lxchilton

Well, I think the other idea is simpler and somewhat "better," but I also see the plausibility in changing his plans because he's realizing that he is going to get rushed on the ground in Reno. For me both of these rely on hefty amounts of speculation and I think it's more likely that he was always prepared to jump close to where he began. Cooper's pattern isn't really consistent across the board too--his anger at fuel times (maybe regarding d rings too) runs contrary to his seeming ease regarding the moneybag et al.

I don't think Cooper was an idiot, but I think he was master of some portions of the hijacking and just ambitious, confident, driven, adaptive, and lucky about others. He knew parachutes. I don't think anything about that worried him in terms of getting on the ground. Is his ability to adapt to certain changes in the plans related to just that quality in him or did he make assumptions and when those assumptions were proven to be in error?

Hey look that is a simple list of your thoughts! I have trouble with two of the items you mention, the first is him putting up no fuss about the range thing if it was ever a consideration--if they misunderstood this and all of a sudden told him they can't make it because of the configuration would he not have said "no, that's not what I mean, what the hell is wrong with you?" The second is randomly deciding to jump out--if everything else is seemingly so ordered and supported by evidence, why this one incredibly out of left field choice? I'm not arguing the other stuff above; you've chosen a set of interpretations that are evidence backed and no others are.

I don't think Cooper was dumb overall, but he certainly had a lack of knowledge when it came to parts of his hijacking. If we think of a plan as going from A to Z, you can still arrive at Z if the letters in the middle end up getting changed, switched around, or altered in some way. That's basic, but it is a simplification of the plan to illustrate the point. To the specific points above where there are no answers allowed other than those you have provided: Why he demanded Mexico. The longer the plane is in the air the greater the area that needs to be searched, provided they don't know where he jumps out. It also muddies the reasoning behind his hijacking; shades of hijackers who want to go to Cuba. (I'm not hung up on that, it's just a tertiary possibility. Why he got the range wrong. The flight from SEA to MEX is roughly 200 miles shorter than the maximum range of a 727-100 at the time. Cooper looked that up/saw it/asked about it and then thought it would apply, but didn't think about or understand the range issues caused by flying low and dirty. This is something he appears to have been "dumb" about. Why he rejected large airports and changed his demands. I can think of a million reasons he didn't want to head towards California--I'd argue that he's from there and doesn't want the FBI immediately involved near where he lived. That's some real head canon stuff though so I won't go there now. Mostly I think he wants them to think he will be on the plane when it lands; feigned concern about the place being too busy, etc. Why he did not indicate or confirm a path. I'm torn between him knowing that the 10,000ft altitude is going to actually going to define a specific enough path (I refuse to change this word, just be flexible) towards Portland, or if he just thought that having a destination to the south would get him there. I am slightly inclined to think he has a bit of ignorance in this department since he is not specific. Why he jumped random and blind in the PNW. I don't think he did. His goal--the 'Z' in this hijack--was to jump when he saw the first light of civilization north of Portland. For the most part this is just rehashing what we have all been harping about for so long; I reiterate it because it's a valid set of answers to the questions we all have about the vagaries of the case. My own view is that these are simpler explanations than yours, but yours might have merit as well. The "why" portion of your argument is lacking, however, despite the instance on the above answers "ignoring evidence."

If that's the case, that engineering the plane heading south from Seattle is a fools errand because it could have gone 100 different ways, I would suggest that Cooper was overconfident in his ability to make the plane head the direction he wanted, not that it suggests anything about what his original plan was. Cooper was dumb about some things and his overconfidence here could be another example of being dumb but also very lucky.

The existence of "dozens and dozens" of paths doesn't really matter if it is conceivable that Cooper had only planned as far as getting the plane headed south after taking off from Seattle. The fact that his 10,000ft altitude ends up getting them on v23 means that he might have surmised that that was the route they would take, but it's not clear that he knew it or not. Cooper may have known the weather would be bad, but the crew saw the lights so Cooper would have been able to see them too. It's conceivable that that was his plan about when to jump and he did so. Cooper most certainly did not say "I will land here at this exact spot," but he could have said "I will jump well before Portland where there are lights so I know I am not in the middle of a forest and can hoof it out of there without being caught in a tree, etc." This is not the only set of options, but I can't see any real reasoning behind why this set of options is bad other than that you are sure it was wrong, mainly because of word choice.

Any dictionary definition of 'path' is going to feature, as the second or third meaning, something along the lines of "the direction an object is traveling." It doesn't matter though because this isn't about debate or discussion, it's about noise and deflection.

You say this as if it is one or the other, but he could have altered parts of the original plan without affecting the end result. It's less complicated and requires less evidence to assume this is the case. His LZ could be pretty big as long as he can hoof it back to wherever his car or other escape is. If the targeted LZ is as big as "nearish Portland" then he can still have "targeted" it. If there is evidence of an original plan then it would be great to see that...but if there is not (there is not and I'm not just suggesting that it doesn't exist; you have provided nothing other than being contrary) then it's a waste of time.

Yes that is the nature with almost all the stuff in this case, though I argue that this is simpler than trying to suggest he actually had another mystery plan beforehand. I am erring on the side of you just being obstinate, but if there is a reasoning behind this it would go a long way to maybe tip your hand slightly.

To me that "characteristic" is that he thought he could still achieve his original goal with those modifiers in place.

Well what I'm saying is that those negotiations and changes and decisions can all fit inside his original plan, especially if it's as nebulous and simple as it seems to be. It doesn't matter if the destination changes as long as the plane is headed generally in the same direction, it doesn't matter when the door opens as long as he can open it when he wants, it doesn't matter when he puts the chute on...as long as he does it before he jumps. The knapsack thing is so wild since he doesn't push back on it. Other than it just being more important that he has chutes and the money so he's going to figure it out ASAP with as little outside interaction as possible...I can't really follow his lack of action there.

Those are facts, but I don't know that they mean anything other than that they happened.

What evidence is there that his plan changes when they decide to head to Reno instead of Mexico? If a change is made it appears to happen entirely inside Cooper's head with no indication to the outside world, which would mean there is no evidence for it. Not saying that it can't have happened, just that it's a real stab in the dark vs an educated guess.

But couldn't his "plan" have been that he just wanted to head south and jump out in a general sort of area thinking that the feds would be looking everywhere along the path to Mexico (which ended up being Reno)? That overall plan isn't ad hoc, it just means in his outline that "jump" portion is kind of "wing it."

I think we can all see that assuming the plane would go exactly where you want it when you don't tell it to go exactly where you want it to go isn't the best plan. That doesn't mean that it wasn't Cooper's plan though. He knew enough about all the things involved in the hijacking to be dangerous, but he may not have known as much as he seems to since we don't know who he is. South can be a path--head south. That's a path as in: "the course or direction in which a person or thing is moving." It is not the same as defining an exact flightpath, but your argument seems to be entirely tied up in this dumb distinction. His exact LZ was ad hoc in that he didn't pinpoint anything but he assumed (whether out of ignnorance, confidence, knowledge, etc. we don't know) he would end up back where he started. Back where his means of conveyance was. Back to the simplest explanation for this all. And he appears to have done just that.

Wow a semantic argument on this forum. First time for everything. Cooper seems to have wanted to go a general direction. That general direction was south. Was his plan to jump when he did exactly? Probably not. He did jump then and it worked out in the sense that we don't know who he was or what happened after he left the plane. Let's be done with this.

Right but his plan may have been to do exactly that. It might seem somewhat barebones and even dumb from our point of view, but it indeed worked; we are forced to pick up the pieces and try and make sense of it. I don't know what 'evidence' you are pointing to; we know that he got on the plane and that he left the plane and, using the bits that we can piece together from transcripts, witnesses, etc., we can try and decide why he did the things he did. There's nothing that makes it clear what his exact plan was once he got on the plane. He didn't have instructions prewritten, he worked and instructed as things went on. His plan appears to have been malleable and it could have been as nebulous as "once I get them off the ground headed somewhere farther away I will jump out once I see the first lights of civilization." He could have timed himself and gotten lucky. He could have planned everything out before the jump as he did and told himself "I'll just wing the jump part." I think there are options that are more likely than not, but I can't think he wasn't at least cognizant of the cardinal directions on the map. I don't think he's pinpointing where he's going to land but he might assume he's within walking distance of the interstate in the dark or something of that level. That's a plan. Knowing that he planned something else that didn't work out and ended up going this requires orders of magnitude more evidence.

To me it sounds like this is the plan he had in its entirety the whole time; there's little to suggest any other plan other than this rough one, he seems to have followed it without much fuss when told he couldn't do it as he originally stated, and it worked. The biggest thing here is that it doesn't matter--I don't think it will help prove who he was if we focus on this part of the hijacking since there isn't enough information to suggest something about a solid plan or where he intended to land. If he had been concrete in those things we could maybe put something together. For me we can tell that he was unafraid to jump into the night, fine with using a "good enough" approach to where he would land, and confident enough in the vagaries of the eventual flightpath that was settled on to not put up a fuss. Useful info, but... I err on the side of him having a basic plan to get the plane going south, however, he could have literally had no idea where he would end up at all and just gotten lucky again. He's good at luck. All that to say that when we find him this stuff will fit in and we can remove a lot of the fuzziness from our end, but it's not going to narrow down people enough to start with it.

I think that arguing anything other than a version of events like this--go south and when you see some lights jump out of the plane--is what requires special evidence. This is literally the simplest explanation. Just because he jumps quickly after getting to the bottom of the stairs doesn't mean anything. If the plan is "jump at lights" and the lights show up quickly...that still means it was his plan.

I think that's right though I will reserve a small possibility that he got very lucky with it; it's more likely that he was doing something in a small way to make sure they headed dead south, but it's also possibly he was just like "I bet they will fly one way no matter what!" and then they did and it worked out too.

Yeah he was at best approximating how far they had traveled until he was down the stairs. And he jumps so soon after that...he either had immaculate timing, just immediately went for it, or saw whatever he wanted to real quick.

I've always assumed he could see some kind of light through the clouds, though it would have been visible as a brighter section of clouds rather than literally seeing the lights themselves.

Agreed, though you can also read this as the writer thinks that Dan Cooper announced himself as DB Cooper and is just saying that it's not his real name. If he said Dan Cooper wasn't his real name I would give it a bit more belief. There ain't a single thing in the letter than suggests it was written by someone who has more knowledge than anyone else who can read a newspaper.

On the taking back of certain items and not others--if Cooper did obfuscate his prints in some manner on the plane he would only have been worried about items that he had handled before doing so; it's very likely that he was lighting cigarettes with that matchbook before he put superglue on his fingers (or whatever the hell he did). I think the fact that Cooper himself was never found, never seems to have told anyone, and no items have ever been found in an attic, etc. really lends credence to the idea that he was completely mum about what he had done. To me the razor swings closer to him taking literally no chances in terms of outing himself and the fact that he never opined regarding any specific grudge or other reasoning while committing the crime suggests that he wasn't interested in explaining himself or taunting anyone. None of us knows what was in his head; most people, however, do not taunt the police and/or news media after a crime. That's a huge outlier. What was not a huge outlier was individuals who were upset with how the US had handled Vietnam and, much like the tips received by the FBI regarding multiple Cooper lookalikes getting on the Montana (I think) flight in the lead to the hijacking, talking about jumping out of planes, etc., this seems like another example of someone twisting the knife through the manipulation of news in the public sphere.

This is a real double edged sword; Cooper isn't going to be anyone who has a name right now for sure, but by the very nature of his committing this crime he is both "unique and special." Drawing the line between someone of the CIA spy/assassin/badass character and someone who has spent a life with the skills to jump out of an airplane and finally decides to do something for himself seems important in terms of finding who Cooper was. It also means the suspect pool is a fair bit wider. "after lifelong rejection from a corrupt system that rewards undeserving people..." This is the grudge for sure. It's all perceived from Cooper's end and it's, again, not something you can really narrow down among suspects until you know a specific suspect well. There are a lot of people with this feeling who literally never do anything about it.