Under ideal conditions, someone who knew what he was doing might break an ankle or leg with it. The other was a training chute used for demonstra-

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Don Cooper — Still A Big If

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ness. The panels had been sewn shut. It wouldn't have opened. The next night the FBI re-enacted the skyjacking using the same plane, crew, fuel load, speed and altitude. The test helped flight engineers and meteorologists compute the probable drop zone to be a trapezoidal area covering about 25 square miles. It has been searched and re-searched in vain. What would it take to find Cooper's remains, assuming they are there? "I'd say it might take 5,000 men five years. I mean, how do you search a blackberry thicket higher than your [guess: head]?"

LOGGERS WHO work in the area agree that coyotes, mountain lions or wild dogs would make quick work of a body. After five years, they say, you might find a scrap or two of bone, if that. Nevertheless, for a while Cooper was a folk hero of sorts. He was macho. He was daring. He didn't hurt anybody, but he ripped off a big corporation. And he beat the fuzz. There were imitators. Around the world, there were more than a dozen skyjacking attempts patterned after Cooper's. Cooper is the only one known to have [guess: failed]. With increased airport security and modification of the Boeing 727 so the rear door wouldn't open in flight, the fad stopped. A [guess: flew] of clues, hints and tips from the public [guess: dwindled]. Dan Cooper has slowed to a trickle now. After checking out more than 1,600 suspects, the FBI says it knows little more about Cooper than it did on that stormy night when he leapt into history. If money[guess: backers] said the whole thing was probably put together with minimal planning and that the bomb was a crude, of relatively harmless highway flare. The bomb was red. Dynamite isn't. If the crew members had realized that, they might have called his bluff at the time. Himmelsbach said, "He's lucky he got as far as he did with a plan like that. Even if the statute holds on Cooper will have problems. The Internal Revenue Service computes his tax debt, and other penalties and interest, at about $168,000. And the C&F [guess: Indemnity] Co., which had to pay $183,000 to the airline, will want to get at him too. [guess: seriously], what? We have to accept the possibility that we may [guess: never] catch [guess: him]," Himmelsbach said. "I guess we can live with that. [guess: It's] a [guess: defense] to

(Joe Frazier is a reporter for The Associated Press.)

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