Did D.B. Cooper live in Bonney Lake?

BONNEY LAKE — Was Bonney Lake home to infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper?

It’s possible, according to an article in the Oct. 29 edition of New York Magazine that postulates that the man who jumped from a hijacked airplane 36 years ago over southwest Washington with $200,000 survived and lived out his life in this community.

That’s the contention of 77-year-old Lyle Christiansen of Morris, Minn., who claims his older brother, Kenneth Christiansen, was the stuff of criminal legend.

A handful of Bonney Lake residents were impressed but naturally skeptical.

“Oh, wow!” said Mayor Neal Johnson when told Tuesday of the article. “That’s very interesting.” He laughed, noting that if true, maybe Cooper’s home could be added to the Naches Trail as a local point of historical interest.

“Anytime something is the home of something, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, it always draws a crowd,” he said.

The connection “would be awesome,” Connie Swarthout said. She owns CJ’s Deli &Dining, across Old Sumner-Buckley Highway from where, according to the article, Kenneth Christiansen lived from 1972 to his death from cancer in 1994. She grew up in the neighborhood but said she doesn’t remember him.

Rose Edmiston, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant until she retired last year after 40 years, was quoted in the article as saying Christiansen was the last man she would have thought to be D.B. Cooper.

A Bonney Lake resident, too, she said Tuesday that Christiansen was really only an acquaintance she would see from time to time in town. Of the article, she said: “It’s interesting, but it’s all circumstantial.”

The Bonney Lake that Christiansen came to was very different from today. It was the kind of place to get lost in, a forested community close by the Cascades. Christiansen’s small house, which he bought about a year after the hijack, is now a print shop, Price Right Print &Sign. The house served as a tack-and-saddle shop after Christiansen died. Next door, excavators are chewing the hillside into a retail and condominium site.

Lynn Rattenbury, who with her husband, Dan, opened the shop three years ago, recalled Tuesday being interviewed by a New York reporter about some kind of “criminal activity” in the house, but said he wouldn’t say what the activity was.

D.B. Cooper? “I think that’s pretty exciting, but not really,” she said. “It would be more exciting if there was some proof to consider. I haven’t found no buried treasure around here.”

In 1980, $5,800 in decomposing bills were found on the edge of the Columbia River near Vancouver. It matched the serial numbers of some of the Cooper loot, but it was the only money ever recovered.

No one has been arrested despite years of effort by the FBI, though they’ve had at least two other suspects. The case is still open.

Proof is hard to come by in the article but there are a few tantalizing facts:

Christiansen was a retired head airline attendant or purser for then-Northwest Orient Airlines, the carrier whose plane Cooper hijacked and paid the ransom. He had settled in southwest Washington.

He was a U.S. Army-trained paratrooper, the kind the FBI thought might try such a stunt.

And he looked a lot like the sketch of D.B. Cooper that has circulated ever since.

The author of the story talked to co-workers and a few people Christiansen knew in Bonney Lake who remember a quiet guy who looked and dressed like a farmer. No one thought he could be D.B. Cooper.

Julia Bowen, who grew up in Bonney Lake, knew Christiansen. She lived up the hill a block or so away from him.

She remembered him as a nice guy who came to dinner sometimes but didn’t always have the most positive attitude about life.

And there was one thing she remembered. “He had a lot of money,” she said, more than she thought he could have earned since he never worked. But, she said, he didn’t mind spending it on others. She said he supported a number of people, including a number of young men who came by his home needing a place to stay.

Edmiston, the former flight attendant, pointed out that experts believe no one could have survived that kind of jump from an airliner. She goes along with that.

It’s sad, she said, that Christiansen isn’t around to defend himself.