D.B. Cooper

The following is a transcript from a phone interview.

I’m here to tell you that D. B. Cooper is alive and well. How do I know this? Because I helped him that night he took the Boeing 727 hostage and demanded the $200,000. So in a way, this is a written confession of my involvement in helping D.B. Cooper escape on November 24, 1971. So who am I? I’m a nobody. Believe me. Also I want to start off by saying that I didn’t know what good ole’ Danny was going to do. Honest. You see, let me begin by telling you how we know each other. I first met Dan Cooper in Vietnam in 1969. I was attached to the 3rd Marine Division and I was a fresh Corporal entering country for my first tour. Dan was attached to the 101st Airborne and was already hitting his third rotation in theater. If my military jargon has your head spinnin’ I do apologize. Where was I? Oh right. My squad got wiped clean while we were patrolling an area with cu chi tunnels. If you don’t know what those are, let me tell you. You have a new fear to discover once you start exploring these large and intricate tunnels in Vietnam. Well, I was trying to clear out a section of those cu chi tunnels when Sergeant Dan Cooper yanked me from my flak jacket and pulled me away from a spring loaded trap. He asked who I was, and when I explained I was the last one left, I followed him and the rest of his platoon off towards Saigon. It was there where I met up with the rest of my unit. Along the way Sergeant Cooper kept telling me stories about the fortune that could be had if someone just had enough guts to pull off something wild and unheard of. He kept talking about how he met another Army soldier, a career man named Vining. You see, Vining was regular Army and was going to make some special team of people. Cooper said he was going to be on his new team? I can’t remember those details. All I know is that once he helped me get back to my unit, I gave him my contact information and told him if he was ever in Washington State to look me up and I would buy the first round. You know, as a thank you for helping me.

Now fast forward to November 22, 1971. I was already out of the military and apparently so was Cooper, because he called me and took me up on those first rounds. I was in my Seattle tuxedo filled up with leaded when he called, but I wasn’t going to say no. My wife had unfortunately passed away from car accident a year before, and I had no kids, so I ended up meeting Cooper at a local bar. That is when he told me what I needed to do. He never mentioned anything about a parachute, a plane, money, nothing! He asked me to stage a motorcycle off of the I-5 with a change of warm clothes, a jacket, and boots. He also told me to stage a small lake boat on Lake Merwin. He even paid me, and told me that he would pay me again once he finished what he needed to do. He went on and said, on November 24th, at around 8pm, to be on the water of Lake Merwin just in case I needed to scoop him up from his fall. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but he said that he would have a light and to look up. And wouldn’t you know it. I mean I did what he asked, he saved my life in “Nam”, he could have asked me to eat a pound of nails and I would have done it with a smile.

So here I am, in the cold, looking up at the sky in a boat on the lake and I see this faint light coming flying over. It looked like a plane, but it was flying too low to be anything commercial. But Dan said to keep looking up. So I did. I quickly looked at my watch and at 8:10 pm I saw a second blinking light getting closer. Then I saw the chute open. Now I remember Dan talk about the parachute. He said that he liked the ones that the old soldiers used to use in WWII. He said that they made him feel brave or something like that. So looking up, and seeing a single chute come down was something else to see. I felt like I was in Normandy on D-Day, you know?

Interviewer: “Did you know that was Mr. Cooper and that he just ransomed a plane for money?”

No sir, not at all. Like I told you before, I didn’t know anything about his plans.

Interviewer: “Okay, please continue.”

So where was I? Oh right, the lake. So I see Dan coming down like a WWII hero and he must have planned this perfectly because from the high winds, he landed within five feet of the river bank on the south side of lake. He knew exactly where he was going to land. So I pull up and there I see Dan. He’s shivering from the weather, so I get him on the boat and I take him to the spot where I staged the motorcycle and clothes. I can’t begin to tell you the surprise and questions I had. I kept asking him where did he come from. Was this some sort of secret Army mission? What was going on? Things like that. He told me that he just wanted another rush. This was going to be his last one. He told me he just wanted to see if he could do it. Maybe get people thinking about safer air travel. I didn’t understand a word he was saying. He even showed me the bad full of money. I asked him what he was going to do with it. At this point we were almost to the Lewis River where it met with the I-5. He handed me a stack of money and told me to bury it near the banks of the Columbia River. He didn’t care where I buried it, but just as long as I did. He said he wasn’t going to spend any of the money here. I didn’t know what that meant. Dan quickly changed his clothes, he gave his suit to me, he got on the motorcycle, shook my hand, told me that he’ll be in touch, and he took off. Of course he thanked me, but that was it. It wasn’t until I went home and saw the news that I knew what he did. That was almost 52 years ago.

Interviewer: “Do you know where he is now?”

No sir. I’m sure he is living his life and enjoying his fortune somewhere on an island.

Interviewer: “Did he ever contact you afterwards, to pay you like he promised?”

No sir. I think he didn’t want for me to get in any type of trouble.

Interviewer: “Wow. What an amazing story. Thank you for your time. We truly appreciate it.”

No thank you sir.

The elderly gentleman stood from his comfortable chair. He shook the hands of the interviewer, a reporter, then shook the hands of everyone present in the room; from the boom operator to the intern bringing another filled cup of coffee to another gentleman behind the camera. He walked out of the room and into a long hallway. His stride wasn’t as crisp as it once was, but he walked with a confidence and strut of a well-to-do man. At the end of the hallway, an elevator awaits his entry. A quick ride down to the lobby and out the double doors into the bright sunny fall day. There was a slight chill in the air as he opened the door of his 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454. One of many gifts from a friend.