olemisscub

Me: Did the stairs go down all the way like with hydraulic assist or did it just go down a little bit as you went onto them and your weight lowered the stairs? Mac: My weight lowered them just 1 foot. Airflow was strong at 300mph. Me: So they were not all the way down when you were hanging there? Mac: NO!!! Coulda gone down 2-3 feet. Maybe more, not sure. I was very close to the third engine directly above me. Very LOUD.

I asked him to draw a sketch of how he had it attached. He put his leather waist belt through the upper handle of the bag (that the guy is holding) and his belt apparently had two snaps on the buckle, it wasn't stitched, so of course it just snapped off. He says he had an identical belt in the closet at home and when he got home he inspected it and yanked really hard on it and it broke. He said I'm the first person to ask exactly how he secured it to himself.

Just got off the phone with McNally after 2 and a half hours. Guy is a hoot. I asked him a bunch of "Coopery" things. Some notable comments. - His alias, Robert Wilson, was completely made up out of the blue. He has no idea why he chose it. Meant nothing. - Despite having 1500 hours in an P-2 Neptune with the Navy, he was never shown how to put on a chute. - He had a briefcase with him that contained gloves, a pistol (that wasn't used during the hijacking), his wig, sunglasses, and rope. - He was so scared that he scooted down the stairs on his butt. - He attached the money bag to his left leg with a leather belt that went through loops on the leather money bag. He later found out that the belt wasn't stitched, which is why it snapped. - He doesn't know why he was described by passengers as swarthy or Hispanic (one article I came across said "Mexican or Spanish" He wasn't wearing makeup. - Said the money bag was totally intact when it was found despite falling several thousand feet, which surprised him. - Said he wearing a set of clothes under the clothes he wore during the hijacking. Tossed those out the plane. They were found. - I asked if his briefcase was ever found and he said it wasn't. - And my favorite: he took a shit in his chute, folded it together and then stepped on it to rub it all in so the FBI or law enforcement would be pissed when they found it. Says he has never seen it mentioned anywhere.

made this the other day. I'm also almost positive, from looking at photos, that the first three people in that video are Robert and Adele Cummings and their adult son Lynn (holding the radio). Also, the guy between Andvik and Michelson matches the age and height of Andvik's co-worker, Albert B. Truitt, but I couldn't find any photos to corroborate this.

Since the top says "female deceased" it appears that it's both hands from that same corpse.

Latest Vault. Nothing notable as far as I can tell. https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper /d.b.-cooper-part-78/view

That’s kind of a low area of the tie for a pin, no? It does look more like that area has been repeatedly stabbed by something moreso than a burn.

The pins at Crucible looked like this. We actually have Vordahl’s and we’re working on getting the family to send it to Tom because he said he wants to have a look at it.

He’s assuming the overcoat is buttoned up. My mind’s eye always has Cooper with his suit jacket and raincoat/top coat unbuttoned while seated (because we don’t sit down with jackets buttoned unless you’re a weirdo)

That's good stuff.

Brian Ingram just said on Facebook that they washed the money in their sink and used fabric softener on the money.

"In my mind, therefore, there is no reason to exclude the arrival of the money in some Northwestern waterway on the night of the hijacking." Except that wads of currency don't float...they sink, right?

The bulkhead door could definitely be locked from the outside. They would often leave these planes overnight on the tarmac with the aft stairs down. That tells me that they must have had a way to lock the bulkhead door to prevent thieves or whatever. It may have been literal keys because I believe there were actual keys that could unlock the stairs from the outside. Perhaps the same set of keys unlocked both?

Good stuff. His timing is odd as well. Rat says that Tina was ringing the emergency chimes right as they were nosing off the ground. So before Tina hits the chimes she had to be handed the note from Flo and have enough time to process it, before that she had to have had enough time to see Flo looking odd and to go inquire about it, before that Flo had to have sat down by Cooper and been shown the bomb, before that Flo would have buckled up and been seated when Cooper turns around and tells her to read the note, before that Flo would have been walking around, and finally before that Cooper hands her the note. So between Cooper initially handing her the note and the plane nosing off the ground there had to be at the very least 2 or 3 minutes. What if Flo read the note immediately and screamed in terror alerting everyone? What would Cooper have done then? They'd have still been on the ground in Portland when all that took place. Why wouldn't he have just waited to give her the note when he was certain they were off the ground? I also think some of the language Cooper used speaks to "phony tough guy" as opposed to "actual tough guy". His stuff like "no funny stuff or I'll do the job" just sounds like movie lingo. I doubt some actual badass like Braden would have said such a thing. Also, as you mentioned, Cooper apparently had this fear of air marshals. This tells me he was a bit timid. Again, I doubt a Braden-type would have been vocally concerned about such a thing.

I believe this interview to be Michael Cooper's. Missoula is the only city that fits the redactions and he's the only Missoula passenger whose name fits along with the story. Charles Street's name fits but he was on a business trip with Arnold Andvik and Charles Truitt for the General Services Administration in Seattle, so he wasn't just passing through.

Just realized that Nancy House was only 24 at the time of the hijacking. For some reason I always imagined her being an older lady, I suppose due to the name Nancy sounding like an old school name to me.

Yeah, I guess I was mainly referring to Cossey being correct about them both being emergency chutes before he pivots to the “he didn’t choose the comfy civilian chute” BS. As far as I can tell there’s no reason to ever look for a further description of the chutes in the 302’s beyond that first 302 from Hayden. That appears to be the most accurate description.

Tina first brought one of the main (big, to use her words) chutes, then both chest packs during one trip, then the final main. Cooper was already fooling with the good chest pack when she brought the final main. Cossey's original descriptions were correct. No idea why he changed it. These are both from Nov 71.

Their jobs would have been much easier if they had OCR scanning of every 302 like we have. I’d like to think that many of the errant public declarations Larry made early in his tenure (dummy chute, loafers, military chute over civilian chute, etc) could have been avoided if he had searchable 302’s at the time.

Been saying this for ages. Glad we agree.

Tina's description is pretty clear about him wrapping the money bag up. It then appears that he tried to put the whole bag (still wrapped up presumably) into the container of the good reserve. So if he, at some point later, had decided to put some of the money in the dummy chute container, then he would have needed to unwrap the money bag to access the cash. That seems rather tedious with the clock ticking.

On a related note, in Cossey's first interview with the FBI he states his belief that Cooper could have removed the parachute from one of the chest packs and used it as an additional money bag. He states this immediately after acknowledging that the harnesses didn't have D-rings, so is he assuming that Cooper would have tied this bag to his body with paracord or is he possibly suggesting that the connector snaps could be fit onto the harness? Meltzer told me that he tried to see if you could fit the fabric on the harness of an NB-8 into the connector snaps of an old reserve and it won't fit. So, if he did use the dummy chute as an extra money bag then it would have to have been tied with the paracord to the harness or his body. For the dummy chute we seem to have three options (if there are others let me know): 1. He tied it to his body to be used as a reserve. My issue with this is that it seems a bit of a dodgy prospect. Since I've never jumped out of a plane, I think I can accurately play the role of a "whuffo Cooper" in these discussions. I think if I was Cooper and my harnesses didn't have D-rings I'd just have to accept the fact that I wasn't going to be jumping with a reserve. I wouldn't trust any knots I'm tying with paracord to hold if I had to open a reserve. 2. He popped it, threw the sewn together dummy canopy out the back, stuffed some of the money in there, snapped it back up, then tied it to his person or to the harness with paracord. The issue with this is why you would do this at all. Would there be any benefit to having two awkward things tied to your body as opposed to one? 3. He just threw it intact out of the back of the aircraft at some point.

Made enhanced versions of these.

Yeah. This brief clip from a WWII training film indicates that. FullSizeRender.MOV