CooperNWO305

I’ve tried to get Gunther’s notes through FOIA. Typical government response. I engaged Mark Zaid on it. I need to follow up with him. I hope you get the notes.

This film is eerily similar to the Cooper hijacking. Makes me wonder if Cooper wanted his family to get a life insurance policy.

If you’re planning this big of a crime, your seat matters. So he’s taking a huge risk that someone will take his seat. I like the back. And on a short flight there may not be many people using the bathroom. He wanted those seats. His whole plan goes to shit if he gets on and someone is in those seats. It’s also Thanksgiving and a busy day. Huge risk. This also makes me think he may have tested the waters before. Maybe gone to the airport. Maybe talked himself out of it once or twice.

Good point. I always have to go back on the little things to confirm. I've heard he was the last one on, and also second to last. It seems he wanted the back of the plane. But when you're one of the last guys on the plane, you're risking not getting the seat you want.

If they could prove he was left handed it would narrow things down considerably, as something like 10% of the population is left handed. As I remember, he could have sat on the left or right side of the plane, but he chose the right side, which would mean his right hand was in the briefcase. If he had chosen the left side then his left hand would have been in there. I guess one could argue that he would want his dominant hand on the bomb, or one could say he wanted his dominant hand free to drink with, smoke with, punch with if need be. 4 to 5 hours is a long time to have his hand in the briefcase. Seems odd. It would make sense that once it was just him and Tina that he could have taken it out. Little things matter. Did he maybe go back to smoking with his right hand? As for the ticket agent remembering which hand he used. It is possible that he did not remember him using his left hand, versus remembering that he did use his right hand. Meaning that if someone is a lefty, it usually stands out, sets off an alarm in your head, etc. Leftys are just not that common. I think Sheridan was lefty, hence the push for Cooper being left handed.

I have not been able to figure this one out. Did he write in cursive or print? We know it was print for the MISS. Back then many people wrote cursive. I was looking at the back of old post cards and it made me think of this again. I’ve seen the term “handwriting”

As far as I know. Mitchell had a profile view. It’s possible there are other statements from people we have not heard about. I forget where I heard it or read it, but I thought Mitchell said it looked like he had just lost a lot of weight or had surgery (the loose skin). One of his interviews went like this. “How old was he?” “I was 20 and I want to say 40. He had you know a turkey gobble it wasn’t a double chin but he had loose skin there you know. I picked on the guy. That struck me.”

Medication requests could be a good indicator of something. Being from far away is not a disqualifier. I find it hard to believe that the hijacker was from or lived in Portland or Seattle after the hijacking. Even to this day that area is inundated with news stories and info about the hijacking. The belief that this guy hijacked a plane and then went about going to work in the same area is a big stretch. As for your suspect. Keep digging. You never know. 35 seems young. And if the comic book was not connected then everyone who uses it as a connection is wasting their time.

I somehow missed these 302s saying Tina liked the B sketch. If that is her, then the believers in the A sketch might be disappointed. A couple suspects get their photos side by side with the A sketch.

In Gray's book he mentions that Flo thought Tina was hiding something. That may have to do with the case, maybe not. It is not beyond reason that Tina started to relate to the hijacker, especially if he got her sympathies or connected with her in some way. There just seems to be an odd cloud around her, more so than the normal speculation from YouTubers and all about the crew being in on it or it being made up. I don't think she was in in on it though, maybe just got caught up in the moment or felt bad for the guy.

Good find. What platform did you use to get this? Ancestry, eyearbook etc? Finding old yearbook pics is hit or miss, but it is cool when I see old ones of family members pop up.

There was some discussion at one point about Tina saying she did not see his face straight on, which seemed very suspect to me. It just seems that she would have more to say having sat next to him for so long.

Something to consider, at least from my perspective. Cooper would have thought this one out some, maybe in his mind, maybe on paper, maybe with a partner. These statements were made early on in the hijacking, so he likely thought about what he would say. Whatever he did say may very well have been for a reason, as in he didn't wing it in the moment. Same thing with the name. I have to imagine that his first interaction with Flight 305 and Northwest is going to involve a name that means something to him, but then again he could have gotten to the counter and made it up on the fly, doubtful.

Visual for my own brain to try and process this.

I got a quick response back from McCrone about possibly seeing data from other tests to see how elements/particles are reported. Below is what I got. I think the latest look at the particles is assuming that a line of data (1 of 106,000 lines) shows alloys. For instance, if it was NaCl then it would be salt. However, I'm of the opinion (Flyjack it seems too) that the NaCl could just mean that the stub picked up Sodium and Chloride and not that they were together forming table salt. Now, if a microscope actually identified a particle that was an alloy, then we can assume that is accurate. However, we do not know if that particle has an exact corresponding line in the data. Tom Kaye responded a while back on Facebook that those lines do not mean that they are alloys, just that they were found together. Someone with a science background could help here. I searched for Scanning Electron Microscope data output and got a few hits. One read out looked just like the McCrone one in terms of format and column headers. I was hoping to find one that explained what an alloy would look like on the readout, versus something that was maybe plated with another element, or just found next to each other. On the Citizen Sleuths site they do say "This data is complicated to look at. Please do not email asking how to interpret it." Response from McCrone. Client confidentiality is paramount to our business. Our reports are the intellectual property of our clients. You will have to acquire the information from the original client. With highest regards, Craig

Can we get the moderators to treat Slim King the same way as they did Blevins? This is becoming a spam issue.

I saw on the Cooper Forum some discussion about the aft stairs. It got me thinking. There has been some discussion on whether Cooper said to have the stairs lowered in flight or lowered for takeoff. But what I don't remember anyone talking about is whether Cooper said to "lock" the stairs. A plane taking off with stairs lowered could be very different than taking off with the stairs locked. My opinion is that Cooper learned about the 727 but was not on the secret flights in Vietnam nor was he a top secret engineer during the test phase.

I'll have to chat with Tom again. He did say to me that they did not find steel. The question I may ask is what is the difference between a particle and an element. We have roughly 106,000 rows of data, are there 106,000 corresponding particles? What element is this below, have they tied this line to a particle? Is there a particle made up of these? Does it have a name? There are 106,000 rows of these. If a stub has a series of elements, does it mean that makes a particle, or could there be multiple particles mixed in? Let's say Cooper wipes a few elements on his tie, then a few days later wipes some other elements on his tie, then years later one stub hits both those sets of incidents. What do we call that? O 7.66702 MG 2.303652 AL 15.0484 SI 13.5198 S 1.184901 K 2.816026 CA 35.1904 FE 7.942541 AU 21.99428 Some commentary. Almost every major element known to man was found on that tie, so to me that doesn't rule out too many industrial activities. There are hardly any samples to compare these to. I know Tom is working on a few. I've found some similar looking data just doing we searches, but it will take me a while to find more. I sent another note to McCrone to see if they will talk. Doubtful they will. I think the tie was Cooper's or was from someone close to him or his industry. To the point above, if he did not try to hide is appearance, then why worry about something so minor as a tie? But, he did seem to not want to give much information to Tina during the hours they chatted. The tie is like the money. It is one of the only pieces of hard evidence we have, so many of us continue to dig into it and try to make conclusions. If Cooper did buy the tie at a thrift store, then we've gone on a wild goose chase. I can see how people say that ties don't end up in thrift stores. Maybe, maybe not. But I've donated ties before. Does someone grow out of a suit or decide it is out fashion and just donate the suit and throw away the tie? Doubtful. The guaranteed piece of info is that Cooper's DNA was on that tie at some point. He touched it to put it on, touched it to take it off, his neck rubbed up against it. The technology we have today may not be able to find his DNA and isolate it, but that technology can't be that far off.

They did find stainless steel. That is not that uncommon.

Interesting thought, that very well could have been a pin that identified him, a company, religious organization, veterans organization, etc. You'd think he would take the tie bar off too though, but without any logo, maybe he decides its ok to leave it. On the tie, I'm not convinced that the particles were all that special. I'd still like to see some more samples tested from other clothing. Steel is pretty common and every element in steel was found on that tie.: "Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, and sometimes other elements. While iron alloyed with carbon is called carbon steel, alloy steel is steel to which other alloying elements have been intentionally added to modify the characteristics of steel. Common alloying elements include: manganese, nickel, chromium, molybdenum, boron, titanium, vanadium, tungsten, cobalt, and niobium. Additional elements, most frequently considered undesirable, are also important in steel: phosphorus, sulfur, silicon, and traces of oxygen, nitrogen, and copper.”

I missed that one. Back in 1971?

I'm gonna guess that Max Gunther did not take the steps to do any FOIA's. He clearly got some info wrong in his book that was readily available in articles, but he has enough info in there that tells me he read some articles. I've read a good amount of his material (books, magazine articles) and I just don't find him to be a guy who digs too deep into details. That served him well when writing his books and articles in that he could make things up or weave together stories with minimal info. I suspect he got a little bit of info from "Clara" and then had to go the rest of his way on his own.

Yea, given what I've read, it seems he did not have boots on. However, landing hard in calf high boots versus ankle high shoes is very different. Cooper was a very lucky man if he landed in ankle high loafers and did not twist an ankle or worse.

Any chance Cooper was wearing Corcoran jump boots on that plane? Those boots do differ on the toe from regular military field boots. My Newspapers.com membership lapsed, but someone could probably search Elisnore, DB Cooper and see if maybe there was a news article about it that Gunther may have seen. The trouble with Newspapers.com is that it does not have all the newspapers.