Part 69, page 85

Transcript

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

Tucson, Monday, November 25, 1991 The Arizona Daily Star NATION

---

Skyjacker's fate still debated 20 years later

---

By Hal Spencer e Associated Press

SEATTLE — Yesterday was D.B. Cooper's th anniversary. But was it the 20th year of the legendary skyjacker's death or 20 years since he began a new life with a bagful of stolen green- backs?

As is their annual custom, Cooper fans from Seattle to San Jose, Calif., to Salt Lake City organ- ized celebrations to honor their hero, who they believe melted into society after committing the perfect crime — parachuting from an airliner over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom money on Nov. 24, 1971.

Two decades after the unique exploit, which a retired FBI agent calls stupid and almost certainly fatal, Cooper's real identity is still a mystery. No- body knows if he's a pile of bleached bones in the mountains of Washington or the guy next door.

Cooper's crime seems almost quaint in today's violent world. And his $200,000 in marked money would hardly make him a rich man.

The story began Thanksgiving eve, when a man wearing dark glasses boarded a Northwest- ent Airlines Boeing 727 at Portland Interna- tional Airport. He used the name Dan Cooper to chase his plane ticket. The name became pop- ularized as D.B. Cooper after a law enforcement official erroneously referred to him that way.

Once airborne, "Cooper" handed the stew- ess a note saying he had a dynamite bomb in attache case. The man, who chain-smoked Ra- leigh filter-tipped cigarettes and who appeared to be in his middle to late 40s, demanded $200,000 in $20 bills.

He collected the money — provided by the airline — during a brief stop at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the 36 passengers were released and the four crew members were aboard.

Airborne again, Cooper parachuted into a raging rainstorm at 10,000 feet near tiny Ariel in southwestern Washington, wearing only a busi- ness suit and loafers. The temperature was 7 below zero, not counting the wind chill factor at the plane's speed of 200 mph.

"It was obviously not well-thought-out. It was stupid," said Ralph Himmelsbach, the retired

Sketches made in 1971 are of man believed to be the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper

FBI agent who spent nearly a decade investigating the crime.

"If Cooper didn't freeze to death on his way down, he probably died when he hit the ground," said Himmelsbach, reached at his home in Red- mond, Ore.

"And he came down right smack dab in the middle of the woods in really rugged country," he said. "There are steep, up-and-down ravines in really heavily wooded country. It was a bad place to land, and it is doubtful we would ever find the body."

The very fact that Cooper's identity has never emerged tells Himmelsbach the man was proba- bly an ex-con.

Himmelsbach said he was further convinced that Cooper was dead after boys playing on the Columbia River in February 1980 found $5,800 in crumbling $20 bills that turned out to be from

Cooper's loot. He speculated that either Cooper landed in the Columbia and drowned, or died in the mountains and the money was washed out.

As usual, Cooper believers are having none of that. Each year, anniversary celebrations are held at taverns named D.B. Cooper in Salt Lake City and San Jose, and at a little bar in Ariel, where, legend has it, Cooper paid an anonymous visit dur- ing an earlier party in his honor.

At the Salt Lake City tavern, where a cele- bration is set for Thanksgiving eve, the customers have a new explanation of Cooper's fate, said bar- tender John Nicolaisen.

A recently published book argues that Cooper was actually Richard F. McCoy, a Provo, Utah, man arrested and convicted of a similar hijacking in 1972. McCoy was later killed after a prison es- cape.

---

Sketches made in 1971 are of man believed to be the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper The Associated Press

---

DB Cooper-29381

---

b6 b7C