Part 59, page 389

Transcript

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

above Merwin Dam, then why hasn't his body or the money been found? Have the searchers been looking in the wrong place?

No answers. The prospect of all that money sent fortune hunters racing into the woods last fall. And even today campers keep an eager eye out for the skyjack- er's loot. Meanwhile, the North- west has eulogized D.B. Cooper in song and verse. Promoters have capitalized on Cooper's [guess: shinanigans]. Bumper stickers. Two men were ar- rested and charged with fleecing a writer of $30,000 by promising an interview with Cooper. An un- derground newspaper in Seattle published another "interview" with the skyjacker, but it was promptly debunked by authorities. With the passage of time Cooper has as- sumed a certain Jesse James qual- ity. At the Angel store, an auto- graph party was held this month to celebrate publication of Anna Friday's whimsical book on the skyjacking, entitled Skyjacker's Guide--or Please Hold This Bomb While I Go to the Bathroom. "The people are all kind of proud that it happened here," observes Mrs. Friday, whose house looks down on long, frigid Lake Merwin. Ev- eryone breathed a sigh when the wasn't found. They feel the glory --and the money--belong to us."

In Mrs. Friday's book, which her brother-in-law, Bill, illustrated with cartoons (right), the skyjacker meets an ignominious end. In- deed, the FBI informed residents that Cooper may have been de-

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voured by animals, and asked them to look for remains. But like most of her neighbors, Anna Friday doesn't believe that Cooper died. "It was too carefully planned for him to flub up at the last minute," she says, fixing a thoughtful gaze out through the low-lying fog. "And remember, there were just enough odd things that happened around here that night."

Like down the road at [guess: legless] Hat- field's place, Old [guess: Less] heard a thumping on his roof, but by the time he got out there, rifle at the ready, there was nothing. In the nearby community of View, it was black and blustery--hardly a night for small planes--but at a seldom- used airstrip near the cemetery, there were strange goings-on. Emil Neiger's wife recalls seeing an air- craft circling for nearly an hour. She doesn't know if it landed, but Mrs. Melvin Andersen, who lives across the way, says that it did.

Five miles to the west at La Center, there is another strip adjacent to Donald Haun's black- berry farm. On the preceding night, also in forbidding weather, Haun's wife remembers that a plane ren- dezvoused with a car. The aircraft took off with the aid of the head- lights. It returned 45 minutes later and then both car and plane left. Was this a rehearsal for Cooper's getaway? The Hauns don't know. On the night of the crime, like just about everyone else in La Center, they were attending a wedding at the Evangelical church.

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DB Cooper-24556