The legend of D.B. Cooper is as Northwest as Starbucks, Sasquatch and grunge music.
In 1971, a man known as Dan Cooper, later misidentified as D.B. Cooper, successfully hijacked Flight 305, a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 bound from Portland to Seattle, absconding with $200,000 in cash and parachuting out of the jet into the wilderness of Southwest Washington.
In the nearly four decades that have passed since the hijacking, Cooper has become an outlaw legend.
Although the FBI believes that Cooper did not survive the jump, several theories regarding the identity of the hijacker have made the rounds. One theory claims that Bonney Lake and Sumner resident Kenneth Peter Christiansen, a former World War II paratrooper and Northwest Airlines purser, was the hijacker.
Enter Robert Blevins, Auburn author and publisher of Adventure Books of Seattle,
Blevins, along with co-author Skipp Porteous of New York-based Sherlock Investigations, recently released “Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper.”
The book details the circumstantial case against Christiansen, using interviews with several of his acquaintances to fill in the gaps.
“In May of 2009, Skipp Porteous of Sherlock Investigations contacted me,” Blevins said.
Blevins said he had commented on Porteous’ blog, inquiring about the private investigator’s plans to write a book on Cooper/Christiansen.
“I asked him what kind of book he wanted to do,” Blevins said.
Porteous replied that he wanted to present the evidence on Christiansen that he had gathered.
“He had sent teams of investigators to the Northwest to check Kenny out,” Blevins said. “But he wanted someone local. So I told him I would do some checking for him.”
Blevins said he requested more information about Christiansen, and Porteous responded by asking Blevins to sign a confidentiality agreement. Soon after signing the agreement, Blevins said he received a FedEx package containing pictures and other documents from Porteous’ investigation.
“I looked and realized that he might actually be on to something,” Blevins said. “There was just too many unexplained things about Kenny.”
Blevins said that there were several sources, close friends of Christiansen’s who were not interviewed in the original investigation by Porteous.
Although the circumstantial evidence was convincing, Blevins said he didn’t think it was enough for a book.
“I thought what it needed was testimony from witnesses,” he said.
Blevins said he examined the files and made a list of people he hoped to interview.
Soon, Blevins was on the highway, traveling all around Washington and Oregon to talk to people who knew Christiansen.
“Some of them were really hard to find,” he said.
Blevins said eventually, the more he talked to those who who knew him, the more he became convinced that it all pointed to Christiansen.
‘He had help’
“D.B. didn’t do this on his own,” Blevins said. “He had help and the person that I think helped, I call ‘Mike Watson’ in the book, lived up in Sequim. After my second interview with (his wife) ‘Katie Watson’ it just clicked.”
Blevins added that he did not use the Watsons’ real names to protect them.
The book lays out the case for Christiansen as D.B. Cooper, postulating what might have happened after the hijacker left the plane, and illustrating the possibilities through interviews with the flight crew from Flight 305 and Christiansen’s friends.
“I had a lot of fun doing the investigation,” he said. “It was a lot of fun traveling around and talking to these people. A lot of them I had to cold call. They were really difficult to find, they didn’t have phone numbers or addresses listed.”
Since the book has been published, Blevins said he has received a lot of attention from people fascinated with the legend of D.B. Cooper.
“I get a lot of strange e-mails,” Blevins said. “They’ll say, ’No, he buried the money’ or tell me I’m crazy. Some are OK, but most of them come from wackos. I actually answer them if they don’t get too crazy.”
Although it’s been almost four decades since the hijacking, Blevins said he believes he knows why the legend has such longevity and still interests people after all that time.
“I think it’s because he didn’t threaten anybody,” Blevins said. “He’s the guy who thumbed his nose at authority and got away with it.”
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“Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper” sells for $12.99 and is available at amazon.com or at Browser’s Books in Kent.
