CooperNWO305

It would be in the censuses. I’ll have to look later.

Discussion on the Facebook group about maps. Why would pilots need maps? Wouldn’t they have some for their area? And if they didn’t, then what area did Cooper request?

Pic of Mitchell’s ticket from CooperCon

Good point. Tom mentioned that the tie tack/pin/bar whatever we call it was coated with gold, so the element Au would show up. The stubs had nickel in them too. I've counted 34 elements in the first summary from McCrone. It will take some time to count from the other tabs. There are something like 118 elements in the periodic chart, but many of those are very rare like plutonium, livermorium, etc. Long story short, it looks to me like almost every common element in the world was found on that tie. I had some leads on places to test clothing, but I did not follow up with paying the $1000 or $1500 to do so. It sounds like Flyjack is the only one to have had something tested.

How are these not Titanium alloys? It looks to me if the elements are found together that it could mean they are an alloy. In Tom Kaye's presentation he discussed the pure titanium as likely being found with Chlorine or salt (depending on if it is the Hunter Process or Kroll Process). Titanium alloy would contain silicon, aluminum, iron, etc. It varies. I do believe the tie was at a metals shop or a chemicals plant. Narrowing that down though is a needle in a haystack, unless we had Cooper and then found out he worked at a plant. That assumes the tie was his.

Above is a snip of a series of the McCrone spreadsheets. You can see in the upper left (Detail) how complex it is. The summary (right) is easier to read. The part in yellow is just a few columns of the detail sheet. I was interested to see that four elements were listed on each particle. There are 100s of thousands of these lines. I watched Tom's presentation at CooperCon 2018 and got more info. I need to dust off some of my detailed Excel training and figure out how to quickly get all the info into one tab so I can count elements. That may take me a bit. What will that get me? Not much. I think it will just say that Cooper was around a lot of equipment, machines, dust, etc. The guy had a clip on tie, which means he was probably not a CEO.

I think the rows on the spreadsheets are individual particles. Tom’s presentation at CooperCon 2018 mentions 100,000 particles. So each particle had some combination of elements it seems.

Georger: How well versed are you on the McCrone part of the Citizen Sleuths website, or was Tom Kaye the one who focused on that? I was looking at the Excel spreadsheets on the elements and noticed that the summary tabs only hit on the major elements found, and not all the elements that were actually found on the tie. This makes sense because the site says something along those lines. I've been focusing on the overall summaries. For instance, the summary might say Gold, but that is the element in the Excel row with the highest percentage, listed as First Element. But also in that row are Silver, Aluminum, and Sulphur. What I'm trying to figure out is what each row means. Each tab on the spreadsheet has the same stub that was used, but each row for that stub is different. Tom Kaye has said that there is no way to know if an element was found combined with another one, but I'm wondering if elements were found together. Example: Pepperoni and Cheese may be found together in a pizza, but they may not be combined together, just one on top of the other. I know this is a loose example. What leads me to look at the McCrone analysis more is a desire to see if McCrone has other data from their research that they can compare to the DB Cooper tie data and see if there is overlap. There could be 50 elements in this data, not just titanium. It will take me a while to pull out all of them. I guess one could look at the elements and decide anything they want. For instance, I could pull out Vanadium and say that it came from coal dust. I've theorized that Cooper was a working man and worked in some industrial setting (as have many others theorized the same thing). As I was looking at the McCrone site, I perused their press releases. There are a few on DB Cooper, but what caught my eye was on one coal analysis: https://www.mccrone.com/media-coverage/fox10-news-investigates-coal-uncovered/ Also one on stolen currency. You need to be a member to read the whole thing. https://www.mccrone.com/media-coverage/laboratory-analysis-of-stolen-currency-paper-money/ Bottom line is that a lot of folks love to talk about the titanium and not the other 50 elements. I think McCrone could give us some good info just by comparing the stubs to other analysis that they've done. I would still like to see some other clothing items analyzed besides Cooper's tie and a Boeing tie. Flyjack I think you were working some angle on this too.

Call it conjecture or whatever. TC has a history, a pattern, a series of trends. We all know where he is going with things. "Lots of new material on Rackstraw." Sure. One of my favorites is how they tout this 100 pieces of evidence on Rackstraw. It is not evidence, it is information. For instance is this evidence: "On October 20, 1963 the Santa Cruz Police Department found an intoxicated Robert Rackstraw with fake identification" How is this evidence? The fact is that every suspect has good information about them, but to call their life story "evidence" is a bit misleading. Information is a good word, theory too. Here is their list of evidence on Rackstraw. He was 28 at the time, does not look like any witness description, and did not have the temperament to be DB Cooper. I'd be curious to know if the investigation team is so caught up in the details that they can't see the forest for the trees, or is it that they are fanatical true believers, or is there an integrity issue here? https://dbcooper.com/evidence/

I agree with you on the science Georger. But on the Netflix series I have a different view. DB Cooper’s relatives are out there. Maybe they know their grandfather was DB Cooper, maybe they don’t. But you never know how one of these shows will motivate someone to come forward or for some person to get excited to join the search.

https://ew.com/tv/d-b-cooper-hijacking-documentary-netflix-trailer/ News article on the Netflix series.

Looks like it should be good. I had heard that it was very focused on Colbert and team, but it looks like they've got Gray, Bruce Smith etc. Darren is in there too.

That’s a great way to put it. The tail does not wag the dog. The money find does not prove a flight path.

I've noticed a trend where the FBI files released seem to often times have info that has recently been a hot topic, for instance the air stairs. That topic was being discussed a lot, and then it shows up in the FBI release. I have not seen a lot of rhyme or reason to how the files are released, like by date order. You'll see a file from 1972 and then one from 1982. So maybe if we talk about it enough, something could show up. It's possible that Mark Zaid uses the discussions to then ask for certain files. I don't know, but it does seem to be a trend. I asked about photos a few weeks ago and was told there have not been any released, so yea, I'd like to see it too. I've been thinking about the tie some. Was it Cooper's? What really indicates that it was his? He was wearing it, ok. But he was wearing a suit too, and we talk about him buying a suit secondhand, but not a tie? Ties did not typically show up in secondhand stores I guess. They did end up in lost and founds though. Cooper did not wear any identifying jewelry, no watch, no rings, etc. But he decided to wear a tie bar/pin etc?? Does Cooper buy a suit but use his own tie? Possibly. But if he did get it second hand, and we trace the particles to say Kansas, that helps. I question how rare those elements were, titanium specifically. It was being used on aircraft and racing cars in the 60s for certain. I have to imagine it was on other items like trucks, cars, brakes, etc. Anything needing light weight or corrosion resistance. The part about the pictures would help me a bit. I think he could have dropped the tie accidently, or on purpose, or placed it and not picked it up. But if he had a tie bar, that would have been used to hold the tie to his shirt, and therefore it would not be flapping in his face. Why place the tie on the middle seat and not the seat closest to the aisle, or on Bill Mitchell's side? We don't know if he left the tie on purpose or by accident. In terms of photos, I'd like to see how things were found, the tie, the chutes, etc. Citizen sleuths have 50 years of discussion and learning and may be able to see something the FBI did not see.

Does V23 encompass both the FBI flight path and the WFP, how about the EFP (Washougal)?

Do we know if Cooper's coat was for sure a raincoat or was it an overcoat? It's been a while since I've worn suits regularly, but when I wore them more often, I had a raincoat and an overcoat, but I would not travel with both. Basically when it rained, I'd pull out the raincoat. I guess if I was on the road a lot, I'd have both with me. Does Cooper travel with both? Or because it rains a lot in Seattle, does he have that raincoat with him at all times? We talk about the tie being bought second hand, the suit too, but I have not heard much talk about the raincoat/overcoat being bought second hand. We may never know, but if he owned everything, that is different than him buying everything at the last minute.

The US government, any agency, military, politician, etc, rarely will admit fault. It just does not happen that way. There are scapegoats, which there does not seem to be in the DB Cooper case, but no one will admit that they did not get their man. Now, if this somehow became political between Democrats and Republicans, then I guarantee the case would move forward. That won't happen. Bottom line is that we can't expect the FBI to say "Cooper lived, and got away with the money." Even though there are probably FBI agents who believe that. I'll be curious to see if Larry Carr adjusts his theory as the years go by. If Cooper did die, then there are plenty of methods to find him, and frankly this case would be easier to solve if he did die.

Another takeaway I had from the Larry Carr interviews is that the FBI is not doing anything on this case, and unless you have a $20 bill or some other huge item, then the government is not taking this anywhere. Translated, it will be a citizen sleuth who takes this to the next step.

Great. It worked. Thanks.

Anyone know what the url was for Sluggo’s site? It would be on the Wayback Machine but I think you need a url.

"He stated that there was approximately one stream per mile of land in this area. If a person parachuted in this basin, he would most probably come to earth on land. Based on this fact, there is a good chance the money was carried to water rather than falling into it. If the money had not landed within ten feet of a stream, chances are almost zero that the money would make the stream. [Almost a repeat of Bradley’s comments. Who came up with the Washougal Theory first?]" This goes with my thoughts in that Cooper likely did not land in water. I say not likely, but that does not mean impossible. But given that most of the drop zone was land, it is unlikely that he landed in water. There were 3 packets of bills found at Tena Bar, $6000 or so. This is very possibly the same amount of money that was taken out of the bag and handed to Tina, then maybe put back in the bag?? Or into the raincoat, or Tina kept it. I realize that this money is one of our only clues, but many people in case want to use the $6000 to define what happened to the other $193,000. My stance is that it is possible that the $6000 was separated from the $193,000 early on in the event and that the $193,000 is still out there buried, or disintegrated, or was spent, etc.

He mentioned maps too, but that does not get a lot of publicity. We don't know if those are aeronautical maps or street maps. As I understand, Hahneman jumped into the jungle with no real plan, as did some of the other hijackers. So a hijacker jumping with no plan may not be that unusual.

I don't remember seeing the reference to Mazatlan. Is that in the 302s? Good point about possibly changing the destination in flight. That would have been an option for him.

Larry's comments on the Washougal had me looking at a map to see how far the Washougal was from the actual jump spot. It is a good distance, and I just don't see it. As I was playing around, I used the map to draw a straight line from SEATAC to Mexico City and one to Reno. Attached is a rough attempt to see how those lines would look (granted this is on a map and not a globe, so a straight line would be a little off, but not too much). What strikes me as unusual is that the line to Mexico City goes over completely different areas than the one to Reno, and those are both different from where he jumped. If Cooper did plan a jump spot, then he had to have been flexible, because once the plane leaves SEATAC he does not know for sure where it will go. Did he hope it would go through Portland? Did he hope the stairs would work? Sometimes I think he planned every step, and other times I think he just didn't care and winged it as he went. Map to Reno and Mexico City.pdf