◆ SpookStack

aft OO tin, Se gh bly ratrands $31 p “handed over, But-I" insisted on ‘seeing 4 the real money, whereupon: Thomas;* ad extracted a wallet and produced . three “-f erisp $20 bills. I: checked_ their” “serial of numbers ° ‘against _ the. . FBI. li "-* matched... ‘te Bee wae ht pe the three $20 bills. “And I have $199, 90:7 , More of them buried in the ground that" I will be happy to give you in exchange + ‘ for other bills,” he said. TU told him I": ‘ didn't think I wanted to have any stolen. y - t bills in my possession. - Ce tee ae T continued to hesitate, prodding Coop-.:; ‘er to yield up details of the hijacking" few of which had appeared In the press. - He began hesitantly, but soon Ccon- ; Avinced me I had the right man. Subse- quently I handed over the money, with | the stipulation that it be held for Coop: -,” er’s legal defense were he caught. What — - helped convinced me was what Cooper _ Said was his motive... - *. wt ’ He. was raised in an authoritarian _ Catholic household, Cooper said, and T Cooper’ was anxious to have the moneys vs you'll get the gold watch or whatever. " Ri; That | was DB. Cooper, and that was * "the way he had lived his life, patiently - “hoeing out the row, obeying the rules, v ‘and waiting to cash-in on the American Dream, as advertised ete ae Bitter Payoff ° fea His payoff, he related bitterly, came one day when he went to his Boeing desk “and found a pink slip of dismissal. He “was crushed. lm, . “It made me feel just like the first . ‘time I jumped out of an airplane.. just bereft of’ everything that's inside . . you, that’s all,” he said. . : He was being replaced, he discovered, by a man 15 years his junior, a junior man he had carefully trained. He had ‘*: been a believer, an unquestioning cog, but now a jolt of hard truth hit him: “You're dead wood. If they could, they'd warded, Because besides’ your pay? * i ‘check and your anhual leave and your™, ‘vacation, if you get a little higher up, ; you can look forward to a bonus and the... pension and be well-fed and, of course, me) deteriorating. He began. to contemplate:; - be the way. He tried, but he’ ‘couldn't’ ‘do it. The Catholic Church had instilled too strongly in him that suicide, like marital infidelity, is a sin. hy $ on an At home ‘every “day, he read a lot of. " newspapers. They were full of hijacking’” which he read after vainly ‘ _ Searching the, classified Job, Section:;: “agg then, I started thinking about it” “he said. “The more I thought about it, stories, the more I. thought how easy it would be. Because the security is very weak, very. lax, almost non-existent. So I started’ to organize, mentally, to do this. I would * ; go on with everyday living. But I would * _ begin to think about this in earnest.” : - Then followed a period of moral wrestling. “There’s the code: you can't take what's not yours. But wait a minute. — Who says it’s not mine? Where would this money come from? Either the Stock- holders or the company that insures | them. Now, wait a minute. Insurance. : Who has a strangle hold onthe American © economy? Insurance: companies, And suicide. Pills, he finally decided, ‘would : cao “the insurance: companies, They’re ‘buyi g Ding | build! - didn't pay taxes. And look at the ‘oil “companies. I could put the money I would steal down as a | depletion a, en, Kart Fleming and D. B, Cooper H | ‘to hide the money, They’ re loaning money. They're ing skyscrapers. They’re into ever, hing. many millionaires made $1 last year and lowance,” Cooper said. ° 34 a So he planned. “! didn't ‘want: anything I had up, and in order thing. And then I was, if you'll ardog the expression, very much pissed off tight then. So more and more, I planned, for over a year, and still I was nét sure wot I would go through with it. But y bit- ‘terness was changing to hard eynietsm, an If he did it, how much money would he’ ask? Had he worked at Boeing to > retire- 4 how | maintain what I had, I had to dosome- ment, his annual income, with company . re EN PART ENS ih" a COND eA PUTO OD Oey, SOANM ENOL FROIN M TN OT ONOANM TNO ONO pet ' QDANMeNOr wo . . deh PREG YE LE pay . we feted Bet ey deen fe eG i PAT Fey tent BLE AT o akle aL . Ra aH Ct 186 0d wot ttle WEA te ET Dae vieteed pat Olah ce on aes East PhAST RPA i TNC aa RNA BES SH ' . .