Part 78, page 370

Transcript

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

to the store. Last year, a professional parachutist from Portland and two of his students came right down. I think that's what Cooper did.

"He was a man who liked a challenge. A loner. I don't think he needed the money. Maybe he didn't have anything to do on Thanksgiving."

If this is where D. B. Cooper landed with the $200,000 ransom, then he fell in with good company. A long time ago, before reforestation programs, the loggers had a slogan.

Simply put, it read: "Get yours and get out."

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The psychiatrist:

David Hubbard cursed the idea of a musical about D. B. Cooper when he learned of it.

"I'm of the opinion that this type of thing doesn't need to be perpetuated. Cooper represented no ideals and no values. He's not a folk hero. He was a man acting selfishly. The number of people who can be harmed by men who think they'll be immortalized is innumerable."

In 1971, Hubbard wrote a book called "The Skyjacker." It's the only psychiatric study of the "skyjacking personality," and it's based on dozens of interviews with men who committed the crime.

Hubbard's premise is that we are bound together by twofold gravity. One part is physical—which holds us to earth. Another is emotional—which holds us to each other. Skyjacking, he concludes, is a defiance of both realities.

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Hubbard also believes in "mutations." One man commits the crime; another emulates it. Cooper—he points out—was not the first to get together parachutes, bombs and disguises. A Canadian tried the same trick in Calgary three weeks before. Hubbard assumes Cooper read about it and tried to go the Canadian one better. He did—the Canadian was caught and Cooper was not.

"Cooper created nothing," says Hubbard. "He was an imitative creature like all the rest who followed."

There certainly were plenty to follow—though none succeeded. Eventually, the back stairs on 727 jets were modified to lock in flight. And that was the end of that.

"I took the notorious and made it commonplace," says Hubbard. "You want to take the commonplace—and D. B. Cooper was commonplace—and make it notorious. I don't buy that."

Psychiatrist David Hubbard does all his work at the Aberrant Behavior Center in Dallas. He lives nearby. Back in 1971, Hubbard—like Cooper—received $200,000.

But Hubbard's money came from a private benefactor. It was given to finance a study on skyjacking.

John Kerans is a free-lance writer.

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DB Cooper-34247