A twist in high-flying mystery

In the Northwest's most enduring mystery — who was D.B. Cooper? — about the only thing we've ever been certain of is that the legendary skyjacker was a he.

What if he wasn't?

"My wife says I'm two people," reads a 1969 letter to a University of Washington psychiatrist, as unearthed in a wild, so far unpublished book, "The Legend of D.B. Cooper: Death by Natural Causes."

"She tells me that when I am Bob I seem bitter," the letter goes on. "But when I'm Barbara, I'm a much nicer person."

That was written by Bobby Dayton as part of his pre-surgery counseling for a sex-change operation at the UW hospital. The book suggests that two years later, on a November night in 1971, he — now technically a she but still looking very much like a he — hijacked a 727 out of Seattle and parachuted into the dark with $200,000 in ransom money.

Ron and Pat Forman, of Puyallup, wrote the book. Ron insists there's no need to call the "men in the white coats."

"It is a crazy story," he laughs. "But I can assure you: We're not crazy."

The Formans met Barb Dayton in the mid-1970s at Pierce County Airport. She was a weekend pilot, a loner who worked as a researcher at the UW's Suzzallo Library and lived in West Seattle.

She told amazing tales. About boar hunting in the Philippines. Sky diving, gold mining, riding with the Hell's Angels. Surviving for eight days without food in the British Columbia wilderness.

Women's Lib was new. The Formans wondered: What kind of woman is this?

It turns out she lived her first 43 years as a man, but was driven to near-suicide by a sense she should have been born female.

Then, in late 1979, she told the Formans that she was D.B. Cooper. She skyjacked the plane because she was depressed and suicidal due to her gender problems, as well as angry at the airlines for not permitting her to become a commercial pilot.

She described in detail how she jumped from the plane over Oregon, not southwest Washington, as the FBI has always theorized. She said she hid the money at a farm — she never much cared about the money — and took a bus back to Seattle.

"The FBI doesn't know what they're talking about," she is quoted as saying in the book.

The Formans say they never knew whether to believe any of Dayton's yarns. When she died in 2002, they began researching her life and obtained letters and records from her family. Surprisingly, all the stories checked out.

Well, not necessarily the D.B. Cooper part. For that, there is only circumstantial evidence. The book is a portrait of an extraordinary Northwest character, who certainly had much in common with our most notorious missing person.

She was a sky diver. Like Cooper, she smoked Raleigh cigarettes. Drank bourbon. Always wore loafers. The old photos of when she was Bobby bear a marked similarity to the famed Cooper wanted poster — enough so that her brother thought it was pre-sex-change Bobby when TV flashed the sketch of Cooper in 1971.

"She was a remarkable person, capable, very calculating, definitely someone who could have pulled this off," recalls Bruce Thun, operations manager at Pierce County Airport.

Thun knew Barb and flew with her in the '70s and '80s. He also vouches for the sanity of the Formans.

"I'm not saying she was D.B. Cooper," he said. "But I do think it's possible."

The FBI doesn't think so. She was only 5 foot 8, shorter than the 5 foot 10 or 6 foot description of Cooper provided by flight attendants. Apparently her DNA does not match a spot of saliva found on a clip-on tie Cooper left on the plane (though that saliva might not be Cooper's).

And there's the hard-to-get-your-mind-around fact that witnesses saw and spoke with a he. Not a she, which is what Dayton had become by the time of the hijacking.

But then you read this from her UW doctor. In a 1973 medical record obtained by the Formans, he describes Barb Dayton's voice and appearance:

"The effect was neither masculine nor feminine, but could perhaps pass for either."

I am not telling you this because I think the Formans have proven anything. They haven't. To their credit, they end their book with a question mark.

Which is the way it goes with the D.B. Cooper story. It has attained the status of myth. More is revealed about society in our imaginings than we would ever learn if an actual Cooper was unmasked.

The FBI maintains a Web site just for D.B. On it, the agency insists it remains focused not on myths, but on the realities of cracking an open criminal case.

"Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely," it reads.

I like imagining that the reason they haven't is because all along they should have been looking for a woman.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.