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Show By Brian Gray When Sheriff Brant Johnson resigned last week, he suggested . that my good friend Harry Jones be appointed to replace him. I'm glad he mentioned Harry. But it wasn't the first time this ; month that Harry's been mentioned. A soon-to-be-published book written by a federal probation officer also mentions Harry in an extraordinary light: Harry, says the author, actually cap-; cap-; tured the notorious D.B. Cooper, the villain of folk songs, motion pictures and continued mystery. Most readers remember the saga of D. B . Cooper. In November, Novem-ber, 1971, he boarded a Northwest Orient jet in Portland, ; announced he was hijacking the plane and demanded $200,000. : He then parachuted from the plane over a rural stretch of southern Washington, spurring front-page headlines and a massive mas-sive West Coast manhunt. Cooper or his body were never found, although fragments of money were later discovered x ; floating in a river. Cooper, say the experts, probably died in the descent, an unsuccessful end to an otherwise brilliant plan. But author Bernie Rhodes doesn't believe it. Cooper, he says, ; : was none other than Utah's own Richard Floyd McCoy ,a 29- t year-old BYU student who five months later hijacked a United X Airlines en route from Denver to Los Angeles, diverted the cS' plane to San Francisco and then led scurrying FBI agents and. H Coast Guard planes on a wild chase through Nevada and south- ern Utah before pulling another Cooper bail-out with $500,000 near his hometown of Provo. Kaysville's Harry Jones remembers the case well. "There was talk even then that McCoy and Cooper were one and the same person," he says. "The plan was basically the same, McCoy's description matched Cooper's and ironically McCoy and Cooper both reserved the same seat on the airplane. McCoy, highly-trained in special forces military tactics, was technically a genius." With the $500,000 in a satchel, McCoy instructed the pilot to make drops in altitude near the High Sierras, Las Vegas and central Utah, creating the illusion that he had parachuted from the jet. The ploy worked and McCoy then escaped unseen near Provo. Since he had used a fake name, lawmen were bewildered by his whereabouts and identity. His name cropped up only after his friends in the Utah National Guard remembered him bragging about his ability to "pull off the perfect hijacking." With this information, Jones, then an FBI special agent, burst into the McCoy home and arrested a man he remembers as "cold and calculating." Rummaging through boxes on the back R porch, Jones also found the $500,060. Once in the car, Jones says, McCoy asked him if he had to 4 make a statement. When Jones said no, McCoy quipped, "Then ' shut up and stop bothering me." Convicted of the hijacking, McCoy was sentenced to 45 years ;! at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. But he escaped in the Jl summer of 1974 and led law enforcement officials on a merry ": chase for several months before he was finally killed in a shootout shoot-out in Virginia Beach, Va. Jones doesn't speculate on the McCoy-Cooper link. But he does speculate on McCoy's motives. "To McCoy, the money was never the issue. In his mind, the "' hijacking wasn't a criminal attempt, but simply a challenge. It t was a chance to show people how smart he was. Even during his escape, he was involved in two bank robberies and was planning 11 another airplane hijacking. The man had no conscience. ' "As far as the first hijacking, he would have got away with it, l1 too. If he had not bragged to his buddies, he could have remained re-mained unidentified." ?': Maybe Hollywood will make a movie out of this book, too. f "If they do," cracks Harry, "I hope they hire an actor who looks like me." But they probably won't. They'll most likely hire an actor who has hair! H " ' V |