Famed skyjacker's loot is up for sale

MENA, Ark. — D.B. Cooper.

For most with a clear memory of the 1970s, the name evokes images of a daring heist: A skyjacker who jumped from a commercial airliner in 1971 with $200,000 in ransom money and vanished. His is the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.

For Oklahoma native Brian Ingram, the name and enduring mystery are much more personal.

Ingram, 36, and now living in Mena, Ark., became forever linked with the famed case in 1980 when as a child he discovered three bundles of fragmented money buried in the sandy banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Wash. FBI agents quickly authenticated the money at the time as part of the Cooper ransom by matching serial numbers on the wadded, weather-worn $20 bills.

Ingram says its time to sell of the famed bills, which are stored in a bank vault.

"I have a lot of reasons for wanting to sell some of the money now,” said Ingram, a 1990 Sallisaw High School graduate. "I've had the money for so long now. I thought it would be nice if someone else — perhaps some longtime buff of the D.B. Cooper case — got to enjoy owning some of the bills.

"Besides, maybe I can put a few kids through college, too.”

Ingram's timing could be based on the FBI's recent announcement that it was launching a new effort to crack the 37-year-old case. In November, the FBI posted a new Web page on the Cooper case, enticing the public to "Help Us Solve the Enduring Mystery.” The man known by the alias "D.B. Cooper” has never been identified, and the mystery over whether he survived the jump that fateful night remains unsolved.

FBI agent Larry Carr thought of the idea after the notorious cold case landed on his desk.

"I knew the agency wouldn't commit the manpower and resources to this case given that it's so old,” Carr said from his Seattle office. "So I figured I could either take my one or two new leads every week and stick them in a file, or take the case to the public and ask for help. Maybe it will jar a few memories. It's really a rather rare approach for the FBI.”

"This is really the ultimate who-done-it mystery in the his- tory of American crime. What happened to D.B. Cooper?”

Dwayne and Patricia Ingram enjoyed taking their two boys to a little stretch of sandy beach on the Columbia R