I am going to post a condensed verbatim version of Bruce's original interview with Dorwin Schreuder, Bruce posted at Dropzone in 2010. This can serve as a reference for future questions concerning the Tena Bar find, Schreuder, etc.
BruceSmith
Jan 17, 2010, 10:04 PM
Post #15853 of 58140 (53112 views)
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Re: [snowmman] Dorwin L. Schreuder FBI, alive? maybe bruce can interview [In reply to]
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In reply to:
The article I posted that named Schreuder as the agent "in charge" of the beach search, and making the "3 feet down" comment, spelled his first name wrong.
Notes, Dorwin Schreuder, Interview January 17, 2010
8 pm, Sunday, January 16, 2009
In a delightful two-hour phone conversation, I learned that Dorwin Schreuder was the FBI agent who took over the Portland office’s Norjak case from Ralph Himmelsbach when Himms retired in 1979.
Dorwin supervised the evidence retrieval operation at Tina’s Beach, although he was not the first FBI agent to arrive on the scene, which he believes was actually the field office agent from Vancouver, WA. He recalls getting a call to go out to Tina’ Beach and “bring lots of rakes and shovels.”
His Portland Public Information Officer (PIO) Billie Williams also called to say that he couldn’t make it to the site to handle the press and asked Dorwin to act as PIO for this portion of the investigation. Dorwin agreed and ultimately became the PIO for the Portland Office.
“There were a ton of media out there for days,” Dorwin said, referring to the scene at Tina’s Beach.
When they started, they visualized an informal grid pattern, radiating out for twenty yards from where Brian Ingram found the money and all the way down to the water.
“We went at it like archeologists,” Dorwin said, explaining that they preferred not using any heavy equipment initially. The usage of backhoes was much later in the retrieval.
In that initial search they found “thousands of teeny shards of money the size of a man’s fingernail, up to the size of a silver dollar.”
Dorwin said the pieces were well-preserved and layered in clean sand.
“No matter how deep we dug we found money – homogeneously mixed to a great depth.”
Dorwin said that most agents were digging at a depth of 1.5-2 feet deep and that they dug at least four holes “at least four deep.” He said they found shards in most holes and evenly placed all the way to the depth of four feet.
Dorwin also said that the dredger “Bedell” was parked off-shore in the Columbia, and he concluded as self-evident that the money had been shredded by the dredge and thrown up on the beach as part of deposition of material.
Outside of the 20-yard circle the shard finds diminished. Then they brought in the backhoes, but did not find any more shards of money.
However, Dorwin also said that they found “part of the leather briefcase – enough to contain the bundle that the little boy found (Brian Ingram).”
Dorwin continued to talk about the briefcase throughout our conversation, mentioning it several times, and specifically said that the portion they had retrieved was “about a third to half of the briefcase.”
At the end of our chat, I asked him if he was sure about the briefcase find, as I had never heard anyone else say that it was part of the findings at Tina’s Beach – or anywhere else.
He insisted on his statement.
When I told him that I had thought the money was tied up in a cloth satchel from the bank, he paused, and then very soberly said, “Hmmm, you’re beginning to make me doubt myself.”
We talked a bit more about this, and Dorwin confirmed that he was not at the site when the briefcase was found, since only the Ingrams were there, but, in addition, he had never actually handled the briefcase – or any of the evidence – at any point in the case.
He was a little hazy about the actions of the Seattle office, and when I asked him initially about the activities of the Seattle guys, he said, “Oh, yeah, they were involved,” but when I pressed him on how many, their names, and exactly what they did, he backed off and claimed that maybe it was only the Vancouver office agents that actually came on site and handled the evidence.
Dorwin believes that all the evidence ended up in Seattle. He thought that some of it was in the Portland office, too, for a time.
I asked him about the relationship between himself and the Seattle office, particularly with SAC Seattle Charlie Farrell, when Dorwin was the case officer for Norjak in Portland, he seemed to become a bit vague, but left me with the impression that he was confirming that Farrell was still SAC.
Dorwin was the Norjak case officer until his retirement, and his involvement with the case was minimal in the latter years. However, in the early 80s, he got about six strong leads a year and plenty of “wannabes” to check out.
The Norjak case file in Portland is enormous. Its shelf spans an entire wall.
“A lot of good work was done on that case.”
Dorwin believes that Cooper never survived the jump and “augured” somewhere, and the animals of the forest disposed of the remains. He believes that the money, “protected by the briefcase” made its way to the Columbia and got chewed up by the dredge and deposited at Tina’s Beach.
His voice had a trace of uncharacteristic frustration when he said, “We never found a thing, other than what was recovered at the beach.”
Dorwin also told me about his experiences negotiating with three different skyjackers. Dorwin has a Master’s Degree in Behavioral Sciences, and sounds like he was a superb negotiator.
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