CooperNWO305

"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

Georger: I'm with you on this one. As I was listening, I realized that Larry Carr was referring to the tried and true methods of law enforcement, which were knocking on doors and the belief that criminals get caught because they talk. Apparently this is the case most of the time, but clearly the DB Cooper case did not go that way, so the knocking on doors and waiting for someone to talk just may not have worked out. Larry actually says in the podcast that there were sort of two groups in the FBI, one was the "knuckle draggers" his words, the former street cops it sounded like, and the other was a group that focused more on long term investigations, warrants, etc. That makes sense from people I've talked to and friends in different agencies. The ones who wanted to do the tactical stuff leaned more towards city police, or DEA, and the higher level investigative work interested people who went into the FBI or State Police. I am generalizing here, but it sounds like Larry is more of the former, wanting to do bank robbery and the hardcore law enforcement work, but he got stuck on domestic terrorism to start. I can relate in that I prefer a field job to a desk job, or at least I did when I was younger. In 1971 I think they thought they would catch him, so looking into every suspect made sense, but in hindsight that was looking for a needle in a haystack. Edit: I feel like the FBI was looking at Cooper as a lifetime criminal who had done crimes before and would act like a crook and tell his buddies about the crime or brag to some person in a bar. But what if this was Cooper's only crime and what if he never told anyone, except maybe his wife or his accomplice? If that was the case, then waiting for someone to talk is futile.

I have yet to see any information about a systematic way to check bills or that they were even doing it. The NCIC has been around for over 50 years. There would have to be a situation where someone took an actual bill, then ran it through the NCIC. I could see something in the late 90s or 2000's being more automatic using computers are a program to recognize serial numbers, but it still seems very manual. By the 90s most of these bills would be out of circulation. If they were spent overseas, at some point some of those would end up back in the states too. I just find it very hard to fathom that someone would have this money and not spend some of it. Some kid finding the money actually makes sense. Like most things in this case, there are a range of odds/probability. Money washes out to sea? Possible. Low chance. Money is still out there? Possible. Very low chance. Cooper got away with the money? Possible, higher chance. Someone found the money: Possible, higher chance. If one believes that the money left the area by hand (Cooper, some kid), then we have a very cool character who does not spend any of it. If it were me, I might spend a little of it to enhance my life. Eating out, gas, gifts, whatever. Little things. If you're a blue collar worker making $5 an hour in 1971, a few extra $20s can go a long way.

The latest 302's are decent. Not a whole lot of new info. A good amount on the air stairs test if people are interested. Some info on Early Cossey. Here are my takeaways. Composite B is the sketch to be using. Frankly if someone is using Composite A, it is to make their suspect fit. It sounds like the SR-71 did make a flight but did not take pictures.. The sketch was expensive to re-produce and may not have made it out to all the magazines and newspapers as often as the government would have liked. The FBI did search a lot of the area, to include the new search area (I'm guessing closer to Orchards). They made an effort to engage hunters to look in their hunting areas. My observation on this is that it is just one more reminder that no body was found, no nothing. So many things need to fall into place for Cooper to have died in that jump. I just don't see it. I listened to Darren's podcast and the Facebook Live with Larry Carr. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the case from Larry. He is still focused on Cooper dying. That just does not make sense to me. He did talk about how the money would not have been found in circulation.

Imagine the 727 is flying today and I go to a pilot, mechanic, stewardess, etc. and I ask "Is there any reason the aft stairs can not be opened in flight?" They would say "There is a Cooper vane which makes it impossible." But what would they have said to that question in 1971? There really is no reason that the stairs could not be opened unless it was due to air pressure (which he planned for) or some locking mechanism somewhere, which we know there wasn't. It is really how one asks the question. Question: Can the aft stairs be lowered in flight? Answer: Well, I don't know, I've never done it or seen it. Or, Question: Is there any reason the aft stairs can not be lowered in flight? Answer: No, not really. There is no reason. I agree that he would not want to just assume on this one, but if he could not test it in flight, then the best guess would be that there is no reason the stairs can't be lowered in flight. I thought of something else in terms of picking Seattle. Proximity to a military base for the parachutes. If he assumed the chutes would come from a military base, then he would have wanted an airport near a base. That rules out a lot of other airports.

The airstairs piece has been used to indicate Cooper knew a lot about the 727, but this info above seems to discredit that some. There is mention that he knew where the oxygen bottles were on the plane too. This to me is not that big of a secret, as I've seen oxygen bottles on planes many times. Another piece mentioned is that Cooper knew the area because he knew McChord Air Force Base was a 20 minute drive from SEATAC. But was it really a 20 minute drive? Straight line distance is about 24 miles, so even at 60 MPH it was 24 minutes, but in reality I'm guessing it was more like a 25-35 minute drive. This is information easily obtained from a map. Also, it is mentioned that he knew the area because he identified Tacoma from the air. The only major city on the route from PDX to SEATAC was Tacoma. The next closest city was 25 miles away (Olympia, much smaller) and there is no reason to think that the plane would circle Olympia (25 miles from the flight path and 25 miles from Tacoma). Also, Tacoma's population in 1970 was 154,000 to Olympia's 23,000. It would be hard to confuse Tacoma for Olympia. How much effort was put in looking for someone from the Northwest who had intimate knowledge of the 727 when it could very well have been some guy from Kansas who had visited the area and studied up on the 727? I give Cooper a lot of credit for having the guts to pull this off, and to have pulled it off, but I do not put him in the James Bond or Special Operations category. I still see him as an average guy who got away with a crime. He may have wanted to be James Bond, but he was not, except for a few hours on that night.

I'm with Flyjack on the air stairs, and I don't need to have Hahneman as a suspect to think this way, so no bias here. Initial demands seem to be air stairs up, with aft door open, which makes total sense. Cabin stays de-pressurized, plane can take off. Somewhere along the line he decides he wants the stairs more easily accessible, so he says something along the lines of halfway down. That makes total sense. Leave the stairs unlocked, and hanging, but not touching the ground. This allows the aircraft to take off. Air stairs locked down and hitting the ground just does not make any sense. I would challenge someone to get all the documents relating to this exchange and post those. Flyjack has posted the sequence of communications, so what out there trumps this? Whether he jumped where he wanted or not is up to interpretation. I believe he jumped almost exactly where he wanted to. Jumping in a city does not make sense to me, nor does jumping in the wilderness past Portland. After that point he has no idea where the plane will be, except if it goes to Mexico City. However, part of me thinks this guy had such a death wish that he just figured he could escape and evade from anywhere. Flyjack is one of the few who actually post the relevant evidence (302's, book excerpts). So who has the equivalent evidence that he wanted the stairs down at takeoff from the beginning?

See if this works. I went to Jo's profile and found her early posts, which seem to be part of the original chain. This should get us to the beginning of the thread.

I was trying to get to the original DZ posts. There is a link that used to work. But it is not working for me. It might be the computer I'm on.

Nicky: You're thinking this is not Cooper? It sounds like they were talking about him.

As stated before, I firmly believe that Gunther's book is our best bet in finding out how DB Cooper was. In the book it is written that Clara called Max a half dozen times between April and August of 1982. One thought I had was that the money find in 1980 and the movie "The Pursuit of DB Cooper" released in November 1981 put the case back in the spotlight. When "The Pursuit of DB Cooper" was released, Universal Studios offered a $1 million reward for information that would lead to his capture. All of this news may have spooked Cooper and Clara, or it could have re-invigorated them. I'd be curious to know how Cooper felt when the Unsolved Mysteries episode came out. Although, I would guess that a movie in the theaters would have brought more attention than an Unsolved Mysteries episode.

Some of it does not fit with Gunther's character, or at least Gunther did not mention it (seminary, bomb being his "voice", etc.). Here are some things from this profile that do sync up with Gunther's character (from my perspective) He had issues standing/speaking up for himself growing up and thus he's always compromising when faced with confrontations. He has void within himself where he feels unremarkable so he does what he feels are remarkable things to try and fill that void. (speculation that there is a void and that he is trying to fill that void. This is more clinical than Gunther was) Attention seeker and the resulting attention is self satisfying enough for him even if he isn't personally acknowledged. (I don't see him as an attention seeker, but the rest is accurate) Doesn't have to announce afterwards, look it's me-----look it's me. Parachuting experience, both day and night times and in inclement weather. The event began as a simple fantasy. He probably never thought it would ever become reality. Fantasized in stages so he would have doodled stuff on paper. Possibly in his own covert language. The money was not his primary focus in his fantasy. It was initially all about the plane and the jump. Somewhat recent stressor point in his life caused it to go from fantasy to reality. Examples: Separation, Divorce, Job loss. The more I read it, the more I think that the original poster has read Gunther's book. Simply put, very few people have come up with this "profile" outside of those who are into Gunther's book. Certainly very few of the suspects fit this mold. William Smith checks a lot of these blocks.

When will we see?? You’ve always found good stuff.

Flyjack. You did some research on the matchbooks a while back. Did you look into ICS International Correspondence School located in Scranton, PA?

More witness images?

Based off what I found on Ancestry with a quick search, Kenny has Scandinavian (Denmark) roots and what looks like English and French. Not to say there is no Southern Europe in there, but I don’t see it. Granted that there are exceptions to every rule, but swarthy and olive are not usually terms associated with Denmark or England or France (maybe the south of France). This is a situation where it would have been good to have follow on questions. Witness A says he’s swarthy. So show some pics of people and have them identify what swarthy is. Same for olive. Is Dean Martin swarthy? Al Capone? Richard Nixon? What is olive? Is Fidel Castro olive or swarthy? Regardless of all of this, we have a composite B that is pretty detailed and shows a white man with medium skin maybe dark. Not pale. And contrary to many comments on other boards, not every American male in 1971 looked like that.

There is no way Kenny is DB. But if Blevins could show that he had Latin or Mediterranean or southern/Eastern European heritage it might be better than just saying he had a tan that day.

Where is Blevins saying this? Even if Kenny looked olive, he’s ruled out for so many other reasons.

I agree that using the 302's description of race as white does not rule out someone of Hispanic descent. I worked in market research for a few years and race/ethnicity always came up and was confusing even among experts in surveys. The technical aspects of the census or dictionary versions of race/ethnicity don't always align with how people use the terms in everyday conversation. Many people would say Hispanic is a race, even some Hispanics. Many would say their race is Caucasian, when that is technically not a race anymore (I think). The most recent batch of 302's has a number of suspect profiles. For race there were mainly white, but Caucasian was listed twice (not a race). There was no entry a few times, and one American Indian. Attached are the questions in the 1970 census regarding race and origin. This is where recordings of these conversations would have been useful. Realistically if race is listed as white then we can rule out a lot of races (Japanese, Chinese, Black), but not anyone of Hispanic descent or American Indian. It's best to look at the actual descriptions like you've mentioned Flyjack. I'd be more interested in asking "What descent do you think the person is?" or "What country of origin do you think the suspect is from or his ancestors?" I interpret the information as Cooper being American, probably native born, with relatives from Eastern/Southern Europe, which could include Spain, and therefore by definition any of the Spanish/Portuguese colonies (Mexico, Brazil, etc). Given the small population numbers of American Indians, I would guess he was not American Indian, but it could be possible. Also, if we figure Cooper was born in the 1920s, then it means his parents were born in the late 1890s or 1900's. The US is a melting pot now and many of us can trace ancestors back to many different countries and parts of the world. That was not as much the case if you were born in the 1920s. There would be a good chance that both your parents were descended from one part of the world, or even from the same country. Just look at the ethnicity pockets in US cities in the 1900's. There were Irish sections. Italian, Jewish, Hungarian, German, etc. In my mind, the olive/swarthy etc. clearly rules out Rackstraw, McCoy, Recca, Peterson, and probably some of the other candidates.

One of the writers of Dan Cooper had an earlier aviation comic named Buck Danny. Interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Danny

One of the writers of Dan Cooper had an earlier aviation comic named Buck Danny. Interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Danny