D. B. Cooper

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D. B. Cooper : biography

In early 1973, with the ransom money still missing, The (Portland) Oregon Journal republished the serial numbers and offered $1,000 to the first person to turn in a ransom bill to the newspaper or any FBI field office. In Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer made a similar offer with a $5,000 reward. The offers remained in effect until Thanksgiving 1974, and while there were several near-matches, no genuine bills were found. In 1975 Northwest Orient’s insurer, Global Indemnity Co., complied with an order from the Minnesota Supreme Court and paid the airline’s $180,000 claim on the ransom money.

Statute of limitations

In 1976 discussion arose over impending expiration of the statute of limitations on the hijacking. Most published legal analysis agreed that it would make little difference,Frazier, Joe (November 13, 1976): "Sky Thief: Bandit Who Stole $200,000 in 1971 Still Being Sought" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. B-1. Retrieved March 3, 2013 as interpretation of the statute varies considerably from case to case and court to court, and a prosecutor could argue that Cooper had forfeited immunity on any of several valid technical grounds.CRS Report for Congress: Statutes of Limitation in Federal Criminal Cases: An Overview. Retrieved March 6, 2011. The question was rendered moot in November when a Portland grand jury returned an indictment against "John Doe, aka Dan Cooper" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act.Denson, Bryan (November 24, 1996). D.B. Cooper legend lives. Retrieved March 6, 2011. The indictment in effect formally initiated prosecution of the hijacker that can be continued, should he be apprehended, at any time in the future.

Physical evidence

In 1978 a placard containing instructions for lowering the aft stairs of a 727 was found by a deer hunter near a logging road about 13 miles (21 km) east of Castle Rock, Washington, well north of Lake Merwin but within the basic path of Flight 305. In February 1980 an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram, vacationing with his family on the Columbia River about 9 miles (15 km) downstream from Vancouver, Washington, and 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Ariel, uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, significantly disintegrated but still bundled in rubber bands, as he raked the sandy riverbank to build a campfire. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom—two packets of 100 bills each and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper.Associated Press (May 22, 1986). Boy to Split $5,520 of D. B. Cooper’s Loot. Retrieved March 6, 2011.

The discovery launched multiple new rounds of conjecture, and ultimately raised many more questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were founded on the assumption that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries. An Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist noted that the bills had disintegrated in a "rounded" fashion, and were matted together, indicating that they had been deposited by river action, as opposed to having been deliberately buried. If so, it confirmed that Cooper had not landed near Lake Merwin, nor in any other part of the Lewis River, which feeds into the Columbia well downstream from the discovery site; and it lent credence to supplemental speculation (see Later developments) placing the drop zone near the Washougal River, which merges with the Columbia upstream from the discovery site.

But the "free floating" hypothesis presented its own difficulties; it did not explain the ten bills missing from one packet, nor was there a logical reason that the three packets would have remained together after separating from the rest of the money. Physical evidence was incompatible with geologic evidence: Himmelsbach observed that bundles floating downstream would have had to wash up on the bank "within a couple of years" of the hijacking (before November 1973); otherwise the rubber bands would have long since deteriorated. Geologic evidence suggested, however, that the bills arrived at the area of their discovery—a beachfront known as Tina Bar—well after 1974, the year of a Corps of Engineers dredging operation on that stretch of the river. Geologist Leonard Palmer of Portland State University found two distinct layers of sand and sediment between the clay deposited on the river bank by the dredge and the sand layer in which the bills were buried, indicating that the bills arrived long after dredging had been completed.