DB Cooper

[Orange1 0]

Red dollar bills in circulation in SE Asia during the Vietnam War. Appear to be the same as Snow's MPCs.
More interesting maybe is that the thread in this forum has posters who are Vietnamese and remember the war, and seemingly ex soldiers who were stationed there... anyone wanna go on and ask stuff? (The link below is from 2005 but the guys may well still be around?)

The thread is in reverse chronological order.
http://mail.saigon.com/pipermail/vnbiz/2005-November/007555.html

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[snowmman 3]

1) there's a jpg I found of a 1969 J series bill that would be a good start for a photoshop of a cooper bill. (1969 bills aren't that common in circulation nowadays)

2) 1970 roster for California Parachute Club is at
http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/MembershipRosters/1970/Roster.jpg

3) attached is a good article talking about people getting paid in $100 dollar bills in other countries, and the "newer" US bills being worth more than "older" US bills! really.

4) you can check for Cooper serial #'s here:
http://www.check-six.com/lib/DBCooperLoot.htm

5) "Where's George" is a site where you can enter location and serial numbers for bills. You can see how bills travel around the world. They show the longest travels etc. Very interesting. I tried some of the Ingram serial numbers and some folks had entered them as a joke.
http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

You've probably seen bills with the "where's george" stamp advertising their site.

They are currently tracking 142,757,009 bills entered by 3,907,679 users. This is only 0.0983% of US bills in circulation.

I should probably enter some more cooper bills, just to check. (ideally they would have something that flags all of them!)

[snowmman 3]

what's odd, is their report says they get a 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 hit rate on bills entered. Surprising?

Hmm maybe I'll try entering a stack of bills. I should get a hit within 10 or so?

(edit) example hit report here:
http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key=96f489a926e55f60683d907df1f7e54072636739ed24b15d

nice it overlays onto google maps

[snowmman 3]

trying to get some numbers
from various sources

These may be just numbers of "voters" or possible tax payers.

All are estimates? For comparision, 1970 US population estimate was 205 million, 1985: 237 million, 1999: 272 million

So percentage-wise, it seems significant? 1-2% range?


1932: 404,317
1972 2.5 million
1980 1.6 million registered civilian, non-diplomat
1987 1.8 million
1989 2-3 million (including 750,00 armed services)
1999 3 million
2004 4.5 million
2005: 4 million (largest is Mexico with 1 million)
2008: 6 million eligible to vote

[snowmman 3]

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/state/amcit_numbers.html

just highlighting the big ones: (>20,000 or so)
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
China
Columbia
Dominican Republic
France
Germany
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Korea
Mexico
Philippines
Saudi Arabia
Spain
Taiwan
United Kingdom

[Orange1 0]

  Quote

what's odd, is their report says they get a 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 hit rate on bills entered. Surprising?

Hmm maybe I'll try entering a stack of bills. I should get a hit within 10 or so?

Did I read the website right - it basically is up to you when you find one to enter it on the site? I wonder if bank tellers do as well (probably not). 10% hit rate sounds reasonably high to me but then again there is a difference between getting a dollar bill with a stamp on it alerting you to the fact that something is special about it, and an ordinary one, no?

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[snowmman 3]

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  Quote

what's odd, is their report says they get a 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 hit rate on bills entered. Surprising?

Hmm maybe I'll try entering a stack of bills. I should get a hit within 10 or so?

Did I read the website right - it basically is up to you when you find one to enter it on the site? I wonder if bank tellers do as well (probably not). 10% hit rate sounds reasonably high to me but then again there is a difference between getting a dollar bill with a stamp on it alerting you to the fact that something is special about it, and an ordinary one, no?

No it works for any bill, not just the ones they've marked.

(edit) abc news vid about the site here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2436133

Yeah you just enter any US bill, and it's tracked. If it was already entered you get info. If not, it's set up to email you if someone else enters it later. I've seen guys get email 4 years later.

I entered 20 bills and got zero hits (2003/2006 series..1, 5, 10 & 20's)

I wonder if people enter a lot of bills that have the red stamp (Where'sGeorge.com) on them..I've seen those in circulation...it's like writing on a bill. I suspect if you enter one of those, the hit rate might be higher.

But at the very least, it shows how silly this notion of people noticing Cooper bills is. Here we have a massive computer database, with a lot more people entering bills than tellers would ever check. And look at the low percentage rate, relative to total bills.

[Orange1 0]

I realise it works for any bill, but (for example) if people don't know about the where's george thing, they're not gonna think "oh let me go enter this serial # on the net" ...presumably. The stamp would be more likely to result in a hit, was all i meant.

I did wonder about the Cooper bills, I mean it's not like serial #s are easy to remember. ...bank tellers might have been checking and some civilians but I wonder how many people actually sat there with the newspaper lists and checked. Though having said that, i would have thought at least one bill would have showed up somewhere, Ingram find excepted...and perhaps they did, but not in the US.

Re dollars abroad. There will be a number of instances you would not know where they end up, because they go to places people do not have internet, or are too busy trying to survive to enter serial numbers into a computer, or because it is illegal to hold USD and they do not want to be traced, or or or...

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[snowmman 3]

well, if you don't think the money was planted by humans, then it's very likely all the money got in the columbia somehow, and then the most likely thing is that that the rest of the money got buried and decomposed.

Looking at the decomposition rate of the found money, it wouldn't take much longer for the money to totally decay away, depending on how it was covered?

So unless Tom finds something that can make a human burial more likely, the most likely thing is the rest of the money was in the Columbia somewhere, right?

(edit) There's no Ingram story that would make sense in terms of "faking" a find. If they found 3 bundles, saying they found it by the river didn't change anything. And if they had found more, it doesn't make sense to report just the 3...the rest would be similarly decomposed..i.e. unusable.

[Orange1 0]

So you don't buy that some may have been lost during the jump?

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[snowmman 3]

  Quote

So you don't buy that some may have been lost during the jump?

no. The bag would have had to open? Plus how could 3 bundles fly thru the air and land in one spot? not possible.

Now the bag could have come loose, landed in the columbia, and then dispatched some bundles. But that's just another version of "money in the columbia somehow, 3 bundles on the shore somehow"

So I can't see bundles flying out in the air. All to the ground, and then 3 to the shore at some point in time.

Or a human plant for some reason, but that seems unlikely.

We don't need to understand the exact behavior of bag and ground, to bundles on shore. That gives us no extra info right?

There's only a couple of interesting questions, I think.
1) Did Cooper land in the Columbia and drown and not get found?
2) Did he no-pull on land and die and not get found?
(although the money find becomes problematic)
3) Did he deploy, and land, and take off, probably with no money?

Why do we care what the exact DZ is? We're not going to find harness and bones. We can't have enough precision.

If we can prove he didn't drown, that would be huge.

We can't prove he didn't no-pull.

(edit) So to make a long story short: I think the physical evidence doesn't matter. I think all that matters is a profile of Cooper that works for a Cooper that lived. Then you run everyone thru that profile and see if anyone interesting pops out.

(edit) Obviously if Tom can prove the money was planted, then Cooper lived.

[377 22]

2) 1970 roster for California Parachute Club is at
http://www.crocuta.com/...ters/1970/Roster.jpg

Club rosters are not complete records of who was jumping at the DZ. I jumped at Livermore (Calif. Parachute Club's DZ) in the late 60s and early 70s. They didn't require membership to jump there. I was a student in 70 and spent my spare cash on jumps rather than CPC membership.

Sad to see Eric Anderson's name at the top. He walked into a spinning prop and was killed. Eric was partially deaf which may have contributed to the accident.

Doug Hansmann is still around. He was from the Seattle area and a hard core aviation enthusiast. Got his PhD in engineering from UC Berkeley and now lives on an island in Puget Sound. He no longer jumps but is an acro pilot and flight instructor. No, he isn't Cooper.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[377 22]

  Quote

(edit) There's no Ingram story that would make sense in terms of "faking" a find. If they found 3 bundles, saying they found it by the river didn't change anything. And if they had found more, it doesn't make sense to report just the 3...the rest would be similarly decomposed..i.e. unusable.

Makes sense Snow, but I keep wondering if there is some weird scenario that we haven't considered? The money find is suspicious to me, but like you, I cannot figure why it would be a setup deal rather than an incredibly unlikely and lucky event.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

377 said:

  Quote

Club rosters are not complete records of who was jumping at the DZ. I jumped at Livermore (Calif. Parachute Club's DZ) in the late 60s and early 70s. They didn't require membership to jump there. I was a student in 70 and spent my spare cash on jumps rather than CPC membership.

Yeah the list was short, and it's not even the right area. I mostly thought it was interesting that old bits of paper are still around. There's another bit of paper there were they were bitching about the USPA and saying they weren't going to require their members to be USPA anymore, although most still would join.
I thought that was funny. Goes to the idea that if Cooper had some skydiving in '62-'71 in the WA area, he might not have had a PCA/USPA membership...

Here is the USPA bitch letter. You guys probably will get a kick out it. (they made the jpgs big so it's a slow download)
http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/Correspondence/1971/19710706-MichaelPotts-1.jpg
http://www.crocuta.com/CPC/Correspondence/1971/19710706-MichaelPotts-2.jpg

[snowmman 3]

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(edit) There's no Ingram story that would make sense in terms of "faking" a find. If they found 3 bundles, saying they found it by the river didn't change anything. And if they had found more, it doesn't make sense to report just the 3...the rest would be similarly decomposed..i.e. unusable.

Makes sense Snow, but I keep wondering if there is some weird scenario that we haven't considered? The money find is suspicious to me, but like you, I cannot figure why it would be a setup deal rather than an incredibly unlikely and lucky event.

377

hey did you see where they just dug up $1.6 million on a farm? (someone tipped them). They had already confiscated $4 million.
news article here:
http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=1337197&c=y

buried in seven ammo boxes.

Got me thinking of remote possiblities, like ingrams finding the money early on, like in '71 and stashing it, but then discovering it rotted, and hatching a plan to get something out of it by stuffing it on the river.

But I've looked at a bunch of buried money photos, and it's hard to believe that no matter how the Ingrams stashed it, that it would have decayed to the state it was found in..They would have done a reasonable stash job.

I'm really confused how Tom can be confident of anything on that money, regardless of what kind of observation or testing he's doing.

The lack of something isn't going to mean much. So maybe he's detected something? like heavy metals being absorbed into the paper? And he knows something about the rate of heavy metal absorption into money? Doesn't sound plausible.

For right now, I'm thinking the most likely scenario is that Tom is blowing a little smoke. By example, he seemed to confident that he "knew" the story about the stairs and door, even though he confessed to not being fully read up on the transcripts?

[377 22]

Amazing how you find this obscure stuff Snow. Potts wrote a very eloquent letter I thought. Amazingly, the CPC still exists even though they have no DZ. I saw a few of the CPC old timers in the 1999-2006 WFFC meets. It was pretty cool to get to jump in 2005 with several of my old jumpmasters from the late 60s.

When Cooper did his hijack in 71 thats all jumpers were talking about for weeks. It was HUGE. Everyone had a theory, but none of them led to anything useful in the investigation. Some skydivers basked in the glory that was linked to suspicion that they might have been Cooper.

Nobody suspected me, darn.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Michael Taylor wrote for the SF Chronicle, where the article first appeared on 11/17/96. The link below is when the LA news reprinted it a week later.

There are some factual errors in the article. I was wondering if Rataczak was actually talked to and quoted, as it appears. I used to think in another article that someone had made up R. quotes, when I read about 30 degree flaps. But that turned out to be accurate when we got the 2nd transcript.

What's interesting is that Rataczak, like he did in the Discovery show, (I posted what R. said in that German Discovery show a while back)...Rataczak is quoted below saying that Cooper asked for 15 degree flaps. Ckret says Cooper didn't ask for 15 degree flaps.

This is 1996. I'm wondering if Rataczak is having a bad memory..i.e. remembering the transcripts or maybe what Scott told him.

I'm also wondering about the comment about Cooper supposedly saying "airstairs". If all Cooper comments were relayed to the cabin, then Rataczak is really just hearing what the stews say? So maybe Rataczak got a false understanding of how aviation-savvy Cooper was, (he implies there was other terminology Cooper used)...since he was listening to the stew, not Cooper.

I've also attached the SF Chronicle article.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/D.B+COOPER%27S+LEAP+INTO+INFAMY+:+DARING+HIJACKER+ESCAPED+BY+JUMPING...-a084004103
``I was thinking, this guy knows a lot about the airplane,'' Rataczak, now a 57-year-old captain and still flying for Northwest, said the other day. ``With the gear down and the flaps at 15 degrees, it limits us to about 175 miles an hour. So I wondered, could he really equate flaps-at-15 with 175? The guy's no dummy.''

As for parachutes, Cooper got four, which made everybody wonder. Rataczak thought that maybe the hijacker was going to take a few of the flight crew with him and then, in horror, he thought, what if the FBI decided to summarily end the hijack by sabotaging all four parachutes.

``We really got concerned with the possibility that we were going to get bogus parachutes,'' Rataczak said.

The plane at last stopped circling Seattle - it was clear Cooper knew where he was because after glancing out a window, he asked why the plane was over nearby Tacoma - and landed on a remote section of the runway. Cooper ordered the flight crew to get the ``airstairs'' over to the plane. Given his constant use of aviation jargon, the crew thought he may have worked for Boeing or was a pilot. Finally, the hijacker released the passengers.

[snowmman 3]

  Quote

Nobody suspected me, darn.

377

Don't worry 377, sure the FBI doesn't suspect you, but I make sure I tell every good looking woman that I see in a bar, that I KNOW FOR CERTAIN that this guy named 377 is D.B. Cooper.

So you got that going for you.

[Orange1 0]

  Quote

hey did you see where they just dug up $1.6 million on a farm? (someone tipped them). They had already confiscated $4 million.
news article here:
http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=1337197&c=y

buried in seven ammo boxes.

Got me thinking of remote possiblities, like ingrams finding the money early on, like in '71 and stashing it, but then discovering it rotted, and hatching a plan to get something out of it by stuffing it on the river.

But I've looked at a bunch of buried money photos, and it's hard to believe that no matter how the Ingrams stashed it, that it would have decayed to the state it was found in..They would have done a reasonable stash job.

I'm really confused how Tom can be confident of anything on that money, regardless of what kind of observation or testing he's doing.

The lack of something isn't going to mean much. So maybe he's detected something? like heavy metals being absorbed into the paper? And he knows something about the rate of heavy metal absorption into money? Doesn't sound plausible.

For right now, I'm thinking the most likely scenario is that Tom is blowing a little smoke. By example, he seemed to confident that he "knew" the story about the stairs and door, even though he confessed to not being fully read up on the transcripts?

Would an early money find by the Ingrams still only be the part of it though?

Maybe Tom was briefed by Ckret & therefore didn't feel a need to read the transcripts?

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[Orange1 0]

  Quote

Michael Taylor wrote for the SF Chronicle, where the article first appeared on 11/17/96. The link below is when the LA news reprinted it a week later.

There are some factual errors in the article. I was wondering if Rataczak was actually talked to and quoted, as it appears. I used to think in another article that someone had made up R. quotes, when I read about 30 degree flaps. But that turned out to be accurate when we got the 2nd transcript.

What's interesting is that Rataczak, like he did in the Discovery show, (I posted what R. said in that German Discovery show a while back)...Rataczak is quoted below saying that Cooper asked for 15 degree flaps. Ckret says Cooper didn't ask for 15 degree flaps.

This is 1996. I'm wondering if Rataczak is having a bad memory..i.e. remembering the transcripts or maybe what Scott told him.

I'm also wondering about the comment about Cooper supposedly saying "airstairs". If all Cooper comments were relayed to the cabin, then Rataczak is really just hearing what the stews say? So maybe Rataczak got a false understanding of how aviation-savvy Cooper was, (he implies there was other terminology Cooper used)...since he was listening to the stew, not Cooper.

I've also attached the SF Chronicle article.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/D.B+COOPER%27S+LEAP+INTO+INFAMY+:+DARING+HIJACKER+ESCAPED+BY+JUMPING...-a084004103
``I was thinking, this guy knows a lot about the airplane,'' Rataczak, now a 57-year-old captain and still flying for Northwest, said the other day. ``With the gear down and the flaps at 15 degrees, it limits us to about 175 miles an hour. So I wondered, could he really equate flaps-at-15 with 175? The guy's no dummy.''

As for parachutes, Cooper got four, which made everybody wonder. Rataczak thought that maybe the hijacker was going to take a few of the flight crew with him and then, in horror, he thought, what if the FBI decided to summarily end the hijack by sabotaging all four parachutes.

``We really got concerned with the possibility that we were going to get bogus parachutes,'' Rataczak said.

The plane at last stopped circling Seattle - it was clear Cooper knew where he was because after glancing out a window, he asked why the plane was over nearby Tacoma - and landed on a remote section of the runway. Cooper ordered the flight crew to get the ``airstairs'' over to the plane. Given his constant use of aviation jargon, the crew thought he may have worked for Boeing or was a pilot. Finally, the hijacker released the passengers.

I thought Ckret said he had deduced Cooper didn't ask for 15 deg. As the quote I used from the transcript some days ago show, the pilot mentions 15 deg but the wording makes it ambiguous if Cooper actually asked for it or if the pilot supposed that from what he asked. Pilot also mentioned to ground control right then that he thought Cooper knew something about aviation.

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[snowmman 3]

It's funny that Jo is accusing georger of being ex-FBI. I know I miss the days when I was NSA, on Project Mannequin.

So let's look at it:
What do we know about georger. Reviewing his posts:
1) He says he's in Iowa City, Iowa
2) He says he's a physicist at the Eastern Iowa Observatory and Learning Center and this is a pet project:
http://www.cedar-astronomers.org/paldows.ht
3) He says he was painting barns for cows apparently.

What's weird, is if he was involved in putting together the "Dream Team" like he says, is how did he know Tom K?

I can see the Seattle connection to Ckret for Tom K, thru the Burke Museum/univ. of wash.. But Tom is currently in AZ.
So how does georger in Iowa, get to reach out to Tom?

georger is always dropping hints like he has/had access to fbi info on the case in the past. But I don't think he really has.

What's weird, is georger introduced the "dream team" on August 27 with this post, saying the panel was assembled "some time ago". Yet by 11/24 there was zero information. In fact the sand in Tom K's lab had only been gathered 11/13/08, if the labels were true.

said georger on 8/27:

"Some time ago, a panel was assembled and
recommended to Larry Carr with the idea of examining the money.

The panel consists of recognised experts in
different areas of forensics and analysis, who will examine the money or specimens from the money cache. The analyses will be conducted in laboratory
environments equiped with the latest in technology,
including chemical, spectroscopic, and even electron
microscopy (if necessary).

Our panel will also have access to other researchers
and resources if necessary. Every person on our
panel is highly skilled, experienced, credentialed,
and a published research scientist: some with ties
to Quantico."

I can't help but think "B.S." based on the lack of results we've seen.

[snowmman 3]

  Quote

I thought Ckret said he had deduced Cooper didn't ask for 15 deg. As the quote I used from the transcript some days ago show, the pilot mentions 15 deg but the wording makes it ambiguous if Cooper actually asked for it or if the pilot supposed that from what he asked. Pilot also mentioned to ground control right then that he thought Cooper knew something about aviation.

well the odd thing is that R. basically says the same thing he says above, in the German Discovery show that's on Youtube. I posted the place before, but not bothering to look it up. The english version of the show isn't on Youtube cause of copyright I guess, but you can hear R. in English, thru the German.

In any case, it raises the question of having to decide why to ignore R. R. could have a false/mistaken memory.

It also raises the question of "Why believe Ckret".

It's always unclear if Ckret has additional interviews he can't release, or if he's just interpreting stuff a certain way. (edit) I guess I say that because Ckret tends to deliver just the summary judgment, not the connection to source data..so we can't evaluate the summary.

That's the nature of the game. Not complaining. Just outlining the problems I have in digesting everything.

[Orange1 0]

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What's weird, is if he was involved in putting together the "Dream Team" like he says, is how did he know Tom K?

I can see the Seattle connection to Ckret for Tom K, thru the Burke Museum/univ. of wash.. But Tom is currently in AZ.
So how does georger in Iowa, get to reach out to Tom?

I don't see this as strange at all. Academics often have very wide-ranging networks geographically, from students who come from out of town, visiting professors, people they meet at conferences, academic networking via journals and email, etc etc.
I've been out of academia a long time but even back then, which was pre email/internet being widely used - and I was very junior in the hierarchy at the time - i knew, or knew of, people at universities on 3 different continents, let alone cities. & I imagine networking is far easier these days.

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[377 22]

Is the part about Cooper inspecting the rigger packing cards fact or fiction?

Rataczak sure was a vindictive guy, hoping to drop Cooper over the ocean. Once Cooper has left the plane he is no longer a threat to the crew, so killing him after exit is hardly self defense.

And Snow, thanks for promoting me to all the good looking women you run into at the local bars. I am not sure Georger even notices them.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[Orange1 0]

From that article.

  Quote

....says Jack G. Collins, the federal prosecutor who had the case until he retired one year ago. ``He's foiled the best efforts of the Establishment. Also, this guy had some guts. The plane's going 170 miles an hour. It's the middle of the night. And he walks down the ramp of an airplane. I mean, Holy Smoke!''

yeah, gee, the guy makes it sound like no-one ever done that before. at least Cooper wasn't SL'ing at some ridiculously low altiutude wondering if there were going to be men with guns greeting him on the ground...

edited to add: hmm.. and this?

  Quote

Back in the early '70s, it was not well known that a 727's rear door could be opened in flight. But the CIA had been doing it for years in Southeast Asia, dropping agents into enemy territory from the back end of an unmarked Boeing 727. For a while, the FBI thought Cooper was ex-military and might have moonlighted for the CIA. It's something they looked into.

They seem to think this went beyond test flights (a la 377's version - why spend all that money and not use it?) And this article was printed in 1996... so knowledge of the CIA's flights was out there long before we stumbled on it here

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.