D.B. Cooper cash sold at auction

DALLAS, June 13 (UPI) -- Buyers at a Dallas auction Friday paid a total of $37,433 for 15 tattered $20 bills taken by notorious skyjacker D.B. Cooper in 1971, the auctioneer said.

The bills went for as much as three times as much as expected, Heritage Auction Galleries said in a news release.

Two of the bills that bear the clearly visible handwritten initials of investigators who handled the money after it was discovered in 1980 went for $6,572 each. A buyer paid $358 for a remnant of a note that consisted of a small portion of the printed San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank seal in the design.

Cooper hijacked a jetliner in the U.S. Northwest, was given $200,000 in $20 bills, and then parachuted somewhere between Reno, Nev., and Seattle.

Heritage President Greg Rohan -- who says he was 10 at the time -- said the auction had bids from across the country.

"For a young boy, it was fascinating," said Rohan. "I've always wondered if Cooper lived the high life for a while or became bear food."

Brian Ingram of Mena, Ark., was 8-years-old in 1980 when he found the money in the sand along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Wash.