Part 54, page 173

Transcript

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The REGISTER Sunday, Nov. 14, 1976 A13

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Sky-Jumper Dan Cooper, Where Are You And $200,000?

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By JOE FRAZIER Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – A miserably wet, windy, cold Thanksgiving eve in 1971. Passengers waited at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at Portland Interna- tional Airport to book space on Flight 105 to Seattle. Many thought ahead to fami- ly 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 de- manded four parachutes, $200,000 in $20 bills, and "no funny stuff." All the passengers but Cooper got off at Seattle, una- ware that anything was amiss. The money and parachutes were put on board and the jet, with only the crew and Cooper aboard, headed for Reno on Cooper's orders. Then somewhere over south- west Washington Cooper, with the 21 pounds of money strap- ped 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

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crimes," says FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach. Himmelsbach, who has worked on the case from the start, concedes that recent court decisions have muddied the question of whether capi- tal punishment would, in fact, have been applicable. "We're continuing to pro- cess suspects," he said. "Of course, it has slowed down a great deal." 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 no- thing about skydiving. In a business suit and street shoes, he jumped from the rear door of a jet going 197 m.p.h. at 10,000 feet. At that elevation it was seven below zero that night, with a wind- chill factor of 69 below zero. "On top of that, he probably lost his shoes (from wind shock) as he jumped," Him- melsbach said. The plane was in clouds. "Up looked like down to him. He had no visual reference. He couldn't have possibly known where he was." Himmelsbach wonders if he cared. "In another 30 minutes he could have been over the Wil- lamette Valley, and almost anyplace he jumped would have been safe to land," he said. Instead, 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-on [guess: ankles] or leg- with it.

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The other was a training chute used for demonstra- tions. 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 to com- pute the probable drop zone to be a trapezoidal area covering about 25 square miles. It has been searched and re- searched in vain. In April, 1972, 200 Army troops from Ft. Lewis, Wash., spent 18 days in the area. All they found was the victim of a homicide, a case unrelated to Cooper's. (Early in the investigation, the name D.B. Cooper was erroneously attached to the missing man and it stuck. FBI spokesman Bill Wil-

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liams in Portland said the agency has been looking for a man whose name appeared as Dan Cooper on the flight list. He said the name D.B. Cooper was a mistake that appeared in early press reports "and just grew from there." '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 head?" The area contains part of a reservoir, steep hills and de-

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nse forest, much of it far from roads or trails. Experienced hunters can and do get lost up there every year. Loggers who work in the area agree that coyotes, mountain lions or wild dogs would make quick work of a (Continued On Page 18)

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