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.The flight continued onwards andMcCoy bailed over Provo, Utah.McCoy had asked for all of his notes to be returned to him before hejumped, but Surdam kept one.A highway patrolman told police that hehad heard McCoy talk about how he was going to hijack a plane anddemand $500,000.They matched the handwriting on the hijacker s 264 Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in Americanote to McCoy s military record on file in Washington, D.C.He was alaw enforcement student at Brigham Young University, a helicopterpilot in Vietnam, active in the Mormon Church, and a skydivingenthusiast.POSSIBLE SUSPECTSWhen the FBI arrested McCoy, he had $499,970 in a cardboard box.They thought that he was D.B.Cooper and connected him to theNovember 1971 hijacking.He was ruled out, however, because hedidn t match the almost identical physical descriptions that flightattendants gave of Cooper.He had an alibi for the time of the Cooperhijacking and also ate Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utahthe afternoon following the Cooper hijacking.It seemed unlikely thathe was the man who had jumped into a terrible storm hours earlier.The crime of hijacking carried a penalty of 20 years to life in prison.McCoy was sentenced to 45 years behind bars.He subsequentlyescaped using a fake gun made from plaster of Paris and died in 1974during a shootout with the FBI when they attempted to recapture him.In the first year following the hijacking, a letter addressed to the NewYork Times was sent from the 902 area code that includes San Diegoand part of Orange County.It claimed to be from Cooper s brother,and said that the hijacker had died September 12, 1972, after an illness.The FBI searched death records for someone whose backgroundincluded a death after a lengthy illness, but they turned up no leads.A man who claimed to be D.B.Cooper bilked the editor of a LosAngeles weekly newspaper out of $30,000.He had shown the journalista photocopy of $20 bills with the same serial numbers as Cooper sransom money, but the FBI said that the photocopies had been altered.They arrested the man posing as Cooper and an intermediary inMay 1972.The accused were William John Lewis, also known asSeth Murphy, and Donald Sylvester Murphy who pretended to beD.B.Cooper.Despite the setbacks, the FBI doggedly pursued their investigation.In 1979, a hunter in Washington State found a heavy plastic placardthat was an emergency warning notice of the type posted next to therear exit of 727s.The notice, which was found in a wooded area, hadbeen missing from Cooper s 727 after he jumped. There isn t anyway that it could have come off a plane without the door being The Vanishing Hijacker: The Disappearance of D.B.Cooper (1971) 265opened, Cowlitz County sheriff Les Nelson said at the time. It sinconceivable, it s one in a million, that any other plane could have lostit in the area in which D.B.Cooper jumped. The placard was found six flying minutes from where he was believed to have jumped.On February 10, 1980, Harold Dwayne Ingram and his eight-year-oldson, Brian, were on a family picnic on the north bank of the ColumbiaRiver near Vancouver, Washington.Ingram, an aircraft assembly plantpainter, had an armload of wood and was about to build a fire.His sonpushed away some sand.Three bundles of money came into view.Brianhad found a package of $5,880 in decomposing $20 bills, damaged byprolonged exposure to water.Almost all of the money had crumbledaround the edges and some had shrunk to about the size of a businesscard.The bills were found in 12 bundles each of which was bound witha rubber band.The serial numbers matched 294 of the bills that Cooperhad been given.It was the only Cooper money ever to be recovered,and it was believed to have washed down from one of the ColumbiaRiver s tributaries.The FBI cordoned off the area to search for more money and possiblythe hijacker s remains. Our intent is to dig up this beach and see if wecan find any more bundles of money, or a suitcase maybe that he carriedit in, said a law enforcement official during the manhunt.FBI agentscombed the beach but were unable to find the other 9,706 bills.In 1986, Ingram and the insurance company for Northwest Orient eachreceived $2,760 of the money that Ingram found.The FBI kept 14 ofthe $20 bills in case Cooper is ever found and prosecuted.Over the years, a number of people have found parachutes that theybelieved Cooper had once used.In November 1979, a logger found onenear Kelso in southwestern Washington State
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