Was that parachute used by skyjacker D.B. Cooper?

Star Tribune

The serial number 30755 and the date Feb. 21, 1946, are stamped on a parachute found in North Clark County, Wash. The FBI is trying to determine if it is the parachute used by the airline robber known as D.B. Cooper.

Star Tribune

Last update: March 26, 2008 - 7:18 AM

Print this story

More from Nation

There could be a major break in one of the biggest crime mysteries in the country. The FBI in Seattle is analyzing a parachute that may have been used by skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

In 1971, Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up a Northwest Orient Airliner. He received 200-thousand dollars in ransom and strapped 21 pounds of 20- dollar bills to his body. He then jumped out of the 727 with a parachute on the flight from Seattle to Portland.

He was never seen again, dead or alive.

Fast forward to 2008, a couple of weeks ago the children of a Clark County contractor found the parachute buried in a field that their father had recently plowed for a road.

The chute is white and conical shaped, dirty and deteriorated. Seattle FBI Agent Larry Carr will clean it and search for a label, which could match the chute

to a companion reserve chute left behind by Cooper in the plane. Carr, who's now in charge of the Cooper case, says the parachute was found near the center of the original jump zone identified by searchers in November 1971, between the towns of Ariel and Amboy, Washington.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found 58-hundred dollars of the loot on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver, Washington.

How it got there is another mystery. Some scientists believed the money bag traveled down the Washougal River, which is upstream from the beach, miles from where this parachute was recently found.

The Clark County property owner says the plow blade unearthed something. He didn't notice it at first, but later his children, playing there, saw some cloth sticking above the earth. They pulled on it, and more cloth came out. They kept pulling, until the chute's shroud lines appeared. They cut them and notified

the FBI in Seattle. Part of the chute remains buried in the field and will need to be dug out with heavy equipment.

Agent Carr showed other evidence items in his possession, including Cooper's clip-on tie and clasp, from which FBI forensics experts were able to extract

the hijacker's DNA. The agency is releasing this information to the public, hoping it will produce more information about the hijacking case.