SKYJACK: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

by Geoffrey Gray

  Inside the cabin, an Air Force captain donning a parachute and crash helmet moves to the back of the jet. He places a foot on the stairs, tests it out.

  The step moves down.

  He takes another step and inches down the stairway, under the scream of the 727’s Pratt & Whitney engines. The captain does not feel heavy gusts of wind. The aftstairs act as a shield, a covered perch high above the Pacific.

  Dan Cooper could make his jump from here. He would be cold. It would be loud. But he would be stable enough to make a jump.

  One sled is lowered. The sled has wood runners. It slides over the stairs and down to where the last step of the aftstairs meets the sky. The rope is cut. The sled falls and drops and sails and crashes into the ocean below. Another sled is brought out, another rope cut. Later in the afternoon, the report is sent via Teletype from Seattle to Hoover’s office in Washington.

  THE EFFECT OF THESE DUMMIES DEFINITELY RECORDED A CABIN PRESSURE CHANGE AND, ACCORDING TO FIRST OFFICER ANDERSON WHO WAS A CREW MEMBER OF THE HIJACKED AIRCRAFT, THE REACTION TODAY WAS IDENTICAL TO THAT WHICH OCCURRED DURING THE HIJACKING.

  The suspicion is confirmed. The pressure bump must have been when the hijacker jumped. Against a map, that places the potential drop zone in the impenetrable forest the feds have been searching.

  “Come next deer season some hunter will find him,” a cop in Woodland says.

  The forest is too thick to search by foot, the winter weather too harsh. If man can’t find Cooper, maybe machine can.

  Nicknamed the Blackbird for its radar-repelling black paint, the SR-71 spy plane is the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever produced. Built for the CIA to conduct aerial reconnaissance during the Cold War, the Blackbird flies three times faster than the speed of sound. It’s retrofitted with infrared cameras and heat sensors that are like the eyes of God. They cover more than 100,000 square miles per hour, and are so powerful they can identify a car’s license plate from as high as 85,000 feet. The film itself is printed on a strip roughly 24 feet long, and requires special training to decipher.

  Each time the SR-71 prepares for a run, the weather breaks. Again, the forces of nature seem to be in cahoots with the hijacker. The first report:

  DUE TO CLOUD COVER, NO PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN.

  The second, the third report:

  PHOTOGRAPHIC OVERFLIGHT USING SR-SEVENTY ONE AIRCRAFT PERFORMED … ON ALL THREE FLIGHTS, NO PHOTOS OBTAINED DUE TO LIMITED VISIBILITY FROM VERY HIGH ALTITUDE.

  Into the spring, the weather clears. The ground search resumes. Jeeps and trucks from the 3rd Armory Cavalry at Fort Lewis barrel down country roads into Ariel, and troops set up tents on a patch of wet grass at the corner of Lake Merwin. In total, there are 260 soldiers and eight Huey helicopters dispatched from the army base to aid the FBI.

  At daybreak, the Hueys drop soldiers and agents in and out of forest clearings. The soldiers wear heavy boots, dark green camouflage, and orange vests to shield themselves from hunters.

  A body is found.

  The report comes from two sisters. The sisters were hunting for antique bottles near an old grist mill outside of Woodland. Down near the bottom of the mill’s cistern a few rotted planks were missing. They looked closer.

  It was a body part.

  Soon, the police, the feds, the Fort Lewis troops from the search, the medical examiner, and reporters are all in the woods at the foot of the old cistern. A soldier uses a chain saw to cut through the old wood. The body is removed.

  She is in her mid to late twenties. She is wearing blue tennis shoes and bell bottom blue jeans. Her jeans have been pulled down to her knees. She’s been raped and stabbed, the medical examiner finds.

  A few weeks later, another body is found. A collection of bones, scattered on the ground. Cooper? The remains are of a hunter who broke a bone and could not make it out of the woods.

  The Army troops search on. Then the spring weather turns. The conditions are so poor they cripple the cavalry.

  DUE TO NEAR EXHAUSTION OF ARMY TROOPS, WHO HAVE ENDURED RAIN, SNOW AND OTHER INCLEMENT WEATHER WHILE TRAVERSING TREACHEROUS, STEEP, HILLY, VINE, TREE AND BRUSH COVERED AREAS, LT. COL. BONSELL FEELS FOR TROOPS WELFARE AND SAFETY THEY SHOULD BE GIVEN REST, WILL TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUE SEARCH.

  When the weather clears, the Army troops return to Lake Merwin. Now, they number 269. They cannot set up their tents.

  DUE TO CONTAMINATION OF JET FUEL, SEARCH NOT COMMENCED.

  When the troops return a week later, winter has returned.

  SNOW, SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN HAMPERED SEARCH. REMAINING AREAS TO BE SEARCHED CAN BE REACHED ONLY BY HELICOPTER INSERTION AND LANDING ZONES IN MOST CASES UNDER SIX TO TWELVE INCHES OF SNOW.

  April 1995

  Pace, Florida

  The phone rings. Jo Weber picks up.

  The caller is the man who bought Duane’s Astro van from Jo. He was cleaning out the van, he says, and found a wallet.

  That’s strange. Jo thought she cleaned out the van.

  He returns the wallet to her. The color is black and the material is pebbled. “Ostrich skin,” it says on the label. She’s never seen this wallet before.

  She goes through it. She finds a picture. A house and palm trees. “San Marino Sanitarium,” it reads.

  Strange. Why would Duane have a picture of an old mental institution in his wallet?

  She finds another paper, folded up. She unfolds it and reads it: COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE. STATE OF MISSOURI.

  Commutation? She doesn’t know what the word means. The document says John C. Collins was sentenced to prison in Missouri for four years and released after two. CONVICTED OF THE CRIME OF … GRAND STEALING.

  John C. Collins?

  She finds another card in the wallet, a Florida driver’s license. There it is again. The name: John C. Collins. She looks at the photograph on the license. It’s Duane. Why would Duane have a license under the name John C. Collins? The name is curious. Jo’s maiden name was Collins. Is that why he married her?

  She finds a card from the National Rifle Association. Member name: John C. Collins. And one from the Navy. “Honorable discharge,” it says. “John C. Collins.” Whom had she been living with? Who was Duane L. Weber? Who was John C. Collins?

  She goes through the wallet again. She burrows deep into the crevices. She finds two slips of newsprint. One is a classified ad for a rifle—it is for sale. Another bears the following text:

  Bombproof and crowded with oxygen … terrace, volcallure at casa Cugat, Abbe Wants Cugie Gets.

  The words don’t make sense. Bombproof and crowded with oxygen? What does that mean? Is it code?

  Several months after Duane’s death, Jo is on a date. She wasn’t interested romantically, so to send the message she starts talking about Duane. She tells her date about the wacky things Duane told her on his deathbed, and how angry he got after he said, “I’m Dan Cooooooper.”

  Dan Cooper sounds a lot like D.B. Cooper, her date says. What if Duane was trying to confess to the hijacking? What if Jo was too preoccupied with his medical condition to pay attention?

  She doesn’t remember much about the hijacking. She stops off at the library the following day. She checks out the book D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened? by Max Gunther. She reads the first few sentences.

  He had given his name to a ticket agent as Dan Cooper, but news reports mistakenly identified him as D.B. Cooper, and that is the name by which he became famous.

  Dan Cooper! Dan Cooooooper! Jo can’t breathe. She goes home. She calls the FBI. She is so hysterical the agent asks her if she has forgotten to take her medication. He won’t listen to her.

  She reads on.

  The audacious crime stunned the world. Nothing like it had ever been done before. Others have tried it since, but nobody else has ever succeeded. The man called D.B. Cooper became a legend. Millions of people in America, Europe, even Russia wondered who this man was, where he had come from, what had driven him to take such a mad risk.

  She
reads about the case, everything she can find. She calls the FBI again. She tells them what she heard him say in the hospital. I’m Dan Cooooper.

  It doesn’t matter what Duane said, agents say. They need proof of a crime. Does Jo have proof of a crime?

  She does not. She has memories. She remembers the strange things he told her. She remembers the places he took her. When she pieces it all together, the portrait of the hijacker and Jo’s memories of Duane are almost identical.

  Both were familiar with the Pacific Northwest. He took her there once, in 1978. After they married and moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, they drove west on a trip over the Cascades. Outside of Vancouver, Duane took her on a hike.

  “This is where D.B. Cooper walked out of the woods,” he said.

  “How would you know?” Jo said.

  “Maybe I was there,” Duane said.

  She assumed he was joking.

  Another memory. She thinks it was later that year. Can’t be sure. She and Duane are sleeping. He wakes up. He is frantic. His right arm is raised.

  “I left my prints on the aftstairs,” he said. “I’m going to die.”

  Aftstairs? An odd word. Reading books on D.B. Cooper, she learns the aftstairs are where the hijacker made his infamous leap from the Northwest Orient 727.

  There was also an airline ticket she found in a sock drawer. She thinks it said Northwest Orient on it, and the year 1971. Again: she can’t be sure. She asked Duane about the airline ticket. He shrugged it off. When she went to put his socks back in the drawer, the ticket was missing. Why was it missing?

  Without proof, the Bureau agents dismiss Jo Weber. How can they be sure she is telling them the truth? How can they be sure she isn’t manufacturing her memories?

  Jo is bitter. Jo is scorned. She decides to conduct the investigation herself. She follows the clues Duane left her, tucked into the folds of the ostrich-skin wallet.

  She starts with his sentence for grand larceny.

  When he arrived, the prison where Duane was incarcerated in Jefferson City, Missouri, was considered the most violent, dysfunctional prison in the nation. Built in 1836, the gray stone buildings were described as a “medieval twilight zone,” and later “the bloodiest forty-seven acres in America.” It was also home, Jo learns, to a small-time crook who rented out magazines in the courtyard.

  James Earl Ray was a jailhouse legend at Jefferson City. Before he pled guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King (and later recanted), Ray had reportedly escaped from the prison by hiding in a bread box.

  Jo wonders, did Duane (or John C. Collins) know James Earl Ray? How can she find out?

  Duane’s wife at the time was Mary Jane Ross. Jo finds a number for her in California. Jo is nervous about calling. Eventually, she dials. She has to know: Does Duane have a connection to James Earl Ray? If so, what is it?

  Lana picks up. Lana is Duane’s stepdaughter. Lana misses Duane. She is sorry to hear he passed.

  “We’re all family in a way,” Lana tells Jo.

  Lana has fond memories of Duane. He was an inspiration to her.

  “He lived a hard and fast life … as a cat burglar. I always thought, Great, my stepfather is a sophisticated criminal. Wow, some of the jewels he brought home. Wow … He always worked alone.”

  Cat burglar? Worked alone?

  Jo knew he stole. Once, after selling antiques at a flea market, Duane’s friend Jim Stallings went with Duane to a pharmacy. Stallings looked down the aisle and saw Duane pocket a bottle of aspirin.

  Jo was not surprised. Before he passed away, Duane would come home from the Piggly Wiggly and she would find packets of Kool-Aid in the pockets of Duane’s coat. Duane didn’t even drink Kool-Aid. She went to the Piggly Wiggly and spoke with the manager. She wanted to pay for what Duane stole.

  “We’ve known about it for some time,” the manager told her. “If he takes anything expensive, we’ll give you a call.”

  Were these signs? Had Jo been in denial about Duane all along?

  “He was a real sophisticated person …” Lana says, “nothing about him that wasn’t first class … He was pulling diamonds out of barrettes, big diamonds … I learned a lot of lessons from him. He told me never tell a cop nothing.”

  Jo asks about Mary Jane. Is she around?

  “Best time to call her is in the morning,” Lana says, “before she’s had a few beers.”

  Mary Jane doesn’t sound too drunk when Jo calls. “Why don’t you come out here and enjoy our earthquakes?” Mary Jane says.

  “I wish I could afford to,” Jo says.

  “You little asshole,” Mary Jane says. “Have you ever been in a seven-point-two?”

  Mary Jane rambles. Maybe she is drunk. She is hurting.

  “I look in the obituary every day to see if my name is there,” Mary Jane says.

  Jo asks her about D.B. Cooper. Did Mary Jane know anything about the hijacking?

  “Never heard of it, Jo.”

  Really? Or is Mary Jane covering up for Duane? Was Mary Jane involved in the caper somehow?

  Jo asks her about James Earl Ray.

  “I met the guy,” Mary Jane says.

  What?

  “I met him. His wife stayed with me for a while.”

  James Earl Ray’s wife and Mary Jane were roommates?

  “She was Jewish,” Mary Jane says. “I’m not Jewish and I don’t go for this Hanukkah.”

  Jo asks Mary Jane about James Earl Ray’s escape in a bread box.

  “That was a put-on, honey. He didn’t escape. That was all a big hoax. They got him to Canada because he was supposed to act like he was the guy who killed Martin Luther King. I know it for a fact.”

  How does she know it? Jo is trembling. Duane must have known James Earl Ray. Their wives were roommates! Was that the connection? Was there more? Jo is now recording her phone calls to prove she is not making up what others tell her. She is also keeping an audio diary to document her journey into Duane’s past. When the call with Mary Jane is over, she speaks into her tape recorder.

  “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” she says.

  She writes letters. She calls federal agents, witnesses, private detectives. She spends hundreds of dollars on phone calls, then thousands. She talks for hours, won’t get off with people. She asks reporters and editors for help. All shrug her off. Except one.

  As a reporter for U.S. News & World Report, Doug Pasternak listens to Jo Weber for three years before he publishes a piece on Duane Weber in 2000. During the course of his reporting, Pasternak discovers that Jo was married to a career criminal. Duane’s first prison was McNeil, a federal penitentiary in Washington. His scam had been seducing women during the war and swindling GI checks from them. After the war, Duane did time at the Ohio State Penitentiary, in Columbus, Ohio. In 1953, he was paroled from San Quentin. In 1954, he spent one day in Soledad, south of Santa Cruz. Then he was in Folsom, near Sacramento, until 1959. In 1960, he was arrested in El Paso for burglary, convicted, and sent to Canon City, the federal prison in Colorado.

  Later, she stumbles on a newspaper story, printed in the St. Petersburg Times, July 29, 1957. The paper calls Duane Lorin Weber a “smooth-talking ex-con.” Then 33, Duane had been arrested for flirting with women at a nightclub on Treasure Island, Florida, and stealing their wallets. When the police searched his hotel room, they found, among other things, identification from several people, among them a badge from an investigator at the District Attorney’s office in Jackson County, Missouri. Police learned Duane had already spent six years in prison in California and five in Ohio.

  “It may take several weeks before we can run down this man’s history, even then we may only know half of it,” a deputy sheriff told the newspaper.

  Questioning him after his arrest, one police officer asked Duane his occupation.

  “Crook, I guess,” he said.

  Jo cries learning these things. Who did she marry? She sobs into her tape recorder.

  “Duane, I get chills th
inking about what you did,” she says.

  August 27, 2007

  Edgewater Hotel, Seattle, Washington

  I wake up under the plaid sheets of the hotel bed. It is dawn, the sky is gray, the window of my room at the Edgewater is open. I hear pelicans and the horns of the passing boats on Puget Sound. Through the window, I see the giant cranes of the port. I smell salt water.

  I duck back under the covers. Could I have been wrong about Kenny? How could I so easily dismiss an expert like Himmelsbach? True, he wasn’t the lead agent on the case—that was Charlie Farrell, then Ron Nichols, out of Seattle—but Himmelsbach had access to the same case documents they did, and he worked the case the longest. What do I know about a criminal investigation? I’m taking my cues from an 80-something retired postal worker from middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, whose advice to me was to rent a metal detector.

  I am ready to cry. I am burning my magazine’s money and my own out here in Seattle. Nothing in Kenny’s past suggests a propensity toward criminal activity. Still, what are the chances? How many other ex-Paratroopers would have lived near the Drop Zone, knew enough but not all about the aftstairs on a Boeing 727, worked in airplane maintenance, and looked exactly like the Bureau’s sketch?

  Kenny’s grin flashes in my mind. I can’t give up on him now. I haven’t even been out to Bonney Lake yet. I think of a story his brother Lyle told me about a game he and Kenny played as boys. The Parachute Game, they called it. It required a blindfold and a table board. Their pa blindfolded Lyle and told him to stand on the board. He did.

  Then their pa and their older brother, Oliver, would lift the board in the air, telling the young boys it was an airplane and they were taking off. The table board airplane was flying higher; in the sky now, far higher. Now it was time to parachute.

  “Jump,” their pa would say.

  Lyle never did. He was too scared.

  Kenny’s turn was next. The table board airplane went into flight again, high in the sky.