Part 54, page 183

Transcript

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FD-350 (Rev. 7-16-63)

(Mount Clipping in Space Below)

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Alive or dead, skyjack 'pioneer' ca

By LEVERETT RICHARDS of The Oregonian staff

ON THANKSGIVING EVE five years ago, a man who said his name was Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Airline's flight 305 at Portland bound for Seattle. He displayed a "bomb," demanded and got $200,000 in $20 bills, then bailed out through the rear stair door of the Boeing 727 at 8:10 p.m. near La Center, Wash., with the money.

Cooper, erroneously described in the press and radio at the time as "D.B. Cooper," was hailed in some quarters as a folk hero who "beat the system" and got away with a small fortune. Some acclaimed him as a Robin Hood who had committed the perfect crime. Part of the folk lore is that Cooper will be "home safe" Nov. 24, 1976 when the five-year statute of limitations expires.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't see it that way at all.

The FBI agents believe Cooper was a bungling amateur; they think he is almost certainly dead.

And if he or any accomplices have survived, they are still wanted men. There is no statute of limitations for them — ever, says Ralph Himmelsbach, veteran FBI agent who has lived with the Cooper case for the past five years, literally day and night.

"We are continuing our investigation unabated," said Himmelsbach. "We don't intend to give up. I still give a substantial portion of my time to checking out leads. We still get several tips every week. We pledged at the outset to investigate any information we received from the public...

"We have checked more than 1,000, maybe several thousand, reports altogether. We have checked a long list of missing persons. And after five years we still don't know if there ever was a Dan Cooper. We have no more information on his identity today than we had five years ago."

The FBI bases its rejection of the statute of limitations on three major assumptions: There is no statute of limitations in capital crimes and air piracy or aerial hijacking was a crime punishable by death in November 1971 and still is.

There is no statute of limitations protecting fugitives from justice, according to a recent ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court in a similar case. Since Cooper has not turned himself in he is assumed to be a fugitive, if he is still alive. The same rule applies to his accomplices, if any. Himmelsbach explained.

Seizure of the aircraft with its 35 passengers and crew of six could be considered kidnapping, a crime also exempt from the statute of limitations [text cut off]

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and Oxford type street shoes. He had no hat or goggles.

"Parachute experts tell us his shoes would have been snapped off his feet when he stepped out into a 196-mile-an-hour slipstream; his eyes would have been blasted by the force of the wind and he probably would have tumbled out of control. He would have landed in his stocking feet, blinded by the slipstream, and the raging storm.

"With that 28-foot canopy he would have descended 28 miles an hour vertically. Add a 30 to 55 mile-an-hour wind and he would have hit at a speed of 50 to 70 miles an hour. The experts say it is inconceivable that he could have escaped serious injury or instant death — even assuming his parachute opened."

How does the FBI know Cooper bailed out near La Center and landed somewhere along the Lewis River? The two Air Defense Command F106 jet interceptors which followed the 727 through the overcast that dark, stormy night, saw nothing. There was no radio transmitter on the parachutes delivered to the hijacker, which would have permitted pursuers to follow his trajectory as he bailed out.

But the FBI, with the aid of Northwest Airlines reconstructed the whole hijacking six weeks after the crime.

"The first week in January, 1972, we flew a Northwest 727 exactly like flight 305 over the same route with the same load, the same power settings, the same flap settings, same use of landing gear, from Seattle south. We had William Rataczak, first officer on the hijacked plane, at the controls," Himmelsbach said.

"Over the Lewis River, 35 miles north of Portland, the rear stairway was lowered and a 235-pound sled [guess: dropped] off while a chase plane photographed its trajectory as it parachuted to the ground.

"As the load left the stairway it retracted to within eight inches of closing, then dropped back down. The result was a marked fluctuation in the cabin air pressure which caused the crews' ears to pop and registered a rapid change in the rate of pressurization on instruments in the cockpit.

"Rataczak said: 'That's just the way it was at 8:10 p.m. Nov. 24.' Only the crew didn't know what it meant then. They didn't know he had bailed out until they landed at Reno and found the plane empty."

The same rapid fluctuations in air pressure were noted in three bailouts from 727 airliners in the next few months, before the FAA ordered all rear doors rigged so they could not be opened in flight.

"There has not been a successful hijacking in the US since," Himmelsbach emphasized. "And none of the hijackers who succeeded in bailing out got away with the money. All were quickly caught and the money recovered."

DB Cooper-23112

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EDITORIALS - LETTERS - SPECIAL ARTICLES - BOOKS

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PORTLAND, OREGON, NOVEMBER 14, 1976 - PAGE 1, SECTION E

The re-enactment of the hijacking was conducted in fair weather. But engineers fed into their computers estimated delays in opening the parachute, known speed of descent, wind velocity and direction and came up with an area 6 ½ miles long and 4 miles wide. The FBI assumes Cooper landed somewhere within this "target area," which barely includes Lake Merwin [guess: and] its northeast corner.

Cooper couldn't have chose[n] [text cut off]