A parachute that may have belonged to skyjacker D.B. Cooper has turned up in rural Washington state.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the parachute was uncovered in rural Clark County, where kids found the parachute while playing in a recently-plowed field.
(Station KIRO says that the chute was uncovered by “a contractor was grading a road,” but also credits kids with the find.)
It’s a long shot, of course, and it’s not like there haven’t been Cooper stories before. But there hasn’t been much hard evidence in this case since some of Cooper’s cash was found in 1980. (Incidentally, the P-I says that if this really is Cooper’s parachute, “it would be impossible for the ransom money to end up where it did by natural means.”)
The location is near Ariel, Washington, which has held a whimsical D.B. Cooper Days festival for many years. And it is along the path of Cooper’s flight from 1971. Stay tuned.
[Update: The Oregonian clarifies that “the children of a contractor who had been doing roadwork on his property discovered the canopy.”]
[Update 2: Thanks to comment by alert reader Gracie (below), map has been changed from Ariel to Amboy, Washington. Early reports put the parachute between Ariel and Amboy, but later reports identify Amboy as the nearest town.]