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New episode out now! DB Cooper: What Really Happened with our good friend Marty Andrade. https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-what-really-happened-martin-andrade/ Enjoy!

My experience of Stylometry in my writing career and how it’s relevant to Martin Andrade’s ground breaking research in unveiling Barb Dayton as “Clara” as the very likely informant for DB Cooper: What Really Happened in at least in one letter. Stylometry is the forensic application of AI, and study to determine the authorship of anonymous sources or true authorship for disputed authorship of written materials/content. Here’s a couple of my experiences 1) My main gig in life is writing, teaching, content on Autism/ADHD etc and I’ve had cases where my blogs/writings/content were taken by competitors. I sued for plagiarism and using stylometry - it was deemed my content was copied/stolen and they had rebranded my work as their own and it was settled before hearing so no more discussion on that. They were caught RED handed and their defense counsel told them to accept settling and not enter the court because their winning margin was 0. 2) For the writing of my novel ‘Dan Cooper’ - I had to completely change my writing style from Irish/European tone/sentence structure, spelling, grammar etc. I invested heavily in writing courses and research to get this right. I didn’t want my narrator ‘Dan Cooper’ sounding like me or reading like someone would feel JUDE was talking to the reader. From critics, human readers - people who know me picked up some “Jude-isms” and had to keep some European-isms in there to suit a global readerbase. ‘Dan Cooper’ as a novel is Cooper being the narrator and giving his why and how. The closest text to mine in this topic area was DB Cooper: What Really Happened - by Max Gunther which is a remarkable work that we all like. So a sample of my first book was sent to Marty. Then a sample of ‘Dan Cooper’. Despite months of effort to disguise my voice - Marty’s software busted me. It came back that it was me to a much lesser extent than Barb Dayton came back as the author of the letters to Ralph Himmelsbach etc. Barb didn’t write these letters with AI Stylometric detection software so she is considered caught in this regard. I wrote intentionally to disguise myself and it was identifiably me to a point where in a court of law I’d be convicted of fraud if I wrote ‘Dan Cooper’ under a false pen name and claimed it as a TRUE CONFESSION. The software would know it’s me. For those new - Gunther’s book was marketed as an anonymous source work that blurred the lines between fiction and reality in a similar fashion to In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. There was long term debate in the vortex to the authenticity of Gunther’s sources - but as a literary work to leave a legacy of debate for 39 years post release is a remarkable and one-off achievement by an author. Gunther was not dishonest - he told a story that was told to him - most certainly by Barb Dayton. So what does this mean for the DB Cooper Community? 1) Barb Dayton was most certainly not DB Cooper - the informing details provided are contrary to the case evidence uncovered over years. Barb is my favourite Vortex story and I love her. I share Darren’s Schaefers sentiment that I want her to be DB Cooper. 2) That Max Gunther’s work is of no evidentiary value to the case but has been a huge catalyst to discussion and debate almost 5 decades post-pub which is a remarkable and unheard of achievement which every author would be honoured to have. His family should be very proud of the impact of the work for sure. 3) That William J Smith was not DB Cooper. The parallels drawn to him using this text as a piece of evidence are now completely null and void. This research has moved the case forward - it has eliminated 2 people from enquiry. WJ Smith 100% so, Barb 99% so.

Other than the obvious huge news from this episode (I won't spoil it for those who have not heard it), the other "holy shit" moment was realizing that Jo Weber knew about Dr. Roman and the double homicide long before it recently came out in the Vault. It is absolutely remarkable how much knowledge - even minute, seemingly innocuous details - she possessed long before the files began to be released. She had to have had access to them from some agent or former agent. Eng? Himmelsbach? The Vortex swirls...

Agreed. But it is also not their job to save an individual from us. The Liberal Trio in their dissent laden concurrence argued that the Court was out of their lane and making rulings that would define later cases. They argued their task was only to answer if a state could make a section 3 determination, not to go further and state that only congress could. The SC could have ruled on the absolute immunity question when Smith requested in December, I think. They wanted the Appeals Court below to answer first. Then they slow walked their decision (on whether a President could order murder with immunity, mind you) and decided the question needed to be decided months from now. They took 3 days for Bush v. Gore. They are partisan hacks with their thumbs heavily on the scale, in my opinion.

It is the job of the US electorate. Save yourselves. The R party should have done the job, but it failed due to its inherent greed and hunger for power. Like Smokey Bear always says, only you can prevent wildfires. God bless America.

I’ll be honest, and say that it’s not their job to save us from an individual. I hate that, because I think this individual is almost uniquely damaging in his potential. But it’s their job to interpret the laws that are written. If they consider personalities, then they can consider other personalities. The fact that Thomas almost certainly is considering personalities is bad; I’m not as sure about the others. But I’m more worried about considering power structures (in the US right now, that’s the parties and various lobbying groups). I think that’s a slipperier slope to go whizzing down, and one many of them have already started on. Wendy P.

And then mentions that he still has hope that the rest of his family will make different choices, even if he doesn't. I agree. I was not trying to imply that you are like this, or suggest what your life experience is, merely that there conservatives and liberals have different views on how families work. Yep. But let's take a more realistic scenario. Let's say your son was born with a minor birth defect. Nothing big, just something he gets made fun of for occasionally. But he does take it quite personally. And when he's 5 he cries constantly about it. And when he's 10 he tries to kill himself for the first time. At age 11 he almost succeeds. I have a feeling you would try to get him help, perhaps see a psychiatrist. And if the psychiatrist told you that he'd worked a lot of these cases before, and plastic surgery had been successful in other such cases when nothing else worked, I bet you'd even consider it. Not because you are OK with him "cutting off his face" (or whatever colorful adjective you wanted to use for the plastic surgery.) Not because you "respect his independence." Not because you want to let the surgeon abuse him. Not because you think that people with birth defects are inferior. But because you love him and you don't want to see him kill himself, or live a lifetime of self-loathing and misery.

Some people can tell the difference between an oppressed population seeking self determination and an oppressive ruling class seeking to continue oppressing and subjugating. And some people are clueless.