olemisscub

So why didn’t he wait til closer to Reno to jump?

U.S Currency is very law "enforcementy". I see it quite often. This is from a current client of mine's indictment:

You'll need to explain to me how you reached this conclusion. I understand the whole "go to Mexico City or anywhere in Mexico" bit. But to go from "I legitimately want to go to Mexico City" to "I'm going to jump out of this aircraft north of Portland" seems quite incongruent.

Here's one issue I've got with it. There's no indication that he said anything about "American/U.S. currency" to Flo. She just wrote down what he said, which was "$200,000 in cash", and walked it to the cockpit. So to go from "$200,000 in cash" to "American/U.S. currency" means that at some point Cooper must have turned to Tina and said something like "oh I forgot to mention that I want this money in circulated U.S. currency, call up to the cockpit and tell them that." Did that happen? Maybe. Maybe not. As an attorney I'm pretty good at arguing both sides of an argument. I could easily argue FlyJack's side on this as well. This isn't an opinion I'm married to. It just seems like an odd thing to say. Seems to me that there would be no need to specify the nationality of the currency unless you were asking for something different from the country you are in i.e. the scenario of a Cuban hijacking an American plane in American airspace and asking for pesos. It seems like an unnecessary qualifier for Cooper to make and to me almost sounds like Rat being ultra-specific. I think anyone who has seen Rat interviewed could see him doing that.

This deserves a deep dive. ATC logs 3:07: "wants money in negotiable American currency, denomination of bills not important." Crew notes written by Flo: Page 1: "man with briefcase with a bomb - request $200,000 by 1700" (no qualifier) Page 4: "wants money in negotiable currency." (perhaps just writing down what she heard Bill say) Page 5: "he request fuel truck, $200,000" (no qualifier) Flo's 11/24/71 statement: "She said that the man dictated the following request to her: "I want $200,000 by 5:00 PM in cash." Tina 11/24/71: 1) "The note further indicated that he had a bomb and wanted $200,000.00" (no qualifier) 2) Schaffner at that time on a plain envelope wrote out the demands of the hijacker, listening that he wanted four parachutes including two back packs and two chest packs, $200,000 in cash in small bills and he wanted this all by five o'clock." Alice 11/24/71: "She stated that the hijacker handed another stewardess on board the flight by the name of Florence a ransom note demanding $200,000 in cash." Rataczak 11/24/71: "Hostess Florence Schaffner brought a note on what appeared to be a standard 6 x 9 tablet written with a felt pen as well as an envelope that had notations also containing the figure $200,000." (no qualifier) Tina 12/1/71: "He later told Tina that he wanted $200,000 in circulated U.S. currency." My take: I found many different instances in the 302's where the phrase "U.S. currency" was used by the FBI to describe money they found in a car or seized as evidence in a case or money they were sending for lab tests. There is a possibility that the "U.S. currency" used in the 302 of Tina's 12/1/71 is just FBI lingo. Given the number of hijackings that were occurring in the previous few years where hijackers were wanting to be taken overseas, perhaps Bill was just being specific when he said "American currency". All indications are that the ransom note simply said "$200,000 in cash". Seeing the term "cash" on the note, I think it's possible that Bill understood that he was dealing with someone who wanted dollars and not Cuban pesos or whatever. Personally I think there is too much variation in terminology to determine what Cooper actually said. The only agreement at all between any of these statements is that the note apparently said "$200,000 in cash". To me it's akin to people wanting to claim he was a pilot or flight attendant because the term "crew meals" appears in the 302's. Bill also uses the term "meals" in the ATC transcript.

He's literally the worst suspect that has ever been given a shred of publicity.

Why the hell would a 22 year old stewardess give a crap about what exit he jumped out of? When did this conversation take place? There is not a single shred of evidence anywhere that this conversation occurred. You don't get to just make stuff up. While they were on the ground in Seattle and after Flo and Alice left, Cooper and Tina had a conversation about the Beatles while they smoked a joint together. He asked her who her favorite Beatle was. She said she liked George because he was the quiet one and all the other girls loved Paul and John. Cooper said he was more a Rolling Stones guy. Don't ask me where I learned about this conversation, but it totally, totally happened.

Cooper McCoy McNally LaPoint Hahneman Heady - The sled tests in January 72 - Boeing did multiple tests with the stairs down in 1963 and 1964 - Air America did it many times in SE Asia (sometimes stairs were removed, sometimes not) in the late 60's and early 70's - The last American plane out of Da Nang in 1975 was a 727 and it took off with the aft stairs down and about six people clinging onto it. They fell to their deaths eventually. There is a YouTube video of this from inside the plane. - When filming "Pursuit of D.B. Cooper" they filmed at least one or two jumps from the aft stairs.

I highly doubt that. There wouldn’t be any need to go to that much effort. You’d just have an Air Force crewman back there to lower and raise the rear stairs.

Why did the FBI release his sketch with sunglasses off if so many had seen him with them on?

He wasn't wearing them in the airport nor when he boarded the plane. Also, according to Schaffner's testimony, he wasn't wearing them the whole time when they were on the ground in Seattle. It sounds like he took them off for a while once the passengers left. Schaffner makes reference to him putting the sunglasses (back) on during her conversation with Cooper when she was asking if she could leave the plane.

Tina said "brown ankle length pebble grained shoes, not tie type shoes" He was likely wearing something like this, which is a 1971 Allen Edmonds slip-on

Cooper also brainfarted and thought a 727 could act like a C-130 because he told Tina that the pilots could lower the stairs from the cockpit once they were airborne. C-130's could drop their rear hatch from the cockpit but obviously 727's could not. Throw in the fact that he had to be shown how to actually lower the stairs and that tells me that he had an intellectual knowledge of aircraft but not a practical knowledge of them.

My guess is that he was intending to just put it in his coat pocket and take it with him since that's what he did with everything else. As adult men, what's the first thing we do when we take a tie off? We just throw it on the bed or on a chair or whatever. I'm supposing that he did the same thing whenever he was putting his parachute on. It's almost a reflex the way you lay a tie down on the nearest object whenever you take it off. So he took his tie off and just threw it on the seat. I think he just forgot about it. If he wasn't in a rush and was actually thinking about it, I'm sure he would have taken it off, rolled it up, and put it in his rain coat pocket or whatever.

So he doesn't disguise himself in any obvious way to obfuscate his facial features yet he's worried about his clothing giving him away.... Yep, that's common sense.

Cosplaying as an International Man of Mystery, I guess. That sort of thing might be more acceptable these days. He could dress up and go to conventions.

Irrespective of all the flight path stuff and jumping out the wrong stuff, how does someone who looks like Larry Carr with a mustache turn into a swarthy guy with greasy black hair and a side part?

So Reca uses an alias for NORJAK but not to infiltrate the KGB? His "KGB ID" has his name as "Walter Reca" Please see below what an actual KGB looks like and what a phony one looks like. Reca had a very active imagination. He did do a lot of Air Rescue things during his time with the military and the guard, but he was not an International Man of Mystery. Simultaneous quadruple agents of the CIA, Mossad, MI-6, and the KGB usually don't use their real names and aren't listed in the phonebook. Comrade Reca is quite possibly the worst Cooper suspect that has ever been legitimately promulgated.

lol what are you talking about?

Vault 74 sucked. Just nothing but 302’s of yokels writing or calling in after watching reruns of Unsolved Mysteries. Speaking of which, is Unsolved Mysteries the one where Cooper is from Alabama and Himmelsbach basically has Cooper jumping into the middle of the Yukon and crawling to a watering hole and dying? lol

https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper /d.b.-cooper-part-74/at_download/file

Jo Weber: "and then I remember Duane took me to this Indian Reservation where he said he grew up. It maybe started with a Y. I said 'Duane, you never told me you were Native American!' He said he had lived there until about 1972.”

I generally don't mind Larry and appreciate him as a guy, but I take a lot of issue with him about the parachute stuff. In multiple interviews he continued to promulgate the false narrative about Cooper "jumping" with a non-functional reserve, which is something he DID NOT do because he couldn't have. Cooper either chucked the thing wholesale out the back of the aircraft or opened it, used it as a spare money bag, and pitched the canopy out the back of the aircraft (and somehow this was never found). Regardless, Larry either didn't know about the lack of d-rings or was being willfully misleading to try and sell his "100% no pull" belief. I tend to believe (and hope) it's the former.

Agreed. The FBI’s own suspect profiles within the 302’s speak to quite the opposite. They say he was educated and not working class. They speculated he was probably used to working as an executive who had a secretary take notes and run errands for him in the past (never liked that speculation since that seems lazy). You get the sense reading the suspect profile that when Cooper served in the military he was probably a junior officer, not a grunt.

I spent some time recently and retraced your steps and found the guy in the yearbook. Those ears wouldn’t have escaped notice by the Stews if he had been on 305, haha :-)