snowmman

377: I was just thinking of way back when you were talking about what looked like "rust" stains on the money and we were musing about cadmium plated hardware etc. The news last night,.....I hope everyone saw the video, read the articles For easier access it's here at youtube (not sure why it glitches at the start).. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFkhUbs4bfA&feature=channel_page Funny how they think it's important to kiss FBI ass at the beginning (talking about what people did in 1971-1980) Sounds like they're worried about offending Himmelsbach? Or deferring to Ckret so that feathers don't get ruffled at FBI? It was just funny. I guess stuff like that is the grease that gets Tom inside the vault. Whatever works! But here's my thought. They mentioned metal. And the metallurgist is there. Alan Stone. He's great casting too. He's a Cooper look-alike! What if the metal can be traced to the rig! I doubt it but it's weird that we get one article talking about chemicals on the money, and another talking about metal on the money. Maybe both? the two articles were: (both new yesterday night as I posted before) http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/03/amateur_detectives_fish_for_db.html http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_030509WAB-db-cooper-tale-KC.9602434.html

In the book, the author goes a long way to trying to find out about the tie and clip, because evidently information about it was buried by the Reno office. (it was up in Seattle?, but pictures/info were apparently controlled) The author makes it sound like the FBI agents just didn't remember the tie, and that it was referred to, but no one remembered and no picture was available. When you read between the lines, it's obvious the FBI agents were holding back, I think...i.e. they didn't want to let info out about the tie, because they could use it to ask potential Coopers "what did you leave behind" Next is one new piece of info that may or may not be true. In the book, it says that Tina watched Cooper take off the tie and loosen his collar. I caught that because it's different than the impression I got, of Cooper taking if off maybe while rigging up. It's not clear when Cooper took off the tie, I think. He may have been uncomfortable with the tie and collar. It might indicate he was not a regular tie wearer, and that it was part of a costume? This detail about whether Tina saw him take off the tie and loosen the collar, and when it happened, would seem to be important. Maybe it's nothing, maybe not true, though. Oh in terms of the agents "covering up" info about evidence gathered or not gathered: The author also talked about how quickly the plane was turned over to Northwest..They didn't really spend a lot of time processing it. I think just one day? I can check again. (edit) This seems inconsistent because I think Ckret said the seats were removed and sent to FBI headquarters or something like that for processing? I forget. They talked about how some agents thought the magazines weren't processed properly. The author says Cooper was seen reading the magazines while they were circling Seattle, but unclear if that's true based on what Ckret said. They said the prints found were unusable (which they expected) as Ckret said. They didn't mention getting prints off the magazines, although I think maybe the FBI guys were holding back, thinking maybe they did get something off the magazines. Ckret has said no one saw Cooper reading the magazines. So there's inconsistent information. But the whole question of a "too fast" processing of the 727, because Northwest wanted it back is a good one. They started dusting right away when agents got on the plane. The author also talks about how some people joked about the skill level of the Reno "crime lab" So: processing of the plane could have been poor for a variety of reasons.

377 said: "That one kid from a "good family" gets a light sentence for the same crime that they gave McCoy 45 years for." Yeah they both had guns. I thought Heady terrorized the crew more than McCoy did. (forget the details). McCoy's grenade was fake. McCoy read a statement where he tried to say, that in his plans, he thought about minimizing the impact on everyone. blah, blah, blah, the usual stuff from a guy that got caught. I think the main thing I got is no one really knew McCoy and we still don't. He apparently did like the adrenaline rush. he did a lot of stuff in Vietnam that was high-voltage as a helicopter pilot. We still don't really understand McCoy, yet we KNOW Cooper was an ADD engineer. We just don't have a clue about who Cooper might have been. That's the only truth about Cooper.

That's really funny. I'm picturing skydiver humor Hot Babe at DZ: "My husband just got sentenced for hijacking. 45 years." Skydiver: "Oh, so you're available?" (edit) I wonder if the book Karen? McCoy was original planning on writing, fell through because it was obviously going to sound like the McCoy thing was more than just Richard, and it would sound like bragging. Maybe that's why this book focused on a possible Cooper connection. If it focused purely on McCoy, it makes you start thinking about how screwed up the whole case was. The Cooper angle kind of throws your brain off. But the author did a good job of getting lots of detail, apparently accurate, in the book. He credits Calame, the FBI agent with research. Calame, while sounding stodgy (he headed up the SLC office in 1971) and a product of the Hoover version of the FBI, does sound like a decent guy. I think Calame was probably a superb agent.

377 said: "Didn't McCoys wife sue some publisher and win a settlement? Maybe all that talk about her being an accomplice couldn't be proven and she had a good slander/defamation case. " There's an amazing amount of apparent first hand testimony from the wife. She typed up stuff for McCoy for the hijack. She said they had a lot of notes. She burned them. She went on and on about how anyone could have done the hijack, it was so simple, after they did all the notes. That she got money from a lawsuit, shit it just makes it all worse. (it's unclear if they recovered the money that the accomplice says she ripped off from them post prison escape) She may not be guilty. But if not, I really can't understand why she said all that stuff. Maybe there was nothing except what she said. McCoy wouldn't testify against her. That's what probably saved her. McCoy gets dead. She gets off. No one else to testify or want to deal on her. (edit) 377 continued his Cooper confession: "Judgment is another matter, starting with his choice of a spouse... but if you use that as a criteria and knew my ex, you'd think I was dumb too. " I told you, no more confessions on why you hijacked 305. They've got this little room bugged.

Good feedback 377. I was thinking about the rig McCoy borrowed from Larry Patterson that was on the plane (from his luggage) and deployed. I wonder if he gathered it up and stuffed it in the duffel bag he threw out. They probably found that duffel anyhow (have to check) since one of the chutes with beacons was either in the bag or also chucked out? (forget right now the sequence/timing of those events) In any case, can you imagine if there was something stupid that was easily traceable to Larry Patterson? I mean the number of deployment devices that were manufactured/sold back then must have been small. The FBI would have been easily able to find McCoy by tracking back from that rig. McCoy was a fucking joke compared to Cooper. Just because he used more jumping knowledge in an obvious way, we're supposed to think he showed how an expert would do it? He showed how a novice would do it. Sure he had a lot of balls, and obviously something wasn't right in his head. But there's a lot of McCoy mythology I think when brainstorming about Cooper.

377 confessed, under extreme interrogation techniques: As your lawyer, I advise you to not make any more confessions until you understand your rights. Now tell the court how you were beaten by posters to a web forum, and that's why you did it. (edit) Your story of starting out was great, 377. Thanks for sharing it. (edit) 377 said: "The description of trying to stuff the reserve back into a sleeve is wrong, reserves don't have sleeves. They are misdescribing a container as a sleeve most likely." Yeah it's weird, he described that second chute as a "small sport chute" but that doesn't make sense, he wouldn't bring a 2nd main to act as a reserve. It's probably not decipherable about what that borrowed container/canopy was (A guy's name is provided though..I mean isn't it weird that he borrowed another guy's rig of some kind, for the hijack along with his own as main. (because he wanted the automatic deployment device) McCoy sure sounds stupid doesn't he. It's like he was superfocused on a lot of stuff, him and his wife convincing themselves they were smart, when they were obviously REALLY DUMB. Then after the arrest, the FBI focuses on maintaining the mythology that he was REALLY SMART/GOOD.

I was confused by this, but this will impress the jumpers a little I guess. McCoy appears to have really injured his ankle in a skiing accident before the hijack and had a cast on it. I don't know if that meant there was a break or it was sprained or what. He apparently cut the cast off 2 days before the hijack. That's why when he landed, he talked about absorbing most of the shock on one leg. His other leg was still sore, before he landed. I guess he had a better chute than Cooper. (sport chute). He asked for Commanders. Not sure what kind of rig he used for a main (since he brought his own). But maybe a Commander also (would be right for the era?)

Good point 377. The FBI guys go thru all sorts of hoops saying that McCoy used knowledge from the Cooper case, and I forget what bogus examples they used, they weren't from a jumper's perspective. (I think the FBI came to their senses eventually about McCoy not being Cooper, but two agents were definitely pushing the McCoy-Cooper possibility hard for a time) But you're right, a jumper's perspective would focus on stuff like how the jump is done, as major first order. It's really funny that the author goes on and on saying "his first freefall was Oct '71 and Cooper was Nov '71...hmm...funny coincidence!" They caught McCoy thorough no skill of their own. It's laughable we got a journalist here who's all impressed with the FBI guys associated with the McCoy case. Dumb. Like I said, I don't think the FBI ever had a hard hijack case. They were all easy. Except for Cooper.

The crazy wife shit continues even after he escapes from prison. She helped the escape. She actually was dating an FBI agent (supposedly) while he was in prison, and may have actually dropped the dime on him that led to his escape buddy's capture (Melvin Dale Walker) and his death. But definitely part of the escape. She ripped off some of their robbery money too, evidently? She definitely was a huge part of what drove him to do the hijack. I'm amazed she wasn't charged. She was totally all about money. And sounded kind of looney. She was cold and calculating. Seems to me they let her slide cause she was the wife with two kids. (hell they got their man, who cares about her anyhow! (that was the '70s maybe still is)) It's interesting that in the web forums, there's this mythology around McCoy, that's just wrong. He's kind of a pathetic creature. Not some "expert" way of doing things. Actually every character in the book has some kind of pathos. All the FBI agents. Everyone. It's like you read it and hope we've advanced as people since then. I don't know if we have! The attempt to connect McCoy to Cooper by the agents is pretty pathetic. About as bad as every typical Cooper nutbag thinking. It's especially disturbing reading all the aggrandization by the people involved in "justice" and realizing that Heady (another jumping hijacker) got out in 10 years. (if I remember correctly) McCoy is a sad case. Nothing to feel proud about there. A main contributing cause never got charged. McCoy confessed. (well they found everything so it didn't matter really) I think his case may have been handled badly. Needed a better lawyer. Didn't have the fine upstanding father to speak up for him. Once McCoy went to jail, yeah he got worse. But that's a different story. McCoy got a 45 year sentence. Winder was McCoy's court-appointed attorney. He eventually became a judge. No pity for him there, or for him and the hijack. But the whole thing leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Vietnam messed him up a bit.

page 119 Van Ieperen was the buddy that suspected McCoy (basically tipped on him) From FBI interview by Jim Thiesen of Robert Van Ieperen: "Van Ieperen stated McCoy made his first free-fall parachute jump in October, 1971, while on a flight with Van Ieperen. He stated McCoy has made numerous military-type jumps and immediately following his first free-fall jump he began practicing jumps with the Alta Parachute Club in Salt Lake City, Utah" Van Ieperen was a jumper. I didn't know that. Must have been tough. Jumper turning in his buddy a jumper. Van Ieperen worked dispatch for Highway Patrol Vietnam vet. Good friend of Richard. Flew helicopters with Richard for Utah National Guard. Weekends, when they had the money they both parachuted together at the Alta Parachute Club.

Okay it's complicated but I'll summarize. His note asked for "FOUR COMMANDER PARCHUTES WITH STOP WATCH AND WRIST ALTIMETER-GET THEM FROM PERRY STEVENS EQUIPMENT COMPANY IN OAKLAND" The rigger, Perry Stevens, knew from the detail that the hijacker must be a jumper. Used two sports packs with orange and white panels. With sleeves. Two white reserves. Two Northstar altimeters on black velcro wristbands. FBI gave him transmitters for all 4, he sealed up each chute and recorded serial numbers. McCoy brought two parachutes on board with him. His own, with which he had made maybe thirty or forty jumps. Got it from luggage in San Francisco. Intended to use as main. The other was borrowed from Larry Patterson. Small sport chute. It had an altimeter on it (I think this was a deployment device?). Two weeks earlier, "I took it and the alitmeter up in a National Guard plane and preset it at thirty-five hundred feet, just in case I bumped my head on the tail section, blacked out, or just flat fell apart at the last minute." "But like I said, a lot of things went wrong that day that I didn't expect. During our climb out of San Francisco, the empty plane lifted up with such ease and pitch - and I still don't understand it now- but somehow it must have triggered the preset altimeter and Patterson's chute suddenly pops open in the plane. Maybe at thirty-five hundred feet. I don't know. It almost knocked one of the stewardesses out of her seat. Anway, I tried to repack it by stuffing it back in the sleeve, but I was ripping my fingernails until they cracked and bled, and by that time it was getting too late anyway. I had no choice. I had to use of the Perry Stevens chutes as a backup because of the load I had to jump with. It didn't look as though the seal had been broken, so I grabbed one and thought, 'What the heck. Maybe the FBI hadn't had time to bug all four of them. Maybe none of them' The chute Richard McCoy was about to jump with was number 171, and it was bugged just like the others. ... "About fifteen minutes east of Wilson Creek, Nevada, he uncranked the rear stairs and booted it (ed. a large duffel containing everything he didn't want any more) out along with one of Perry Steven's chutes." So that's how the story of him kicking out the bugged chutes (actually just one?) happened. And how he happened to end up jumping with a bugged chute. The note about how many jumps he had on his own gear (30-40) seems to coincide with the time period he had started freefalling. Like I said, it sure seems like you guys would call him "novice".

I'm reading the Dayton book. I've read a lot of these Cooper books. I don't have any sympathy for these people who wrote this book. I think they took advantage of this person while dead. In short, it's the classic example of relatively trivial events, documented by people who are easily impressed. That's blunt, but it's the truth. Just because you can fly an airplane, doesn't mean much. Get over it. The authors are good examples of this. Honestly, if the authors are entrusted with making decisions about flying pieces of metal over my head, I'm afraid. There are many little trival stories about Barb. Some percentage of them are probably true. It's sad that people do this kind of thing to dead people. Barb also claimed the dynamite was real. Two five pound charges and a six volt battery. Detonator in her pocket. Switch was a staple remover with wires soldered to it. These guys are trying to make money off another person's life story. Which has nothing to do with Cooper. Sadder than Jo. I can't even take reading it.

"During a gold prospecting trip, she spent eight days without food in the Yukon being chased by a grizzly. " Griz don't chase you for eight days. If they're chasing you, they get you. Hey I knew my talking about gold was relevant. How can a journalist post something like the sentence above and expect people to believe it. My newspaper subscription stays cancelled. 377: you were wrong.

I always wondered if the tractor/backhoe used at the money dig was Fazio's. There are color photos here, which are great. See, I knew Ckret always had to have more data he wasn't showing us! The green/yellow is strong indicator it was a John Deere. Plus I like that you can see more of the trenches. This trench on the left spans the beach in the long direction from treeline to water, but I think there was another trench also. (edit) blew up one of the new money snaps. This is a new photo we've not seen before. It sure looks like it's from 1980? They are bundles? and you can see bill crumbs and the layout is similar ot the green table shots from 1980 we've seen before? (edit) added another awesome money shot

more

I like getting snaps because you can stare at it and see if there's any background info or detail that's new. There are a number of things that are interesting in these snaps, but only for minor reasons. I won't comment but will just post them here for the sake of reference. Just from the King5 vid link I posted.

more video of Tom Kaye here! when can we see him naked! Porn stars would out Cooper.. He's in the Seattle FBI room! They've tricked him and now he's locked up! Need jumpers to land on the roof and get thru the vents to bust him out... Plus: is it metal on the bills? Alan Stone, metallurgist, comments They found the manufacturer of the rubber bands. http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_030509WAB-db-cooper-tale-KC.9602434.html the large video is here: http://www.nwcn.com/video/index.html?nvid=338993 1:03 PM PST on Thursday, March 5, 2009 By JIM FORMAN / KING 5 News Huddled around rarely seen evidence spread out across the briefing room of the Seattle F.B.I. office, researchers say a new theory is emerging in the D.B. Cooper case. "Well in D.B. Cooper, there was a fairly recent surprise," said Chicago metallurgist Alan Stone. Stone is referring to bits of metal found on some of the physical evidence from the 1971 hijacking, the only unsolved crime of its kind in U.S. history. ... Enter the rubber bands. "We were able to find the original manufacturer of the rubber bands," explains Tom Kaye of Seattle’s Burke Museum. A paleontologist by trade, Kaye says there is no way the rubber bands, which held the money together, could have been in the water long enough to wind downstream. "They told us that rubber bands only last in the wild 3 or 4 months at the most," Burke adds. "So this is in conflict with the idea that they would be rolling down the river for seven years," begging the question was the money there all along? Burke’s answer a simple, "maybe." (edit) notice the typo in the article Burke=Kaye

I noticed that too. Maybe the FBI has secret packing instructions for skyjack chutes. Cossey is just covering up when he says he wasn't there at the loft. They can't pack a bent pin impossible pull, too much like an execution... but a hard hard pull? No problem. Having experienced a hard hard pull on a surplus rig, I can tell you it gets your adrenaline going BIG TIME. At night, tumbling out of a fast jet? Terrifying. 377 Yeah, that's why the account felt real, based on the things you guys have described. It was like all these little details were burnt into McCoy's brain. I liked the detail about the little penlight he remembered to bring. But that could have been a problem. Probably lucky for him the cord deattached, and he had to search for the penlight. he sure thought about the hijack a lot. Kind of obsessive. The wife-Richard relationship was very strange. They planned it together. She actually harassed him about the hijack saying he wouldn't go thru with it, on the way to the airport to drop him off, talking about divorce and the kids and how he wasted her money on tickets, gun etc. Fuck. It's reading like he did the damn hijack because of the screaming bitch. She never got charged as accessory? Surprising from this account. There were some serious family background issues for Richard. Like his father was off in Belgium for two years when he was born. (another guy was his dad).

Thanks Bruce. Your summary actually makes her a good match for all the people who claim to be DB Cooper! So the profile fits in that regard. "As therapy, the heist worked, because Barb was hired as a research librarian at the UW in Seattle one month after the hijacking." People never highlight the things that don't make sense in their suspects. I do though. At least she wasn't an insurance agent, but close! So: what happened to the rest of the money?

My speculation is that it's going to be some pollutant that shows up in dredging spoils in the Columbia. Not implicating the dredge, but the dredging spoils leach pollutants Which is why they restrict where you can dump them along the Columba (along with the salmon spawning issues) Tom should get an assay from dredging spoils, all the way down to PDX (remember I noted long term pollution from what was it, the Alcoa plan on the Vancouver side if I remember right?) But that'll be it. Some kind of pollutant. (edit) I'm still betting it'll relate to the purple coloration and maybe bleaching on the backs, but who knows. I don't think the purple is mildew or biological? Just guessing.

thanks 377. (edit) think you have a typo: your final calc is air speed, you said ground speed. But I got what you mean. I'm going to read the whole book tonight and I'll see if there's some more details about that. Obviously I wanted to post it, because I was excited at the "close to first hand, but not quite" nature of the McCoy jump account, and was hoping you real jumpers could sanity check the account. I thought it felt real, maybe amplified a little by the writer. The writer is not FBI agent. Only one of the two authors was FBI agent. The writer was probation officer, interviewed McCoy..couldn't use the interviews, but then the FBI agent coauthor got transcripts from the McCoy family that was planned for a book project that got canned. so I THINK the account is relatively firsthand from McCoy. Will let you know more. Can you comment on the 20-30 second "blackout" he mentions? I was wondering if Cooper could have blacked out for the same reasons. Not a real blackout but a mental shutoff as it were? (read the account back above to see what he actually says) (edit) Interesting that McCoy had trouble with his rip and had to go to two hands?

Yes. I think it was worth posting. Is this a trick question? It isnt so much that the FBI is holding back or that Ckret was holding back so much as, nobody knows - that is the central truth in the Cooper saga. The missing link is the gap in basic facts that simply were not obtainable to failed to be collected at the time, for a million different reasons. Cooper literally hijacked this aircraft at a very bad time when people and systems were down and the weather favoured Cooper. It is as simple as that. Otherwise it would have turned out differently and we wouldnt even be discussing it. Agree. If Tom Kaye is reading this: when you go into the vault, try to see if there's anything describing the note. We have no idea of what's correct there. Imagine if it was a greeting card envelope. My mind reels. People buy greeting cards when they have friends! I know, cause I never buy any!

(just thought it funny that the "digging a fire pit story" wasn't repeated) from The Oregonian article (link above) "Now 37, Ingram was 8 years old tossing a Frisbee with family members on a sandbar along the Columbia when he discovered three stacks of $20 bills totaling $5,800, part of Cooper's payoff."

Last year, Carr sent Kaye a sample of the tattered hijacking currency that remains in FBI custody. Kaye did a chemical analysis of the $20 bills and said he discovered a "unique chemical marker," a compound that explained how the bills degraded and could possibly point to where they had been. He declined to identify the compound because he said it could be a key finding in the scientific paper he plans to write about the investigation. "I'm trying to determine where that (compound) exists in nature," Kaye said.