Part 97, page 95

Transcript

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

'I don't have a shred of admiration for the hijacker. He was not bold or courageous'

If that did not kill Cooper, Himmelsbach said it more than likely injured him severely. Although he calls his observations "just speculation," Himmelsbach said the recent suspect was 56 years old (D.B. Cooper would be about 62 this year), had come into a large amount of money in the early 1970s, had a "serious injury contemporaneous with the hijacking," and disappeared for a long period of time in late 1971.

The suspect also had a long criminal history and was "a loner," Himmelsbach said, which made him all the more attractive. "I have felt for years that most likely we are looking for an ex-con, maybe someone has been involved with the law most of his life," Himmelsbach said.

"There are some suspects who come your way with only one fact that makes it appear they should be a suspect. You have got to be willing to look at anybody, but if you get a guy who turns up with a limp, a lot of money, and he's been missing for a long time around (the time of the hijacking), then it looks pretty good."

Himmelsbach, 59, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from the Portland field office, spent the last nine years of his FBI career chasing down leads to Dan Cooper. He retired from the bureau in February 1980, but Himmelsbach did not retire from the chase. He has worked with Clackamas-area author Tom Worcester on a 15-chapter, 190-page book on the case, and, at the same time, Himmelsbach has fielded hundreds of inquiries about the event that captured the romantic fancy of Americans.

Himmelsbach's book should be published next year, Worcester said. A draft of the book is being edited, and several publishers have been contacted, but no offers have been made, he said. "We may just have to publish it ourselves."

Continued on page A8

---

Story by Kevin Harden Photos by Kirk Hirota

---

DB Cooper-43524