olemisscub

Regardless of when it came about or where he picked it up from, he knew that they could receive their IFR clearance (several miles wide, several miles long, and 2000 feet deep) in the air. He was confident enough in knowing that information that he called their bluff on it. I'd say he also seemed to have confidence in his knowledge of the refueling procedures.

Yep, I understand it technically pre-dates WWII. I'm just arguing that pilots in WWII weren't generally trained in anything except VFR. Furthermore, having to actually receive an IFR Clearance was not standard until the late 50's when the FAA came along. The point is, I believe it's highly suggestive, although certainly not at all dispositive (unfortunately) that his experience with aviation went beyond just WWII. I often point to copycat Melvin Fisher as the closest analog to Cooper of the copycats (I'm aware you and I disagree on that haha). He had been a pilot trainee in the war, but apparently flunked out and ended up on a bomber crew. Like with Cooper, his pilots seemed to think he knew a thing or two about aircraft. But would his experience in WWII have made him capable of calling the pilots bluff if they said they had to wait to get their IFR Clearance? I'd guess not. But obviously we can't be sure. I'll message Mac and see if he knows what IFR clearance is. Surely with 2,000 hours on an aircraft in the 1960's he'd know what that was.

Any of those 4 options would make sense to me. It's an exhibition of what is so confounding about the evidence in this case. There are no outright smoking guns that indicate his actual background. The most I'm willing to affirmatively say is that he had a history with aviation to some degree or another. I also don't think it's too far of a limb to climb out on to suggest that he may have had pilot training at some point, perhaps even being a pilot himself. I believe the fact that he called their bluff on them having to wait for IFR Clearance is highly suggestive of some experience as a pilot that extended past WWII. My research indicates that IFR clearances are a post-WWII mechanism. Military pilots during the war didn't have that training and probably didn't even know what it was. That specific phrase "IFR clearance" doesn't show up on Newspapers dot com until 1954 or so. So him calling their bluff on that, if that's indeed what he was doing, illustrates more recent experience with aviation, from mid-1950's forward.

How did Cooper know about the location of the portable oxygen tanks? Or was he just lying to Tina? It seems highly unlikely someone who is unfamiliar with some of the more intricate details of the 727 would know that the portable tanks are in these "bussels" (as Tina called them). These were situated right behind the rear row of the plane on both sides. When I asked the NWO flight attendant where a rear cabin stewardess would have likely stowed her purse on a 727, she said that they had these little compartments on the floor behind the rear row of seats. She said they put purses there to keep them safe since no passenger would ever go snooping in there. Presumably this is where Flo retrieved her purse from. Tina also checked there for the bomb.

I believe that they didn't begin recording the serial numbers of destroyed currency until 1990.

Perhaps not the old listings from years ago, but there is a computer programmer in the Vortex who has created a program that can compare serial numbers in real time to serial numbers that appear in ebay listings. I believe he turned it on a week ago and it'll just continue running until he turns it off. It'll send an alert to him if there is ever a match.

DBCooper-StarNotes.xlsx cooperserialnumbers.pdf

I posted this on the papermoney reddit which has over 130k subscribers. It's a Hail Mary shot, but who knows. The majority of the regular $20's would have been pulled from circulation ages ago, but some of the star notes may remain in the hands of collectors. Worth a try.

It doesn't take that long to be exhaustive. Pretty sure I can do this off the top of my head because there are so few. I don't know of any other descriptions from anyone else regarding his height. Gregory - 5'9 Mitchell - 5'9 to 5'10 Labissoniere - 5'10 Spreckel - 5'10 Lysne - 5'10 Tina - 5'10 - 6' in her first interview, 6' in her second interview Flo - 6'0 in her interview, 6'1 in her cockpit notes Alice - 6'1 Williams 6'1+

NO ONE IS TRYING TO DISCREDIT YOU. You ever look around and wonder why literally NO ONE who you berate and bully has ever cried that you were trying to “discredit them?” You’re the only person who thinks like that. I handle criticism fine. YOU are the one who has to be right about EVERYTHING. This is a fucking hobby. It’s supposed to be fun, but you make it very, very unfun with your constant combativeness. I have a different opinion than you about the perceived height of some asshole from 52 years ago. So what? Is that worth all this negativity that you throw around? Enjoy the final word because we all know you just have to have it and are incapable of just letting things go and being amicable. For real, you don’t have to be so uncool everytime someone disagrees with you.

Never change, Flyjack. Enjoy your night.

The only one of us who got any “fact” wrong was you with saying Flo didn’t see Cooper standing before she wrote 6’1. I can’t be “wrong” by saying that my preferred range for suspects is 5’10-6’. That’s an opinion. I’m well aware of how shoes affect things. That’s precisely why I said I won’t outright discount someone who is 5’9. Shoes will make that person appear 5’10. Same logic applies to someone who is 6’2. They’re gonna look 6’3 in shoes. That’s far too tall.

Respect your opinion on all that, but personally I’m gonna stick with a preferred range of 5’10 to 6’. If I’m just doing bullet points on a suspect’s description, a 5’11 suspect is going to get that particular box checked but a 6’2 or 5’8 suspect won’t. But that’s just me.

You’re basically 5’9. Do you think you could possibly estimate someone is 6’1 when they’re really the same height as you are? Likewise, there’s no way if you saw me or Dave that you could possibly mistake us for being your height. We’d be notably taller than you. And if Tina was willing to estimate Cooper as much as 4 inches taller than her, then in her mind he was notably taller. Concerning Cooper seated, if anything, this would lead people would led people to underestimate his height. When people saw Cooper seated he was “slouching” (Gregory) or “bending over” (Tina). You just can’t get a very accurate measure of someone seated. Look at the people who we know saw Cooper standing. The only one who didn’t go at least as high as 6’ is Lysne, and we know he’s not a good witness, by his own admission. Not interested in debating an inch or two, but literally all 3 stews went up to six feet tall. Reckon anyone has ever thought you were six feet tall or even six one? Hard to imagine. If a compelling suspect was 5’9, I’d be a bit leery, but I wouldn’t dismiss them outright. 5’8? I just can’t go there. It’s why I could never go all in on Braden. Highly unlikely people could have thought he was 6’. I already have a hard time imaging someone 5’9 being estimated at 6’ by multiple people. 5’8? No way. And for future reference, heights and weights on those WWII draft cards would not have been self reported, at least not for the most part. Your height and weight mattered to the military. They measured you in your barefeet. This is why you see so many draft records that have heights like “6’1 1/4” or “5’10 3/4”. Oh, and Flo actually had already seen Cooper standing when she was sent to the cockpit. She checked him in at the aft stairs as he boarded.

I’d always heard that too. No idea the source for that. Her only extensive interview before recent times was with Tosaw and I just did a word search of his book and didn’t see anything similar.

My take on this height is this: I think the FBI probably got it right, with the 5'10 to 6' assessment. Tina was 5'8. It's on her passport from 71 and she also apparently told the FBI this as well since it's in her 302. There is a video clip of the crew getting out of a van the next morning in Reno about to take the plane back to Seattle. You can see briefly see Tina's boot heels in that clip and she looks to have about a half inch heel. I actually figured their heels would be higher, but they weren't. Tina's first 302 says the HJ was 5'10 to 6'. Her second 302 she just says 6'. It is a well known phenomenon that people who are intimidated by an individual will exaggerate height. However, think about your own height and go through this exercise. I'm 6'1. If someone was 6'1 or 6'2, there is no chance in hell that I would estimate them to be as tall as 6'5. So if Tina was willing to estimate that someone was 4 inches taller than her, then it seems hard to believe he could be roughly her same height. It goes the other way as well. If Tina was willing to go as low as 5'10, then someone 6'2 is probably out of the question. That would be like me thinking that someone could be 6'3 and they turn out to be 6'7. This is why I think 5'10 to 6 is probably about right. But then again, did she ever stand side by side with him? We don't know. Perhaps she had to squeeze past him at some point if he was standing up working on the money bag or something like that. She also claimed that she showed Cooper how to lower the stairs, but does that mean she was standing next to him literally pointing at how to do it or did she merely just explain to him how to do it? Regardless of how people can and do misinterpret height, Tina thought he could have been as much as 4 inches taller than her, which suggests to me that he likely wasn't close to her height. So a suspect who is 5'8 or lower is a complete non-starter for me and by that same token, I have a difficult time with a suspect who 6'2 or something like that.

His other recent blog post about the sketch and the eyes was erroneous. I emailed him about it and he said he'd do a correction on it. He thought that this document was a reference to Schaffner picking out this set of eyes. I pointed out to him that the reference to Eugene is the clue that this document was about Bill Mitchell. Schaffner couldn't remember what his eyes looked like so the agents ran around asking which of the other witnesses saw his eyes. We knew Gregory and Hal Williams made claims about seeing his eyes and picked out eyes from the Facial Identification Catalog, but this most recent Vault release was the first indication we have that Bill also picked out a set of eyes. The eyes he chose didn't end up on the Bing sketch, so Bing's eyes came from either Gregory or Williams. In my most recent video that I published yesterday, I argue (although it should be obvious) that the eyes on the sketches are likely the least accurate components of the sketches. Bing's eyes are, as I stated, based on Gregory or Williams' selection from the catalog. Then, with the Comp B's, Rose essentially just drew the eyes from KK5-1.

I agree that there is something strange about those early descriptions. You'll see where they often refer to both back chutes as being olive drab. I don't dwell too much on that though. I chalk that up to the "fog of war", as it were. Early chaos as you say.

It's a good question, although that description is wrong from the start anyways. It says "All White Nylon". Of course we know the functional reserve was salmon colored, so I doubt that description came from someone on the scene. I would speculate that since Emerick is the one who handed them over that he provided a description at some point between handing them over and when that report was written. That would seem to make the most sense. They called Hayden at 2:50 AM to get a better description of the back chutes, so maybe they did the same with Emerick and it just isn't reflected anywhere in the notes.

Indeed. Tom said they were just crumbs.

Here are the shards that Uncle Bruce has always been so obsessed with.

Milnes seemed to really respect Nyrop's wishes that the FBI and LEO's stay completely out of it. I can't envision them slipping a tracker in one of the chutes given how standoffish they were during the actual hijacking. As we know, other FBI offices during other hijackings didn't keep their distance like the Seattle Office did. Interesting that Seattle took a totally different approach with the Sibley hijacking a year later. They ended up shooting and wounding him. That was a United Airlines jet, so maybe UAL told them to intervene.

Ok I wasn’t thinking about it being the FBI’s transmitter. I see how one could read it that way.

I generally tend to not give much credence to people claiming that transmitters or anything like that that were used. None of his actions indicate that he was planning on a rendezvous with an accomplice. He is the most similar to Mac as far as the DZ of the copycats went. He was 100% winging it IMO, same as Mac. LaPoint was that way as well.