snowmman

Jo, to be honest - these look like 3 different sets of lips to me. I can see some resemblance between the 2nd and 3rd, but the 2nd is significantly wider (differently proportioned) than the 3rd. If you showed me this with no background at all, I would be inclined to say they belong to 3 different people. Orange1 you remind me of something. The FBI or someone did a supposed "age-advanced" sketch. I think that's bogus and unhelpful. People are going to be comparing against photographs from say '65 to '75. When Cooper did the hijack, he could easily have been 20 lbs lighter than a normal weight a photograph might have showed in "better" times (assuming Cooper did this when he was stressed for some reason) I say 20 lbs because if Cooper was 180, then a 200 lb picture of him is not out of the question? But for a 6' guy, a 160 lb picture is too light. So if anything, Cooper was heavier in photos, or the same. But not lighter. So I always thought that a range of sketches show show cooper with different hair, maybe without the tie, maybe with up to 20 lbs more weight. And smiling! no one grimaces at friends taking a photo. Back then most photos would be black and white, so the color probably isn't as important? And if cooper didn't wear glasses, then the sunglass photo isn't useful. A focus on the description of the wraparound shades would be nice. I think most people think the shades where like those eventually used in Blues Brothers, and Risky Business. i.e. RayBan 2140's. (recently reintroduced for sale!) But they're not. They're also not the standard mil issue vietnam sunglasses from the era. I checked? those are MIL-S-475D's. (photo attached) I attached ray ban 2140s (wayfarers) also The Wayfarers were very big. Iconic. See wiki: but that's not what Cooper wore. (see sketches) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray-Ban_Wayfarer

Yes the backs need to be secret. Yes nothing you post on this site will help. Yes it will never be done in person.

Hi Jo. You didn't stumble on Dan Cooper. Yes it would have been better if Duane didn't say anything. Yes you can't go on and no one is going to help you. That's a good thing! Everyone here likes you anyhow. 377 always reminds us to!

orange1 said I looked in the newspapers, and in 1974 they were still publishing the 71 sketch. So I don't know why the other one wasn't distributed if it was done in 73. I'll have to find when it was first distributed. Is the theory it was first distributed in 1981?

I'm still playing with these, because I don't like the result in comparison as much yet. I've noticed one thing. The '81 composite has very different eyebrows. The '71 composite are higher, more rounded. The '81 composite are more sinister, coming down to the nose faster/closer. You don't see as much of the inside below the eyebrow in the eye..towards the nose The lines under the eyes are more defined The chin is pointier, but that may be an issue i have to fix. Cheeks are rounder noses and eyes are about the same lips are the same. face is slightly wider at the cheeks. But the eyebrows are the biggest thing that jumps out. I wonder if the '81 sketch over dramatized them.

YOUR ANSWER for the Composites themselves What they are doing is misinterpreting the code on the front of the pictures - the back of these composites I posted are STAMPED: [b]JAN 2, 1973 --- Just a little something the FBI forgot when they sent these to me. For yrs they have made it appear these where redo's in 81 - NOT so. I have the PROOF they are the new one that Rose did about 2 yrs later, but the FBI kept right on using the old composite (Bing Crosby look-a-like) and the new composites where all but ignored and not released to the public for a very long time.,,maybe why they ended up with a file name ending in 81. See what happens when you guys are nice to me. yes, these are what I thought were the "'81" sketches. If they were made in '73, that's news to me. Jo, can you scan the backs of the composites? I already have better versions of the '81 composites. I think you posted them before.

WELL SAID ABOUT ETHINICITY ORANGE1 and you're not even USA...although I'm sure the issues are strong in SA too. Yes the 3d images were cool to me, because they made Cooper come alive for me..rather than a dumb flat image...it was like a guy that I could visualize. Sure they may be off a bit. But I liked putting the smile in there. I can make the eyes point in different directions to, up/left, like to the camera. I think the flat face-on images have been out there so long, that people don't think of Cooper has a real guy...the only real guy images are these things like Duane that get pushed out there. Everyone didn't look like Cooper. That's a myth. He may have looked like a "typical" 2nd or 3rd generation american of some european ancestry. But even saying that, cuts out a lot of folks. Throw in the receding hair issue, the height/weight and hair color, maybe eye color, and you're slicing the possiblities down more. The only reason he wasn't found, had to have been cause FBI didn't have the right data on where to look. This stuff about a loner just disappearing...a guy with no traceable skills, is just grasping at straws. It's possible, but it's vastly more likely the FBI had crappy data. Computerization was just starting, barely!

Perhaps you should study the pictures of Duane - you will see that same eye sag. This caught my eye yrs ago and anyone who knew Duane - it became more pronounced as he aged. I have one eye that is sagging because of an auto accident and as I age it is becoming more promient. There is absolutely no reason for me to think of Duane. RIP Duane!

Independent of finding Cooper, my goal is that everything that is possible to have been said, has been said. And everything that's in any way relevant that's accessible from the web, or by easy purchase, has been read. Are we there yet? Is there anything left? Is there anything people are curious about I could look for, that's potentially findable? What did people think about the 3d faces I created? I created some from the '81 sketch too. Interested? or ??? I can create a talking animation of the cooper sketch saying the words for the initial note. I did that for fun a while back. I was looking at the sunglasses, cause I got excited they might have been the classic Rayban Wayfarers (2140). But they're not. They're some kind of plastic wraparound. They're not metal aviator, and they're not 2140's. I guess some kind of common all plastic wraparound. I don't know how common it was for 45 year old's to wear them then. Boxers or briefs? I'm not sure we can tell. Nothing has been said about his belt. Must have had a belt. No jewelry noticed. That means no wedding band? So he was single/unattached? Most married men would have worn wedding rings back then? I think it's pretty clear that there's no real way to identify Cooper. Why would Ckret act like he's going to be able to identify him? seems like the DNA and fingerprints are crap. Someone is going to confess? Someone is going to find a twenty and say WTF? and turn in the old man? Are we done yet? I mean if Jo ain't getting on TV no more, what's the point?

Ckret had mentioned asymmetries as characteristics in sketches. I was zooming in and looking at the '81 sketch and noticed that the artist created a slight left eye sag. The eyes are not perfectly horizontal. attached jpg shows what I mean. I just zoomed the '81 sketch. look at the eyes, relative to the nose and mouth lines.

I thought I'd play with some software that creates 3d images you can morph, from photographs. I used the 71 FBI sketch for Cooper. It would be better to also have side sketches but oh well. The program basically extracts info from the picture, to create a 3d image. Then you can morph the image with knobs, for various things. (a lot actually) I changed the lighting to be a little darker. Added a little more beard stubble. Made the age more like 45. And a key thing: made Cooper smile. Then I used something that randomizes it slightly in 11 different ways to get slightly different versions. I'm using the free version, so I had to manually smudge out a watermark on their foreheads. Here's the result of my first attempt. Remember it's from the '71 sketch, not the '81 sketch. There is skin tone. No hair on my free software, but maybe that's good cause the hair thing can change easily. The facial structure should be good though. Tell me what you think, comparing it to the 71 sketch I just posted above. I posed facing to the left, since most portrait shots do that..full frontals are not as common?

Repost of the only DC-9 jump. (LaPoint) with some new stuff from "the good book" at http://books.google.com/books?id=M5VEEhyJHTQC&pg=PA751 Richard Charles LaPoint, 23, an ex-Army paratrooper. Apparently from Revere, MA, or Seabrook NH? Vietnam vet. Was a salesman in Denver. Hughes Airwest Flight 800. It was out of DC-9, not a 727. The kid only asked for $50,000. Injured on landing. Must have been a little chilly too. Jumped in cowboy boots. Day jump..about 3:25 PM. Asked for helmet in addition to the two chutes and money. This cowboy had highway flares wired to a clock. Plane started in Las Vegas, Landed in Denver, CO to get money and two chutes. Jumped near Akron, CO. Used alias "John Shane". from the article: "...mustachioed young man, dressed in cowboy boots and Western clothes... ... The next report,...came at 1:57 PM when the plane was flying at 12,000 feet near Denver. At that time the hijacker was reported seeking instructions on how to open a seldom-used door at the rear of the plane. The opening of this door was described as hazardous by the airline spokesman, who said it was situated beneath the two engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage. The pilot of the hijacked airliner..said later that the man bailed out at 12,000 feet while the plane was traveling 180 miles an hour. ... Two Air Force F-111 fighter-bombers trailed the hijacked plane....pilots ..spotted the parachute blossoming below the hijacked craft. ... ..officers had tracked the accused hijacker through snow and mud, finding him lying in a field about a half-mile from the nearest road. He complained of an injured leg."

I had the ticket bought, the suit pressed and was on my way to the airport, when I found this posting, on a DC-9 site that was discussing Cooper and the Christiansen NY Mag article. From what they're saying, it sounds like you can open the DC-9 as a emergency exit, but were the stairs only deployable from the outside? (if present). Have I just wasted money on a ticket? Any extra knowledge here? (edit) I thought there was one jumper from a DC-9 or MD-80..I have to search the thread. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-749325.html n2flying Oct 23, 07, 8:48 pm not all of the 9's have aft stairs and the ones that do can only be opened from outside the aircraft. xfa617 Oct 28, 07, 4:42 pm >The rear emergency door has been mentioned in > the FAA safety spiel on every NW DC-9 I've flown > on. The rear emergency exit is the aft stairway. Actually, the rear emergency exit on a DC-9 is a slide. The aft airstairs fold up into the tailcone and are used on the ground for the occasional boarding/deplaning and by the maintenance crews (on the aircraft with a rear pressure bulkhead door, that is). The stairs can only be deployed from the outside, as far as I know. To use the tailcone exit in emergency mode, a tailcone release handle located just behind bulkhead/plug hatch door is pulled. This jettisons the tip of the tailcone and releases an evacuation slide. Passengers are evacuated along a catwalk in the tailcone leading to the slide. The catwalk covers the aft stairs when the stairs are stowed, and flips up to cover the inside of the tailcone when the stairs are deployed.

I agree. It makes no sense. It makes no more sense than arguing about whether you saw the money bag in the van. You did.

interestingly, Weinberg supposedly studied law before he got into comics? http://lambiek.net/artists/w/weinberg_albert.htm Comic creator: Albert Weinberg Albert Weinberg studied law before he entered the comic world. He started his career as an assistant to Victor Hubinon. Soon he took over Hubinon's series, ...

without peeking at google, or searching the thread, (or remembering)...how old do you think the guy in this photo is?

If you have a big enough monitor, just open the pdf and view it, then use a screen grab tool to select what you want. That's what I do for all the news articles. If I have to change the jpg compression I do it in photoshop, paint shop pro, or a specific photo resizer tool. I usually adjust jpg compression to "just" fit under the 300kbyte limit here at DZ.com per upload. I use Screen Grab Pro. Free and Great and Brit. What more could you want? http://www.traction-software.co.uk/screengrabpro/

Are you saying most 45 year old men in 1971 didn't look like that? I agree. Are you saying no 45 year old men in 1971 looked like that? I disagree. The first. We've had this discussion before haven't we - about people's perception of age. But if most 40+ men looked older than he did.. how did strangers peg his age? Why didn't they think he actually was younger? Why would someone peg Cooper at 45 or whatever and sketch him looking significantly younger? I just don't understand it. (I'm entirely open to the explanation that I am just a bad judge of age from a sketch. ) Snow, re your 2nd line... I have also met 30-year olds who look 40. Is it possible Cooper was actually younger? Okay, personal detail from me. I'm 49. I think a sketch of me might look like I'm 30, except for lines on the face etc being a give away. If I had a short haircut, you'd see the receding hairline. All young women know I'm an old guy though. They call me mister. However I still get carded for beer. How? dunno. Women are smart.

Are you saying most 45 year old men in 1971 didn't look like that? I agree. Are you saying no 45 year old men in 1971 looked like that? I disagree. (edit) look at the lines around the eyes. The lines on the forehead. The almost-combover? narrow nose. Interesting chin. He doesn't look 30 to me. 45 year old with feminine features. The sketch tells me that's what Cooper looked like. Who started the myth that everyone looked like Cooper? Why would we believe that?

I think Sluggo/Ckret confirmed that "the deal" they were talking about was not Cooper, but the ability for the pilots to escape the plane. They didn't want to leave Tina though. They were thinking Cooper might know about the pilot's ability to escape the plane also. At least that's how I remember this conversation about the deal, being deciphered....????

I was thinking that some people might not have seen this image of the 1971 Cooper sketch that's on file at Getty Images. It has a watermark cause I didn't want to pay, but it's the most detailed (highest resolution) version of the 1971 sketch I've seen. It's interesting to zoom in and look how the artist sketched the hair or other details. You can see little things that don't show up so much in the lower resolution versions of this sketch. Might mean nothing, but I thought people might not have seen this one. I was just looking at what I got, when I was thinking about "coloring-in" one of the 1971 sketches. (edit) attached the "next-best" version I could find, in terms of resolution, for comparison. (edit) resized a little bigger too.

yes orange1. I was thinking we could break Cooper actions/plans/behaviors during the hijack into at least 25 separate identifiable things. And that some number of them can be interpreted as whuffo. But it leaves a large number that seem to imply some thinking. I think sometimes we latch onto one or two, and say "see, doofus!" We should latch just as strongly on the rest that say "see, not doofus"

So you're saying most of the guys you used to night jump with in the '60s used to wear sunglasses before they jumped? Thanks for the first-hand info, Sluggo.

McCoy would have got caught no matter what he did. He was stupid. Didn't they have fingerprints? Remember how they found the money at his place. THAT's why they were able to convict him so easy. That plus handwriting match etc. (fingerprints too) It didn't matter what he said to that guy. They would have found him anyhow. He was stupid. Just cause you have a written plan, doesn't mean you're smart.

Sluggo's site has gotten a little bit unwieldy from a reader's point of view (not criticizing, Sluggo, it's a great effort by someone working for free...no one better) And I was thinking the "primary" data is buried somewhat now, and people unaware of what's what may have missed some "primary" stuff. Tom, the "second" transcript I referred to was faxed from Ckret to Sluggo a while back. Sluggo posted it at his site. It is not the transcripts that were released to the news media. There's good info in there, for instance confirmation of the flaps going to 30 degrees to lower the stairs. Remember we have no idea where Cooper jumped, what the flaps were at when he jumped, or the exit speed when he jumped. We know the avg speed of individual legs at 1 minute intervals, roughly, on the flight map, we think. We have a couple of speed mentions in the transcripts. We don't have flight recorder data. (Too Bad!) The link to the 2nd transcript in Sluggo land ..best to right click and "save link as ..." to avoid hanging your browser on the pdf... http://n467us.com/Data%20Files/Logs%2006-20-2008R.pdf