Video Archive: Willow River’s Bill Cooper on ‘To Tell the Truth’
“Wild” Bill Cooper, the outlaw snowmobile adventurer from Willow River, was a guest on the CBS television game show To Tell the Truth roughly 50 years ago.
“Wild” Bill Cooper, the outlaw snowmobile adventurer from Willow River, was a guest on the CBS television game show To Tell the Truth roughly 50 years ago.
This is your best chance to see local documentary and Arctic crime caper Wild Bill’s Run. It’s screening on Outside’s website on Thursday evening, Feb. 7. You can watch the film anytime between 6 and 9pm (Central Time). Director Mike Scholtz will be hanging out in the comments section at the bottom of the page, waiting for people to ask him questions he can’t answer about snowmobile repair, climate change and the whereabouts of Wild Bill Cooper.
Lawrence Bernabo previewed my documentary Wild Bill’s Run on KUMD. Meanwhile, I had a bunch of mesmerizing raw footage left over from editing the film. I thought it might be a good idea to throw these two things together, sorta randomly, without thinking about it too much.
One of my hobbies a few years ago was researching the adventures of “Wild” Bill Cooper, which resulted in an article for Minnesota Monthly that focused on his criminal history and purported demise.
Filmmaker Mike Scholtz picked up where I left off, and is producing a feature-length documentary that tells the whole Wild Bill story. In addition to the trailer above, there’s a Wild Bill’s Run website and Twitter feed. You’ll have to wait a few more months to see the final product, though. Watch for updates.
This article was originally published in the June 2006 issue of Minnesota Monthly magazine.
A corner of the Squirrel Cage Bar in Willow River still pays tribute to the town’s most infamous citizen. At the top of a collection of framed newspaper clippings is a computer printout asking a question that once appeared on hundreds of bumper stickers in the area: “Where the hell’s Cooper?”
U. S. Marshals are still trying to answer that question.
