Part 77, page 135

Transcript

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

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

[photograph of silhouetted figure]

Andy Farrington demonstrates how D.B. Cooper may have looked before he exited the hijacked aircraft.

---

learned that, in his rush to provide the rigs, the skydiver accidentally grabbed the drop zone's dummy reserve, marked with a large "X" and red closing flaps. The DZ used the dummy reserve for students to practice deploying the reserve, scooping the canopy out of the container and throwing it into the air and over their heads. Cossey explains, "For the dummy rig, I cut the reserve in half and sewed the panels together so that when the student threw it out, I could just fold it up and put it back in the container in half the time."

Cossey learned over the phone that Cooper took his NB-8 pilot emergency backpack and that his freefall rig remained in the air- craft. "When I learned which rig was missing, I thought, 'Oh, this guy's crazy.' " Cossey explains that the Navy emergency backpack Cooper jumped with was specifically designed for pilots for emer- gency bailouts at potentially low altitudes. The round canopy, designed for extremely fast openings, didn't have a sleeve, much like today's slider, to slow the opening. "That rig has a bad open- ing shock. It'll just rip your crotch apart," Cossey says bluntly.

Compared to the freefall rig, the emergency rig was made of a slick nylon material, had absolutely no padding in the leg straps and was significantly thinner. "The differences in the rigs were obvious," Cossey says, "and anyone with any skydiving experience would definitely take the sport rig." Cossey adds that Cooper may have purposely selected the pilot's rig. "If he had military experience, he may have used the military rig because that's what he was familiar with."

In addition to the opening shock, Cossey also wonders if Cooper was even able to pull the ripcord, because the ripcord for the Navy emergency rig lies very flat against the pilot's chest. Cossey says, "The ripcords for the sport rigs were bent up so you could easily see and grab them. The Navy rig's ripcord is designed to lie very flat so that it doesn't catch on anything unin- tentionally. If Cooper was wearing his raincoat, I don't know if

---

he'd even be able to find and pull the ripcord in the dark."

The dummy reserve marked with an X was also gone. Cossey says, "That reserve was half the density of a regular reserve, and it was obvious to anyone with experience that it wasn't a normal reserve." Cossey personally believes that Cooper had emptied the dummy reserve, stuffed the cash in its container and wore that on his chest as he jumped.

---

The Manhunt

By calculating the last verbal contact with Cooper and when the jet's pressure gauges indicated the back stairway snapped shut (with the release of Cooper's weight) and open again, investiga- tors estimated that Cooper most likely exited over the rural and densely forested town of Ariel, Washington. Fifty-foot fir trees cover steep hills, rolling down to the 12-mile-long Lake Merwin.

Authorities combed the area inch by inch, looking for some sign of a parachute, broken trees or branches, money or clothing. They found nothing. How easily something could be overlooked in the difficult terrain was demonstrated by the fact that two elderly women found the body of a missing college student who had been strangled. Authorities had missed it. One wealthy investor, convinced that D.B. Cooper and the cash lay at the bottom of the lake, used his private miniature submarine to search the floor of the lake inch by inch. Again, the search came up empty.

News of the hijacking immediately hit the airwaves all across the United States. As authorities searched the area, country roads in Washington filled with cars and recreational vehicles searching for any sign of a parachute, D.B. Cooper or—especially—the money. In 1971, $200,000 in convenient $20 bills was an immense amount of money, equal to about $900,000 today.

The FBI agent assigned to the case from the moment Cooper hijacked the Northwest Airlines jet was Ralph Himmelsbach of Oregon. With his piloting experience dating back to the Army Air Corps in the 1940s, Himmelsbach served as the specialist for all aviation violations. With the intense media attention, calls from the public from all around the nation poured in. Needless to say, skydivers were suspect. "Many of the calls we received concerned parachutists," says Himmelsbach. "Often, the subject was a jumper who was also known to be bad, and that combination gave us particular interest."

Agent Himmelsbach goes on to say, "Many innocent citizens found themselves the focal point of FBI interest because of a change in lifestyle, participating in the sport of skydiving, a past

---

INTO THE TREACHEROUS TERRAIN

[photograph of forested terrain]

Investigators searched this area inch by inch—Ariel, Washington, the heavily forested town where they originally believed Cooper jumped.

---

PARACHUTIST • NOVEMBER 2003 • 35 DB Cooper-33731