EVick is calling for us to take a closer look at Wolfgang Gossett, so I thought I'd start the balling rolling by posting my overview of "Wolfie," which is an excerpt from my book.
Of course, Galen is Da Man when it comes to Wolf, and I hope he will expand, develop, and clarify this primer of Gossett.
Chapter 19
The family confession of Wolfgang Gossett
Like Kenny Christiansen, another near-confession comes from the family of William “Wolfgang” Gossett, whose sons say that he confessed to being DB Cooper in the 1990s.
One of the sons, Greg Gossett, expanded upon this claim in 2009 on Coast-To-Coast radio, calling-in during a broadcast on DB Cooper that featured Cooper sleuth Galen Cook.
During the show, the younger Gossett said that his father had shown him keys to a safe deposit box in a Vancouver, BC bank where he said the $200,000 was stashed. However, the son does not know where those bank keys are presently.
Reportedly, the son made his claim about his father public in 2007.
As with all the other confessees and suspects, no one has produced any concrete evidence that links Gossett to Norjak, but the clues that do exist are tantalizing.
William “Wolfgang” Gossett was a former Marine, career Army officer, and highly skilled paratrooper. He possessed all the basic skills and physical appearances of Cooper - 5' 10", 185 pounds with brown eyes and short, dark hair parted on the left - Gossett even drank bourbon and smoked cigarettes. Oddly, when he left the Army in 1973, Gossett was stationed in Ft. Lewis, adjacent to McChord AB and just south of Sea-Tac Airport.
Further, Gossett had been stationed in Brienne la Chateau, France during the time that the Dan Cooper action comic books were available. In addition, Gossett could reportedly read and write in French.
Like Christiansen, however, Gossett is also deceased.
Even though Galen Cook has been a long-time Cooper investigator and has espoused others as the hijacker, these days he is primarily focused on Wolfgang as DB Cooper. Galen is writing a book on the skyjacking, but I do not know how close he is to finishing. I suspect he wants to prove Gossett is DB Cooper before he publishes.
Although Galen and I discuss Norjak copiously we do not talk much about Wolfgang and I think the reason is twofold – one, Galen is holding on to the juicy tidbits for his own book, and secondly, I’m not too ga-ga over Gossett.
In fact, I’m not too enthused over any single suspect, as my key interests are how well the FBI has investigated Norjak and the manner in which open-source sleuths are nibbling on the edges of the official investigatory enchilada. Quite frankly, I believe that when the DB Cooper case is solved and we hear Dan Cooper’s real name, we’ll say, “Who’s that?”
However, Galen has talked extensively about Gossett with a journalist named John Craig, who is published on a Yahoo “Voices” website:
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Login As a result, much of what I know of Gossett as the skyjacker comes from Mr. Craig and his Yahoo postings. I have been unsuccessful, though, in contacting Craig to discuss his work, and to learn how sensitive he may be about having some of it discussed here. However, Galen has asked me not to interview any of Gossett’s family members, and he welcomes my use of Craig’s writing.
Hence, here is what I know of William “Wolfgang” Gossett from the Craig/Cook partnership.
Gossett was born in San Diego in 1930, making him 41 on the date of the skyjacking. While in the military he was decorated for action in Korea and Vietnam, and was a trained survivalist.
William Gossett legally changed his name to Wolfgang Gossett in the second half of his life and preferred being called “Wolf.” He died of natural causes at 73 in Oregon.
Galen has told me that the FBI has not eliminated Gossett as a potential suspect in the case, and in many important ways Galen functions as a co-investigator with the FBI on Gossett, such as providing DNA samples and analysis.
Craig says that Gossett often spoke of the DB Cooper skyjacking to his friends and family, and reportedly told one of his four (possibly five) wives that he could "write the epitaph for D.B. Cooper."
Despite his many marriages, Cook says that Wolf was known to be a loner.
At the time of the skyjacking, Gossett worked at Weber State College in Ogden, Utah as a ROTC instructor. The details of his whereabouts on that Thanksgiving holiday weekend of 1971 are inconclusive, but he was scheduled to be at work at his teaching duties. Whether he actually showed up during the holiday is unknown, however.
As for family, he had separated from his first wife and was living alone in an apartment in Ogden, Utah.
Craig also writes that Wolf told his cousin, Charles Gossett, that he knew all about DB Cooper but could not discuss it with him.
In addition, Galen has claimed that Gossett confessed to the skyjacking to a close friend who was also a retired Salt Lake City judge. Craig gives the following account of this confession:
“The judge told Galen Cook: ‘In 1977, he walked into my office and closed the door and said he thought he might be in some trouble, that he was involved in a hijacking in Portland and Seattle a few years ago and that he might have left prints behind. He said he was DB Cooper. I told him to keep his mouth shut and don't do anything stupid, and not to bring it up again.’”
Wolf’s son, Greg Gossett, initiated the contact with Galen and provided the basic information on his father. Greg claimed his father was always strapped for money and had a gambling problem. He said his father showed him wads of cash just before the Christmas of 1971, only weeks after the skyjacking, and Greg believes his father stored some of his stash in a Vancouver, British Columbia safe deposit box and may have blown much of it at Las Vegas casinos.
Similarly, on the Coast to Coast radio show on November 26, 2011 a woman claiming to be William Gossett's niece said she remembered her uncle having an unusual large amount of money during Christmas, 1971.
In the Strange Twist Department, Gossett became a private detective after his military service and specialized in money fraud, exposing cults, and finding missing people. Most notably, he was commended by the FBI for his help in rescuing a woman from the Bhagwan Rajneesh's compound in Antelope, Oregon.
However, at the same time Gossett also began hiding his identity. He changed his name to Wolfgang and began wearing a goatee and moustache. In 1988, he even became an “Antioch” priest in the Old Catholic Church, Salt Lake City Diocese.
He further obfuscated his persona by never mentioning to his fellow ROTC instructors at Weber State that he had served ten years with the Marines and that he had parachute training, accomplishments most servicemen would be proud to acknowledge. Additionally, he never wore his jump wings on his uniform. However, late in life he stitched his wings to a head band that he wore while jogging.
Most surprisingly though, during this period Wolfgang became an expert in the paranormal, and he even hosted a call-in radio show on the subject on KCGL in Bountiful, Utah.
Clyde Lewis, the current host of “Ground Zero” talk radio, says that Wolfgang Gossett was not only a skilled paranormal investigator, but also was his mentor.
“He was my Obi Wan Kenobi,” Clyde told me in 2012 at the Ariel DB Cooper festival. “Everything I know about investigating the paranormal and doing a talk radio show, I learned from Wolfgang Gossett.”
Clyde also characterizes Wolfgang as “one of the best bull-shit artists I’ve ever met,” but Clyde also told me that Gossett could be very deliberate, as his work investigating missing persons was successful.
“He was a remarkable guy,” Clyde told me.
Wolfgang was also very psychic according to Leewis, and his mentor accurately forecasted Clyde’s life-threatening illness on a Mormon missionary trip that would prove to be life-transforming.
Clyde also told me that Wolfgang had a “dark side” to his personality and could be foul-mouthed and moody, and a gambling addiction worsened latter in life.
Unknowingly, Clyde crossed paths with Wolf much later in Oregon. After they last saw each other in Utah in 1996, Gossett moved to Depoe Bay on the Oregon coast, and eventually Clyde took his radio show to Portland.
After Wolfgang’s death, Clyde searched for information on his old friend and learned that Gossett had been living in Depoe Bay and was known to the locals as a guy who could blow $500 a night in machine poker games.
“He was a bad gambler, they told me,” Clyde said, clearly saddened.
But was he a good skyjacker?
