olemisscub

When would you say he was flirting? I've never really gotten that sense from him. Just seemed like he was being pleasant with the stews on a few occasions.

Benzedrine has been confirmed.

I view it moreso as evidence that Flo was no longer afraid of Cooper by that point. I can’t say I blame her. That plane could’ve been heading off to parts unknown. She needs her money and her license and all that.

I've said it a million time. It's weird that he decided to spend an hour and a half McGyvering the money bag instead of simply demanding that a knapsack be brought.

yes, he's a confounding combination of seeming to know what's he talking about at certain times but then other times he's obviously full of shit. I think about him scoffing over them not being able to take off with the stairs down. "Yes they can..." There's absolutely no way he could have known that. As far as I know the only time a 727 has ever taken off with the stairs down was during the evacuation of Da Nang in 1975 and that was obviously an emergency.

I've never had a real clear answer for this, but it was a radio for "cockpit communications" according to Tina's statement. I wrote this on your reddit post just now, but the word "radio" comes from Tina. I think it would be better described as a walkie-talkie for communicating with Al Lee and/or the fuel truck guys. Essentially it was for short-range communication with some of the guys on the ground outside. Cooper seemed to be aware of its existence. It's nowhere in the transcript where they mention discussing this with him, but I guess they must have explained to him at some point that it would be needed to communicate with the guy bringing the ransom items, etc.

The key takeaway from this post is that the 302 briefly mentions a suspect becoming a bit of a Cooperite after being eliminated. This is the first time we’ve seen that as far as I’m aware. I don’t know of any other suspects like that.

Debilitating nearsightedness from every eyewitness? Sorry, I couldn’t help the quip. Haha. I look forward to seeing what you found one day. Hope all is well with you and yours.

So now you ARE saying he was Cooper? Weren’t you saying just recently that you weren’t claiming he was Cooper, you just couldn’t eliminate him?

40% of bank robberies go unsolved. I don't find it surprising that a case of first impression like this one went unsolved. And don't take offense to this because it's not meant to be derisive, but you've said a few times before that you're trying to figure out how the FBI failed to identify Hahneman as Cooper despite having him in custody. So I think your belief that something unique occurred is colored somewhat by your research into Hahneman. The most likely reason Cooper wasn't caught was due to some combination of him successfully keeping his mouth shut before and after the hijacking, catching law enforcement by surprise, by being entirely unremarkable in his appearance, by limiting interactions with eyewitnesses, and by not being sloppy. Let's look at what led the FBI to the copycats. McCoy - ran his mouth before the hijacking Mac - ran his mouth before the hijacking Hahneman - ran his mouth DURING the hijacking. Although I'm sure you'll tell me it was something else, haha, but the FBI's affidavit for the arrest warrant explained that they were able to figure him out due to the things he mentioned during the hijacking, such as his dad being of German extraction, his dad being buried in New Orleans, his mother being Honduran, and his past employment with Philco. LaPoint - jumped in day time and chase plane followed him to the ground. He was caught in the act essentially. Heady - Made a grievously sloppy mistake leaving his car on the side of the road with its USPA bumper sticker. So yeah, not a huge mystery to me. Cooper kept his mouth shut, caught the Feds by surprise, and eft nothing on the plane to help identify him nor said anything on the plane to help identify him.

Also, it appears I was wrong in thinking that Soderlind came up with V-23. Reading this it seems that the assignment came from the Seattle Tower, not NWO.

Couple of things from my transcript of Rataczak's NWA speech. He rambles so much in that speech, it's hard to keep up. But my idea was to go and fly due west out over the Pacific about 10 or 20 miles. It's dark. It's pitch black. He doesn't have any GPS. There's no such thing back then. He did have this paper bag, but all he had in the briefcase was eight sticks of dynamite, road flares, we don't know. So we knew that if we went out 20 miles, and he decided to jump out of the airplane: have a nice trip! Well, so, we started talking about where we were going to refuel. I said how about San Francisco. “Too big an airport”, he said. Well, then how about Los Angeles? The refrain again became “Too big an airport.” San Diego? “No, that's too big an airport. I don't want to go there. You have to pick a smaller airport.” So we told this to Paul and Paul said, We've got it set up now, Bill. I told him what I had planned on proposing to Scotty. He said, “Bill, we've got it set up to go to Reno.” So that was our objective.

Still not seeing a reason for him to say all of that if he's still hours away from jumping.

Yeah that's a good point. He didn't really have any tactical reason to spill the beans on his jump configuration if he was wanting to jump hours later.

I see. fwiw, Mac instructed them to fly to Toronto from St. Louis because he figured Michigan was along that flight path. This is where I can see some commonality between Mac and Cooper with how both were clearly winging it.