olemisscub

I’ve compiled a pdf of all the found parachutes and I didn’t find any that I thought seemed possible. I can’t recall the particular one you are talking about. Post it if you have it handy please.

I'd be totally shocked if WWII Air Crew or pilots actually knew anything about canopy size. Found this about RAF training in WWII for a Lancaster bomber crew. "He was ordered to climb on to a five-bar gate and jump off. On hitting the ground, he should count to five before drawing his hand across his chest to simulate pulling the ripcord. This was, he felt, less than adequate preparation for saving his life in an emergency. Nor did he recall at any stage of his service being told how to leave a stricken aircraft." From a book on the 8th Air Force: "Parachute training for 8th Air Force crews was nothing more than usual instructions on bale out procedure: intercom verbal signals, one steady ring of the emergency bell, or just 'use your own judgement'" Book about 15th Air Force: "The thought of bailing out also terrified many airmen, to the point where they chose not to think it could happen to them. There was little or no parachute training."

That’s aviation related and while our chopper crews didn’t normally wear parachutes they 100% had training with them. I’ve verified that. I can put a parachute on every copycat while they were in the military except for Mac and he’s somewhat tricky. I know he has told you and I that he never put on a parachute while in the Navy, but maybe his memory isn’t so good. He had 2,000 hours in the air. He absolutely had put on a parachute in training before. Hell, even at his trial a fellow squadron member testified that they had it.

Yes, was not a paratrooper. He was in the Army Air Corps, US Naval Aviation, or the RCAF during WWII. Not many things I’d bet good money on in this case but that’s one of them. Literally all of my personal “canonical six” copycats had a background in military aviation. Given Cooper’s age that means WWII military aviation.

I knew you were right when I thought about that, so see my edit I made.

How the hell would I, or Cooper, know how big trackers are? Come on. And about the "inspection and packing data", maybe that's what Cooper saw while looking for trackers in the folds of the chute, not that Cooper checked in that pocket for a tracker and then suddenly found the packing card. Maybe he was like "oh, inspection and packing data, let me check in here and see what I can find out"

I’d make the argument that he may have just happened upon the packing cards while inspecting the chutes for trackers. Probably more likely that he hung around a DZ on occasion (perhaps as a pilot) and just knew that packing cards were a thing.

I’m doing a FB live with Mark soon and we’ll be sure to discuss it. He said he wouldn’t jump with a 24 footer for a million dollars. He did give that a caveat and say that he’s older these days and he would have done it for money when he was younger but he said 24 foot canopies are bad news. I’ve reached out to several of the skydivers on the FB group and they’re all in agreement that he had a high likelihood of injury landing in a 24 footer at night. Mac’s canopy was a 24 foot front reserve and he suffered a pretty major concussion when he landed. He was so concussed that instead of escaping the DZ he crawled under a tree and slept for something like 12 hours. To your point about getting down faster, I can’t recall the exact calculations but I ran some figures through AI and if you were 200lbs and opened a 24 footer at 10,000 it would take like 8 1/2 mins to come down and with the 26 footer it was like 10 minutes and 15 seconds. Not sure if those extra two minutes would be worth the risk of injury. I believe Cooper was a complete novice and chose the pack he jumped with merely because it was newer and for no other reason. He likely didn’t understand the difference in the canopies were that dramatic.

Yes that’s possible. Aside from the canopy size being wrong (Cossey’s fault), the majority of the early confusion with the chutes was just the FBI not understanding the nuances of parachutes. They interpreted the luxury pad business to mean that the one he left behind was a civilian rig, which to them meant a skydiving rig (you know this, of course). The first outright lie I caught Cossey making was to the Seattle Times in 1976 when he claimed that one of the chutes was returned to him and is now a “treasured souvenir”. It wasn’t until his 2003 interview with parachutist magazine that he started making up the bullshit about it being some tricked out “B-4 sports rig” with a special hard to find rip cord, as if he’d have given such a thing to Hayden.

fwiw, the difference in a 24 foot conical canopy and a 26 foot conical is 100 square feet of surface area. 24 has 576 square feet and 26 has 676 square feet of surface area.

I don’t believe in conspiracies like uncle Bruce. If Hayden said he didn’t talk to them he’s misremembering. We have the “receipts”, as you like to say.

Well he sure as shit talked to them when he was trying to get his chute back. The real question is where did that packing card go. Was hoping that it might have been in the 1A envelope, but now with the latest vault we know that it’s not in there. It was probably still in Hayden’s chute when he got it back. Probably shoved it in a drawer somewhere and forgot about it. Lost to history now.

24 foot canopies will drop you much faster than a 26 or 28. Meltzer says there is no way he’d jump in a 24 foot. There is a reason they are usually only used for reserves. What you may be thinking of as far as the chutes being similar is the packs. They were essentially identical except for the coloring. One was OD (Coop’s) and one was tan (in the museum)

What's intriguing about it is that Hayden also seemed to think it was a 28 footer in the Olive Drab pack. I have a theory that I've run by Meltzer and he says it's plausible given how Cossey rolled. So, Hayden bought the canopies at a surplus store (not the packs) and took them to Cossey, who packed them in their backpacks. My theory is that Hayden took Cossey a 26 and 28 footer and Cossey essentially hoarded the 28 footer for himself. Apparently the 28's were a good bit more expensive than 24's. So Cossey shoves a 24 footer into the pack and never tells Hayden about it. Of course Cossey still told the truth on the packing card (didn't want to risk losing his rigger's license), but Hayden only got those chutes because the Aeronautic Commission was requiring him to do so, meaning that he was probably never going to pay too much attention to them. They were, of course, emergency use only so Cossey figured they'd never be used and that Hayden would never be the wiser. Hayden clearly didn't seem to care about parachutes too much since he wasn't a skydiver and Cossey assumed he'd never check the packing card and notice that it wasn't a 28 in there. And if he ever did catch onto it (and actually cared) then Cossey could just make up some excuse.

We really don't need Cossey's statements about the chutes. The packing cards say what they say and the 1960 chute being 24 foot wasn't a typo or an error because it was stated twice on separate occasions. That IS what the packing card said for Coop's chute.

Yes, we're in agreement. He would have touched quite a bit: the railings of the stairs while exiting (and perhaps coming aboard as well), a bunch of things around his seat, his cup, the note he gave to Flo, cigs, bathroom door, his tie, door knob of bathroom, the packing cards, the parachute packs, the interphone, the gear to lower the stairs. Three of the copycats were cognizant enough to wear gloves during their hijackings so presumably Cooper knew the risks of leaving prints as well.

I actually asked Carr just yesterday about the "partial prints". I essentially asked if he remembered what they looked like. Was curious if they could be used to eliminate suspects even though they were partials. Obviously they were determined to be of no value when it was suggested that they be fed into a database, which makes sense for partials. But even though they were partials could you still use what was left to compare to someone's prints. Your post about McCoy makes me think that it was possible. As for Larry's answer, he said "I've seen them but can't make a judgment on how useful they may be. If I recall, there needs to be 8 points of comparison for a print to be of value. I'm not sure how many points are on the partials in the file. Could be worth another look."

Perhaps something was already written in the matchbook. This would have been the ICS-type matchbook and since it ran out of matches, then presumably Cooper had it for at least a day or two prior. Perhaps he had a phone number written somewhere on it or something else written on it that could be traced back to him. Although this would be risky to be handing a matchbook to Tina that may have had something written on it. Maybe the matchbook had some identifying feature as well like if it was from a particular location. Point is, there were many other things for them to have written on without having to scribble things on a matchbook and it would have been Tina writing the note, not Cooper. She had access to other notepads and things if she wanted to write something. Plus, unless I'm misremembering, I don't believe Tina ever ferried a note to the cockpit.

Odd to have written notes on a matchbook. That's an incredibly awkward thing to do. Just write on a magazine or something else. I'm honestly not sure if I believe that. I think that may be an agent reading Rat's statement and conflating things together for that summary because Rat mentions the matchbook and Cooper's notes in back to back sentences. That doesn't appear in any testimony nor does it appear anywhere else in the files. Also, I don't believe Tina ever went to the cockpit once she took Flo's place. What would need to be written on a matchbook? She communicated everything through the interphone.

Appreciate that. Those summaries that they wrote, and there are several (as you know), often have nuggets in them like that.

That's fair. Although I'm increasingly of the opinion that he obfuscated his prints somehow, either by having something already on his fingers or by wiping his area down (maybe that's why he took the tie off?). It's curious that they recovered full prints from elsewhere in the plane but the only "partials" were those recovered from around his seat. What is your source for him writing in a matchbook? I've tried to investigate that recently and am missing it somehow.

Another example of FBI ransom money. This one a photo from a 1971 extortion case. Again, rubber bands AND bank straps. These look to be five packets to a bundle, so if what Grinnell told us is correct, then this is a very close approximation to what Coop's money looked like. Five packet bundles also seems to reinforce the testimony of one of the passengers who said it looked like the bag had bricks in it. Those bundles do rather look like bricks.

I'm not sure I see a criminal being as studious as Cooper was about not leaving evidence behind then turning around and writing a letter. Post-crime letter writing is generally reserved for a select few sociopaths. It's serial killer type crap.

Hard to say what Tina actually said to Dirk Summers in 1977. She innocently claimed to the FBI that all she did was show him her scrapbook. Yet somehow her rejecting the money shows up in the 1980 Hustler article, even with her "we can't accept gratuities" line from her 302. Suffice it to say that one possible reason why so many of the players either didn't talk or kept their mouths completely shut for so long stemmed from that Dirk Summers/Coffelt crap from 1977 where the FBI "gently" reminded them that they could be prosecuted for running their mouths.

Also this wasn’t exactly a highly read paper. The Mucklow blurb was in between mention of someone who had a broken ankle, and a dog that fell into a pool.