From 'Prison' to Tooele

It's only fiction, of course, but D.B. Cooper has been found. And we know where he hid the money from his 1971 plane hijacking:

Tooele.

Really.

All of this took place on Fox's "Prison Break," which wraps up its first season tonight at 7 on Ch. 13.

D.B. Cooper, of course, became the stuff of legend. On Nov. 24, 1971, a man going by that name hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines flight bound from Portland to Seattle, demanded and received $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, ordered the plane to fly toward Mexico, jumped out and has never been heard from again.

And that's the true part.

On "Prison Break," Michael (Wentworth Miller) figured out that Charles Westmoreland (Muse Watson) — who's been in prison on unrelated charges for decades — was D.B. Cooper. He needed Westmoreland and the hidden cash (which, in this TV reality, he thinks is $1 million), as part of his escape plot.

Last week, Westmoreland (who was seriously wounded in the previous episode) was too badly hurt to accompany the rest of the escapers. He told Michael the money is buried under a silo on a ranch in Tooele, Utah.

He pronounced it "Tool-uh," but the captioning spelled it correctly.

He also told Michael it's not $1 million buried there, it's $5 million. And I have no idea where the additional $4.8 million came from.

Tonight's season-ending cliffhanger launches the next phase of the show. As has been planned from the start, "Prison Break" will leave the prison behind next season as the various escapees try to elude the authorities — becoming what creator/executive producer Paul Scheuring described as " 'The Fugitive' times eight or 10 or however many ultimately get outside the wall."

And some of those fugitives are certainly going to be headed for Tooele.

Plus, there's that whole plot behind wrongfully convicting Michael's brother, Lincoln (Dominic Purcell), of killing the vice president's brother — a crime that he didn't commit because the guy isn't dead.

It's part of a big, mysterious plot by forces so powerful they threaten the life of the vice president, evil Caroline Reynolds (Patricia Wettig), tonight.

"Prison Break" is very cool. Even if it does go to Tooele.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com