snowmman

from the article: "So for two days this week, they tromped along the Columbia and its tributaries, the Washougal and Little Washougal Rivers, before heading to Seattle to inspect the FBI's voluminous files on the unsolved case. " And they DEFINITELY went to Denny's. I knew it. They're taking the clues. Next they'll be looking in the river. Look North! Look North! ""You guys are painting my fence," Carr told Kaye and his team over breakfast Tuesday before the group headed for Tena Bar. dammit, the lens on the satellite is jammed, got to wait till morning to reorient it.

(sorry I overwrote this post, reposting) good article. They even named some of the Club :) And picture of Larry Carr there. Larry looks good (not dead) Hey! Geoff Gray is writing a book! Jerry was right! as was Jo! The whole article is very nicely done and I just have some. snippets here. (Good example of good reporting, I think) Amateur detectives fish for D.B. Cooper clues by Edward Walsh, The Oregonian Thursday March 05, 2009, 7:50 PM http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/03/amateur_detectives_fish_for_db.html Kaye was joined in the quest by Carol Abraczinskas, a scientific illustrator at the University of Chicago; Jerry Thomas, who used to live in the area and has spent more than 20 years hiking the backwoods looking for Cooper case clues; Geoff Gray, a writer for New York magazine who is writing a book about the case; and Ingram. The FBI sent along Bruce Friedland, , a journalist who writes for the FBI's Web site and publications. This is not an FBI investigation, but it took place with the bureau's full blessing. It was an outgrowth of a strategy adopted two years ago by Larry Carr, a special agent in the FBI's Seattle office who volunteered to take another look at the case. lead paragraphs Gary Larson looked out his window the other day and glimpsed perhaps the oddest scene he's seen in nearly 40 years of living beside the Little Washougal River in Clark County. There on the opposite bank stood a tall, bearded man, fishing pole in hand. Attached to his line was a bundle of $1 bills that he cast into the water and carefully watched as the river current washed over it. Larson was witnessing the latest chapter in the search for the elusive D.B. Cooper. Tom Kaye takes measurements along the banks of the Columbia River. Here he attempts to reconstruct the path of some of the ransom money from a 1971 hijacking of a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland to Seattle. The fisherman was Tom Kaye, a retired owner of a paint-ball equipment business and amateur scientist from Sierra Vista, Ariz. This week, he led a team of investigators through the thick woods west of Vancouver and along the sandy shores of the Columbia River, trying to figure out what happened after the mysterious figure who became known as D.B. Cooper jumped out of an airliner more than 37 years ago.

This is a first. Never before published. the flight path as we know it from the FBI sectional it's in the article. but when you click on it you get the big picture. I've attached. But go to the web page. it's good! (note this post is out of order due to my repost, see article below)

georger said: "I can direct you to another Cooper tractatus that says with full authroity: Cooper had a wrist altimeter, life raft (in the chute), life jacket (under the chute), walkie talkie (Knight kit), and of course thenuclear bomb you are always talking about .... Maybe you wrote the artikle?" Obviously I have no idea, still, what the note actually looked like, or whether it was typed or handwritten. There have been a lot of descriptions. It must be something the FBI is holding back. Was my highlight from the McCoy book not worth posting? I thought it was.

I was re-reading the account I copied from the book, which apparently is first person from McCoy (they mention the source of the McCoy transcripts in the front of the book, there were various court cases involving them) But if his eyes were watering, he wasn't wearing goggles, right? I'll try to get more, but it's interesting because even though you jumpers have said it's not a big deal, this whole goggle thing was thrown out to try to "prove" something about dumb Cooper. And newspaper articles quoted supposed black eyes for Cooper as a result. It would be really funny if McCoy jumped without goggles. Just a tidbit, but appeals to my sense of humor. (and makes me wonder about goggles on the other 3. Don't know)

Hi Sluggo. I do the internet, and I hide behind it. Kudos to Himmelsbach for his alternate behaviors. It's good to be different. I was wondering about what additional physical evidence we have. We know that a search zone map was created in Spring '72. That map had some points of the flight path on it. I need to cross check, but I believe it's consistent with the full flight path map we have from Ckret recently. If so, it's likely the flight path we have predates the Spring '72 search, and maybe the rest of it is correct. If there was no data on the flight path, why did they search up there with the Army in Spring '72? What data did they have? And why is that data wrong today? Just because of some new wind data from Bohan and the money find? Doesn't make sense. Now, maybe the flight path was created from '71 to '72, and was created wrong. If so, how wrong can it be? Does it shift East totally? If so we can do that and see if they hit Mt. St. Helens. Or is it just randomly wrong. But wrong and still align with things like getting altimeter adjustments from PDX? What triggered the delivery of altimeter adjustments from the PDX control tower? I assumed visibility on PDX ATC radar. Sluggo, you mentioned this at one time. (edit) Note to Sluggo. I don't need to hear interesting stories from Himmelsbach. I'm sure he has them, because 100 other guys I've listened to have them also. Everyone does. That's what life is about. H. has his. So what. Just another guy. You have your way of interacting with folks. Good for you. You'll have your own stories when you get to be H.'s age too.

McCoy had static-lined as a paratrooper. (edit) So to be fair, he had jumped before Oct. 1971, just not freefall (evidently). I'm still digesting the book. I have to read to see if maybe some of the night jumps were from static line? I'm not sure if his free-fall experience was civilian or military. I'm guessing civilian but don't know yet. Maybe it was all military? but military wasn't doing much free-fall then (unlikely for him?) I also don't even know if he had any night freefalls. Just posting the sentences as I find them. Like Cooper, everything just leads to more questions.

Very nice work Sluggo. Thanks for posting it. One question. There were two pilots actually on the plane in question, Flight 305. Why did Himmelsbach think a pilot from another plane, had new, better information? Did Himmelsbach never talk to the pilots on 305? It sounds like that. Did the FBI never have written interviews of the 305 pilots? I doubt it. Did Himmelsbach actually do anything in the investigation? I doubt it. Do I know for sure. No. But I can't understand why Himmelsbach, who supposedly was the lead agent (probably not) didn't know where the flight map came from or why he didn't get the same wind/storm reports from the pilots on 305. Why quote information from someone else, when you could talk to the real guys on the plane? If there's a valid reason, I can't think of one.

I was wondering about that but thought it sounded right? no? They quoted ground speed and a tail wind. with a tail wind, that means the relative air speed is pretty low? (plane to air relative) I think that was the point? the air speed was REALLY low, like right near the bottom limit. (I wonder what the plane configuration was, flaps etc...I'll keep an eye out. I wonder if McCoy just specified an airspeed)

I had read this elsewhere, and just found the reference. We've been told that McCoy represented how an expert would do it with all his detailed notes and crap. No one ever asked "how expert was he" On page 119, "McCoy made his first free-fall jump in October 1971" He hijacked April 7, 1972, roughly 6 months after his first free-fall. I guess, as the prior thing said, he had 3 night jumps by then already? Was it common to do night jumps very quickly? I guess we went thru this, for some license level you need night jump?

page 64 says 14000 feet ground speed 180 knots tailwind of 50mph they say it was barely staying airborne, travelling at 180 groundspeed knots. Captain Hearn said "Maintaining an altitude of fourteen thousand feet for a plane the size of a Boeing 727 would have been near impossible without that tailwind"

Richard could hear dogs barking and helicopters whup-whupping over the marshes only a mile away as he pried himself off the duffel bag. He was about forty yards from I-15 not far from an empty hay shed. Hed had no way of contacting Karen. Even if she was still at the airport, that was three miles away. He had some road flares in his jumpsuit sleevs, but he could have his choice about whom to surrender to if he lighted them. He made two trips to the barbed-wire fence and got his gear over it. There he discovered a round metal culvert that ran under the road. It was dry, a perfect hiding place for the money and the bugged chutes. (ed. I have to read more about the bugged chutes. I thought he had his own gear? Maybe I'm misremembering) "It seemed like I was forever making it, Mr. Rhodes," he said, "the mile and a half into Springville. My leg was killing me, and every time a car came by, I had to dive in these wet ditches along the side of the road. I hobbled through wheat fields, over railroad tracks, crawled a lot on my belly because there were police every fifty yards. Then there was this helicopter circling with searchlights. Once I thought they spotted me." In Springville, near midnight, the only place open was the Hi-Spot Drive-in. They were cleaning up for the night when Richard bought a Coke, paying for it with a United Airlines twenty-dollar bill. "I was afraid to call home," Richard said, "thinking Denise may have one of her boyfriends there, so I found this hippie-looking kid there and said, 'Hey man, this your car?' He said it was, so I told him I'd give him five dollars if he'd drive me to Provo. It was only about four miles, but I would have given him fifty to take me home. He said it was actually his dad's car and he had to head for home. I said 'Five dollars will buy a lot of gas, man,' so he finally took me up on it. We didn't talk much on the way. I told him I had been at a girlfriend's house and my friends went off and left me." He got out about three blocks from the house and checked around back. Karen's car was gone. When Denise let him in, she exclaimed, "Have you heard the news? Some guy jumped over Provo with half a million dollars!" Richard feigning surprise, remarked, "No, I haven't. Where's Karen" Denise, glancing down, saw the jump boots clashing curiously with his suit pants and, her mind obviously whirling with possibilities, commented, "Oh she's just out visiting somebody." Then, bursting with news, she added, "Van Ieperen called twice. He thinks you did it, Richard! Wants you to call him!" Then, unable to resist the temptation, she demanded, "Did you do it, Richard? You know you can tell me." (man...you hijack the plane, you make it, you come home, and first thing, a woman's hassling you) (edit) that's it for now. Tired of typing.

(yes he wore makeup and wig/toupee. There are descriptions but I'm not done with this part) He was close enough now to see traffic stopped at a dozen roadblocks along the freeway and all the side roads. "I knew the FBI was down there waiting." Richard paused before continuing. "I could see I was heading into freeway traffic," Richard went on, his voice serious and unanimated, "and moving way too fast so I turned my body into the wind which slowed me down a little. I was floating now, probably two or three hundred feet above the freeway and heading straight for a cow pasture. Still dizzy and sick, he had good control those last few feet and landed almost softly on the plowed ground, holding up a sprained right ankle so that his left foot absorbed most of the shock. (Richard had told everyone that he had sprained his ankle in a skiing accident.) "I just laid there on that big duffel bag full of money, Mr. Rhodes, for a least ten or fifteen minutes with the parachute canopy blowing around over me. It was such a great feeling, I remember, to be back on the ground, because you see, Mr. Rhodes, ever since I was a little boy, I have been deathly afraid of heights." When Richard looked at his watch. it was a little after 11:30 P.M. (Man it goes on and on...It's amazing McCoy got away with all of the FBI all around him. I guess he kicked out the bugged parachutes, so maybe that made the FBI focus elsewhere that night. Still, amazing the McCoy got away initially. My heart is pumping reading about it.)

He had barely time to realize that the chute must be bugged before another wave of nausea hit. Both chase planes were circling and dropping flares, so he knew he couldn't open his chute. The tug of the huge bag was spinning him against the wind, increasing his dizziness and nausea. He knew that he might be too weak to open the chute if he waited any longer. Using his left hand, he forced his right arm chest-high and yanked the release handle. It was stuck. He pulled as hard as he could. "I remember thinking," he drawled, "that if this thing don't open pretty soon my funeral could be as early as next Tuesday." Still nothing happened. Finally he yanked with both hands, dizzy, panicky, and desperate. His back chute suddenly popped open, but the velocity of Richard's spinning twisted the parchute lines, winding him right to the top of the canopy. "It was like being wound up in a kid's swing," he remembers. "I started slowing down at the top, then stopped completely, then almost as fast as before, I came winding back down. I'm Mormon, Mr Rhodes, you know that, but that's what it must feel like to get good and drunk". Magnesium flares on small parachutes floated along Interstate 15, hanging over Utah Lake like Mardi Gras lanterns with blues, greens, and deep reds sparkling in the sky. These flares and the Provo airport lights made the sky bright enough for Richard to read the altimeter, but he was too dizzy to focus. Cars below seemed to be "spinning around as if they were on ice." He guessed that he was still several thousand feet high, hoped he was headed for the east side of the freeway. On the west side, he risked landing in Utah Lake. He had brought along a ten-foot lead rope, intending to tie it to the duffel bag and let it hit the ground first, but the bag was too heavy and clumsy" (continued with next post)

page 69 Richard, riding the rear stairs ready to jump, was nowhere near the Spanish Fork airport. Captain Hearn's bank was way too shallow. Flight 855 was approaching the mountain pass that leads toward Price when Richard finally came to his senses, wedged the bag between his legs, too a deep breath, and bailed out feet first. "The first sensation I remember was falling off a bank building, Mr. Rhodes," Richard said. "The second was a rush of cold air that practically tore my head off. I had free-fallen at night only about three times before -not all good jumps- but nothing at all like this. He stemmed -arched his back as high as possible- so that the wind hitting his front would start slowing him down. Leaving a plane travelling two hundred miles an hour meant that his free-fall speed was about a hundred and twenty miles an hour. The duffel bag had worked loose from his legs and began pulling him onto his back. A wave of nausea and weakness swept through him. "I remember thinking, 'Simmer down,' but I was too weak. Everything was coming so fast I went black. I'm guessing, but I must have been unconscious twenty or thiry seconds. "When I woke, there was no sensation of falling at all -just a breathtaking stream of cold air getting stronger and stronger. The bag began floating out of control around behind me on my left, offering more resistance to the wind than I was. Trying to position myself in the direction the bag was going, I stemmed left and could now feel myself going faster. I had the feeling I was still plenty high because I could see two military planes coming up on me with these gigantic spotlights searching around" (continue with another post)

page 64-65 (they were at 14,000 feet. The $500k weighted at least 40 lbs. He had a brown suit coat, green pineapple grenade, .45 caliber pistol and the chute also. The pilot figures he jumps at 11:12PM (night)) A shadow darting across the aisle up front frightened Richard. Then he recalled, "I realized it was only the stewardess. She stood about the eighth row, hugging herself in the dark; and I could tell she was cold and tired and wished this thing was over. She was afraid, too. We had been at this thing nearly ten hours." The aft stair door had banged open and shut for most of the trip. Inside the aft door was an instrument panel that released the rear stairs. Richard had chosen a Boeing 727 to hijack because it was the safest to jump from. When fully extended, the rear stairs dropped at a forty-five-degree angle toward the ground. At two hundred miles an hour, the airstream held the stairs almost parallel to the ground, and Captain Hearn could feel the tremendous pull the second Richard lowered them. Richard used D rings-the kind of snap rings mountain climbers favor-to fasten both metal handles on the duffel bag to the metal rings on the front of his parachute harness. "There was no way that darn bag could get away from me," he recalled, reliving the moment. "I stood there in the open door for what seemed like hours with that cold wind banging me in the face, yet I could feel my hands sweat. Then I positioned the bag, which was about three feet long and three feet around, between my legs, took a deep breath, and took my first step outside." The stairs suddenly dropped about two feet, throwing him and the clumsy bag forward. Richard clutched the handrail, wrapping both arms around it, wondering if the teetering stairs might slam shut, folding back into the plane with him still on them. It was bitter cold. His eyes were watering. One of the big jet engines was just a little behind and above the rear door, and its roar was deafening him, shaking him on the stairs. He groped for the penlight he had tied with a two-foot string to the zippered cigarette pocket on the left arm of the jumpsuit. It was gone. He fumbled helplessly on the stairs for it and found it, just as it was about to fall. He scanned the sky for chase planes. Nothing. Below was a continuous string of lights along Interestate 15 between Salt Lake City and Provo. Slowly the stars began to rotate, and he realized the pilot was making the thirty-degree bank he had ordered just before Provo. (skipping to page 69 for the rest of the jump. I'll do another post)

There was nothing in the river. But I always wanted to tell that story, because I remember the seedy Old Portland, the long walk over the bridge, the darkness and dampness, and the pissed off dude. It comes to mind when I think of Cooper. I actually thought maybe I had walked across to Vancouver, but looking on a map, it wasn't. I always wondered how full of shit that guy going to Texas was. Did someone really get dead in Texas. Doubt it. But he may have gotten laid that night. Okay. real life. Just went to the mailbox, and my Real McCoy book is there. The book looks good. Writing not bad, although with McCoy they had a real story to tell (Cooper part is probably weak)..Himmelsbach had no where near as much interesting stuff. I've attached photos from the book that show the McCoy DZ, which people here should like. There is a photo of McCoy in his paratrooper gear that I've not seen before. There is actually a photo of McCoy in his coffin at the funeral. Kind of macabre. On page 33, there's something about Cooper's note. I think it might be correct. They have some other details about the note and Cooper's demands that seem correct, and they were FBI agents. They say "he showed a bomb to Stewardess Florence Schaffner and told her to read what was typed on the outside of a white 5x7 envelope" Now if that is true, it is different than the hand-printed felt pen note rumors. Ckret never gave us details about the note. A 5x7 envelope is an odd size. It's like a birthday card size, isn't it. Photos attached of McCoy's DZ. I like them because it gives you a sense of reality of these jump hijackings, rather than the BS feel we always have. There were 4 other real DZs in 1972. I've only thumbed the book so far. Hmm. there are two other things on page 34-35 that seem like myth. They say Cooper had Tina take up a typed federal aviation flight-plan form to the cockpit. And they say Cooper used the word "interphone". Both of those are false, if I remember correctly, from what Ckret said. There is some detail of McCoy and the stairs and the jump, apparently from an interview? I'll read that and post anything interesting. There's an interesting first person account from McCoy.

Okay I'll give you the full background. And this is all true. One time I took a Greyhound bus from Seattle to CA. I had a plane ticket, but wanted to leave early, but couldn't get a new reservation. I figured, how long could a bus take? It took forever, stopping at every little depot along the way. I ended up sitting next to a Mike Tyson lookalike. He had recently been thrown out of the Army (dishonorable discharge) from a tank division in Korea. He didn't want to talk much. Was pissed at the world. The Army just gave him a bus ticket back from whatever Fort in WA, to back home, in the South. He was going to be on the bus forever. Somehow I ended up sitting next to him. Eventually we get to Portland, after seeing every small hole-in-the-wall town in between, and we miss our connection, so we're all milling around the station. It's night, and some of us mill over to a bar nearby. That's when this one guy confides he's going down to Texas to "disappear" someone. We eventually head back to the bus depot, where there's no buses for the night. They're starting to hand out hotel rooms, and the Texas guy is hitting on a woman with two small kids. He's successful, surprisingly and heads off (both of them) with smiles. Me and my new Army bud (I feel like I have to keep him out of trouble) head out on the streets to keep busy. We're roaming downtown Portland and some random guy wants to sell drugs. Mike Tyson's ears perk up and he's bellowing for a deal and I'm trying to get him to shut up and get out of there, cause it's obviously bad news. So we somehow drift from Old Portland over a bridge (river maybe the Williamette) and end up in a Denny's on the other side. And we're sitting there, and there's a bunch of suburban white kids at the other table. And Mike starts giving them the maddog glare. And one kid actually stands up like he's going to give some shit...And I'm thinking, the kid is thinking Portland dude, when he should be thinking "guy who just got kicked out of a tank division in Korea, on an endless bus ride back to the South, looking for some ass to kick" And on the way back to the bus station, looking over the rail of the bridge, what do you think I saw in the river? And that's what happened.

Another good angle would be how Ckret started this hoax at the tv stations (and they went for it) of a Citizen's Investigation Group. We know it's a secret club. Unclear if there's a membership list (if there is, publish it). There are rumors of CIA funding. There are rumors that all of it's activities are staged, to flush out new tips for Cooper. It's unclear though. Since Nov of last year, Ckret disappeared. There are rumors of suicide, although there are recent news articles where he is still solving bank robberies. Apparently no physical contact with Ckret, just email, so even that could be part of the coverup around his death. What makes me suspicious is that the most recent mention of him is in a IssauquahPress.com web page. That is too coincidental. Why Issaquah? http://www.issaquahpress.com/2009/03/02/robbery-suspect-arrested/ (edit) 377: you're right. The voice of reason as always. I'm just bitching. This is a web forum after all! (edit) Worse yet, it's a skydivers' web forum, and I've never seen a deployed parachute, except on youtube.

(repost: mistakenly overwrote) I've always been a big newspaper reader. I love the idea of getting it every morning. Walking out to pick it up to read with coffee was a morning ritual forever. Just last week, as part of budget-tightening measures here, I cancelled my local newspaper subscription. It wasn't necessary. I felt bad, because I do like supporting writers. I like good writing. I like seeing ideas I would never think of. I like the public record. (it's amazing the detail about the past now we can get by googling newspaper scans) And print is good. Look how Google is focused on their book stuff. It's because editted copy is way more valuable than most web tripe. BUT: the problem is, the newspapers are trying to sell a bogus story too. They claim to be investigative journalists. But they're not. Just tabloid crapola now. And it's really sad to see how the front pages of all the major web news sites, have drifted towards "news of the weird" type leads....when they first started, there appeared to be an attempt to stay away from the "weird stories". But the weird headlines everything now. (cnn, nbcnews, abcnews, etc). Oh well. That's who we are. People look down their nose at youtube. It will be really funny when youtube has more good data than TV or newspapers. Not far away! (edit) Oh 377! I wasn't disagreeing with you or saying anything negative. I was just saying, I thought we were past that, and that everyone already shared that view. See you're agreeing, we really don't have any idea what we all think! I'm in agreement with you on that. That was my point....Sorry!

I do feel sorry for poor Bruce, and want to help give him something he can sell to his editor. Hell, leading with a story that says the shoe story could be false (i.e. it's probably more likely Cooper jumped with ankle boots, than loafers, from what we know, unless he can squeeze out more records from Ckret) The whole "loafer" business was part of the package that was put out there by Himmelsbach. (along with a lot of other "sure death" nonsense about landing and surface wind speeds). Could Cooper have worn loafers? Maybe. But it's hard to see, from what we know, that you would say that was most likely. It becomes real interesting if he indeed had ankle boots. It might show some thinking about the jump.

If you just do a random drop into the possible areas what are the rough odds of reasonably non hazardous LZ terrain and proximity to exit paths such as roads? Maybe his landing and exit wasnt nearly the wilderness/survival ordeal we all picture. 377 ?? see this is why I have no clue how others process information here. I can never understand why Georger keeps beating on Jo, other than the virtual wife beating might be enjoyable. (Duane story is not plausible. No reason to pursue) And there is no way any reporter could go to the FBI and ask "Show me the data that says Cooper most likely jumped in the woods" Because there is no data that says that. Now he might have, since there are woods. Do we even know if Cooper jumped before the Columbia? No. Georger will now say yes we do, because he knows what Rataczak said, and Rataczak somehow pinpointed the jump location (Rataczak didn't). Now with respect to the woods thing. Don't print the real story until 11/24/09. I'm still negotiating with Fox network, and need to pump up the value proposition.

I'm thinking about what you're saying 377, but the real question is even more basic than winds and Bohan. The real question is: why the heck do we pretend this question of winds is so important? It's because somehow, we don't believe there's a flight path that's reliable? So anyone, can say anything about winds, or where Scott thinks he was flying, or where Rataczak thinks he was flying, and it leads to new speculation about possible DZs. The most basic question is: Is there a record of the flight path 305 was on, that's reliable? If not, what is the minimal information we have on where 305 was? For instance, was it even close to V23? If not, how far off, theoretically, could it have been? Was Scott in danger of running into Mt. St. Helens? (use altitude of the landmark before South Africa dropped it's fifth nuclear weapon on it) See, the wind doesn't matter if you think there's a reliable flight path. (unless you're calculating canopy drift) It does matter also if you want to sit around and tell bullshit stories, like Himmelsbach. (edit) Note that if the flight path map is unreliable, we can put Cooper in all sorts of places. Statistically the woods would be low probability, assuming uniform distribution over the likely areas.

Georger, it appears that, as the phrase goes, "you give good phone" (that's actually a compliment, if you've ever talked to someone who has to be on the phone all day) Can you call up Seattle ARTCC in Auburn? They have a web page. Find out if anyone there ever talked to anyone who was working 11/24/71. I think there were at least 5 seats filled that night. The name of the Chief there is in the transcripts (you can scroll back to the shortened pdf I posted). You can name drop the Chief's name (he's probably dead by now) to see if anyone worked with him. 377 wanted a name of someone who was in a radar seat that night. There's a lead there.

A compelling story is someone finding the Cooper money, and keeping it for themselves, and then trying to (badly) cover it up like you say 377. Here's another example. If we're to believe the Georger Denise Extension story, as uncovered by the Citizen's Breakfast Club, which has been infilitrated using cash dispersed from my $200k book advance (my agent says we could have gotten $500k now)....then Why isn't the real story of the money find being reported today? Jo knows. The conspiracy. And the conspiracy is only known here. And by the UFOs that talk to me thru my toaster.