Part 96, page 242

Transcript

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

But they don't agree as to when he died. Law enforcement people have long asserted that Cooper died when he jumped from the Northwest 727 somewhere over southwest Washington state. Or- lock believes Cooper survived the jump, but later died of cancer.

Orlock's play is based, rather whimsically, on a letter that was printed in the New York Times about three weeks after the hijacking. In it, Cooper claimed to be dying of cancer and added that he had hijacked the plane in the hopes of gaining "a few fast grains of peace of mind."

"The tone of it seemed really quite honest to me," said Orlock.

THE FBI'S CLAIM is based on a number of fac- tors — the belief that the hijacker didn't know much about parachutes, that he jumped from the rear door of a jet going 197 mph at 10,000 feet and that he probably landed in some of the roughest

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wilderness country in the Pacific Northwest. Worst of all, Cooper took two parachutes with him — one a small emergency chute used by stunt flyers and the other a training chute used for demonstrations. The big chute was sewn shut and the smaller chute, if used under ideal conditions by an expert, proba- bly would have resulted in a broken ankle or leg.

So who was D.B. Cooper? For a while he was a folk hero of sorts, immortalized by songs, bumper stickers and T-shirts. "D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?" was the song title and bumper sticker ques- tion.

He was macho. He was daring. He didn't hurt anybody, but he ripped off a big corporation. And he beat the fuzz.

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ORLOCK, WHO WAS obsessed with the letter printed in the New York Times, saw D.B. Cooper as a sick little man whose miserable life concluded with a ritualized act, something that put it all in order. He thinks Cooper died 14 months after the crime.

D.B. Cooper, where are you? A fictionalized ver- sion of your life is being performed at the Cricket through Saturday.

If you're still alive, all is forgiven. The statute of limitations for the hijacking ran out more than two years ago.

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DB Cooper-43167