Just a few weeks after I was born in 1971, D.B. Cooper jumped outof a Boeing 727 into infamy and law enforcement lore.
His Nov. 24 leap is the only unsolved hijacking in the pantheonof United States commercial aviation. There are various theoriesabout his whereabouts, demise, and identity.
For my money, he probably didn't make it out alive. If youbelieve the description found on the FBI website of the events thatnight in 1971, coupled with what they have found in the ensuing 39years, it is highly unlikely. The FBI has a 60-volume active casefile in case you really want to get up to speed.
I have a growing pile of D.B.-type files, not 60 volumes, butafter nearly 18 months in my job, I have about a foot-high stack ofmissing-client files in the "D.B." drawer in my office.
Since first learning about Dan Cooper, the name on his ticket, Ihave always held a little mystic candle in my heart that he made itand retired comfortably on a little plot of land with a dog, a beardand his money.
My clients, on the other hand, did not get away with anything, asthey have all been fingerprinted, photographed for mug shots, andprocessed into the U.S. criminal justice complex's data base. Themaze of local, state, and federal computers are like the great radioof the Internet, and I don't have to repeat the wisdom of cops:Criminals can't outrun the law.
It would be hard to do anything in this country without getting ahit on some warrant system somewhere. Whether it's renewing alicense at the Department of Motor Vehicles, applying for a job,checking into a hotel or driving down the street with a badtaillight, the databases will always catch up to you in modern times-- just like the officer in the next town, after he hears on theradio about you speeding away from the scene of a crime.
I have often wondered if I should take over/under bets on howlong some of my clients will go, but that seems in bad taste -- andprobably an ethics violation -- so I have not.
Last week, though, I read a story in the New York Times that puta little more romance in my jaded lawyer heart about going on thelam.
The first few times I heard this expression my young mind wasconfused. I didn't believe lambs were all that fast, so why werepeople who are running from authorities riding them?
Enter Enrico Ponzo. Evidently Enrico spent the early '90s tryingto get rid of the bosses from Boston's Patriarca family. In 1997 hewas part of a 15-person indictment, which alleges, among otherthings, that Enrico participated in a gangland shooting all thoseyears ago against a boss who is now supposedly in witnessprotection.
Enrico got out. Before the indictment, before his partners incrime turned on each other to take plea bargains, and before thecontract to kill him could be fulfilled, he got out.
"Out" is an understatement, as the man went from Massachusetts toIdaho and started his life as Jeffrey John Shaw, aka "Jay."
Friends in Idaho say "Jay" seemed a bit out of place in hisoutdated bib overalls and straw hats with his thick Boston brogue,but he was an affable and helpful enough to earn the trust of asmall community of rural folks out west.
He now has a place in the country complete with some dogs, cows,and a tractor or two, I'm sure, but he didn't stay in isolation.
He married and had two kids out there, and that may have done himin.
The Feds won't tell how they caught up with him in February on adusty road near his house. His soon-to-be ex-wife denies sayinganything, but as someone who has been involved in many divorceproceedings I'm guessing it may not have been his wife, but it wasprobably a friend of hers.
So while he didn't live out my delusion of life on the lam, hedid come close. But to look at his home with two stories, a wrap-around deck and a three-car garage, I would say his romantic notionof riding a lamb was a little better than mine.
He is likely back in Boston now, but who knows? The U.S. Marshalskept the details of his move back to Bean Town secret -- surelybecause contracts on your life don't have a statute of limitationson them.
Craig Napier is an attorney in the Kirksville office of theMissouri State Public Defender System. He can be reached atncnapier@gmail.com.
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