snowmman

Youtube has the more recent DSC show on Flight 305. It's in German though. just search for Flug 305 (5 parts) I watched it. They have Jo and Duane in it a bunch. A couple of worthwhile snaps: Two that show the aft stairs of 305 better on landing in Reno. You can see the torn fabric better, and you can see up into the stairs. You can see the panels on one side. They drew their own flight path time estimate on a map. It's surprisingly really bad, and shows how even basic data hasn't been widely disseminated. -The money find location is wrong -They use a straight line for the V23 flight path, rather than the real flight path. -Their time estimates for crossing the columbia are late/slow They apparently had some info about the '72 search area, since they drew in a drift line and the trapezoidal search area. (see last attach)

I started it with my collage from the video. I was thinking that people have said things like "everyone looked like Cooper" or that people dressed like Cooper when they flew. But that's not true and the collage shows it to some degree. One guy had a cowboy hat. not all had raincoats. All the ties I saw were wide-ish? One guy had a bolo tie. Also striped ties. Hey you want to see a comparison between today and 1971? Attached is a photo of FBI sniper at this Kennedy/LaGuardia hijack in July 1971. Notice how casually dressed/adhoc the sniper setup is. N8733 indicates it's the 707 at JFK. I think Cooper learned a lot from hijacks of the era. If we acknowledge that, he doesn't seem so smart/unique? See, the point is, in 1971 they were shooting hijackers. Think about that, and the jump is obviously just a small part of the overall risk. And you can see maybe why Cooper decided 'no gun'. Interesting things about this 7/24/71 hijack 1) Hijacker had gun. Threatened stewardess. Shot by FBI sniper while outside plane. 2) Unemployed airline mechanic. He was nervous 3) Note that metal detectors existed in July 1971 at LaGuardia at least, although this guy's gun got by. 4) Interestingly there was also another hijack to Cuba from Miami that weekend, where the hijacker shot a stewardess and passenger. They lived (Bond, Evans) 5) history of mental illness? 6) He did it locally. name Richard Allen Obergfell. 26 years old. From Passaic, NJ. Sorry about disjointed text...just snippets from assorted news articles. July 24, 1971, Saturday A hijacker with a gun at the back of a terrified stewardess was shot and killed on a Kennedy Airport runway yesterday as he moved toward a Trans World Airlines jet he had ordered for a flight to Milan, Italy, his second air piracy of the day. The man who hijacked a Trans World Airlines jetliner at La Guardia Airport yesterday had aroused the suspicions of airline employees enough to make them search a small bag he was carrying aboard the plane. But no weapon was found, so the line's agents let him board the aircraft. The airline officials were warned by a signal from a metal-sensing antihijacking device that had searched a bag he was carrying. .. TWA employes searched they had found several harmless metal items in Obergfell's bag ... A thin, long-haired man in an orange shirt turned a Trans World Airlines transcontinental jet back to Laguardia Field at gunpoint Friday, then commandeered a truck that took him tq Kennedy Airport. A nervous, neatly dressed man armed with a gun ... Two rifle shots fired by an FBI agent felled the hijacker, who was using a Trans World Airlines stewardess as a hostage. As they talked got off two quick shots from a rifle with telescopic sight. He caught the hijacker once in the abdomen, once in the back. Obergfeld was dead on arrival at a hospital... The hijacker who was shot and killed at Kennedy Airport Friday as he attempted his second air piracy of the day had a history of mental illness for which he had been treated as recently as the last few weeks, sources close to the investigation said yesterday. Hijacker 'very nervous' Stewardess not afraid --'until I heard shots' Idie Maria Concepcion, the stewardess held hostage in the attempted Hijacking to Italy Friday, said she was not afraid during her ordeal until she heard the shots that killed the Hijacker. "I thought I was shot." the 21-year-old TWA stewardess said. She said she and the hijacker were standing alone near the TWA 707 jetliner, which was being prepared to take them to Milan. Jobless Airline Mechanic Shot To Death In Hijacking, Tripped Alarm At LaGuardia A man who fit a "hijacking behavior profile" but passed an airport security check pirated an airliner and a truck Friday, then was shot to death holding a hostage stewardess as he walked toward a jet for a .

ltdiver. I see your points. But isn't it likely the passengers were debriefed before they were released to an area where the press was? And you saw the still photo of the passengers taken by someone else (it's taken from a different angle). I find it hard to believe some news org. would video random non-associated passengers for a long shot (enough to count 15 individual passengers) and a still photographer would get the same shot. I've attached the still photo and crop of the montage, so you can see they're of the same people (passenger 6-8)

What you were referring to here sluggo...i made a bunch of sorta random posts? or did you mean georger?

Back to being serious. (whatever that means in the Cooper context) There's a video on youtube that's relatively new. It has some apparent new archival footage/photos. (some archival footage we've already seen) You can watch the video to verify my snaps. The video seems credible, as it has other archival video available elsewhere. Also has some new modern footage of Himmelsbach, including a closeup of his FBI ID. (I didn't snap that) (edit) I had the wrong url. fixed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VY6jzgWJ7c in order of attachments 1) a photo of the passengers. Passenger 6 from the montage is first. You can see 7 and 8 match the montage. Nice detail on 7's raincoat, to get a feel for the era. You can see 6's widish tie. I wonder if clip-on ties were more likely to be narrow? Modern day clip-on ties sold to pilots seem to still be narrow. (relatively?) 2) and 3) These are VERY interesting. It seems like it may be a posterboard put together by FBI for some press briefing? or maybe it's not FBI? (edit) Is it a closeup from some book?. 2) shows the wrong money find location (more by frenchman's bar). There is a Corbis photo that also shows this wrong location. But 3) is interesting. It shows a Cooper landing in the Columbia on the island south of Hayden Island. This is interesting. I've never seen something like this before. (edit) Is it from some book?. The island appears to be "Tomahawk Island" 4) is an old Corbis photo showing a FBI posterboard with the wrong money find location. It is not the same posterboard as 2) and 3). 5) Here's some other random pics from the web. This one is Caterpillar Slough at low water (recent) looking towards Caterpillar Island 6) When they were doing all the plans/studies for dredging Vancouver Lake (not done till the '80s) they did some soil analysis to see if the dredge spoils could be used on farm land. So we have the results of a 1972 soil sample report from cores from the bottom of Vancouver Lake

"At Google, Bigelow's vision was being brought to life. The von Neumann universe was becoming a non-von Neumann universe. Turing machines were being assembled into something that was not a Turing machine. In biology, the instructions say "Do this with that" (without specifying where or when the next available copy of a particular molecule is expected to be found) or "Connect this to that" (without specifying a numerical address). Technology was finally catching up. .. The advent of template-based addressing would unleash entirely new forms of digital organisms.... ... Google was inverting the von Neumann matrix—by coaxing the matrix into inverting itself." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysong08/dysong08_index.html

? is this myth or fact? I thought he hung at Club Rendevous, based on the contents of the wallet found in the van. (attached)

Should we then aspire to Aldonza's view of the world, "The world's a dung heap and we are maggots that crawl on it!" or Quixote's, "It is the mission of each true knight... His duty... nay, his privilege! To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go; To right the unrightable wrong. ...and the world will be better for this, That one man, scorned and covered with scars, Still strove, with his last ounce of courage, To reach the unreachable star." That was GREAT Ckret! Bravo! Encore!!! Can you sing My Way next? Sinatra, Goulet, Martin, Bennet... those Vegas lounge punks aint got nuthin on you. Someone mentioned the Zodiac Killer in this thread. And now Ckret mentions Don Quixote. Everyone knows that the Zodiac sent a Dragon card right? here: http://www.zodiackiller.com/DragonCard.html When they burn Don Quixote's books, what do they tell him? That all of his books were destroyed by some magical guy who was riding a dragon. And the next two coincidences: Jo can confirm: Duane was born in Lorain, Ohio. MLK was shot in the Lorraine Motel. Do I have to spell it all out for everyone?

How come no one commented on LaPoint? Or Sluggo's business card? I thought I did a good job on that. It seems to me the LaPoint hijack proves the lunacy of rationalizing about Cooper details too much...(kind of like the McNally case). (edit) go to Google News and type in Richard Lapoint hijack, and click on "all dates" if you think I'm making Lapoint up. It also amazes me how the US public only thinks of Cooper and McCoy when it comes to jumping hijackers. LaPoint was from the east coast, he jumps in Colorado, on a flight originating in Las Vegas. Lands in the snow, in January, wearing cowboy boots and western clothing. Sure it's daytime, but a little colder than Cooper's temperatures...LaPoint only asked for $50k. He was ex-army paratrooper, unclear how much experience. He jumped from a DC-9, which hadn't been done before, so he was a first of sorts. He had jumping experience, yet he jumps in cowboy boots and gets injured on landing. Sure he was caught. But looking at the details of clues, ignoring fingerprints, there's no way those sparse clues make any sense that would lead to someone? I don't think so. I think all the other cases say catching a parachuting hijacker is dependent on: prints, locating the DZ quickly, having someone ID you on the ground, or having a co-conspirator say something. If you don't have any of that, it's too hard to work back from details of the hijack to a suspect. There's no logic that works. I think it's a myth that the clues as we know them, can point to Cooper. I think the only strong thing we have is the probable landing in the Columbia scenario. Looking at the long stretch of beach along the columbia between Frenchman's and Tena Bar, I think plant theories are nonsense, now. I think it's reasonable to believe the money could have survived in the water in that condition. I don't believe the dredge scenarios any more. (because it would probably be harder for the money to land in-channel at a spot where the dredge would get it successfully). Isn't this just a boring little case once we get the true facts? I'm scratching my head trying to understand what's interesting about this thing now. I'm almost certain there was a report of a body found by the Columbia around the time of Cooper by a kid, but when investigated, no body was found. Maybe that was Cooper's body? I wonder how much the Columbia was investigated at the time in '71? I've attached a graph showing the number of hijack attempts, US and non-US from 1947 to 2003. In 1971 there ~33 non-US and ~25 US. ?? peak was '69-'70. another chart with a definition of "successful" hijackings showing the numbers from '46 to '85 These are from "Testing a Rational Choice Model of Airline Hijackings" by Dugan, Lafree, Piquero. (2004) You can see that Cooper's hijack occurred at the peak of the form...i.e. there were a set of skills/methods that had been honed by sheer numbers. And it was all well reported. Sure the chute thing was cooper's new new thing. But other scholars have theorized that hijackers tried to outdo the ones before them. Arguably, Cooper was just a natural progression. (as the people say who point to Cini and his apparent parachute plan before Cooper). I look at the graphs and say "Who Cooper was didn't matter. He was a product of the times. There would have been another Cooper, if Cooper wasn't first. So we can't find Cooper by focusing on clues from the one hijack" Cooper was ordinary. here's some more impressive stuff: http://www.jackboulware.com/writing/historys-unsolved-heists or how about this one in Japan. 110,000 names on the suspect list? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_million_yen_robbery

found a picture with the panels open. hey it actually looks like you could fit in there. but as 377 noted, you have the problem of buttoning things up after you get in. (edit) found two nicer ones with all panels open?. added

I realize I don't know a lot. I really don't have a clue about the range of folks that hijacked. It's pretty broad. Enough to make me think we're very narrow minded about our cooper profile? or at least wonder if we are.... VonGeorge's planned escape wasn't by parachute. Don't know what his plan was. There was just 3 successful US jumps in '72. There were some more attempts with chutes, that didn't have jumps. I think sometimes we focus on the parachute too much. I wanted to show some other folks that hijacked for money. You need someone willing to do the hijack and then also willing to do the jump. And cooper was the first on the jump thing, so that made it harder. Hey for us whuffos: I've been watching dc-9 jet exits on youtube. There's a lot of them. although probably

REPLY> and the biggest fact of all: He hijacks and holds for ransom an airplane in flight! Not your average civilian. Yeah. In looking at the other extortion hijackings, I'm not sure what percentage had prior serious criminal records. There are some odd ones...Trapnell had a long history of bank robberies. And his case led to two more hijackings. Trapnell wanted his friend Padilla released from jail too, but Padilla told his Dallas jailers, "I'm not going anywhere with him. He's nuts." Also of note: the Oswald daughter hijack: she had railroad flares? his hijack: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903752,00.html 'The hijacker boarded the Los Angeles-to-New York airliner with an automatic pistol concealed inside a fake plaster arm cast. Once he had seized control in the cockpit, he started making a wild series of demands over the radiotelephone. He wanted to talk to President Nixon; he wanted the release of Angela Davis; he wanted a ransom payment of exactly $306,800. Eight hours after the hijacker struck, two FBI agents disguised as crew members boarded the plane at John F. Kennedy Airport, shot the hijacker in the hand and captured him. There was no doubt about his identity. He was Garrett Brock Trapnell, 34, a dark-haired man with piercing eyes and a long record of bank robberies. Trapnell himself did not deny the hijacking, but he claimed it had been done by his wicked alter ego, Gregg Ross. He was a Jekyll-Hyde personality, he said. Appearing in Brooklyn's U.S. District Court last month, he pleaded not guilty." some of his appeal stuff here: http://www.altlaw.org/v1/cases/550694 Trapnell had some psychiatric history. Apparently a prior patient of Hubbard the guy who subsequently wrote a book on skyjacking. Hubbard testifies at the trial..there's all sorts of dissent about whether Trapnell is insane or insanely smart. So then Trapnell's in prison with McNally, a hijacker we know. Trapnell's girlfriend Barbara Ann Oswald hijacks a helicoptor as part of an escape plot for Trapnell, McNally and a third?. She's armed, but the pilot somehow gets her gun and shoots her. she dies. court case on the escape attempt: http://www.altlaw.org/v1/cases/492887 Later, her 17 year old daughter hijacks a plane going from St. Louis to Kansas City. She wants Trapnell freed, again. Here's a news article on that hijacking: ----- As a TWA jet from St. Louis descended 25 years ago toward Kansas City, a passenger's scrawled note prompted a startling change of course. Claiming to have a bomb, the passenger demanded the DC-9 be turned around and flown instead to Carbondale, Ill., not far from one of America's toughest federal prisons. Co-pilot Lyle Mitchell quickly retracted the jet's landing gear, raised the flaps and boosted power to the engines. Pilot James Miller quietly entered a code into the transponder, a device that helps air traffic controllers track planes. The code signaled that Flight 541, which carried 87 persons, had been hijacked. It was only four days before Christmas 1978. Pilots at that time were trained to comply with the demands of hijackers, who were terrorizing the skies that decade. Besides, Miller and Mitchell knew they couldn't do anything about a bomb. And they didn't have a gun and unlike hundreds of today's commercial pilots in the United States who have undergone special training within the last year and now pack semiautomatic pistols. Looking back, Miller wishes he'd had one. There's no doubt in my mind, I would have shot (hijacker) Robyn Oswald if I had a chance. the Independence native said recentl Of course, then my life would have changed forever, because I would have taken a life. Hijacking Family Back in 1978, Miller and Mitchell stayed in the cockpit while Oswald a 17-year-old high school dropout from suburban St. Louis commandeered the plane's back rows. The hijacker communicated through notes handed to flight attendants. Oswald said she had dynamite taped underneath her bulky sweater. Witnesses said wires ran from a row of sticks to a triggering device, which resembled a door bell. On the ground, FBI agents scrambled to learn whether the bomb could be real. On the plane, two passengers, both Naval Academy graduates, told the crew that it sure looked real. Oswald's motive? To free GARRETT BROCK TRAPNELL, who was serving a life sentence at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill., for a 1972 hijacking. The day Oswald hijacked Flight 541, Trapnell was in an Illinois courtroom facing charges of attempted escape. Seven months earlier, Oswald's mother, Barbara Ann Oswald, hijacked a helicopter and ordered the pilot to land inside the maximum-security prison to pick up Trapnell and two other inmates. The pilot wrested away her gun, then killed her, before regaining control of the helicopter. After her mother's death, Robyn Oswald continued contact with Trapnell through letters and at least one prison visit, her former attorney said. Trapnell, the attorney said, told Oswald what to do. She was going through a very bad time with the loss of her mom, attorney, Donald L. Wolff said, He played upon he as if she were taking her mom's place. In a sense, she was trying to do what she thought her mom would have done. In the cockpit, Miller and Mitchell knew none of this. All they knew was that the string of hijackings that had shocked America in the 1970s was continuing. And for the first time, they were hostages. Passengers Unaware Oswald delivered her hijack note when the plane was only eight miles from touching down in Kansas City. As the plane turned away from Kansas City, Miller said nothing to his passengers. Many wondered what was happening, however, when two flight attendants began moving people from the back rows forward. Because the plane was full, the attendants raised armrests and packed four passengers into where there had been only three. Oswald, who had ordered the seats near her cleared, stayed in the back. But the runways at Carbondale wouldn't handle the big DC-9. Through another note, Oswald told Miller to land at Marion instead. Miller asked another airline's crew for proper radio frequencies and other landing details for that airport, at which he'd never landed. Of course, everyone (in the air) knew what was happening, he said. Everyone except the passengers, that is. They finally learned they had been hijacked when Oswald insisted the pilots pipe their radio transmissions through the passenger cabin so she could hear the conversations. Unknown to her, the pilots still talked discreetly with TWA officials on a second radio. After landing at Marion, the pilots parked the plane at the end of the runway, far from the terminal. The plane, which should have landed in Kansas City at midmorning, sat on the tarmac until well after dark. “We talked to FBI, you know, asking what's going to happen if five sticks of high-impact explosive go off, Miller recalled.They said, Wait one minute, we'll have to check on that. Well, we think it will be total devastation. The plane will be destroyed. Well, wait one minute. We'll have to get back with you.' We had a half of dozen of these (conversations). We decided we would have to sit there and wait. Worried that his partially full fuel tanks would worsen any explosion, Miller kept the engines going until they ran dry. Although the December weather was cold, the passenger cabin grew uncomfortably stuffy and hot. I figured she was going to suffocate everybody. said Barnett Helzberg, who was returning to Kansas City from Cincinnati and sat not too far from Oswald. Earlier in the flight, Helzberg had watched her point out a window and ask someone, What's that? as they approached Kansas City, then dash to the rest room to write her hijacking note. Oswald set a deadline for Trapnell to be freed. It passed without incident. Eventually, she agreed to release elderly passengers and babies in exchange for food. The plane's now-open door and ramp tempted some remaining hostages, especially since a forward bulkhead blocked Oswald's view of the opening. At one point, Helzberg strolled toward the door simply to seek relief from the hot cabin. Another passenger asked whether Helzberg was ready to get out. Helzberg balked. We were scared she would blow up the plane if she saw people on the runway he recalled I said, You go check with the captain. Retelling the moment, Helzberg paused. I've never been known for courage,said the retired jewelry chain president, who now leads his own foundation. The pilots already had plotted a plan that called for some passengers to stand and stretch, further blocking Oswald's view, while others escaped. Once he learned the pilot approved, Helzberg bolted. He slogged through a marsh before a van without lights approached and took him to the terminal. With the hijacking more than nine hours old, a speaker in the Federal Aviation Administration command room in Kansas City crackled with unexpected news: Passengers were leaving the plane in unstructured pairs.The trickle continued for more than a half hour. Before long, only a few hostages remained. Oswald suddenly realized something was wrong. The few people still standing to block her view ran, leaving only one passenger with Oswald. Miller remembers yelling at him to get off. The pilots also fled, and the FBI boarded. Agents quickly subdued Oswald. Instead of dynamite, she carried only harmless railroad flares. Tried as a juvenile, Oswald spent 22 months in a treatment program. Her former attorney ran into her a few years ago at a shopping mall.She was a mother and doing fine Wolff said. Trapnell, who once bragged he would escape, died of emphysema in a Springfield prison hospital in 1993. Today, Miller admits that confronting Oswald would have been difficult. She was not getting out of that seat back there. said Miller, now of Hot Springs, Ark.I couldn't go back there with a gun if she had a bomb. If I go back there, she's liable to blow the whole thing up But having a gun at least gives pilots options, he said. For example, he could have passed a gun to a trusted individual, such as the flight attendant, who could have gotten close to the hijacker. Yeah, I'd love to have had one Miller said. You bet your life. By DONNA McGUIRE The Kansas City Star

just exploring the idea of "what kind of person" ..had a petty theft prior w/prison. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,905711,00.html Heinrich VonGeorge, 45, the man who hijacked a Mohawk Airlines propjet last week (July 1972), scarcely fits that pattern. His motive was not an escape compulsion or an aberrant drive for momentary fame. It was a simple, brutal act of financial desperation. VonGeorge was the kind of American failure that Theodore Dreiser was born to document. His real name, according to FBI files, was Merlyn La Verne St. George, and he once served two years in San Quentin for petty theft. He variously, and unsuccessfully, ran a tobacco shop, sold drug products and worked as assistant manager of a discount store. Despite his failures, though, friends in Brockton, Mass., where he moved in 1970, say that VonGeorge seemed determined to provide for his wife and seven children. Finally, unemployed and debt-ridden, he told his wife that he was going to Albany to look for a job. He hijacked the Mohawk airliner with a track-meet starter's pistol, demanded and got $200,000 in ransom money, then forced the plane to land in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. There VonGeorge suffered his final setback: he was shotgunned to death at point-blank range by an FBI agent.

Question 1) Did DC-9's get a modification to prevent use of the rear door? or only 727's? (the fake cowboy jumped from a DC-9 rear door) Question 2) In reading about these other extortion hijackings, I'm wondering if the profile for Cooper is just all wrong. 1) It doesn't seem like he knew anything special about planes. He was wrong about stairs at takeoff. And he didn't need wheels down to achieve a slow enough jump speed. Right ? I'm saying that because I don't think the other people had wheels down? How did we get to his wheels and flaps request showing expertise? Doesn't it show lack of expertise? 2) He only asked for flaps down, not 15 degrees. Asking for wheels down and flaps down can be interpreted as lack of knowledge. 3) Disguises seem de rigueur. By default we should assume Cooper was disguised. He had sunglasses, so he was thinking disguise? A disguise would be to wear what you're not. 4) It seems unlikely to me that anyone involved in commercial aviation would do this to a commercial flight crew. Yet we want to say he was involved in aviation? 5) He was wrong about fuel apparently. Again lack of plane expertise. 6) He didn't specify flight paths. 7) The comment about Tacoma from the air seems to indicate non-local to me. I don't see what data says "seattle area resident". The McChord comment is only accurate to the level of reading a map..can be interpreted as inaccurate actually? 8) The request for negotiable US currency seems odd. (edit) Did Scott make up that phrase in the transcript. Ckret's post below seems to say he just asked for cash? If Cooper did use the phrase: Either misdirection or showing expertise/thinking about the money. He's showing more expertise here than in any of his other requests, yet we ignore it? 9) we say he was "well spoken" kind of implying a white-collar maybe college educated. But when he says "no funny stuff" or "get this plane on the road" or "I'll do the job" or "take this down"...we act like that kind of talk isn't important for understanding cooper. Or we assume he's acting. I'm wondering if he really used the word "aft". I'm thinking no. 10) If we agree a night jump was a bad plan, then his attempt to get things by 5 may be seen as an attempt to get done before dark. But that shows lack of expertise then, because he's not thinking about refuel time and takeoff time on the ground. So I don't see how any of the data agrees with the profile Ckret has put out there. Even though Cooper was first, when you look at the other extortion hijackings where they jumped, our focus on aviation connection (engineer) just seems wrong? Also the idea of a local seems weak, especially when you look at the other extortion hijackings. It's like we look at the data, and ignore it? from Ckret's June 5, 2008 post This is what Cooper relayed to the crew through Mucklow: (1) Fly to Mexico City non-stop, if you can't make it then anywhere in Mexico. (2) Fly with landing gear and flaps down (3) Do not fly above 10,000 feet (4) Fly with the lights out in the cabin (5) Do not land in the US for fuel or any other reason. (6) No one aft of the first Class Curtain (7) After takeoff the stewardess will be allowed to the cockpit. (8) The rear door open and the stairs extended for takeoff. from Ckret April 6, 2008 Cooper said to Schaffner, "Take this down." These are Cooper exact words as spoken to Schaffner: "I want $200,000 by 5:00 PM in cash. Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff, or I'll do the job."

(edit) Found his real name. Richard Charles LaPoint, 23, an ex-Army paratrooper. Apparently from Revere, MA, or Seabrook NH? Vietnam vet. full NYT article attached. I knew there was 3 successful jumps in '72 and found McCoy and Martin Joseph McNally. This guy must be the 3rd. 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. Trivia sidenote: Paul Cini's failed attempt was on a DC-8. 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." (edit) here's an interesting failed attempt at parachute hijack. (Stanford grad too) April 9, 1972 Stanley Speck, 31, a Stanford graduate, boarded a PSA plane, claimed he had a pistol and a grenade, and demanded $500,000 and four parachutes. He was tricked by the pilot into leaving the plane to pick up flight charts, and captured by the FBI and the airline president.

I think the most interesting one is the one you didn't mark on the N bank of the Columbia. (Sluggo has one there, and I did too). If that one doesn't exist, and we assume the one minute error is a real error, then with some forward throw, that could put Cooper in the Columbia at a "correct" 20:15:30 or so. Otherwise it's 20:16. I guess with the inaccuracies we're dealing with it doesn't really matter that much. Maybe when you measure the length resulting 1 minute leg you have currently, there's too much ground speed. So I think another tick is there?

I got into looking at this because I was wondering about an engineer in the Portland area, rather than Seattle. Intel didn't have fabs there yet in '71. Tektronix was a big employer. They had their first hard time in '71..from company history: "Earnings fell for the first time in fiscal 1971, by a devastating 34.7 percent. Early in the year employees took unpaid time off to avoid layoffs, but it did not help. That autumn, Tektronix announced the first layoffs in its fast-paced history. Adding to the pain that year was the death of Murdock, who drowned when his seaplane flipped during takeoff on the Columbia River. Murdock had not been active in daily management of the company for many years, but he had stayed on as chairman of the board and was generally regarded as the person who gave Tektronix its strategic vision. Less than two weeks after Murdock's death, Vollum suffered a heart attack. Vollum recovered, but he resigned as president in 1972." Murdock was quite a guy. details of the accident: from Google News (article snippet) May 18, 1971 - State Patrol officers said Murdock, 54, and a passenger, Naomi Hamblin of Portland, swam for shore after staying with the overturned plane for two hours. Police said Murdock apparently did not make it to shore. Mrs. Hamblin said the two floated downstream with the plane until it was caught in ... So, even though a lot of drowned bodies are found today, eventually (some not till 6 months later?)...this is an existence proof for a drowning victim in the Columbia never being found in '71. Found recent friend's tribute which confirmed Murdock's body never found..also picture of flipped seaplane at this url: http://www.orjw.org/Paranormal-journey/MJ-Murdock/index.htm There's also the peripheral idea of a laid off Tektronix worker being Cooper? They cancelled layoffs in the spring, but I think? they had them in the fall as it notes above.

jo will beat me up for this, but here's a pic of duane and jo from the CBS interview she did back in 2001 or so. My opinion is the more info the better. It's an old photo. Not sure of the year. Good to remind ourselves there's a human behind every post...regardless of Duane's past, looks like they had some good times. And... I thought Jo looked kinda hot for back in the day...really! Not sure of the year, but I never really liked Duane for a match cause of the hair and nose (biggish?)...ignoring the glasses issue.

wow! that pixel density work you did is excellent georger. I guess 2009 is "right" but it sure seems like an outlier...unless the plane did something weird there. You have a 3rd opinion about the pts across the Columbia. You agree with me on one new one, but you drop one. I was wondering if we could justify one you don't have, based on comparing unlikely plane speeds on two adjacent legs there? Although, could the change in direction (at the Columbia) mean ground speed increased, because plane direction was more aligned with wind direction? could that be an explanation? Do you want me to stretch those maps into GE and get a kml for all your points? We also should agree on whether we should start using the "correct" times given the apparent 1 minute error. i.e. assume the first pt up by Seattle has the correct time, and go from there. Yeah, I was trying to guess what kind of information it would be. For us with GE, we'd have used lat/long. But if someone had lat/long from the radar guys, would it be easily transferable to that map? Sluggo made some comments about "investigating the investigation" but it's like we have to do that, to understand the data. The edges of the flight map aren't shown, so I don't know what kind of references there would be. Lat/long? It seems like the ticks were done with a straightedge? so maybe a big T square or draftman's table used to transfer locations? Or was it marked by hand the night of the flight? who knows... Usually, when we first get new data, we chew on it for a while, and find out it has some errors, or not. Like the new photos. Do we have a new/correct money find site now or not? We never had good data before...just a position someone got after talking to Fazio I guess (the waymark lat/long). Or some guess based on the photos.

funny! I thought the same thing!

Sluggo likes the "walkie-talkie man" in the sequence of passengers in the Cronkite video. Thought it would be interesting to put a collage together with every individual passenger that's visible. There are 13 +2. The last 2 don't have good shots. So it's less than half of the passengers. Number 11 is interesting: "cowboy man" Number 6 is "hat man" Number 10 is "bolo guy" Number 13 is "columbo" I wonder if 8 is William Mitchell? If you go thru the ties (3, 4, 6, 12, 13) they are all wide-ish ties. I think the idea that everyone on the flight looked like Cooper is a bit of a myth? 1,6,7?,13 had raincoat on 6 and 11 had hats 5 had a sheep? lined jacket. 3,4,9?,10 had no raincoat on. 8 has coat on shoulder? woman 2 had no coat

hey quade, good to hear from you. I was actually missing you :) The original jpgs we got were 5.3"x5.9", 5.4"x5.9", 7.9"x7.8", ..assuming they were 1 to 1 with the originals, the FBI probably had a hard time drawing the circles in because they didn't have all this zoom/computer stuff at the time? So inconsistent accuracy maybe just from that? I did a quick snap out of Google Earth for modern image, and put it in the montage too. (attached) Yeah, there's some good reference points in the photos. There's that little diagonal path that comes from the NE. It seems to be gone in recent GE. There's a vertical road in the middle of that little grassy area that appeared in 1979 (is still there in GE). The grassy field seems to have been squared off. There's a more recent building in GE also, by that field. Man, b/w photos, sand...You know we should be looking for WMDs! Hey the CENNP logo on the photos, I think refers to the Army Corps of Engineers, North Pacific Division, Portland District.

Now I'm starting to feel the intimidation Jo talks about..

I zoomed, rotated, aligned as best I could quickly, and created a montage of the 3 new bw photos from ckret, highlighting the tena bar area. You can see the circles that "somebody" (not me) drew. Assuming they are the money find location. You can also see what I think are the dredge spoil plumes in the middle photo. I put the dates on each. If we agree on what the circles mean, someone should pop open GE and find a new lat/long for us to use as the money find location? I didn't think it was that far up past the Fazios..but who knows! We're gonna need a montage! http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=gog&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Team_America_World_Police"e=montagesong.txt&file=montagesong.wav

N of Tena Bar, on OR side. zoomed in crop shows it, attached. If you analyzed the photos I provided of pipeline dredges in operation, especially up by the Nuke plant after Mt. Helen's eruption, you'd recognize the output pipe and barges supporting it, going to shore... (edit) added the two photos I posted before, for comparison