Washington ? The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled, buried parachute found by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday.

Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute’s fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said.

The children had seen recent media coverage of the case – the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery – and they urged their dad to call the agency.

A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper – later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper – hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane’s back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border and was never seen again.