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A tattered, half-buried parachute unearthed by kids had D.B. Cooper country chattering Wednesday over the fate of the skyjacker, who leapt from a plane 36 years ago and into the lore of the Pacific Northwest.
While the FBI investigates whether the fabric came from the world’s only unsolved skyjacking, the discovery re-energized a legend in the southwestern Washington woods where Cooper may have landed, and where time has helped turn him into a folk hero.
If it is Cooper’s parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, FBI agent Larry Carr said Tuesday.
In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper’s money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near
Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal
River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there’s no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.“If this is D.B. Cooper’s parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means,” Carr said. “That whole theory is out the window.”
Like cars, parachutes have serial numbers, and identification that includes dates of production and names of the manufacturers. And the man who supplied the parachute Cooper is believed to have used says he would be able to identify it.
“It was my parachute,” said Earl Cossey of Woodinville, Wash. “So, yes, I’d be able to identify it to this day.” Cossey was a pilot and ran a skydiving school at the time. When Cooper demanded parachutes, the FBI got in touch with him.
The FBI doubts Cooper survived because conditions were poor, the terrain was rough and Cooper was lightly dressed. “The night it happened, I thought he had a 50 percent chance,” retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach said. “… It has gone down since then.”
Other theories abound. Richard Tosaw, author of “D.B. Cooper: Dead or Alive?” says Cooper met a different death — when his plunge ended in the Columbia River.
Locals prefer to think he made it. “I think he’s out there enjoying his money,” Gilbert said. “Most people here say they think he made it. We may never know.”
