16:15
El NACHO
Tattered, half-buried parachute found in a rugged region in the north-west of the United States state may yield clues to the fate of the robber behind a daring high-altitude hijacking 36 years ago.
The FBI is examing the find to see if it belonged to hijacker D.B. Cooper, who leapt from a commercial jet in 1971 after collecting a $US200,000 ransom.
FBI investigators have for years said Cooper most likely did not survive the jump from 3000 metres, but the hijacker's body has never been found.
FBI agent Larry Carr said that earlier this month, children playing outside their home near the town of Amboy in Oregon state recently found fabric sticking up from the ground where their father had been grading a road.The children, responding to a publicity campaign, urged their father to call the FBI, Carr said, and when their find became public this week, it reignited talk of the region's favourite folk hero.
The FBI doesn't want to excavate the property until it confirms, either through an expert's examination or scientific analysis of the fabric, whether the chute is the right kind.In November 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper, later mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper, hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, claiming he had a bomb.When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $US200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico.On the flight to Mexico City, he apparently took the cash and parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.Cooper asked for four chutes in all. He jumped with two and used the cord from one of the remaining parachutes to tie the stolen money bag shut.Carr spoke with the children's father, whom he declined to identify, and learned the chute was white, the same colour as Cooper's.And when Carr overlaid the family's address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper's most probable landing zone.
If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery - where he apparently landed - but it will raise another, Carr said.In 1980, a family on a picnic found $US5880 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."Retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach who worked the Cooper case, said on Wednesday he doubts the remnant found near Amboy could be the nylon parachute Cooper carried when he jumped into poor conditions over rough terrain.
"Lying in the mud, mostly wet, would not be the kind of environment that would be good for a parachute," he said, though he conceded he could offer few alternate explanations for how the chute got there.Himmelsbach said his theory of the case hasn't changed."The night it happened, I thought he had a 50 percent chance," he said. "... It has gone down since then."
Locals prefer to think he made it.
"I think he's out there enjoying his money," said Dona Gilbert, owner of store near the town of Amboy. "Most people here say they think he made it. We may never know."
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