Man Who ‘Found’ Infamous Hijacking Money Auctions It For Small Fortune
Posted June 16, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Brian Ingram just wanted to get enough money to help send his kids to college. And he did it on Friday thanks to a discovery he made way back in 1980.
The then eight-year-old was on vacation with his family near the Columbia River in Washington State when he chanced upon the only tangible proof of one of modern history’s most notorious crimes – the ransom money delivered to D.B. Cooper.
Ingram’s story is one we’ve been following since the start of 2008. But Cooper’s goes back much, much farther. He’s the man who pulled off the only successful hijacking for money in American history, commandeering a plane heading from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington and then jumping from the airborne aircraft once $200,000 was placed on board.
Nine years later, Ingram was looking for firewood and stumbled on some remnants of the cash, much of it in pieces. The FBI was able to confirm it was the real thing. And it was something else, as well – the only hard evidence ever found about what might have happened to Cooper.
To this day, it’s never been known if he got away with it, although many legal experts are convinced he died in the attempt and that his body was swallowed by the water.
Ingram was allowed to keep some of the bills and their remnants and has had them ever since. Until Friday, that is, when the now 36-year-old finally auctioned off a number of them, raising $37,000 in the process.
Fifteen of the recovered $20s went under the hammer. Two of them fetched $6,500 and contained the handwritten initials of investigators who examined them. Another fragment went for $358.
But Ingram kept at least 70 for himself and his family, kind of a belated reserve fund for the future. The FBI also has 13 of them, in case they’re ever needed to prosecute the celebrated case.
And while the head of Heritage Galleries, the firm that held the auction, doubts that will ever happen, he admits there’s no way to know. “There’s obviously still tremendous interest in the legendary case,” Greg Rohan – who was just 10 years old at the time of the crime – notes in a statement. “I’ve always wondered if Cooper lived the high life for a while or became bear food.”
Photo courtesy: Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas
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