THE SEARCH FOR A LEGENDARY FUGITIVE - D.B. COOPER

Few fugitives have ever reached the fame of the icy-cool skyjacker whose true identity has never been discovered in the 26 years since he pulled off his incredible crime.

He called himself D.B. Cooper, but the hundreds of law enforcement agents who have searched for clues to his whereabouts are certain that that is not his true name. But they don’t know very much more about the mysterious, ordinary looking man who hijacked an airplane, demanded - and got - $200,000 in ransom money, then skillfully leaped from a Boeing 727 at 10,000 feet, vanishing into the black night over a remote area in the Pacific Northwest.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, 1971, when a middle-aged man of average height and build purchased a one-way ticket on Northwest Airlines Flight 305, a short hop from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington.

Giving the name D.B. Cooper, the passenger attracted little attention. He was dressed conservatively in a dark suit a dark tie and was carrying a standard businessman’s briefcase. These were the peaceful days before airline terrorism had demanded that more stringent security measures be put in place. Only the dark glasses he wore cause for any notice on that partly cloudy afternoon.

Only about 30 other passengers had booked the afternoon flight. As the man who called himself Cooper sat down it seat 18 C near the back of the plane, he caught the attention of passing stewardess. Florence Schaffner and handed her a note. He told her to read it at once.

“Miss, you’d better look at that note”, Cooper said calmly. “I have a bomb”.

Cooper then opened the briefcase he had brought and showed the horrified stewardess its deadly contents - two sticks of dynamite attached by wire to a battery.

The skyjacker made his demands instantly clear - $200,000 in small bills were to be delivered to the aircraft along with four parachutes.

The plane’s pilot was given specific instructions by Cooper about the take-off and the flight that would follow. The craft was to rise higher than 10,000 feet, the landing gear was to remain down and the flaps were to be set at a 15-degree angle. The rear exit of the plane was to be left unlocked.

The puzzled FBI agents on the ground who were attempting to negotiate with the skyjacker soon realized the disturbing cleverness of the man they were dealing with and how thoroughly he planned his caper.

The explicit directions about how the plane was to be flown were based on intimate knowledge of the ideal conditions under which a parachutist could leap from a Boeing 727, which is now became clear the skyjacker was planning to do.

Why did he ask for four parachutes? The agents wondered. They figured he wanted the authorities to believe in the possibility that he might take some of the passengers or crew with him on his jump. If that was his plan, authorities could not risk sending a faulty chute on board because they would not know who would be wearing them.

By 7:30 p.m. the money and chutes had been delivered to the plane. True to his word, Cooper released the other passengers he’d held hostage.

Lighting yet one more of the filter-tipped Raleigh cigarettes he had chain-smoked while waiting, Cooper calmly checked the satchel and found the $200,000 he had demanded. It had taken the FBI several hours to microfilm each and every bill that went into the canvas bag. Cooper gave the pilot the order to take off and told him to fly a route that would take the craft up to the wilderness areas along the Washington-Oregon border. He ordered the stewardesses into the flight cabin, leaving him totally alone at the rear of the plane.

At exactly 8:12 p.m., the crew felt a slight bump. An indicator on the plane’s instrument panel registered a small shift in cabin pressure.

The skyjacker had dropped open the rear stairwell of the plane and leaped into the dark and rainy night - to the waiting, rugged Cascade Mountain wilderness below - and into the pages of history.

Frustrated authorities had been waiting for Cooper to make his jump. Two military jets and a helicopter were shadowing the 727 in the darkness. But the chopper had trouble keeping up with the plane and two jets could not reduce their speeds enough to observe the jump. Hundreds of federal agents, assisted by army troops, scouted the ground near Ariel and Cougar, Washington, over the next few weeks, using complex calculations to determine the most likely area where Cooper would have come earth.

A small submarine was brought in to scour nearby Lake Merwin on the possibility that the tricky winds that night might have carried him there - and to his death. No trace of daring skyjacker was found.

It was until 1980 that any trace of D.B. Cooper came to flight. Young Brian Ingram and his family visiting from Oklohoma, were picnicking along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, when the 8-vear-old boy made an incredible discovery. A sand-covered canvas satchel that had washed up on the bank caught Brian’s eye. It contained almost three hundred $20 bills that FBI check revealed were among those given to Cooper.

But like every other clue to the mystery of D.B. Cooper it led nowhere, and the whereabouts of the legendary skyjacker remain unknown to this day. Some speculate he may have died in the jump. Others are just as certain he survived.

Authorities speculated endlessly about who he might have been, based on the few things they did know.

Could he have been a pilot? How else could he have known how to give the orders that made his jump from the big jet possible?

Up to that time, authorities discovered, only the CIA had used the rear exits of 727 aircraft to secretly drop spices into Vietnam. Could that where D.B. Cooper had learned how to do that? Was he a master parachutist? Few would have dared to make the jump Cooper made. What did he plan to do with the money? None of it other than that found by Brian Ingram has ever been found.

D. B. Cooper has been the subject of several books and movies. A special switch on passenger planes that prevents the exits from being opened in flight has been named the Cooper Switch in his dubious honor. And the small town of Ariel, Washington, holds an annual D.B. Cooper Day celebration to which, they say, he is cordially invited to drop in any time.

If you have any information regarding this fugitive, authorities ask that you call your closest FBI agency.

Answer the questions.

1. What did a fugitive call himself?

2. What ransom did D.B. Cooper demand?

3. Where did he leap from Boeing 727?

4. When did it happen?

5. What is known about Mr. Cooper?

6. How did he catch the attention of stewardess Florance Schaffner?

7. What specific instructions was the plane’s pilot given by Cooper?

8. Were there any attempts to negotiate with the skyjacker?

9. Why did he ask for four parachutes?

10. Did Cooper hold anyone hostage?

11. What actions did authorities take?

12. Was any trace of daring skyjacker found in 1971?

13. What trace of D.B. Cooper came to flight in 1980?

14. What did authorities speculate about?

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