SKYJACK: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

by Geoffrey Gray

  “You’re in it,” Barb says.

  Another night, Barb is over again for Sunday night dinner.

  “I have something to tell you about my past,” she says. “You’ll probably never want to see me in your house again. The last person I told about this tried to kill me.”

  “Don’t tell me you were a prostitute!” Ron says.

  “No. I wish it were as simple as that.”

  “Give me a hint. Does it have anything to do with money?”

  “In a way. At one time I had all the money I could want, but I just blew it.”

  “I know. You killed someone.”

  “No, that’s not it, though I could have if things kept going the way they were.”

  “Did you do something illegal?”

  “Well, no, what I’m about to tell you about wasn’t illegal.”

  “You were in a mental hospital.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  Barb looks at Pat.

  “I think your wife knows now,” Barb says.

  It takes a few minutes for Pat to figure it out. Ron and Pat retreat into their bedroom. Pat tells Ron that Barb was once a man. Ron feels angry, betrayed. He befriended Barb because he was so impressed that a woman could possess such extraordinary mechanical skills. The sting lingers for a few days, but he likes Barb and likes to fly with her so much. Eventually, he gets over it.

  D.B. Cooper comes up for the first time one afternoon at Sanderson, a small airport near Thun. It’s close to Thanksgiving, Cooper anniversary stories are in the papers, and every pilot at the lunch table has a theory about the missing hijacker.

  Ron thinks Cooper is an idiot. Why jump over Ariel? No way to make it out alive.

  Barb defends Cooper’s intelligence. She sounds angry, offended almost.

  Ron jokes with her.

  “I know,” he says. “Barb is the real D.B. Cooper!”

  Later that day, Barb pulls Ron aside.

  “Don’t ever say that in public again,” she says, about calling her Cooper. “Not even as a joke.”

  A few months later, over Sunday night dinner, the topic of the hijacker returns.

  “The FBI doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” Barb says, and goes on to discuss the case in detail. Cooper’s actual drop zone, she says, is nowhere near where the FBI was searching.

  The Foremans are skeptical. How does Barb know so much about the case?

  “Okay,” Barb says. “Ron guessed it at Sanderson. I am D.B. Cooper.”

  They don’t believe her. How could they?

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Barb says. “I get claustrophobic. I couldn’t survive in prison.”

  August 2000

  Pace, Florida

  McNeil. Ohio State. San Quentin. Soledad. Canon City. What convict did Jo marry? She flips through the Soldier of Fortune that Duane left in his safety deposit box. Was he trying to tell her something by leaving this magazine for her? Are the clues in here? She scans the personal ads again. NIGHT VISION BINOCULARS, one reads. GORGEOUS ASIAN WOMEN. More listings. WHO KILLED KENNEDY?

  She remembers a few names of the friends Duane had, people he introduced her to in Atlanta and New Orleans where they went for parties. She met Tommy Gunn once in Mobile, Alabama. She looks up his name, finds it in the directory. After the call, she trembles when she remembers what he told her.

  “If you want to see your grandchildren, burn everything. Duane knew people in high places.”

  What people? What places? How high?

  Jo calls the FBI again. They don’t call back.

  She is hysterical. What has the FBI found in Duane’s past? Why aren’t they calling back? What are they hiding?

  With a dial-up connection on her computer, she painstakingly punches out more e-mails.

  “Please help me,” she writes to the Missouri Department of Corrections. “I am a 64 yr old widow who just wants to piece together her husbands life.… My husband told me his name was Dan Cooper … so be assured the FBI thinks I’m a loo loo.”

  She studies the commutation paper she found in the ostrich-skin wallet again. She looks at the date. March 1968. She realizes that March 1968 is one month before Duane’s prison mate James Earl Ray was suspected of assassinating Martin Luther King.

  What was going on inside Jefferson City when Duane and James Earl Ray were there? Had James Earl accepted some kind of deal to escape from Jefferson City? If he did, would Duane’s ex-wife Mary Jane know about it? Did Duane have some part in the killing of Martin Luther King? Or did John C. Collins?

  Jo scans her mind for the names and faces of the men Duane introduced her to. How else can she figure out who Duane was and who John C. Collins is?

  She remembers the one-legged man, who drove them to dinner in Denver and said he once worked for Howard Hughes. She remembers the man with cupid lips and a diamond horseshoe finger ring at the Red Rooster, a bar in southern Colorado. They met at the bar so early in the morning. Why?

  More memories. Why did Duane’s boss Ed Hurran—or was it Hurrand? Or Horan?—not want Jo to take his picture? Or founder of American Life Insurance Bernie Rapoport—“Kissy Kissy,” as they called him? Did these men think she was annoying? Or were they hiding another piece of her dead husband’s secret life?

  She sees a photograph of “Macho,” or Bernard Barker, who was involved in Watergate. The Nixon Plumber looks familiar. Did she meet Macho at a private party in New Orleans? She thinks so. Can she be sure the photo is of him? No. And what about the man wearing the blue jacket in Salt Lake City? Duane asked her to take his picture. Why?

  Another memory. Members of Duane’s family told her a story. When Bobby Kennedy was campaigning for president, in 1968, Duane took a job working as a bellhop at the Muehlebach Hotel, in Kansas City. On the campaign trail, Bobby Kennedy and his entourage checked in. When Kennedy left the hotel for the day to campaign, Duane snuck into the candidate’s hotel room looking for a memento to steal. In Kennedy’s room he allegedly found a tie and swiped it.

  Was it possible the tie Duane left on the plane was the same tie Kennedy wore? Was that another clue, revenge perhaps for Kennedy’s blundering at the Bay of Pigs? Was it even possible that Bobby Kennedy would wear a clip-on tie?

  That can’t make sense, Jo thinks. And then it does. On the campaign trail in 1968, folks were always pulling at Robert Kennedy’s body, his hands, and probably his tie. Perhaps he wore a clip-on to avoid being choked?

  Or maybe it wasn’t Kennedy who wore the clip-on tie? Perhaps Duane snuck in to the room, got nervous, and grabbed the skinny Towncraft that belonged to one of Kennedy’s security guards?

  That also made sense. When Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he grabbed the tie of one guard, and it came off. Kennedy’s guards did wear clip-ons.

  Once again, Jo goes through Duane’s files. One letter she finds is from the Government Employees Benefit Association, a company based in Georgia. The letter claims Duane worked for Government Employees between November 1973 and December 1977. She looks up the company. Government Employees, she finds, is the leading provider of insurance to the CIA. Was Duane really selling insurance to CIA agents? Or was that his cover? And if Duane was a rogue operative working with the CIA, was the Cooper mission a “company job”? Or maybe it was former CIA agents, or mercenaries, the folks who read Soldier of Fortune, who contracted out the mission. If so, why?

  The conspiracy theorists believe Cooper’s hijacking was a black operation, staged during a moment in the news cycle when Americans would be home and watching television (Thanksgiving). It was designed to pressure legislators to pass more stringent safety laws on airplanes and in airports, and to push airlines to pay for metal detectors to deter hijackings. That makes sense to Jo. The Nixon era is chock full of black bag jobs and covert ops. But if the Cooper hijacking was an inside job, who called it? And how was Duane chosen to be the jumper?

  July 26, 1972

  Brighton, Colorado

 
The sheriff reads the names for morning arraignments from a list.

  “Benjamin Namepee?”

  Richard Floyd McCoy looks around the drunk tank. A few inmates are still sleeping off their hangovers. No hands go up.

  “Benjamin Namepee?”

  McCoy raises his hand. He walks out of the cell and proceeds to the courthouse. He keels over, cringing in pain. He’s sick, he tells the sheriff. Needs to use the bathroom, fast. He holds out his wrists. The sheriff uncuffs him. He runs.

  Later that afternoon, the marshals find McCoy a few blocks from the courthouse. They place him back in handcuffs and belly chain and finish the drive east to Lewisburg.

  The federal penitentiary at Lewisburg is a massive prison in rural Pennsylvania that was built during the Great Depression. McCoy is housed in the prison’s maximum security wing, Dog Block. His job is in the prison’s dental laboratory. He makes fake teeth for inmates.

  Working with the plaster, McCoy begins to think about another escape. Didn’t John Dillinger use a fake gun to escape from jail? And if Dillinger could whittle a phony gun from a piece of wood, why couldn’t McCoy make his own pistol out of the plaster he works with in the dental lab?

  He needs a sculptor. Through inmates, McCoy makes contact with Melvin Walker, who made the Bureau’s Most Wanted List. The feds call him the Flying Bank Robber.

  Walker has ice-cold eyes, a menacing Fu Manchu mustache, jailhouse tattoos crawling up his arms, and a résumé of epic escapes.

  On a transfer to Marion, then the most secure prison in the nation, Walker made a handcuff key from a refill cartridge of a pen. He hid the key in his sock, handcuffed the marshals to a maple tree, stole their badges, credit cards, guns, car, then disappeared.

  On the lam for months, Walker was eventually caught and transferred back to Marion. The fences were fourteen feet high, topped with swirling rolls of razor wire.

  Using two pairs of bar spreaders, Walker pried open his window. He shimmied down the prison wall with a rope made from his bed sheet, clutching a wool blanket. Fired at by guards with high-powered rifles, Walker jumped the prison fence, using the wool blanket to shield himself against the razor wire. He ran for most of the night. The next morning, prison guard dogs discovered him sleeping in a tree.

  Now in Lewisburg, Walker is biding time, writing poetry, waiting for his next escape.

  If I’m destined to be in your prison,

  Then bury me deep underground

  Just the sight of a light, for a man like me

  And I know I am freedom bound.

  In his cell, McCoy flips through magazines, looking for images of guns. He cuts one out. Through other inmates, he sends the image to Walker. McCoy’s next shipment is a block of wax he pilfers from the prison dental lab. Walker sculpts the wax into a replica of a .45 caliber pistol. He sends the replica back to McCoy, who writes to the judge who oversaw his trial in Salt Lake. He begs for a reduced sentence. His letters are not returned. McCoy writes to the judge again.

  It has been nearly six months since I wrote to you. I know you are quite busy and I don’t want to impose on you, but there are important personal considerations which require solutions in the near future. Knowing the final outcome of my case could very well influence some of the decisions that need to be made.

  Like escaping from Lewisburg.

  March 1, 2008

  Catheys Valley, California

  The sun is blinding. I squint through the windshield. I see endless rows of almond trees that line the farms of the Central Valley. We are driving toward Merced. As a young man, Bobby Dayton drove the same route. I imagine him pulling over in his beat-up truck, asking for work. With his fair hair and blue eyes, Bobby would have burned in the sun. Or maybe he tanned dark. Bobby was a quarter Indian.

  That fits. On the plane, witnesses described the hijacker as dark, swarthy.

  “He says he was Kickapoo, and when my grandfather went to check it he says Winnebago, so I don’t know really what tribe we are,” Rena Ruddell says.

  Rena is Bobby’s daughter and closest living relative. Her brother, Dennis, died years ago. Shortly after he returned from Vietnam, police found him in a friend’s bathtub. The bathtub was filled with milk, and a needle was stuck in his arm. A heroin overdose, the coroner said.

  Now in her fifties, Rena has picked me up from the airport in Modesto, where she teaches elementary school. We are en route to Catheys Valley to see the old Dayton ranch and visit with Barb’s relatives.

  Rena is a believer. At first, when Ron and Pat Foreman contacted her and told her they thought her father was D.B. Cooper, Rena doubted it. But that’s changed. The more Rena thought about it—Barb’s love for airplanes, her hatred for the airlines, her lust for The Score, her suicidal tendencies—the more it all made sense.

  “You had to know him,” Rena says. “He just didn’t care if he lived or died.”

  Listening to Rena talk about her father, I think of Dr. Hubbard, as if the psychiatrist had left me clues to uncovering Cooper’s identity.

  Failure after failure gradually aroused an intense hostility that was slowly transferred from himself to society in an attempt to defend himself against a rising desire to commit suicide.

  … After years of inadequate and misguided effort, these men had steadily depleted their sense of self-worth, until in a last desperate moment they plunged into this symbolic action in which they saw themselves more or less permanently as men who had done one fine thing.

  Yep. This was Bobby. Or, Barb.

  The hills of the Mother Lode are marked with the mouths of old mining claims and the tombstones of bank robbers. In clearings, oak trees stand alone and the spindly branches cast shadows that look like witches’ fingers. The road is now dirt and we follow a creek. In the creek a man has his jeans rolled up and is showing a boy how to use a sluice box, working the water that runs over the rocks and through the dirt for flakes of gold.

  The Dayton ranch exists only in memory. The house and barn are gone. All that’s left are a few stones of a chimney Elmer built. Rena and I walk the grounds. She wonders if her father buried the ransom money here. Across the stream, I can see an old mine that must have been active in the 1860s. Did Barbara hide the ransom in there?

  A car barrels down the dirt road, pulls over. I see a white cowboy hat. It’s Sharon Power, Rena’s aunt. She was married to Bill Dayton, Bobby’s brother. Sharon is also the sister of Dixie, Bobby’s first wife. Sharon spent years on the ranch with the Dayton family. She learned to ride horses here. She walks around the property in her stiff dungarees and cowboy boots, pointing to where she and Bill and Bobby stabled Toots, Sugar, and Buck, their horses. She points to a patch of grass that was once a kitchen where Bobby’s mother, Bernice, made her hominy grits and tamale pie.

  Sharon does not doubt that Bobby Dayton turned into Dan Cooper.

  “He just had that kind of mind,” she tells me.

  Sharon is a poet. She wrote a few verses to explain her theories.

  A lonely man sat in the night

  The spirit within, was just not right.

  The bomb he held was violently loaded.

  A move of his finger and it would be exploded.

  Stilts in his shoes raised him from short to tall.

  He had always hated being somewhat small.

  The unfamiliar tie was bothersome.

  Becoming edgy it troubled him some.

  He shot out in the turbulent air

  In a free fall, if he died he didn’t care.

  In small pieces he burned the chute

  And note by note he burned all the loot.

  This was his hidden treasure

  No one would find it, not ever.

  He changed into women’s clothes

  Put on makeup and powdered his nose.

  It would be a long walk to the road to catch a bus

  SHE would find amusement in all of the fuss.

  Sharon’s daughter, Billie Dayton, lives nearby. Billie was close w
ith Bobby too. Bobby was her uncle. When the hijacking occurred, Billie remembered her father hearing the news and saying, “That’s Bobby.”

  Billie Dayton is a believer too. Her uncle Bobby was always trying to prove he could do something others could not. He was also suicidal over his sex change operation and depressed over his failure to obtain a commercial pilot’s license. Bobby was a man with a grudge.

  After the operation, Billie’s father didn’t speak or visit with Barb until she got sick. She’d moved out of Seattle and into a trailer in the desert near Carson City, Nevada. She was broke, gambling all her money and social security checks away in slot machines.

  When Bill and Billie arrived to visit, Barb was in the hospital.

  Bill and Billie suspected she might have some of the Cooper bills. They searched her trailer for them, but nothing turned up.

  Then a curious thing happened. In the hospital, Barb began to make strange gestures. Bill and Billie thought she finally wanted to confess to the hijacking. But Barb’s condition had deteriorated. She could no longer talk. Then she was gone.

  “I have no doubt in my mind Bobby was D.B. Cooper,” Billie says. “I know it.”

  August 2000

  Pace, Florida

  Jo Weber does not leave her house. She has too much work decoding the clues Duane left her. Her friends stop calling. Her daughters are embarrassed by her obsession with the Cooper case. But how can Jo let it go? She has to find a piece of evidence to prove Duane is Cooper. She has to prove it because she needs to show everyone who doubts her that she isn’t making up this story—that she isn’t a loo-loo.

  She calls the FBI again. They don’t call back. What have they found? What are they hiding from her?

  After the story about Duane is published in U.S. News & World Report, Jo gets calls from all over the country. One of them is from Bob Knoss.

  Knoss knew Duane, he claims. He met Duane through Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. They were training for the hijacking together.