Part 97, page 98

Transcript

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

Cooper case was most notorious, not best

Ralph Himmelsbach may think the Dan Cooper case is his biggest failure, but he had several successful cases during his 28 years and 10 months as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Himmelsbach, 59, was the FBI agent assigned in 1971 to the most famous hijacking case in the nation. He has chased Dan Cooper — or "D.B. Cooper," as the Portland-area media dubbed him — for about 14 years, listening to hundreds of tips on suspects and tracking down thousands of dead ends in the investigation. Although he is known mostly for his work on the D.B. Cooper case, Himmelsbach was the FBI agent who gathered evidence to convict "Frosty" Forsberg in 1966, and to convict Carl Cletus Bowles in the early 1970s. Forsberg and Bowles were wanted on separate federal warrants for bank robbery. "The Cooper case was one of my most notorious cases, not my most successful," Himmelsbach said. Forsberg was convicted in August 1966 of bank robbery after Himmelsbach's investigation. Bowles was convicted of kidnapping and bank robbery in an unrelated incident. The convictions were marred, however, when both men killed people while not in custody. Forsberg was paroled in 1973 and killed a 20-year-old California woman in 1975. Bowles escaped from prison in the early 1970s and killed a Eugene couple. More recently, Himmelsbach worked on state investigations in which a juvenile parole officer was convicted of fraud, and the Sisters police chief was convicted of stealing government property.

---

DB Cooper-43527