Hijacker Found Dead; Homemade Chute Failed

MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - The body of a man who hijacked a Philippines passenger jet was found Friday buried deep in mud after his homemade parachute fell off when he jumped from the plane.

``The body was embedded in the ground with only the hands protruding,'' national police chief Panfilo Lacson told reporters after the body was discovered near a reservoir at Liabac, east of Manila.

A homemade, lavender-colored parachute was found nearby.

Liabac village chief Basilio Gesmundo told local radio he saw a parachute open after a person jumped from the Philippine Airlines Airbus A330 as it flew over his village Thursday.

``I saw the parachute separate from the person,'' he said.

The pilot of the hijacked airliner described the hijacker as a jilted husband. He wore a blue bonnet and threatened passengers and crew with a grenade and a gun after he hijacked the domestic flight en route from Davao city to Manila on Thursday.

After robbing the passengers and crew, he forced the pilot to take the plane down to 6,000 feet before jumping out.

The plane later landed safely in Manila. It was the country's first hijacking since 1982.

Senior superintendent Marcelo Ele, from the air force aviation security agency, said the man had never sky-dived before.

``I would say he's an adventurer or a man fantasizing about being a skydiver,'' he said. ``Using that kind of parachute would be plain and simple suicide.''

********

See what happens to "jilted" husbands? They go nuts!

Whaddya think, does he deserve the Darwin Award?

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), May 27, 2000

Answers

Maybe he should have told the pilot to take the plane down to 10 feet instead of 6,000 feet!

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 27, 2000.

One vote for the Darwin Award on this one.

-- E.H. Porter (Just Wondering@About.it), May 27, 2000.

Two more votes for Darwin award...mine and the woman who jilted this guy. [I suspect he had a LOT going for him towards the Darwin awards BEFORE his wife jilted him.]

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 27, 2000.

A lavender parachute and a blue bonnet!??!!? Tsk. No fashion sense at all.

In another version I was, it was mentioned that one of the flight attendents "helped" (i.e., pushed) him out the door as he was preparing to jump.

No need to vote. Darwin Award, all the way. The only thing that would have absolutely clinched it for this guy is if he'd jumped out with an opened umbrella instead of a lavender (!) parachute.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), May 27, 2000.

Lol! No wonder he didn't have his chute on!

Good thing his hands were sticking up, otherwise they might have never found their money! Of course the money probably had to be "laundered" after they found it.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 27, 2000.

Thats,the funny thing,Hawk.the money hasn't been found.Now why does that not surprise me?

Dawin Award for sure.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), May 27, 2000.

Yep. Darwin Award fer sur.

Hawk: are you currently "flying at a great height" or simply "Flying in an altered state" of some type?

Just curious.

-- (bigmouth@goinghome.now), May 27, 2000.

Actually, my original e-mail address "flyin@high.again" was inspired by the Ozzy Osbourne song "Crazy Train". It has a double meaning of simply flying high like a hawk, and that I am high on life. Recently shortened it because it's faster to type and also serves as a greeting. Don't do drugs if that is what you're wondering (not anymore anyway). :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 27, 2000.

Hi,Scotty,long time no rant.Thanks for following up on this.

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 27, 2000.

So Hawk, is that the way YOU went nuts? (jilted husband)

btw: Crazy Train and Flying High Again are two different song.

All aboard! ahahahahaha

-- x (x@x.x), May 28, 2000.

Kiss my ass, TROLL! :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 28, 2000.

When I first saw this original post I must admitt, I thought, nah, not interested.

But Hawk^^^^^^ nice to see you in 'original' form....LOL...

Gotta admit, it is 8:19 sunday, raining like heck, gotta picnic to go to, and I NEEDED that laugh.....

Keep flying high hawk, and for those interested, Hawk what is the name of the thread where all of us admitted past experiences (almost all) w/experimenting?

Imho, that was the funnies thread yet!!!!!!!!!

----sumer who is bumming over rain :-(

-- consumer (shh@aol.com), May 28, 2000.

This should have been the way the skydiving episode in the Keven Costner movie Fandango ended.

-- John Thomas (cjseed@webtv.net), May 28, 2000.

LOl consumer! "Coke or Pepsi" was the thread you're thinking of, I think. Your story about getting your fingers stuck while "luded" was hilarious. Those were the days! :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 28, 2000.

``The body was embedded in the ground with only the hands protruding,'' Wow. And can you imagine walking up and discovering this sight?

The story reminds me of that guy who bailed out of a jet in the 70s (?). DB Cooper? As I recall, they never did find him, either dead or alive. Anybody know the latest? Was it the final conclusion that he *did* die in the jump?

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), May 28, 2000.

Cooper changed his first name and is making millions as a rock star named Alice. The Feds don't have a clue. :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), May 28, 2000.

A lavender parachute? This guy must have been gay. You are all homophobes.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), May 28, 2000.

What a strangely contradictory thing to say....

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 30, 2000.

Zoobie,

A feeble attempt at absurdist humor. no offense intended. You do know that Lavender is the official Gay color don't you?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), May 30, 2000.

Sounds like you are the homophobe nemesis.

-- Richard Simmons (gay@as.hell), May 30, 2000.

Richard,

Some of my best friends are homophobes.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), May 30, 2000.

"Candidate"? Jeez, this dude's the WINNER. Think of how incredibly stupid the NEXT act would have to be to beat this guy.

Uh, yeah, nevermind that I said that.

As to DB Cooper, they've recently (few months ago?) found what was left of about $5000 of the money he jumped with in the approximate vicinity where they thought he would have landed. They found the partially decomposed money along the banks of a river (I think). It also appeared to have become "unearthed" somehow.

They still haven't found Cooper, but if I had to guess, and using this current Rocket Scientist as a basis, he, um, might have been "buried" somewhere in that vicinity.

Somehow it's kind of comforting to know that we're breeding really stupid criminals. Then again, somehow it's kind of unsettling at the same time.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 30, 2000.

Patricia, the recovered money you speak of was found in 1980. Here is the latest on the legendary Mr. Cooper.

D. B. Cooper, where are you?

It's been 25 years since he took that big step out of a Boeing 727 at 10,000 feet, yet tips on D.B. Cooper still trickle in.

One of the most daring -- or dumbest -- criminals ever remains at large, having either flouted the laws of society or been foiled by the law of gravity.

"It's still a pending investigation," says Seattle-based FBI agent Ray Lauer, who adds that the case will stay open "probably forever."

The FBI here still stores 60 volumes of interviews and other documents telling how Cooper hijacked a jetliner, demanded and received $200,000, then jumped from the plane over the Cascade Mountains of southwestern Washington and into legend.

He hasn't been heard from since, although $5,880 of his loot was found by a boy playing on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980.

A few taverns and restaurants mark the anniversary of the nation's only unsolved skyjacking case. And now and then someone calls the FBI with a tip or suggestion.

"Surprisingly, yeah, we still get quite a few of them," Lauer says. "They tend to come in spurts, when they might get two to four in a week, then might not get any more tips for several months."

The FBI dutifully checks them out.

Wherever Cooper is, it's a safe bet his skydiving days are over: If he survived, he'd be 70 or older now.

On Nov. 24, 1971, the night before Thanksgiving, a man in his mid-40s wearing dark glasses boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines plane in Portland.

He bought a ticket under the name Dan Cooper -- a law enforcement official later erroneously referred to him as "D.B." and the initials stuck -- and took seat 18F in coach. He ordered a bourbon and water and handed flight attendant Flo Schaffner a note.

He apparently lacked a strong criminal presence; the busy Schaffner stuck the paper in her pocket, thinking it was a mash note, according to an account published in Northwest's 1986 corporate history, "Flight to the Top."

Not until takeoff did she bother to read the message: "Miss, I've got a bomb, come sit next to me -- you're being hijacked."

Fellow cabin attendant Tina Mucklow Larson recounted how she and Schaffner relayed dozens of messages from Cooper to the cockpit -- including his demands for $200,000 in used $20 bills and four parachutes.

He had no unusual characteristics, Larson recalled. He wore a dark suit, dark tie, white shirt and the sunglasses, which he never took off, and chain-smoked.

He also had a black briefcase, which he opened for Larson, showing her a couple of red cylinders, wires and a battery.

He collected the money, provided by the airline, during a stop at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the 36 passengers and two flight attendants were released. Larson and the two pilots remained on board. Cooper demanded the plane be flown to Mexico, agreeing to a refueling stop at Reno.

Just after takeoff, Larson said, Cooper asked how to lower the rear stairs of the 727, the only jetliner equipped with that feature. He then told her to go to the front of the plane and pull the first- class curtain shut.

About 40 minutes after takeoff, the cockpit's stair signal light flashed on. When the jet landed in Reno, the stairs were down and Cooper was missing, along with the money and two parachutes.

Such an exit would be impossible today: Cooper's lasting contribution to aircraft design is the "Cooper Vane," a latching device on Boeing 727s that prevents the tail stairway from being lowered in flight.

Cooper dove into a freezing rainstorm at 10,000 feet, wearing only a business suit and loafers. The temperature was 7 below zero, not counting a wind chill factor estimated at minus 70 because of the plane's speed of 200 mph.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent assigned to the case before his retirement in 1980, has long maintained Cooper was a bumbler and a fool.

If the cold didn't kill him, if he withstood the powerful turbulence, Cooper was still parachuting into dense forest at night, at the onset of winter, with no food or survival gear.

"It was a bad place to land, and it is doubtful we would ever find the body," Himmelsbach said in a 1991 interview. "This was a desperate act you wouldn't expect from a normal man in his mid-40s. This was something you would expect from somebody who had nothing to lose."

Himmelsbach believes Cooper either landed in the Columbia and drowned, or died in the mountains and the money was washed out.

An extensive search turned up no traces. Nine years later, Mount St. Helens erupted and blanketed much of the area with ash. If hikers or hunters have stumbled across Cooper since, they've kept his secret.

Each year, celebrations are held at restaurants named D.B. Cooper in Salt Lake City and San Jose, and at a little bar in Ariel in southwestern Washington where, legend has it, Cooper paid an anonymous visit.

Dona Elliott, who has owned the Ariel Store for six years, says she wishes she had started keeping track of all the men who come in claiming to be Cooper.

The latest addition to her Cooper memorabilia is a flier from a Florida woman with a photo of her late husband. The woman said he confessed on his deathbed in 1995 to being Cooper.

"What do you think?" asked Elliott, while holding a photograph of the man next to a FBI composite drawing of Cooper. The man in the photo appeared to be at least a decade older.

The Ariel shindig will be held Nov. 30. The annual "Jump Night" at the Salt Lake establishment is Wednesday, and owner Basil Chelemes promises live music, free hors d'oeuvres and a trivia contest.

He'll decide on the contest prize -- either a trip for two to Seattle or free skydiving lessons -- after checking with his insurance agent.

"I just want to see if we can be held liable for the parachute lessons," Chelemes said.

-- Ra (tion@l.1), May 30, 2000.

Thanks, Ra. I think I had SEEN the documentary a few months ago and blew it from there. (Oops.) I still think it's one of the most fascinating "unsolved mysteries". Would really love to know whatever happened to old DB. I would guess he froze in the mountains because he apparently wasn't properly dressed for the climate, at least according to the witnesses on the plane.

Then again, no one really knows, which is what makes it a great mystery.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), May 31, 2000.

Ra,

Thanks for the info. If some Scout found part of the cash, he probably died, but it's a heck of a story.

It really seems stupid to me though, how long could you live on 200k anyhow? Not long enough to risk your life like that.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 31, 2000.

200k in those days was like a million now.

-- (could.be.set@for.life), May 31, 2000.

Oh wow, for a minute there, I thought this was another anti-gay thread.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 31, 2000.

The D.B. Cooper saga will go down in American Folklore as one of the great-unsolved mysteries of our time. I believe that Mr. Cooper survived the jump but was seriously injured and perished in the wild. The fact that the young boy found 5 grand on the shores of the Columbia River suggests the possibility that the rest of the money was also found but not reported. In any case this will be fodder for the imagination for generations to come.

-- Willy (from@old.Philly), May 31, 2000.