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COPYRIGHT 2001 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
SEATTLE _ If you believe a persuasive San Diego cabdriver, D.B. Cooper was a drifter and card player who died of a cocaine overdose in California 15 years after skyjacking a Northwest Airlines jet between Portland and Seattle.
If you believe an equally insistent Florida real estate agent, D.B. Cooper was her late husband, a chain-smoking ex-con who revealed his true identity to her six years ago as he lay dying of kidney disease in a Pensacola hospital.
And if you believe the FBI, the notorious skyjacker, after parachuting out of the plane at 10,000 feet with a 21-pound satchel of ransom money strapped to his chest, died in the jump. No matter that his body has never been found.
Three decades later, the only unsolved skyjacking in the country's history continues to fascinate mystery lovers, with many hoping the passenger known as D.B. Cooper _ who physically hurt no one, except possibly himself _ landed safely with the loot and got away.
"He's our Jesse James and Billy the Kid," said Jerry Thomas of Jefferson County, a retired Army infantryman who has made it his mission to scour the backwoods of Southwest Washington for any sign of Cooper.
Even law-abiding Americans have a history of rooting for the underdog, and "here's a little guy all by himself who reached up and tweaked Uncle Sam's nose and took $200,000 from a major corporation" and may have gotten away with it, said retired FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who spent years searching for Cooper and wrote a book about the case.
It almost doesn't matter if Cooper is dead; for 30 years, his legend has lived on.
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On Nov. 24, 1971, a tall, dark-complexioned passenger identifying himself as Dan Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 on a stormy Thanksgiving Eve, demanded and got $200,000 and parachutes, then jumped from the rear of the plane into history.
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