Skyjack Page 8

  Himmelsbach also considers another detail. The request to have the plane flown at the altitude of 10,000 feet was telling. At 10,000 feet, the cabin would not be pressurized. If Cooper cracked the rear door of the jet, he would not get sucked out. Clearly, the man the agents were after knew airplanes.

  In the cockpit of Northwest 305, pilots consult with the company’s engineers. The hijacker wants to take off with the aftstairs in the down position. Is that even possible?

  It isn’t, the engineers tell them.

  And what about the aftstairs down? Can they fly that way?

  Northwest calls Boeing. Engineers there inform them that the Boeing 727 was used by Air America, the CIA cutout, in Vietnam.

  “The plane has been flown this way. There’s been large boxes of two to three thousand pounds dropped through the door in this configuration.”

  Another concern is fuel. Under the configurations the hijacker wants—flaps at fifteen degrees, landing gear down—the jet will be moving extremely slowly. The fuel burn will be tremendous. The Northwest pilots will need to land several times to make it to the Mexican border.

  “Reno makes a better choice for a wise hijacker.”

  “Roger. Will plan Reno first stop.”

  “Roger. A second stop would be Yuma, Arizona.”

  “Roger. Fuel truck has left. Stairs removed. Forward door has been closed. He has agreed to let us take off with the stairs in the full upright position.”

  “Okay, we’ll start you out here heading toward Portland and then we’ll get you clearance.”

  “Okay, fine. And we’ve got the company working on the flight plan, so if we don’t answer you right away, we’re trying to work a couple of free frequencies.”

  The interphone is ringing. The pilots pick up. It’s him.

  “Let’s get the show on the road,” he hollers.

  In the rear, Tina hands him a piece of paper: instructions on how to use a parachute.

  “I don’t need that,” he says.

  She wants to know why she is still with him. Why won’t he let her go to the cockpit?

  He doesn’t know how to release the aftstairs. He needs her help.

  She is scared. She imagines herself getting sucked out of the plane once the door is opened and the pressure seal is cracked. She asks him if she can secure herself to something in the cabin. Perhaps the pilots’ escape rope in the cockpit?

  No. He doesn’t want her going to the cockpit.

  She asks about the flight engineer. He can bring it back.

  “Nobody behind the curtain,” he says.

  Tina looks at the cannibalized parachute. He cut shroud lines to tie up the money bag. Can he cut a shroud line for her?

  “Never mind,” he says.

  He’ll lower the aftstairs himself. He asks her to show him how to use them. Then she can leave.

  She goes to the panel. Push the lever this way, the stairs go down. Easy. They have oxygen on board, too, she says.

  “Yes, I know where it is. If I need it I will get it.”

  He looks around the cabin. It’s too bright. He wants the lights off.

  The switches are hit. The cabin turns as dark as the inside of a glove. He reaches for the reading light above his seat. He turns it on and the light spills onto his hands.

  The plane is not moving. Why aren’t they moving?

  Tina calls Scotty. The pilots are filing their flight plan.

  “Never mind,” the hijacker says. “They can do that over the radio once we get up.”

  Tina wants to know what he will do with the bomb.

  “Take it with me, or disarm it,” he says.

  Tina worries about the aftstairs. If he doesn’t put them up before they land, they could get damaged.

  “Go to the cockpit,” he says. “Close the first-class curtains. Make sure nobody comes out.”

  She leaves. In first class, she looks back. She can see he is standing up. He has a shroud line in his hand. He is tying the money bag to himself, running the rope around his waist. She closes the curtain.

  The rain is light. The wind speed is ten knots, from the southeast. Clouds are scattered at 2,500 feet. Visibility is seven miles. The night is black.

  From the cockpit, the pilots can see the high beams of the detective’s unmarked car.

  “Yeah, say, this is Al again. I’m down here in a car.”

  “Yeah, Al. We’re all set. We’re going to crank the engines. You’ve probably heard me say he’s indicated that he wants the show on the road, so we’re going to get her cranked up here and pick our clearance in the air.”

  “Or maybe you can get him downtown toward Portland. He might get homesick and want to land there again, I don’t know.”

  “Well, we’ll hope for something to happen here, that’s all. You go ahead and pull out. We’re going to get cranked up here now. So we’ll see you later.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Ground, no force on 305. Be advised that I will be trying to make her up to altitude any way we can. Any other restrictions that may be imposed upon us?”

  “No restrictions at all. You fly in the best way you can do her.”

  “And, 305, there’ll be people with you all the way down.”

  The company is a pair of F-106’s, interceptor turbojets designed to shoot down bombers with air-to-air missiles. If the Northwest pilots lose control of the jet and Flight 305 is headed into a populated or residential area, the F-106 pilots could be ordered to unlock their weapons systems and take the jet out.

  At SEA-TAC, agents are busy debriefing passengers and Flo and Alice about the hijacker. What color was his hair? Did he speak with an accent? Was he wearing a wedding ring?

  On the runway, Flight 305 picks up speed. Soon the nose is up and the wheels are off the ground.

  In Portland, outside the Guard hangar, the giant blades of the Huey are spinning. Himmelsbach and a partner hop in the cockpit. As they rise, winds from the storm bully the chopper around the airfield. Himmelsbach can see the lights of the Portland suburbs. He thinks he sees his house. His wife and daughters are probably inside preparing a turkey. He was supposed to have been home hours ago.

  Happy Thanksgiving, he thinks.

  The chopper picks up speed. They try the radio, but the frequencies are different. There is no way to communicate with the Northwest pilots. Himmelsbach looks out into the night. He can see nothing. They are moving 120 knots into the storm. They are moving too slowly to catch Flight 305. Above the chopper, somewhere, the F-106 fighter jets are moving too fast. To maintain any radar reading on the passenger jet, the fighter pilots are forced to carve wide turns, snaking through the night sky. As they make these S-turns, Northwest 305 comes in and out of their radar screens. They are losing him.

  Other jets join the aerial posse. In Boise, Idaho, a pair of F-102 interceptor jets is dispatched. The F-102’s cannot make contact with Flight 305, either.

  To the west, Norman Battaglia, a National Guard flight instructor, is on a night training mission in a T-33 reconaissance fighter plane. The training mission is canceled.

  “We want you to tail an aircraft,” an air traffic controller says.

  “The one that’s hijacked?”

  “That’s the one.”

  In the sky, Battaglia positions the T-33 about three quarters of a mile behind Flight 305. It’s hard to keep up. The Northwest jet is moving so slowly. And, every forty-five seconds or so, the plane changes courses. Battaglia tries his radio to contact the Northwest pilots. It doesn’t work. The frequencies are also different.

  In the cockpit of Northwest 305, the phone is ringing. It’s him again.

  He needs help with the aftstairs.

  The pilots relay the message over the radio.

  “Fourteen miles on Vector 23 out of Seattle. He is trying to get the door down. The stew is with us. He cannot get the stairs down.”

  “After a while, someone will have to take a look back there and see if he is out of the aircraft.”


  “Miss Mucklow said he apparently has the knapsack around him and thinks he will attempt a jump.”

  The pilots notice a change in their instruments.

  “We now have an aftstair light on.”

  Copilot Rataczak picks up the receiver to use the jet’s intercom. The air swirling around the cabin must be fierce, a tornado of wind twisting up and down the aisles. Rataczak calls back into the cabin as if trying to reach a man trapped in the belly of a mine.

  “Can you hear me? Is there anything we can do for you?”

  The hijacker picks up the cabin phone.

  “No,” he says.

  With the aftstairs released, the temperature in the cabin must be far below freezing. In the cockpit window, pilots look at their thermometer. The reading in the sky is minus seven.

  It’s also loud. The jet’s engines are blasting away.

  Rataczak calls back into the cabin again.

  “Everything okay back there?”

  “Everything is okay.”

  The jet is moving south. The flight crew notices another change in reading.

  “We’re getting some oscillations in the cabin. He must be doing something with the air stairs.”

  Harold Anderson, flight engineer, checks his instrument panel. The cabin pressure gauge is spiraling out of control.

  Rataczak calls back again on the interphone.

  “Sir?”

  There is no response. Tina picks up the plastic receiver.

  “Sir?”

  Underneath the jet, the lights of the cities in Oregon pass: Portland, Salem, Eugene. The configurations of the plane keep the jet moving slow and strain the engines. In Northern California, an HC-130 rescue plane is dispatched from Hamilton Air Force Base, as well as another pair of F-106 interceptor jets. At Red Bluff, California, the pilots and the jets following them turn east, approaching Reno on the Nevada border.

  Time to descend. Time to refuel. Tina calls back into the cabin.

  “Sir, we are going to land now. Please put up the stairs. We are going to land anyway, but the aircraft may be structurally damaged. We may not be able to take off after we’ve landed.”

  Northwest officials in Minneapolis and air-traffic controllers in Reno want to know if the hijacker has jumped from the plane.

  Tina uses the intercom phone again.

  “Sir?”

  The screech of the dangling aftstairs against the runway in Reno sounds like a car crash. Police cars trail the jet to ensure the hijacker does not roll out onto the tarmac. The Northwest pilots are talking with Reno Approach.

  “See any sparks coming off the tail at any time on touchdown?”

  “Negative. None at all. The only thing that’s visible on the tail is lights on your ramp.”

  “Roger.”

  “I do see some sparks now, just a few, trailing you as you’re taxiing in.”

  The plane rolls to a stop.

  Scotty turns and unlocks the cockpit door. He calls out into the cabin.

  “Sir?”

  Tina is behind him. She calls out over his shoulder.

  “Sir?” she says. “Do you want us to refuel?”

  Scotty inches into first class. The seats are empty. He creeps forward into the cabin. He is facing the first-class curtain. He unhinges the clasp. He pulls the curtain back.

  “Sir?”

  The so-called Bing Crosby sketch was the first composed by the FBI.

  The Bing Crosby sketch with sunglasses.

  Another FBI sketch. Notice the differences?

  What an aged Cooper would look like now, according to the FBI.

  Private eye Skipp Porteous and Cooper suspect Kenneth Christiansen. Notice Christiansen’s smirky grin.

  Northwest Orient Flight 305, hijacked shortly after leaving Portland en route to Seattle. The model was equipped with aftstairs for loading passengers. The CIA also used the aftstairs of the 727 to drop cargo and parachutists during Vietnam.

  Stewardess Tina Mucklow. She spent nearly five hours with Cooper. “He was never cruel or nasty in any way,” she said after the hijacking. She later became a nun. ASSOCIATED PRESS

  Row 18. The hijacker sat in the middle seat.

  The aftstairs of Northwest 305, which Cooper leaped from at 10,000 feet.

  Suspect Bobby Dayton. COURTESY OF RON AND PAT FORMAN

  Suspect Barbara Dayton, post-surgery. COURTESY OF RON AND PAT FORMAN

  Army soldiers search for Cooper near Lake Merwin in the spring of 1972.

  Cooper suspect Duane Weber, photographed by his wife Jo Weber in 1979, after they married. COURTESY OF JO WEBER

  After digging into her husband’s past, Jo Weber discovered that Duane was a career criminal who spent much of his life in prison, often under the alias John C. Collins.

  A military parachutist tests the air-stairs of the hijacked Northwest Orient Boeing 727 during a test flight to see where Cooper landed on January 6, 1972.

  Designed for the CIA, the SR-71 was the most advanced spyplane of its era. Its cameras and sensors failed to locate the hijacker. THE NORM TAYLOR COLLECTION/THE MUSEUM OF FLIGHT

  McCoy later escaped from federal prison with a gun made from dental plaster.

  Former Green Beret Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. was a suspect in the Cooper case after he hijacked another 727 five months after Cooper’s jump, for $500,000. SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

  Special Agent Ralph Himmelsbach quizzes Dwayne and Patricia Ingram after they claimed their son Brian found the Cooper bills on Tena Bar, the most significant development in the unsolved case. MAX GUTIERREZ © BETTMANN/CORBIS

  Brian Ingram, age fourteen, after winning back a portion of the Cooper bills in a six-year legal war with the FBI. MICHAEL LLOYD, THE OREGONIAN

  FBI agent Larry Carr went undercover in a cyber forum under the code name Ckret; he was later reassigned. ANDY ROGERS, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

  Scientist Tom Kaye tests the buoyancy of money in the Columbia River at Tena Bar, where the Cooper bills were found. RANDY L. RASMUSSEN/THE OREGONIAN

  Vietnam veteran and retired drill sergeant Jerald Thomas has been hunting for Cooper for more than twenty years; recent theories suggest he might be looking in the wrong place. MARK HARRISON/SEATTLE TIMES

  The mystery of the hijacker’s alias, Dan Cooper, may finally have been solved—as the name of an old French comic book hero who was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.

  I must ask you, who in the hell do some of you people think you are, and what in the hell do you think you are doing. I have succeeded in pulling off one of the most successful, talked about crimes of today.… No one was endangered, the caper was only committed to show the unbelieving world that a PERFECT crime was possible.

  NO HARM DONE

  the perfect crime

  grant me amnesty

  money will be returned

  no harm done

  answer by way of public announcement

  within 48 hours

  i’ve won, admit you’ve lost

  —d.b. cooper

  i am alive and doing well in home town PO. The system that beats the system. db cooper

  ATTENTION!

  Thanks for hospitality. Was in a rut.

  D.B. Cooper

  you will never find me

  give up

  db cooper

  i am right here portland and the $200,000 is for revolution

  dear manager,

  much of the credit for my success is yours, thanks.

  I am departing very soon for foreign soil, flying naturally, thanks again.

  D.B. Cooper

  August 24, 2007

  Approaching Portland International Airport, Oregon

  I am on the plane and I am thinking of the Pulitzer prize. What is the prize? Is there a trophy? A plaque? Anything I’ll be able to keep? A check to cash? And how will I apply? Or will they just know about my exposé unmasking the real D.B. Cooper as bashful Northwest purser Ken Christiansen? And how should the story start? With Kenny as a bo
y, growing up in the Great Depression and running up to his attic to gaze at his father’s Perpetual Motion Machine?

  Now I am wondering about a metal detector. Before I left, Lyle was insistent: Bring a metal detector to Bonney Lake. If Lyle knew his brother Kenny, he told me, Kenny would bury the loot in his backyard like the family dog buries gnawed-up bones.

  How can I take Lyle seriously? If Kenny was Cooper, why would he have kept the evidence on his property? Then again, if Kenny actually planned out the hijacking—if he was gutsy enough to jump out of a plane over the remote forests of southwest Washington with $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills tied to his chest with a pair of parachute shrouds—then he was capable of anything. To prove the case, I would have to consider the most unlikely scenarios, stretch the limits of my own logic.

  My first interview is forty miles south of Portland, with the man considered to be the world’s foremost expert on the D.B. Cooper case, Ralph Himmelsbach. The retired special agent is now in his eighties, and there is talk about how he became “obsessed” with the case after the first call (“164 in progress”) came over the radio. He’s chased Cooper for decades and still failed to identify him. They say Cooper ruined his first marriage.

  I have come for his blessing. I have photos of Ken Christiansen in my bag and copies of his military records from the Paratroops. I have my arguments all mapped out. If I can convince an expert like Himmelsbach that Ken Christiansen is a worthy suspect, I’ll be on my way toward making my case.

  His ranch is set back from the main road. I drive down the gravel moat and across fields that sit in the shadows of Mount Hood.