CooperNWO305

The 1973 fire in St. Louis really wiped out a lot of history. However, the remaining records are not all digitized yet, and certainly were not in the 80s or 90s. It’s not like the FBI could have cross checked a lot like prints or airborne training unless they had a specific suspect in mind. Maybe now it is easier. DNA is a different story. If there were no restrictions, the DNA from the tie could be fed into a number of systems, military and civilian (23 and Me). Maybe there would be a close match. Those cigarette butts may still be out there too.

The accent is one of the pieces of "evidence" that sent this case down a path that is hard to come back from. Early on the narrative became that he was Canadian, due to "no discernible accent" and the whole "negotiable currency" bit. Parts of the USA have very heavy accents, Boston/NYC/the deep South come to mind. Others have accents that are not what I'd call heavy, but that do stand out, Chicago, Minnesota, etc. Then there are parts of the country that just have plain accents, these are often the places that produce newscasters. These accents are pleasant and easy to understand (I definitely do not have one of those). These come from states like Kansas, Maryland, Colorado. But these accents can also come from rural areas in populous states like NY, MA, NJ, IL, etc. Not everyone from Illinois has a Chicago accent. If Cooper had an accent, then he certainly would have done as much as he could to hide it, maybe even practicing what he would say, or purposely disguising it. I think he could have done this with Dennis Lysne the ticket agent, and with Flo. However, it would have been a lot harder with Tina. That leads me to speculate a few possibilities. 1. Tina was in on it somehow, and it was planned for her to say she did not hear anything or see anything. For someone who spent all that time with him, the amount of info she gave is pretty light. 2. Tina was from the same area of the country as Cooper, and therefore his accent did not stand out to her. It just sounded normal. This happens a lot. I don't pick up an accent so much when I go back to places where I've lived, and it's only after I've been gone a long time that I start to hear it when I meet someone from those areas. 3. Cooper was a gentleman. How does one get described as a gentleman? By the way they dress, how they are groomed, how they speak, and what they say/do. I could walk you into The Bronx, New Jersey, etc. and introduce members from the same family, one who will have a heavy accent, and one who has no accent. Someone who speaks calmly and has made a point of speaking intelligently could easily not have any accent, even if they were from the Northeast or deep South. 4. Cooper was actually foreign, and when he learned English, he learned it the perfect way, not through growing up using slang or hanging out on the street. I don't worry about pronouncing English words perfectly, but in other languages I've studied, I always made sure I sounded out the words the best I could. Frankly, there are foreigners who speak better English than some of us. But, it is still very hard to hide a foreign accent.

The closest resemblance to the witness sketch I’ve seen is William J. Smith. Cary Grant and Rod Serling look like it too, but they are not good candidates for the crime.

I agree. Non local. The best indicator of him being from somewhere else than the Pacific Northwest is that he was never caught. Someone from far away would not have friends and relatives looking at him thinking he might be DB Cooper. Also, a lot of the articles after the hype died down were mainly in the Northwest, and still are. Frankly, people in say North Carolina don’t care as much about DB Cooper as people in Oregon. I think he chose Mexico City because that was the max range for the 727, and he wanted to make it look like he’d be in the air for a long time. But why stay in the air that long and risk adding more and more chase planes or people on the ground? Regardless of where he wanted to jump, I’d like to know how he planned to escape. Did he have a radio? Was he going to use a pay phone or a pre arranged pickup spot? Was he going to walk out on his own or maybe camp out for a few days?

Practically everyone in the military has heard of Fort Lewis and McChord. Those were staging bases for troop movement to the Pacific in WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq/Afghanistan. Both those bases were also on maps (crazy as it might sound). Anyone in the Seattle area would know too. Little anecdote. Before GPS, military actually learned land navigation using a map and compass. I spent years doing land navigation training off and on, and we used the Tenino map sheet, which was right near Fort Lewis. Having not been to the area at the time, I would have felt confident navigating on the ground there. The rivers, mountains, and all other terrain features were burned in my memory. Someone confident with a map and compass (military, Boy Scout, hiker) would have been ok on the ground after a jump. Someone confident in the air (air crew, pilot, navigator) would have been confident in the air. Knowing Tacoma or Fort Lewis does not mean he was from the area. That's just one more fallacy that DB Cooper laughed about to his grave.

Dudeman, I agree. I'm of the belief that he made a recon flight, or multiple flights. I firmly believe he chose Northwest for a specific reason, and likely used other airlines for his other flights, in his normal hairstyle which was not jet black. If your goal is to get $200,000, then spending $25 a few times is nothing. A few recon flights could keep you out of prison. I also believe he had aerial recon experience, so recon flights would have been standard. I also think he could have looked out the window and spotted landmarks, or at least lights and darkness. You may not know where you are in the air, but you can see the change from lights to darkness (city to country).

Movies really don't mean a lot these days unless it is a big box office production. Anyone can make a film. If the movie is not interesting or not well done, then it actually hurts the case, like the ridiculous Treat Williams movie. Public interest is clearly increased during airings of episodes such as Case Closed or Unsolved Mysteries or Expedition Unknown. The Pageview Statistics on Wikipedia will give you a good history of what the interest in the case is. I put the DB Cooper viewers/researchers into roughly 3 groups: 1. Those who know a lot about the case and are not swayed by the manufactured suspects like Rackstraw or Reca, and who don't believe the media stories on McCoy. Some of this group have their own suspects and will not be swayed into believing anyone else could be a suspect. Most of this group is concerned with facts about the case. If the case were solved today, some of this group would not believe it, some would be happy it was solved, and some would be disappointed because they don't have anything else to live for. Group 1 is almost everyone on the Cooper Forum and on this thread. 2. Those who know a little bit about the case, and have some interest. These are the ones who concern me, because they all seem to fall for the suspects in the media (Rackstraw, Reca, McCoy) and don't do any basic research on the details. They know DB Cooper hijacked a plane, they could probably tell you it was in the 1970s, and that he took a lot of money. However, they do not get into any of the relevant facts such as age, description, personality, etc. They believe what they have been told. If the case was solved today, they would probably believe the new suspect and realize they were wrong to think it was Rackstraw, McCoy, etc. This group likely does not read Dropzone or Cooper Forum, and if they do, they don't post. 3. Those who don't know who DB Cooper is, or if they do, they don't know anything except that he was a hijacker. If the case was solved today, they would read a few snippets about it on the news and never talk about it again. Group 2 is the target audience to educate about the case.

Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" wrote notes on a matchbook to his blonde accomplice. Add that to the list of an unusual number of connections to that movie. https://dbcooperhijack.com/2019/01/04/d-b-cooper-cary-grant-and-the-1959-film-north-by-northwest/ Flyjack, do you have a release number on the set of documents on the Tina Mucklow-Tacoma comment? Tied to The Vault or to the Last Master Outlaw FOI docs? Thanks.