The significance of this geography is the connection between the presumed jump zone and Tena Bar. If Cooper came down near any of the eastward tributaries—the Lewis, the Washougal, the Kalama—money that entered the water in those systems could, in principle, have been carried to the Columbia and eventually to a deposit point downstream.
Researchers who have tried to trace this potential path have encountered the same fundamental uncertainty that characterizes everything else in the case: the specific jump zone is not known with precision, the path of the money (if it went through the river system) cannot be reconstructed from the evidence available, and the Tena Bar location’s relationship to potential upstream sources is subject to interpretation.
What the geography does establish is that the Columbia River basin is the relevant physical landscape for the case. The jump zone, the Tena Bar site, and the river system that might connect them are all in this basin. Cooper’s demands—fly south toward Mexico, land gear down, stay unpressurized—took the aircraft along a route that passed over this landscape.
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## The Insurance Angle
The $200,000 ransom was paid by Northwest Orient Airlines, but the financial loss was covered by insurance. Royal Globe Insurance—a subsidiary of the Royal Insurance group—was the carrier that covered the ransom payment.
This insurance coverage is why the 1986 court proceedings over the Tena Bar bills involved two parties: Brian Ingram and his family on one side, and the insurance company on the other. Royal Globe had paid the claim on the ransom and therefore had a legal interest in any recovered portion of that money. The court divided the bills between the two parties, with Ingram receiving $2,760 in face value and the insurance company receiving the remainder, minus the FBI’s evidence retention of 14 bills.