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V4 2001 INDEX
E-SYLUM ARCHIVE
The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 48, November 25, 2001, Article 7
D. B. COOPER: WHERE IS YOUR LOOT?
Thirty years ago this week (Thanksgiving eve, 1971), the infamous
"D. B. Cooper" parachuted into history with his hijacker's ransom
of 10,000 U.S. twenty dollar bills. The following excerpts are from
a Seattle Times' article of November 16, 1996:
"Cooper parachuted from 10,000 feet into the blackness of a
Thanksgiving eve storm with a 21-pound bag of $20 bills tied
around his waist. His is still the only unsolved domestic skyjacking
in U.S. history and despite checking out almost 10,000 potential
suspects and maintaining a case file 60 volumes thick, the FBI
remains stumped. The basic questions have never been answered:
Who was he? Where did he land? Is he dead or alive? What
happened to the money?
Even the name, "D.B. Cooper" was pure media creation. The day
after the skyjacking, FBI agents checked out a Portland man with
that name and quickly cleared him. But the moniker stuck.
An 8-year-old boy digging a fire pit on a sand bar along the north
bank of the Columbia River west of Vancouver on Feb. 10, 1980,
unearthed $5,800 of Cooper's loot. The money, only inches below
the surface, had eroded so badly that only Andrew Jackson and
the serial numbers were left.
Some believe the find showed Cooper landed in or near the
Columbia River, but hydrologists concluded the tattered and
still-bundled money was more likely deposited by a stream flow
than human hands."
All of the notes had been photocopied before being packaged
for the hijacker. So the serial numbers are known, and 290 of
the bills have been recovered. Is anyone aware of a published
list of serial numbers? Have any others been found? And what
of the notes found in 1980 - are they still in an evidence locker
somewhere?
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/
web/vortex/display?slug=coop&date=19961117
Wayne Homren, Editor
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.
To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com
To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum
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