The Cold Case Team has received the final piece of the 1971 “NORJAK” puzzle: the inside story of the hijacker’s getaway, with the help of 3 partners. Adding weight to this are matching facts found in FBI field reports (released by court order), a newsman’s forgotten eyewitness interviews, and forensic materials just uncovered at a dig site.
The genesis of this development comes from an unassuming Oregon couple: RUSS COOPER (No joke; 62), a construction company owner and recreational pilot, and his wife KRISTY (60), a retired senior administrator for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and a reserve officer. Between work, grandkid visits and caring for ailing family members, this pair finds time each week to sit on a citizen advisory board for their local police department.
Two decades ago, Russ claims an aviator (below) discreetly told him and three other members at their local flying club the alleged escape’s details. After sharing it years later with his new cop-bride, they decided to contact the FBI in 2007. But even with her police creds and a lawyer’s help, Kristy couldn’t get a return call from either the Portland or Seattle field offices. Now with the four other club members deceased (including the storyteller), the pair are trying again to go public, this time through Thomas J. Colbert (TJC). The couple called him on 3/2/17 after hearing of the Bureau FOIA suit involving his team of 40 private investigators – led by former FBI.
In 1997, Russ (then 42) was elected VP of his antique airplane chapter at Ever-green Field in Clark County, WA. When he walked in on four “old timers” (in their 60s) at a clubhouse coffee klatch, one of them – a “very serious” 10-year pilot named WALLY – asked if Russ could be trusted.1 Fellow flyers put Wally at ease, saying the young VP was “not from the area and not a talker.” In truth though, the low-key Russ had grown up there as a teenager
Wally, an 82nd Airborne veteran, proceeded to tell the story (all in the 3rd person) involving “a light-plane pilot” that had been tasked to fly D.B. Cooper out of his night drop zone in the farmlands near La Center, Washington
On Nov. 24, 1971, the pilot’s small Cessna was circling after 8 pm when the slow-moving Northwest airliner broke through the storm clouds and rain. Minutes later, the pilot spotted a truck’s blinking headlights below, a signal that the daredevil had touched down and rendezvoused with two other partners.2 All their practiced air-to-ground coordination paid off; the jumper missed the selected drop zone by only 1300 feet.3 The flyer’s two-seater aircraft then swooped towards nearby Goheen Airstrip to await the arrival of the vehicle and Cooper.
When the three men pulled up to the idling Cessna, the hijacker crawled inside with his briefcase bomb and $50,000 of the jet ransom. The remaining $150K and parachute were driven away by the two others to be buried.
Flying “below the radar,” the pilot and Cooper followed three rivers to Vancouver Lake where the alleged $50,000 and briefcase bomb were unceremoniously dumped – with the hopes, Wally explained, that it would lead authorities to think Cooper had drowned. FYI: The money and briefcase instead sank into the lake’s notorious deep mud – which happens to be right next door to the Columbia River’s Tena Bar. TJC now suspects the hijack money that was “discovered” there in 1980 was Cooper’s second attempt at a drowning stunt.
The pilot and skyjacker then flew to Oregon’s Scappoose Airstrip where they transferred everything into another small plane. Storyteller Wally noted this was when Cooper changed out of his business suit.
The pair’s last landing was at the hijack’s starting point, Portland International Airport, where the two parted ways at a terminal. FYI: TJC believes Wally was in fact one of the two on the burial crew; his plot’s validated details also appear to point at a one-time FBI Cooper suspect – a suspect the Cold Case Team has been trailing for six years. (Research supporting the 9 superscripts starts on p. 7; background on the team’s former suspect is on pgs. 9-12.)
Source Russ committed Wally’s 1971 escape story to memory. Then later, he and Kristy reviewed flight charts and traveled the full route – including to the alleged burial site of Cooper’s parachute and remaining cash.
Eight 1971 eyewitness accounts from farm families near the La Center drop zone have given credibility to this complex getaway tale. Though their testimonials officially went no further than the FBI, bits and pieces of it were eventually picked up by a newspaper (p. 13), a TV show and four credible books – three of which were authored by retired Bureau special agents.
The most senior former FBI member on TJC’s team, Assistant Director William M. Baker (Criminal Investigative Division; his 1980 photo is on page
, was first to receive a complete briefing on all of these new developments. He stated, “Look…this is more than a theory, and you have a [living suspect] that has all the attributes of someone to do this successfully. These are issues that have to be examined and weighed” by the Bureau. “I’m all for it.”
