Orange1

yes. people may be able to ballpark a guess, but there are so many factors that affect how people look. People i know - who have worked with me for 5 years - expressed surprise at a recent "big" birthday. the median "surprise" response was that they thought i looked 5 years younger, one kind person had me at 7 years younger!! i know people the same age as me who look 5 or more years older. i know 2 guys who are both 48, one looks like he is in his early 40s and the other looks around 55. If Cooper was pegged at mid-40s, i'd reckon a 40-50 span is relevant, may even be people in their 30s who look like they are in their 40s. Have you ever seen "10 years younger"? I haven't seen the US version, but the UK version...well, let's say it is a real eye opener how lifestyle can age someone prematurely. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Hm, Snow IIRC (and I may not) it was you who was the "people" saying Vietnam was too young.. I distinctly remember arguing people could have fought in Vietnam as well as being vets of the Korean war. (At the time I was trying to find out about paratrooper activity in Korea, I wasn't particularly successful but anyway that was before finding out re the first military freefalls in SE Asia during the Vietnam war). I imagine a 41-year-old with Gosset's history may well have looked a bit older than he was Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

observation... Just because someone says he is something, doesn't mean he is. Gossett said he was Cooper. Doesn't mean he was. Some arbitrary guy says he was once a night clerk. Doesn't mean he was. Another observation: The economy in China is better than that in the US right now. US in recession, worst unemployment rate since 1982, Chinese growth rate has slowed sharply but still growing around 6%!! I wonder where it might be easier to find a job... especially should one have experience teaching english in a foreign country, for example. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Then you haven't read all the posts Like 377 said maybe a bit old, but WW2 vets were discussed as options. Somewhere... a ways back... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Alternatively, if you stop posting you will stop giving reason for people to bash you. Sorry 377, I know you think Jo has stuff to add. Me, I've had my fill of rambling nonsense. Your eloquent well-argued post has gone the way of all the others... Bozo kept on telling me I was hitting my head againts a brick wall, I fear you are doing the same!! Why do people keep on "threatening" to stop posting but never actually do? The pattern is always the same: 1. "i'll stop posting" then 2. (sulkily with lots of bold and/or underlines) "i'm only posting because someone said something about me" then 3. yet another long rambling post about someone or something barely even tangential to the DB Cooper case. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Enticing thought, but I tend to agree Ckret would surely have focussed the investigation more - or did he, in ways in which we were unaware? btw As interesting as all the stuff about John Collins may be, it really doesn't have much bearing in this thread, which is about DB Cooper. I saw a quote that we would not have to listen to ramblings anymore, unfortunately that has become the girl who cried wolf. But while a certain person is posting her PMs to people, perhaps she would care to post the ones that show how two-faced she is - the ones that are nice to someone she thinks may be able to help her, then denigrating that same person in a missive to someone else. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Shelly, you can set your PM settings so that you can reject PMs - either by all users (which you probably wouldn't want to do), or by specified users. That may be the best way to avoid unwanted PMs by particular people, certain of who do have a tendency to send lots of unsolicited PMs. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Alternatively, if a 727 can vanish into Africa, so can Cooper The landing permission request in the Seychelles is puzzling btw... that is a VERY long way away from the west coast of Africa (Angola, Burkina Faso etc), and it's not like that is on the way to anywhere ...except maybe Asia... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Clearly a child prodigy. Great stuff Nick, loved the pics Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

reading further in the above article - this on HALO specifically: Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

aha - when in doubt, there is always wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HALO/HAHO Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

2 things: paratroopers do also do freefall (read up on HALO etc jumps). i've asked here before but not received an answer, as to when freefall became more "standard" for paratroopers vs static line only. our local army has freefalling paratroopers and our police special unit also gets trained in freefall - had the pleasure to meet some of these guys and their plane, but that's another story

very possibly, remember there was a reference to the 727 jumps in that 1995 newspaper article snow posted - so it wasn't ever a "real secret" (or at least not for more than a decade now), and i guess in the age before the internet was widespread the FBI would have been able to find the info easier than us people in the street

At some point ckret spoke about this part of his theory here. I like the theory (or alternatively that of a cargo kicker) because it explains how someone who may not have jumped before would not really have door fear, as well as choosing the rig he did. if cooper was not airborne military, then the smokejumper/air america connection may be important. 377 - been busy/distracted. Around. trying to figure out merits of other forum but haven't really had time to check it out. been a dz.com junkie since i began jumping and that won't change, but real life intrudes occasionally Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Jo, To prove your theory you must produce convincing unequivocal evidence. The FBI's refusal or failure to investigate leads you provide them PROVES NOTHING. I am convinced that Ckret REALLY wants to win the gold medal in the "detective olympics" and would follow up any lead that looked like it might be reasonably productive. I see no reason why Jerry isn't just as eager to solve one of the greatest whodunnits of the 20th century. If people knowledgeable about the case discredit or ignore you, the most likely explanation is simply that they see your leads as non productive. A coverup or deliberate efforts to suppress productive evidence is the least likely explanation, by far. This late after the crime, a coverup makes no sense at all. Even if Cooper were an FBI agent Ckret would not cover it up in my opinion. As cynical as I am about cops, the FBI has a pretty decent record in nailing their own when they commit crimes unrelated to their investigative duties. 377 (sigh) 377... it's a bit like talking to a child in a sulk. we have heard how difficult it is to get the FBI to use resources to do, for example, DNA testing in the Cooper case, yet Ckret still managed to get Duane's done. I believe Ckret (and it sounds like others before him) had looked at what they thought relevant in terms of Duane as a suspect, in fact it sounded like Ckret kept looking long after he would usually have dismissed him as a subject. What Jo really means is that no-one has managed to prove that Duane had anything to do with the hijack, in fact the opposite. But she doesn't like that outcome, so she comes up with yet another claim that has no basis in truth and decides no-one has looked at Duane as a suspect. You know, I know, everyone knows that people would love to solve this. Until someone can prove Duane did it, which most of us believe will never happen, Jo will not be happy and will keep repeating her mantra. I believe it is the only way she can justify having spent 13 years on this. It is all rather sad, really. This is not the first time you have given a well reasoned and articulated post but it will be, yet again, file 13'd by the person it is aimed at. I do understand Georger's irritation at the way the thread keeps getting sidetracked by stuff like this. By the way I loved your list of why you like everyone here. The one thing it proved to me is that you are one of the few people out there to truly look for the positive in everyone! Wish that more people were like you

Ckret on the fact that tellers at banks would have to manually scan the bills for the SNs. He didn't say anything about the Fed: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3099527;search_string=bills;#3099527 and yes you're right about the numbers being prerecorded: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3029831;search_string=bills;#3029831 On Jo toning it down, she says because she's tired. Yes maybe, tired of what is the question. A number of people noticed it happened around the same time Jerry/Shelly started posting. Of course we here already know how Jo changes stories and tactics to fit her agenda. There is more than one poster she has been complimentary to in a PM directed at them (usually when she wants something) and then been very nasty about the same person in a PM directed to someone else. While I doubt anyone would break protocol by publicly posting contents of a PM, they can and do get discussed privately (obviously depending on subject; some are clearly meant to, and do, remain completely confidential). Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

IIRC they recorded the serial numbers by photographing the bills, to save time. Presumably the bills were bundled then in roughly at least the same order they were photographed. Do the original photos still exist? - this may give a clue as to the order they were bundled in. On a different tack, it seems to me there is still a lack of understanding about dollar bills "disappearing" through laundering. Laundering exists to remove the chain of connection - it does not make money vanish entirely. The dollar bills will generally not "disappear" unless they end up in a country where they are in such use by the general population that they disintegrate somewhere there (and we have seen this might be the case in SE Asia and Africa for example at the relevant time). But if they get back into the banking system, no matter what country they were used in - as they would if they were used to buy goods in stores (where the owners have bank accounts), casinos etc - most of them would eventually find their way back to the Fed for destruction/replacement. So I guess really what the main question is, is this: was anyone at the Fed keeping a watch for the Cooper serial numbers among the bills that were brought back for replacement? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

here is a site for all you armchair forensic scientists: http://www.dna.gov/basics/ Not only is it an "official" site, but it also offers that you can "Take a free online training course and learn about how DNA, analyzed in the laboratory and used in a courtroom.". http://www.dna.gov/training/ From the intro page: About Forensic DNA DNA collection and analysis gives the criminal justice field a powerful tool for convicting the guilty and exonerating the innocent. About Forensic DNA provides general information on a wide range of topics. Basics of DNA Typing Only one-tenth of a single percent of DNA (about 3 million bases) differs from one person to the next. Scientists can use these variable regions to generate a DNA profile of an individual, using samples from blood, bone, hair, and other body tissues and products. In criminal cases, this generally involves obtaining samples from crime-scene evidence and a suspect, extracting the DNA, and analyzing it for the presence of a set of specific DNA regions (markers). If the sample profiles don't match, the person did not contribute the DNA at the crime scene. If the patterns match, the suspect may have contributed the evidence sample. (Orange note: note the "may".) DNA from crime scenes also can be compared to profiles stored in a database. See Forensic DNA Databases for more details. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Jerry are you saying that because the case was opened the statute of limitations doesn't apply? (Sorry my knowledge of the US legal system, other than that it is a huge industry, is not very good) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Snow, that was a really interesting link you posted on the forensics journal. Like you say, they do real forensics. Never mind Tom, I wonder what they think of assorted whackos on the internet impugning their forensic expertise. Ckret said, it is not easy getting them to do DNA tests for the DBC case because it is so old & cold... so i imagine, for example, they wouldn't have wasted precious resources on comparing Weber's DNA to that on the tie if they thought the outcome would be inconclusive. I'm guessing they know enough about forensics to think that Cooper's DNA is among the other samples on that tie. Ckret said something once that implied you could get a false positive (from a partial strand IIRC) but not a false negative. In other words Snow, you have just convinced me that the DNA evidence against Duane being Cooper is absolutely solid, despite people with no knowledge of forensics beyond what they see in CSI (oh sorry some people don't even watch TV) trying to invalidate it. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Ok here's my training come out: Bruce's statement implies that half the people DON'T have someone waiting for them or call the cops if they don't... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

nicht, Orange1 ist! LOL - you people. Talk in German accents and think you are talking about the Dutch! Ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch, aber ...i don't really speak Dutch but I can understand it very well. I can't transcribe the beautiful lilting Dutch accent to paper (screen), but it does not sound like Georger's rip-off of Freud . Alstublieft! Incidentally most people outside the US don't care very much about baseball I was in ansterdam during the Eufa cup (do you guys even know what that is??) last year when Holland was playing ..um Russia i think it was ... the whole city was orange and so was everyone in it. Completely festive. [Footnote: America: baseball, basketball and american football The rest of the old English colonies: cricket and rugby Just about the entire world outside america, including the ex GB colonies: football (soccer)] Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Presumably chasing after some strand of their usual specialization. As far as I am aware, Tom never claimed to be analyzing every last fact pertaining to the money as a means to solving the DB Cooper case. Crikey, no wonder relevant posters feel unwelcome here. Georger may not always say it in the kindest ways, but he has made some very good points about how certain posters tend to try push everything in one direction. Yeah, coming from you that's rich Jo. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Well, if Tom doesn't share it with us I'm sure we can afford it if we all club together. (That will be a not-so-exclusive, secret club ) Edited to add: holes in the money - accidental nibbles by the crawfish? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Gonna read your page later but I had to smile cos I can imagine one of your kids looking at skydiving in a decade or two and saying Oh, forget it. That is just 377's anti-authoritarian genes talking. He was a skydiver. One of the reasons he liked jumping was the lack of stupid rules and enforcers. Back then the USPA mainly licensed people and weren't an aviation enforcer of hundreds of BSRs. He'd ...... if he knew how overregulated things are now in his sport. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.