TomKaye

I just want to assure everyone that my entire team is still on the job. Ckret is hard for us to get in touch with too. Experiments are being conducted as we speak. Snow, I have been trying to track down the cotton fiber test fabric but it seems they stopped making it and ran out of stock a year ago. If you see anything in your surfing please let me know. We hope all the Cooperites :) have a very happy holiday! Tom and the Team

I didn't read the transcript before I posted, I went from memory so my bad. But I am bringing up the point that we should also look at the possibility that Cooper was flying by the seat of his pants and pulled a rabbit out of the hat. I am not hung on this theory, just putting it out for discussion so we cover all the bases. Tom

To my way of thinking that is completely consistent with ignorance. "Ok, wierd stairs in the back of the airplane. I better get them down before we take off so I know it can be done". If he was really knowledgeable about it he would have known you can't take off with the stairs down (if I remember right he requested that before takeoff right?) Tom

There was a discussion a while back that seemed to indicate the chances of Cooper knowing which plane he was getting on was slim. This was glossed over by the idea you could just keep flying back and forth until you got the right 727. I would like to put this out there for discussion. If we now think that Cooper had limited skydiving experience, wouldn't it be just as possible that his plan was to bail out of ANY plane he was on?? It didn't seem like he planned it well given the loafers and suit. He needed Tina's help with the stair right off. If we take a minute and frame him as a guy who needed money and was just-smart-enough, you could come up with a much simpler profile that just HAPPENED to go down on a 727 with a rear stair. In this scenario he would be sharp enough to plan out the parts he knew about and could visualize, like the sunglasses, bomb and hiding in the bathroom. If his knowledge ended there, then the stupidity comes in, loafers, picking a reserve that didn't work, jumping into the night, big pile of money to be dealt with. My take on Cooper is he is just like so many other people I know that have a big motivation to get rich, and then convince themselves they have a great plan when they only have 10% of it thought out. This thinking accounts for the 80% of small businesses that go bankrupt after several years. Discuss? Tom

Now Snow, (wiggles finger back and forth) don't quote me as saying "nothing possible", I didn't say that. The money underwent degradation that hopefully can be pinpointed as to cause and effect. This we hope will expand on the story of what happened AFTER Cooper jumped. Anything human or fiber on the tie would have to connect back to a particular piece of evidence like the parachute etc. At the moment I can't imagine what that would be, but we hope to have a look at the tie at some point in the future. Tom

We don't have the tie and haven't given it a thought at this point. I don't think it is better evidence since you would be looking for human types of clues and its been handled by everyone for the last 37 years. Tom

Dream Team (not) Metalurgist owns his own lab does failure analysis and legal reporting. Chemist, grad student at MIT Scientific Illustrator, Chicago 20 years in scientific publications. Assisting: Elemental analysis expert, military black projects Organic chemist, retired, used to do work for paper industry. Tom

Snow, We can't tell the original configuration of the three bundles. While Ingram might be able to comment, at this late date, it would have to be taken with a grain of salt. There were all sorts of conflicting stories on the find scenario. So much so that we are discounting any and all descriptions of how they found it except that it was buried in shallow sand and had rubber bands attached. In fact we are trying very hard not to use ANY modern testimony from anyone. Only original information/ testimony from the period in question. We tentatively hope to get something out by spring/summer but that could easily slip. Experiments in the planning stage now will take at least 1-2 months to execute. I hope you all are not expecting miracles from our research. I really can't comment on what if anything we are finding but I can tell you its not going to end the investigation. Once we publish then we will have a new round of discussion that should keep things busy for a while. Tom

Snow, We don't know for sure but its very reasonable to assume the black bills were on the top and bottom of the stack. We don't know at this point if it was BOTH top and bottom but that would make more sense. I have one of the black bills here. I am sure they split the bundles open to show that they looked like real money. I am sure when Brian found them they looked like a ball of crap. Its a miracle he ID'd them as cash. Tom

Jo, I can tell you absolutely, positively and with COMPLETE authority, that the bills on Tena Bar had nothing to do with Duane and the bag your talking about. I am listening to all your evidence carefully and trying objectively to see if any of it fits into our investigation. In this particular case the question is answered. Now this is my test for you to see if in fact you really are accepting of new facts that prove Duane innocent or guilty. If you don't accept my answer, and continue to believe the bag is related to the money, it will color your other evidence from my perspective. Thanks, Tom

Snow, Thanks for those references, they were quite helpful! I only bought the palladium disk not the whole sputter coater. I am doing the soak-in-columbia test because you have to start somewhere. In our case we have three things, cash, water and sand. If you eliminate one, do you get similar or different results? That tells you something about what is responsible for the things your seeing. Tom ps my guns are already deployed here along the AZ border. So I am getting my homeland security check, no kidding...

All, Nice job on the 727 movie! Nothing like actual pics/video to prove a point. Things were getting pretty personal around here lately, I am glad your back to real RESEARCH! I am waiting on UPS for a palladium target for my sputter coater. This will allow for more detailed elemental analysis. Besides that I have money rotting in a jar with water, kind of like watching paint dry.... Did anyone see the Discovery documentary on last night? It was news to me. Jo got her 5 minutes. TK

Orange, That's a yes and no question. CSI is usually full of crap when they look at some particle under the scope and declare "this is a green paint fragment from a 57 Chevy" or some such nonsense. To answer your question, if there are obvious differences in the "dirt" you can tell by composition. For sand specifically what you can do is separate out the heavy minerals, which are rarer, and look at the proportions of each mineral to the others. They actually have maps for the whole country on what the proportions are. You can't tell if the sand came from a mile up the river, but you could tell if it came from a hundred miles away. So yes on the sand analysis, no on the very small area unless you were lucky. TK

Snow, Your on target with your comments. The hole was punched out of a modern bill for comparison under the SEM. The sands are for experiments and comparisons. We are still trying to figure out what is different about old and new bills and if it matters etc. Don't let me stop you from from doing what this forum does! TK

Guys, It was all for show. I poured the LN2 specifically so they would have a shot of "smoking liquid" because that's what everyone THINKS a lab should look like. The pictures on the computers were put there to be plain and simple so they would reproduce in the video. Snowman is right though, it was an EDS system on the electron microscope I was pouring it into. Yes in fact I do try and label all my samples. The jars labels were simply from a laser printer and packaging tape. With as many specimens as I have here I have to say organized with ID numbers etc so I can track my notes back to a particular piece. The sample stubs you saw all have laser engraved serial numbers underneath them. Please believe me when i tell you that there was nothing of interest in the video. The electron microscope shot was of an actual fragment but there was nothing interesting on it. There are "particles" on everything when you look at it with an SEM. We only agreed to do the video if we didn't have to release any info. When you publish a scientific paper they really frown upon you releasing info early. TK

Whoa! That's a a lot of math! I will have to call one of my physicist buddies..... Thanks Sluggo, you paved the way for all of us. Our intention is to do a formal, scientific, peer reviewed paper of the findings, probably around spring. We have to do experiments to verify our ideas. Once we publish, the debate can begin in earnest. Tom

Hello Everyone! Tom Kaye from the news clip checking in. I have been watching this forum daily for months and have enjoyed your interchange very much. There was a lot of discussion within our team about going public and yes some of them prefer to remain anonymous for the moment. We did it mostly because it would help out Ckret and shake the trees. I am most curious to see what Snowman can come up with about me so I will not say much more besides the fact I am not a Dr.. The guy has amazing skills.. Although I knew of the Cooper story for decades, I was never really a fan until this project came along. Hats off to Georger and Sluggo for the immense databank on this subject. TomKaye