30 years ago, D.B. Cooper's night leap began a legend

Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of D.B. Cooper, who on Thanksgiving eve 1971 hijacked a Seattle-bound jetliner and parachuted into the night, $200,000 in ransom money tied to his waist. It remains the nation's only unsolved skyjacking.


	An artist’s rendering of D.B. Cooper in 1971, left, from descriptions of witnesses, and how he might look now if he survived his jet bailout.

Though thousands of tips have come to the FBI, investigators have been left with nothing -- no suspect, no leads and nothing to prove who D.B. Cooper really was, or where he went.

The case inspired more than a score of failed copycat attempts, prompted new airport security measures nationwide and was memorialized in film and song. It has called out to a raft of amateur sleuths who have for years tried to solve the riddle.

"It's with me," said Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent who worked the case for eight years until his retirement in 1980. "I don't lose any sleep over it, but if I had my druthers, it would be solved."

Survival questioned

Himmelsbach and other Cooper mavens tend to believe their man died trying to make his escape. They point out the facts: The weather was awful; he jumped over a dense forest of pine and Douglas fir; he wore only a suit and loafers; one of the two parachutes he used was defective, a mistake made by agents in a rush to meet Cooper's demands.

But several folks, including some in the tiny village of Ariel, like to believe otherwise.

On the edge of Lake Merwin, 30 miles north of Portland, Ariel became famous as the place authorities thought Cooper may have landed. Soon after the hijacking, when the weather broke, local police and the FBI set up camp near the Merwin Dam and sent scuba divers into the lake. They also searched Ariel's winding roads, small waterways and much of the thick forest that shrouds Southwest Washington.

They found nothing.

To a federal agent, Cooper's crime is just that -- a potential deadly felony that could be tried as a capital case. But around Ariel, Cooper's daring and his ability to elude capture is something to be celebrated.

On Saturday, for the 27th year in a row, people from around Ariel will throw a party in Cooper's honor at the Ariel Store, the town's main bar, convenience store, civic center and tourist trap. "Cooper's Corner," over by the wood-burning stove, memorializes the man with dozens of newspaper clippings from around the country and other hijacking mementos.

In past years, the annual shindig has featured skydivers and D.B. Cooper look-alike contests -- and sometimes real-life FBI agents just checking in case Cooper himself makes an appearance.


	Dona Elliott, who has owned the Ariel store in Southwest Washington since 1990, puts up a flag as she gets ready for Saturday’s 27th annual D.B. Cooper party. Phil H. Webber / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

He just might, says Dona Elliott, a plain-spoken grandmother of six who has owned the store since 1990 and who believes Cooper is alive. She remembers the night it all started, when she was baking pumpkin pies in nearby Amboy and heard the whine of the jet engines.

"It was flying so low and it was raining," says Elliott. "I said, 'Wow, that plane is gonna crash.'"

It didn't. And three decades later, people here say they still admire a bold rebel willing to risk it all to mess with the system.

"I just think he was ticked off with the government and wanted to get away with something," Elliott said. "And he has -- so far."

Said he had a bomb

Here are the facts behind the legend:

On Nov. 24, 1971, a thin white man in his 40s, dressed for business, checked in for a Portland-to-Seattle flight on a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727. He gave the name Dan Cooper (hours later, a reporter mistakenly identified him as "D.B. Cooper," which stuck).

During the short flight, Cooper told a flight attendant he had a bomb. He opened his briefcase to show what may have been just that to a different flight attendant.

When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers. In return, he was given four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills.

Cooper then ordered the pilot to fly toward Mexico at an altitude no higher than 10,000 feet. Once airborne, a flight attendant observed Cooper tying the bags of money to his waist. He strapped one parachute to his chest, the other to his back.

Several minutes later, the pilots noticed a cockpit light indicating that Cooper had opened the plane's rear door and extended the stairway -- made possible because the plane was not pressurized at low altitude -- and vanished into the freezing rain.

Most serious Cooper aficionados believe he landed southeast of Ariel, in the forests of the Washougal River watershed.

The FBI believes he's still there.

"It was windy, and he was ill-prepared," says Ray Lauer, spokesman for the Seattle FBI office. "The chances of his surviving the jump are very small. The reason the case is alive is that there's a small chance he's still alive."

More than 1,100 "serious suspects" have been looked into since 1971, Lauer says. Three to four substantial leads still come in each year. Good leads still are being investigated, but the case "is not on the front burner," Lauer says.

But an indictment against Cooper is still on file in U.S. District Court in Portland, waiting to be unsealed should he be found. If nothing else, it proves the government has a long memory when it comes to bold rebels who mess with the system.

A deathbed confession

There was a flurry of excitement last year when Jo Weber, a Florida real estate agent, said her 70-year-old husband had on his deathbed in 1995 confessed that he was Dan Cooper. Weber said she met her husband, Duane, in Atlanta six years after the skyjacking. Authorities determined that Duane Weber had served in the Army, and had also done time in prison near Seattle. Lauer said the FBI is still looking into the matter, having neither proven nor disproven the story.

The biggest break in the case came more than two decades ago, in 1980, when an 8-year-old boy playing on a sandbar in the Columbia River near Vancouver found almost $6,000 of the Cooper money, tattered and rotten. If nothing else, it indicates Cooper had a rough time of it that night. The going theory is that Cooper came down somewhere in a roughly 30-square-mile area in the Washougal River watershed, and that the money eventually washed down the river into the Columbia. The airline's insurance company and the child's family split the find.

Maybe someday a hunter or hiker will stumble over something that will solve the mystery of D.B. Cooper.

Or maybe Jerry Thomas will get there first.

Thomas, a Vietnam vet, Army survival trainer and drill sergeant, has been looking for Cooper since 1989. He's spent hundreds of days in the Washougal watershed, sometimes going months at a time searching for clues under the tall trees.

He believes Cooper's chute never opened. That D.B. hit the ground hard.

"There's no way in hell that guy could have survived the jump," says Thomas. "There's nothing that would have separated him from that money."

Thomas is optimistic that his methodical search will one day yield results

He says he's hopeful he can answer the Cooper riddle for his friend, Himmelsbach, the 76-year-old former FBI investigator, and for all the others who have wondered, and worked, on finding the man.

"If I can solve this thing," he says, "I can put things to rest for a lot of people."

P-I reporter Sam Skolnik can be reached at 206-467-1039 or samskolnik@seattlepi.com

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