Coopericane

Bruce shared a story on the Cooper Forum about Cooper actually trying to board the plane early, but got turned back by Flo and sent to rejoin the rest of the passengers in the terminal... an interesting tale, but not sure if he ever dug up the source for the report.

Part 75 is here... https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper /d.b.-cooper-part-75/view

Well, here's something useful I stumbled upon.. unredacted witness reports of Cooper, courtesy of Anonymous/Dave's D. B. Cooper site... https://dbcooperhijack.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TrueFBICooper-Part1-2.pdf I haven't heard much about Spreckel's testimony before, but interestingly he says that he could recognize Cooper again...

Ok, good points. Using Mrs seems believable too, and the use of middle names might not be as rare as I thought... Also potentially problematic is the interchangeability of FLO SCHAFFNER and FLORENCE SCHAFFNER... though I believe they usually referred to her Florence, right?

If we start imagining the use of middle names and titles wherever it's convenient for us, we could probably get whatever names we want to fit into the redacted spots... we should continue to assume the FBI standard, which seems to be full first and last names... which would happen to be FLORENCE SCHAFFNER in this instance.

And still our only description of an eye color comes from Flo, right? I assume the other witnesses didn't get close enough to him, it can be hard to notice eye color at a distance... still, a corroboration on the eye color would be nice to shut down those that still insist he could have had light-colored eyes...

How many times did Alice actually interact with Cooper? I know she asked for her purse at one point, and later asked if he was taking a parachute apart... any others? Which stewardess asked if they could leave the plane?

Oh, shoot... I just meant Robert Gregory. I must have been thinking of someone else at the time

Personally, I think that Mr. Gregory's testimony has some interesting details... it shouldn't be given as much weight as the accounts of the stewardesses, but his report isn't too outrageous to me. He apparently also got a look at Cooper without his sunglasses on, if only briefly. And for a bit of tinfoil hat time, Mr. Gregory also identified a certain suspect (who I believe to be the man from Egg Harbor) as having a "very strong resemblance" to Cooper, which is some of the strongest wording used for photographic comparisons in the FBI files. That's not a positive identification, of course, but just a tidbit I found intriguing regardless...

The loafers are a myth that only exist in newspapers. No FBI file actually describes his shoes as "loafers".

Do we have a list of every known suspect who's DNA has been tested? In addition to Peterson, I think Weber's and L. D. Cooper's was too, if I'm not mistaken...

Anyone know which witness this report comes from?

I happen to be reading SKYJACK (what you meant?) too... it's a great book, but I'm not sure there's anything juicy enough to get killed over in there lol... I was curious about the guy supposedly stalking Flo on NWO flights after the hijacking, though... did anything ever come of that? Did the FBI identify him? Seems to me like it was probably just another nut, but you never know...

SKYJACK offers a rather morbid solution for this question, which is that the two trailing F-106s could have been ordered to take out the plane if it lost control near a populated area...

That reminds me of this very similar report... I wonder if the two are related? Maybe even a part of the same incident from the perspective of another person in the car?

Part 73! https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper /d.b.-cooper-part-73/view

There's been some talk on Reddit recently... is this "Robert Aitken" guy as the Shelton Lead legit?

It's nice to have closure on the Heisson Store robbery. Maybe a little disappointing, but anything we can rule out as not involved in the case only helps us narrow down the right areas of focus.

Part 54 page 169

I found a single mention of Bald Mountain in the 302s, it comes from a newspaper clipping from '75.

I think I've noticed that too... like for example with release #57, the Egg Harbor Suspect was getting talked about, and then boom, nearly half of the new pages seemed to be about him. That didn't feel like a coincidence to me, but who can say for sure... I still want to know what Carr thinks about the relevant files of the EHS and Shelton Lead... (if someone hasn't bothered him already about them, of course) Marty has a good recap of what we know about them on his blog, which could be a good jumping-off point. I assume they probably led to nothing, but I have been dying for some follow-up information on those two since first reading about them.

Incoming slight diversion, but I think found evidence of a third body found in/near the dropzone during the search in the latest 302's... a 16 year old male named James Annis (page 103), identified via dental records. The others from what I've gathered were a 20-something male with no teeth available for identification and a young girl discovered under different circumstances, so all three were presumably different people.

So that was a fascinating interview with Larry Carr... very interesting to hear his opinions on everything. The implications of what he said about the tie are disappointing but I suppose not wholly surprising. Anyone look into the composition of fingerprint powders yet that the FBI may have used on the tie back then? That being said, I pretty much agree with him on everything except Cooper dying! But I can see why that's a reasonable conclusion to make when nothing else ever went anywhere... I wasn't someone personally investigating the case after all. A little surprised he wasn't familiar with the Egg Harbor/Shelton suspects... but I suspect they probably aren't referred to as that in the Bureau, though. It would be interesting to ask him about the relative files and what he thinks of them/if there were any later developments with them. Seems like they confidently closed the book on McCoy who was in the same report from 2004 (FBI files part 52, page 189+), so I wonder if it's also the case with those two and we just don't have the relevant documents yet.

How did she know Cooper (if at all) then?

Anyone see that post by the profiler on the D. B. Cooper forum today? Who he describes sounds very eerily similar to Max Gunther's Dan LeClair. I'm almost tempted to think he lifted it straight out of the book, haha. Intriguing stuff.