Lawsuit Settled Over Skyjacker Book

SALT LAKE CITY - A suit over a book claiming the late Utah skyjacker Richard Floyd McCoy was also the Pacific Northwest skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper has been settled out of court.

Details of the settlement reached this week in the suit brought by McCoy's widow, Karen Burns McCoy, were not released. It did not include any retractions by writer Bernie Rhodes and researcher Russell P. Calame, a retired FBI agent.

"We're not backing down," Calame said yesterday.

David B. Watkiss, the authors' attorney, said they agreed to settle, in part, to avoid the expense of a court trial.

The publisher, the University of Utah Press, is no longer printing copies of the book. Some 3,000 copies were published.

The press will pay a cash settlement to McCoy, but that amount will remain secret until a final order is signed by the judge, said the Utah attorney general's office.

Karen McCoy denied her husband, Richard McCoy, was D.B. Cooper, who jumped out of a Northwest Airlines jet somewhere in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens in November 1971 and disappeared with $200,000 in ransom money.

McCoy was caught soon after his 1972 skyjacking in which he bailed out over Provo with $500,000. He was shot to death by FBI agents in 1974 after escaping from a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa.