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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 17, 2018 Washington researcher safe after wolf encounter By COURTNEY FLATT Northwest Public Broadcasting Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Lylah Huff watches fireworks on the Fourth of July. Astoria hears concerns about fireworks One resident calls for a ban By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian Astoria city council- ors briefly discussed a possi- ble ban on fireworks Monday after Mayor Arline LaMear received a letter from a resi- dent worried about how the celebratory explosives impact the city. The writer asked for a ban on the sale of fireworks in Astoria, LaMear told coun- cilors. LaMear asked if there was anything the City Council could do to give the police and fire departments “a little more clout” in dealing with fire- works complaints. But the majority of the council didn’t support moving ahead with any kind of discus- sion to institute a ban. City Councilor Bruce Jones and Police Chief Geoff Spald- ing pointed out that legal fire- works aren’t the main prob- lem. It’s the illegal fireworks that people continue to buy and light off despite the restric- tions in place. Police and fire personnel already have trouble enforcing the rules for these explosives, a problem many communities large and small share, Spalding said. A ban would just be a way to make a statement, City Councilor Tom Brownson said. “If we want to make a state- ment, I think we could have that discussion, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to effectively stop this as much as I agree to a certain extent.” Though, he added, “I don’t want to ban sparklers.” The city already has so many issues to prioritize, City Councilor Zetty Nemlowill said, but the letter writer is not the only one concerned about fireworks. “Perhaps you bringing this up here will bring some other citizens out of the woodwork,” Nemlowill told LaMear, add- ing, “If there’s going to be any kind of movement here, and I think there’s some merit to it, we need to hear from the cit- izens if they want a change.” Thanks to quick think- ing, a tree and a helicop- ter, a salmon researcher in Washington state was able to evade two wolves she couldn’t scare off. Biologists who visited the spot Friday to investigate the incident attributed the rare wolf-human interaction to the presence of wolf pups nearby. Authorities haven’t released the name of the stu- dent researcher involved. She could not be reached for comment. However, authori- ties have reconstructed what happened. It started out as a nor- mal morning of survey- ing streams in the Okano- gan-Wenatchee National Forest. Then the seasonal Forest Service employee started to notice wolf tracks and heard yipping and barking. A little while later, two wolves from the Loup Loup pack appeared. The student yelled and tried to wave them away. She sprayed bear spray, but nothing worked. That’s when she climbed 30 feet up a tree to escape. She climbed back down when she thought it was safe, only to encounter the wolves again. She called for help on a satellite phone and was rescued by a Washing- ton Department of Natural Resources helicopter. The helicopter was able to scare the wolves away and fly the researcher to safety. It was an unusual situation for the pilots — typically they’re used in wildland firefight- ing and have been deployed all over the state for that purpose. “To my knowledge this is the first time that we have rescued a biologist from a tree with wolves at the base,” said Hilary Franz, Washing- ton’s commissioner of pub- lic lands. Franz said the Depart- ment of Natural Resources, which she oversees, has helped respond to other res- cues and accidents when pilots are able to. Officials say the salmon researcher did everything right — and they’re not sure what went wrong. Okanogan County Sher- iff Frank Rogers says peo- ple need to be aware of their surroundings. “I’ve tried to tell people, it’s not like the movies. The wolves aren’t running around in packs hunting humans. But if you see a pack, don’t antagonize it. If it’s feeding, for God’s sake, stay away from it. If you run upon a den, stay away from it,” Rog- ers said. New documentary hopes to unravel Cooper mystery Another theory into the famous skyjacking By TOM BANSE Northwest News Network The legend and theoriz- ing about Northwest skyjacker D.B. Cooper just won’t die. A new documentary about the unsolved 1971 hijacking introduces a new twist to the tale: It suggests we might have been looking for D.B. Cooper and his loot in the wrong place for all these years. The makers of the four- part video literally rolled out a red carpet for the sold- out premiere of “D.B. Coo- per: The Real Story.” It hap- pened at a community center in Cle Elum, Washington, on Saturday. The town in the eastern foothills of the Cascades was chosen deliberately because Cle Elum is the closest town to where former Army para- trooper Walter Reca said he landed after he jumped out of a hijacked Boeing 727 with a $200,000 ransom tied to his chest. Decades later, Reca con- fessed to a close friend and to a niece that he committed the hijacking under the pseudonym Cooper and made a clean get- away. He allowed himself to be recorded by the friend, Carl Laurin, with the understanding that the secret not be revealed until after Reca’s death, which came in 2014. The written and recorded confessions are at the heart of the new documentary and a book released in May that cov- ers the same ground, both from Michigan-based publisher Principia Media. If you remember your Coo- per lore, you’ll know the jump zone has always been assumed to be over southwest Wash- ington, close to Portland. The airline, the FBI and ama- teur sleuths have analyzed the flight path many times. No one else has placed the jump over central Washington. Principia Media Walter Reca during a visit home in 1984. Laurin asserts the FBI “bungled” this high profile case or purposely misdirected searchers away from the cor- rect jump zone. “Do I believe that there was a cover-up here?” Laurin asked rhetorically in an inter- view. “Let me put it this way, it’s the only honest answer I can come up with. D.B. Coo- per jumped over Cle Elum.” On the afternoon of Nov. 24, 1971, Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines plane in Portland with a one- way ticket to Seattle. He passed a note to a stewardess indicating he had a bomb in his briefcase. He subsequently negotiated to exchange the pas- sengers in Seattle for $200,000 in ransom and four parachutes. He also got the authorities to refuel the plane and said he wanted to be flown to Mexico. Shortly after takeoff from Seattle, the remaining flight crew — which had retreated to the cockpit — noticed a warn- ing light indicating deploy- ment of the jet’s aft stairs. Coo- per is believed to have jumped from the stairs a few minutes later at an altitude of 10,000 feet into a frigid Thanksgiving Eve storm. He was never seen again. The plane landed safely in Reno, Nevada, for a planned refueling stop a few hours later without Cooper on board. The FBI effectively closed the Cooper case in 2016. The bureau said it won’t reopen the cold case unless someone comes up with relevant phys- ical evidence such as the para- chutes the hijacker used or ran- WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 AP Photo This sketch shows the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper. som money. The makers of the new documentary found neither of these things. There are some other discrepancies in their story, including Reca’s age at the time of the hijack- ing, 38 years old, which is on the young side of the esti- mates from passengers and air- line employees interviewed by the FBI at the time. They fig- ured the skyjacker was in his mid-40s. “Although the FBI appre- ciates the immense number of tips provided by members of the public, none to date have resulted in a definitive iden- tification of the hijacker. The tips have conveyed plausible theories, descriptive informa- tion about individuals poten- tially matching the hijacker, and anecdotes — to include accounts of sudden, unex- plained wealth,” FBI-Seattle Division spokesperson Jillian Voigt wrote in an email Mon- day. “In order to solve a case, the FBI must prove culpabil- ity beyond a reasonable doubt, and, unfortunately, none of the well-meaning tips or appli- cations of new investigative technology have yielded the necessary proof.” Principia Media’s investi- gators faced a challenge in rec- onciling the getaway story they accepted with one of the undis- puted facts of the Cooper case, namely, how did a cache of the ransom money get buried in a sandbank along the Colum- bia River north of Portland. In 1980, a boy digging a camp- fire pit at Tena Bar uncovered three bundles of decomposing $20 bills, whose serial num- bers traced back to the Cooper ransom money. Laurin and the documen- tary makers posit that an appre- ciative Reca gave his getaway driver a bundle of bills and that the accomplice later buried the loot at Tena Bar to dispose of evidence that connected the driver to the hijacking. Reca is the latest in a line of at least a dozen previous suspects publicly accused by friends and relatives or self-confessed to be Cooper. The new documentary presents other details that make Reca a plausible suspect. He had nighttime parachuting experience, survival training, a Thur. - July 19 12:00-6:00 Fri. - July 20 10:00-3:00 Sat. - July 21 10:00-12:00 (Items FREE 1:00-2:00) N0 CLOTHING Grace Episcopal Church SINCE 1886 1545 FRANKLIN AVE., ASTORIA • 503-325-4691 criminal background (he pre- viously committed armed rob- bery) and a motive (tired of being poor). Self-appointed investiga- tor Laurin managed to locate an eyewitness who, with some prompting, corroborated Reca’s getaway. That eyewit- ness is a Cle Elum musician and former logging company truck driver. Jeff Osiadacz now believes he unwittingly helped Cooper summon a get- away driver to the roadside café where they were the only customers on Thanksgiving Eve 1971. “He come in and the first thing he said is, ‘Hey kid, where am I?’” Osiadacz said. “I said, ‘You’re about 4 miles east of Cle Elum.’ And he says, ‘If I make a phone call, can you give a friend directions how to pick me up?’ I says, ‘Sure, no problem.’” At the time, the musician didn’t suspect the soaking wet, odd, limping man was any- thing more than “a French fry short of a happy meal.” “Never saw him again, never know nothing,” Osia- dacz said. “The next day, they’re advertising this guy that jumped out an airplane, all this on the news media. They’re showing these com- posite sketches and every- thing. Didn’t look nothing like the man I was sitting with.” Reca told Laurin he removed and bundled up his parachute after he landed out- side Cle Elum and covered it up with branches. There are no accounts of anyone finding a parachute in that area, which might have been newsworthy at the time given the intense coverage of the hijacking. Reca said he limped for about a half an hour in the direction of the closest lights he saw during his descent, which Laurin deduced to be the Teanaway Junction Café. At the café, Reca recalled meeting a musician in a cow- boy outfit, now believed to be Osiadacz. The cafe no longer exists. After spending two-and- a-half years investigating the Cooper case and making his documentary, filmmaker Dirk Wierenga said he is confident they fingered the right guy. “I’m a 100 percent (con- fident),” Wierenga said in an interview Saturday. “I gotta tell you every other story that is out there is voodoo. They’re all voodoo.”
