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a > SSS seated what’ happened next in a recent telephone interview. ~~ ~.“T think he wanted ta get out of the plane as 800N-aS jump,” he: said. “But he had trouble getting the : stairway open. He had to get Fina to help him. Then he was looking out in the dark, the wind blowing like Billy ~ Hell. It took a lot of time to work up his guts.” ¥ It took 35. minutes, in fact, for Cooper: to depart the. , craft, . According to Brown, ‘Coffelt recounted to him that as hs descended the rear staircase in, cold, blinding rain, turbulence jolted the plane and pitched him off before he could sight a beacon marking the’ location of a waiting partner. - '.Coffelt talked of tumbling through the storniy sky, trying frantically to open a faulty parachute on his back, then dropping the money as he. grabbed for a& chute on his chest, Brown said. \. Himmelsbach said one of the four. chutes was sewn up and given to the hijacker by accident. He denied, claims the faulty chute was. designed to’ foil the hijacker, emphasizing that ‘authorities ‘had. _feared Cooper planned to take a hostage with him. ar ideath, " the retired agent said. ie Coffelt told Brown he crashed to the ground. ina eanyon miles from his planned landing spot, ‘severely reformatory when he was 15, ‘winding up in federal _penitentiaries in Atlanta and. Leavenworth, a After leaving Leavenworth, he attended the Univer- ‘ “it,took off, as soon as the plane was high enough ‘to’ sity of Kansas at Lawrence, then lived in Lawrence off - ~Himmelsbach said years of searching for Dan Cooper —~ who mistakenly was dubbed D.B. when a reporter wrote a story using hearsay information from police — have convinced him Cooper was ‘ ‘a loser, an ex-con who was reaching the end of his string.” __ The description fits Coffelt, who was born in Joplin, ° ‘Mo., in 1916, raised in Picher, Okla., sentenced to a. and on afterward. Robert. Hoyt, a Lawrence resident and technical . writer for the CIA, said he knew Coffelt for years. “Jack was full of stories, some of which were true -and some of which weren't,” Hoyt said. “Sometimes he , “had stories about the FBI. I don’t know that he was | ever seriously involved with them, but they knew every time he came to town.” Coffelt bragged of working with the FBI and CIA and flashed FBI identification, _ according to both: Brown and Hoyt. — In Portland, FBI agent Dorwin Schreuder said that he: had “heard of Coffelt’s alleged participation” in. the * ‘hijacking through Brown’s work but when asked; ' whether Coffelt ever had worked for the agency, he: ‘injuring his legs. He eventually was able to rendezvous ~ with his unidentified partner, but he, his partner, the Browns and an army of authorities 1 never were e able to find the loot. ; ; ‘ . ' About $5,000 in bills with serial numbers ‘watching ; ‘those on the money given to Cooper was found ona sand bar near Vancouver, Wash., iri February 1980, but the remainder is believed to be molderng in the rugged Cascade Mountain foothills, 7 pes ae replied, “The FBI never comments on the use ‘of its’: informants one way or another.” Reached in Hawaii, where her husband died of a _ heart attack in 1976, Tave Coffelt refused to discuss his . ; ‘ -* past. '.. “We don’t have the right. to sentence someone to 2B Robert L. Dobbs, a Memiphis attorney who had represented Jack Coffelt, said the ex-con had claimed . to do undercover work for the FBI. He said Coffelt : once boasted, “With my reputation, I can get in with - any criminal that they. might want to check on.” - Dobbs said he knew Coffelt had been in Portland’: shortly before the hijacking. Could his client have been : * “He was the type of person who ‘wanted to d the elusive Cooper? something daring and original before he teft a Earth," Dobbs responded. “He'd come up with the . spectacular, that’s for sure.” DB Cooper-185