SEATTLE — The FBI is investigating a “credible” lead
in the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case, nearly 40 years after a tall,
dark-complexioned man hijacked a Seattle-bound Boeing 727 on
Thanksgiving Eve 1971 and parachuted into history from the rear of the
plane with $200,000 in cash.
“We do have a promising lead,” FBI spokeswoman Ayn
Sandalo Dietrich said Sunday, a day after a British newspaper reported
the development in a lengthy feature story on the notorious case.
Dietrich, of the Seattle FBI office, cautioned that
the FBI is not on the verge of a “big break,” but is carrying out “due
diligence” on the new information.
“It’s a routine part of our investigation,” she said.
Dietrich said the FBI received a tip in the past year
from a member of law enforcement who directed the bureau to a credible
person who might have helpful information on a suspect.
“I can’t get into specifics,” Dietrich said, declining to provide any details on the potential suspect.
The FBI obtained an item from the person to determine
if fingerprints can be extracted from it for comparison to the partial
prints the hijacker left on a magazine left behind on the plane and
parts of the airliner he touched, Dietrich said.
The item has been sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Va., she said.
Asked to characterize the significance of the lead, Dietrich said, “It’s good” but the case is “not on the brink of a solution.”
She also called the new information the “most promising lead we have right now.”
Dietrich said the FBI disclosed the information to a
reporter from The Telegraph newspaper in London, but didn’t think the
article was going to appear until November.
In the story, Dietrich is quoted as saying, “The
credible lead is somebody whose possible connection to the hijacker is
strong. And the suspect is not a name that’s come up before.”
The development is the latest in a case filled with
lore, including the name D.B. Cooper, which was a media creation. The
hijacker who jumped from the plane Nov. 24, 1971, identified himself as
“Dan Cooper,” but a day after the skyjacking FBI agents checked out a
Portland man with the name “D.B. Cooper” and quickly cleared him. The
moniker stuck, however.
Agents knew little about the skyjacker except that he
smoked Raleigh cigarettes, drank whiskey, was familiar with
aerodynamics and paid $20 cash for a one-way flight from Portland to
Seattle.
He wore a dark suit and tie, white shirt and pearl
tie tack, and had short, dark hair. He periodically wore sunglasses,
carried a briefcase and a dark raincoat, and took seat 18C on Northwest
Flight 305, having the row to himself.
The jet was barely in the air before he passed a note
to a flight attendant, who slipped it unopened into a pocket. Cooper
leaned closer: “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.” He
opened his briefcase to reveal several red cylinders and a nest of
wires.
The plane landed in Seattle; passengers were
exchanged for parachutes and ransom money paid by the airline. With
Cooper and the flight crew on board, it took off, heading south toward
Mexico.
About 30 minutes later, a cockpit warning light
showed the rear stairway was fully extended. The pilot asked over the
intercom, “Is everything OK back there?”
Cooper yelled back, “No,” and bailed out the back into freezing darkness.
The plane landed in Reno, Nev., where agents found
Cooper’s skinny black tie, tie tack, eight of his cigarette butts and
two of the parachutes.
Cooper’s body was never found, and only a portion of
the ransom money — whose serial numbers the FBI had recorded — turned up
when a child digging in a sandbar on the north bank of the Columbia
River west of Vancouver in 1980 unearthed a bundle of $20 bills.
Cooper jumped from 10,000 feet into a storm, with air
temperatures around 7 degrees below zero, strong winds and freezing
rain. It wasn’t until the plane landed for more fuel in Reno, with the
stairway still down, that the crew and FBI knew for sure he was gone.
Authorities estimated he landed near the small
community of Ariel, Cowlitz County, east of Woodland and one ridge line
over from the Washougal watershed. The weather was so bad that the
manhunt was delayed a few days.
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