Part 63, page 161

Transcript

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

'D. B. COOPER Continued from Page 9 fallen snow made it virtually impassable. The search resumed on Friday, but by now police doubted that Cooper could have survived. "We're either looking for a parachute or a hole in the ground," Under-Sheriff Tom McDowell of Clark County was quoted as saying. After a week the search was called off. Then, late in March, 1972, 300 soldiers from Ft. Lewis searched the thawing terrain for 18 days. They found no traces of Cooper although they did find a body and cleared up a local murder. What happened to him? And what happened to the bag of money which was reported to be 6"x8"x27" and weigh 24½ pounds?

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Crew of Northwest Airlines Flight 305. Left to Right, Second Officer H. E. Anderson, First Officer William (Bob) Rataczak, Captain William Scott, Stewardesses Tina Mucklow, Florence Schaffner and Alice Hancock. (World Wide Photos)

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Four Theories While there has been much speculation all theories fall into one of four basic categorys: (1) He bailed out where the FBI thinks he did and got away before the search started. (2) He bailed out where the FBI thinks he did and is still there, hung in some remote tree or possibly at the bottom of Lake Merwin. (3) He bailed out elsewhere and got away. (4) He bailed out elsewhere and did not survive.

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Let's examine each of these in turn. No one seems to give much credence to the first theory. If FBI agent Harrington's statement is correct and the search was started immediately after the plane passed over the area, Cooper could hardly have landed, hidden his parachutes (or taken them with him) and gotten out of the area with his bag of money without attracting attention. It was raining and even if he was lucky enough to come down on a paved road, he could not have hitched a ride without the incident being reported. And what did he do with the parachutes? Could he have had a car or an accomplice with a car waiting for him? This is a good possibility,

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but if he did, how did he know exactly when and where to jump to meet this accomplice in time to get away before the hunt started? While he did not specify the route of the flight the plane was to take, it is possible that he knew that for the airliner to fly to Mexico City, Yuma or Reno, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, it would have to take the airway it did, at least as far as Portland. And it is possible that he could estimate their position by knowing the amount of time it would take them to fly to that point from Seattle at the speed of two hundred miles an hour. But even at 200 miles an hour, the plane was traveling at better than three miles a minute. To do all these things and then be lucky enough to land close enough to his planned point of landing in that weather to get away, money, parachutes and all, before the search started would indeed be incredible. Another point against this theory is the absense of the parachutes. If he did indeed come down in a planned spot and have transportation nearby, it would seem he would leave the parachutes. He had no further need for them and he certainly wouldn't carry them if he had to walk any distance or had to hitch a ride out. Theory number two is a little more likely than number one, but nevertheless seems to have been abandoned. From all reports, the searches that were made, both at the time immediately following the flight, and the following spring were very

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Search—A Helicopter takes off from search headquarters on Friday, November 26, 1971, as Clark County deputy sheriff Bob Rayburn checks a map of the area where the FBI thought Cooper jumped. (World Wide Photos)

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DB Cooper-26564 Continued on Page 45