Americana: Bank Deposit

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D.B. Cooper, where are you now?

We're looking for you high and low.

With your pleasant smile,

And your dropout style,

D.B. Cooper, where did you go?*

That question has also been asked by FBI agents, ever since D.B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 in 1971, extorted $200,000 and four parachutes from Northwest Airlines, and bailed out at 7,000 ft. over rolling wooded hills near La Center in the state of Washington. No trace was ever found of the ransom or Cooper, who soon became a local folk hero.

Then last week eight-year-old Brian Ingram dug a dozen packets of weathered $20 bills from a bank of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Wash. The FBI determined from the serial numbers that the $4,000 was part of Cooper's loot. Using picks and shovels, agents unearthed fragments of several more bills, some buried 3 ft. deep. FBI officials speculate that the money and Cooper landed somewhere upstream and that floods washed the bills to their final resting place. Said FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who has been investigating the hijacking for more than eight years: "The money didn't make it out. As for whether Cooper did, I'll leave that to conjecture."