Chapter 6
The investigation begins: an analysis of the parchutes and the jump
When DB Cooper hijacked his airplane it was considered bold and inventive, and he is still revered by many for “beating the system.” Besides being a cultural hero, many considered Cooper an astute and savvy criminal.
Initially, some FBI agents openly shared their respect.
Specifically, Cooper was viewed as a skilled parachutist, and the FBI extensively investigated the skydiving community. Recently released records and interviews with agents reveal that in the days immediately after the skyjacking the Bureau intensely interviewed commandos returning from Vietnam and closely examined the files of professional skydivers.
Yet over time, and especially in the current era, the FBI has characterized Cooper as a bumbling fool who died in his jump. However, no concrete evidence exists to support that notion.
The historical arc of the FBI’s investigation truly cuts a broad swath across the decades, and the variance may reflect the political pressures upon the FBI as much as it does any forensic analysis. Simply, the FBI’s current view may be a bureaucratic spin job concocted by an image-conscious agency.
In the early days however, and certainly in the weeks just after the skyjacking, the FBI considered DB Cooper a master criminal, as did Walter Cronkite in his broadcasts following the skyjacking. To whit: the Cooper case agent in the Portland FBI office, Ralph Himmelsbach, readily acknowledges in NORJAK that the skyjacking was well-planned and executed.
As mentioned previously, Cooper also impressed the pilots, as the skyjacker’s knowledge of the 727 surpassed their own.
In addition, Himmelsbach has characterized Cooper’s bomb as a game changer.
Cooper’s choice of weapon was also considered to be an improvement from an earlier skyjacking attempt two weeks prior in Montana, when a young man named Paul Cini attempted a skyjacking similar to Cooper’s and carried a gun. But Cini was overcome by airline personnel rushing him from different directions as he donned his parachute and dropped his weapon.
One of the odd myths of Norjak is that DB Cooper is widely credited with initiating the idea of stealing an airplane for money and parachuting away to freedom – yet, he wasn’t the first to implement the idea. Paul Cini was.
This begs the question if Cini and “Dan Cooper” had a relationship that fostered the development of such an unprecedented plan. Remember, at the time of the skyjacking diving out of the 727 was a classified secret and only known to a handful of Boeing officials and military personnel. The mainstream parachuting community had no idea that the jump was possible and the average sky diver had no knowledge whatsoever of the particular metrics the plane would have to fly in order to be successful.
Cooper did though, and Cini may have, even if he hijacked a DC-8 that doesn’t have an aft stair system and only a rear escape hatch. Nevertheless, the essential question remains – how did they know it was possible and how did Cooper, at least, know the configuration for successfully slowing the plane? We’ll certainly explore those dynamics in later pages on the subject of a group effort and copy-cats.
In the meantime, here’s how the investigation developed in the weeks and months after the skyjacking.
Himmelsbach says that DB Cooper had the upper-hand in the early stages of the skyjacking and specifically acknowledges that Cooper’s bomb was a tactical upgrade from Cini’s shotgun.
Further, Cooper’s hijacking plan was comprehensive and his execution was near-perfect. In the air, his control of the cabin was complete – he had little direct contact with the cockpit, recalled his note from Flo, and moved the passengers forward in the craft. These actions reduced the chance of being identified. Additionally, by closing the window shades and hiding in the lavatory when the passengers disembarked he had minimal exposure to sniper fire while on the ground.
For the first few years, Cooper’s getaway by parachute was considered daring but not impossible, a perspective supported by the fact that at least four DB Cooper-esque skyjackers – the so-called “copy cats” - successfully parachuted with their loot in the year following the Cooper jump.
In fact, many in the FBI considered that one of the imitators, Richard McCoy, the skyjacker who took $500,000 with him into the skies over Provo, Utah was actually Cooper doing a second and more lucrative skyjacking. Russ Calame, the FBI agent who captured Richard McCoy in April 1972, is still convinced that his man was DB Cooper. In fact, Calame told me in 2008 that many in the FBI held the same opinion, including the Cooper case agent in Seattle, Charlie Farrell.
However, the current thinking in Seattle is that Mc Coy was not Cooper, but there are circumstantial links between these skyjackers that we will explore in the discussion of possible accomplices.
Nevertheless, the FBI’s initial assessment of Cooper’s abilities shifted during the 1970s, particularly as the Bureau was unable to crack the case or even retrieve a single piece of hard evidence. Remember, prior to the money find in February 1980 the Bureau had nothing definitively from the Cooper hijacking.
They also had little compelling soft evidence, such as family members coming forward saying they had a missing husband or brother who had suddenly vanished over the Thanksgiving Day weekend in 1971 and who looked like DB Cooper.
Nonetheless, there were many leads that arrived, most of them linked to romantic quarrels and revenge, and most were considered bogus. Nevertheless, the Bureau invested huge amounts of time into digging through the pile of accusations, and at last count the Bureau has investigated over 1,100 suspects in the DB Cooper case.
In addition, certain aspects of the case continue to perplex investigators:
1. If DB Cooper survived the jump how did he get away once he landed?
And,
2. How did Cooper get to Portland Airport in the first place?
Investigators have failed to produce any concrete evidence on these issues.
Another troubling aspect is the question: what happened to all of DB Cooper’s stuff?
Presumably, Cooper went out the door with everything not found inside the aircraft at Reno – the parachute he wore, the reserve chute with the “X” sown onto it, the briefcase and bomb, the paper sack, and the Seattle First National bank bag with the $200,000.
By the late 1970s, the FBI strongly felt that Cooper had died in the jump and had taken all his gear with him, either by landing in a lake and drowning, or “cratering” into a remote hillside after spinning out of control due to hypothermia, extreme wind turbulence or some chute malfunction, such as a balky rip cord.
The money find in 1980 only reinforced the notion that Cooper did not live to spend his money, as the Bureau speculated that the money became separated from Cooper either in the air or upon impact, and it floated its way down the Columbia for eight years before appearing at Tina Bar, four miles downstream from Vancouver, Washington.
Variations of this theme are profuse, with numerous speculations on what body of water or remote mountain peak DB Cooper impacted, and they still dominate FBI thinking to this day.
Key to interpreting these possibilities are the four parachutes the FBI delivered to DB Cooper and which ones he used. We’ll discuss the flight path and where Cooper may have jumped in a forthcoming chapter, but for now let’s focus on the parachutes.
Analysis of the parachutes used by DB Cooper:
Was DB Cooper an expert sky diver or was he a “whuffo,” as the skydiving community calls an inexperienced wannabe. In the current era the view from the FBI, notably championed by Larry Carr, is that Cooper had some amount of parachuting knowledge but was not an expert, such as held by someone who was a “cargo kicker” in the skies over Vietnam. Such a fellow would be wearing an emergency parachute as he shoved supplies out the rear of a cargo plane to troops on the ground, but he would never actually deploy his own chute.
The notion that Cooper wasn’t very skilled is held as proof that he died in his jump, and conversely, the belief that the skyjacker was an expert is used to foster the idea that he survived.
Additionally, the fact that a lot of stuff apparently went out the door is perplexing. Did Cooper fashion a hugely long and unwieldy kite tail of gear to take all of his evidence with him? How aerodynamic could that have been?
Or did he toss his gear out the door, piece-meal, and have guys on the ground pick it up with high-tech detection equipment?
Or is it still out in the woods somewhere and no one has ever found a stitch, despite the thousands of thrill-seekers and fortune hunters who have scoured the woods for a free twenty and souvenirs?
Ironically, the same set of facts is used to promote both sides of the argument – the difference is how to evaluate the data. Since nothing has been found many feel that DB Cooper must have survived the jump, walking away with his gear and money. The alternative is also offered as proof that he died - that all of Cooper’s stuff buried itself with his body without a trace, but I find that hypothesis truly hard to accept.
Except for one possibility - that Cooper and all of his gear plummeted into a big body of water, such as Merwin Lake, and everything sank to the bottom. But there is no evidence to support that possibility despite the extensive examination of the lake bottom by a private investigator in a pint-sized submarine, and Himmelsbach writes that this intrepid explorer found nothing linked to the skyjacking.
Similarly, investigator Richard Tosaw combed the Columbia River bottom near Tina Bar for years without discovering anything directly tied to Norjak.
Larry Carr’s Propeller Theory is a related theory, and it posits that Cooper and all of his stuff landed in the Lewis River near Ariel, and the skyjacker drowned due to frigid conditions. Cooper and his bundle then flowed down to the Columbia River and became snagged on the propeller of a freighter heading to Portland, fifteen miles upstream. Then finally, at Tina Bar the prop cut Cooper and his parachutes loose, chewed up the money bag, and some of the twenties floated onto the beach. Cooper’s body and the un-recovered stuff then floated out to sea.
Nevertheless, Larry didn’t provide a stitch of evidence to support this hypothesis before he went public with it on National Geographic cable TV. Afterwards, he was widely ridiculed.
So, let’s look more closely at the jump and the parachutes to learn more about DB Cooper.
The skyjacker’s ransom deal with the FBI included “two back chutes and two front chutes,” meaning that Cooper demanded two main parachutes worn on one’s back, and two smaller reserve parachutes worn on the front. A reserve parachute typically lies atop a skydiver’s abdomen and is secured by metal “D” clips to the harness of the main chute.
The first to arrive were two main, “back” chutes, either by taxi or private car depending on whose version of the Norjak narrative one believes – Norman Hayden and the official FBI documents, or Earl Cossey and his many ad hoc pronouncements.
The two reserve “front” parachutes were the last to arrive at Sea-Tac airport in Seattle, Washington and when they did Cooper allowed his plane to land.
As for the reserves, they came from the Issaquah Sky Sports skydiving facility, located about 25 miles east of Seattle, and were brought to Sea-Tac by troopers from the Washington State Patrol (WSP).
Ironically, it is now known that one of the reserves was a dud – a “dummy” chute used in indoor training exercises - and its panels were sown shut, thus making it inoperable. This chute had a white “X” sown onto it and inexplicably was given to the WSP, who delivered it to the officials at Sea-Tac. Subsequently, Tina carried the chute on board 305 but it was not found on the plane in Reno, so presumably it went out the door with Cooper.
As for the second reserve chute, the “good one,” Cooper opened it long before he jumped, cutting the shroud lines to use as rope. Tina Mucklow was reportedly on her way to the cockpit when she saw Cooper cinch his money bag with the cords and secure it around his waist, and that’s the last eye-witness account we have of Cooper’s actions.
Also, despite Cooper’s request for “D” rings to attach the reserve chutes to the mains none were provided, rendering the front chutes nearly impossible to use. Conceivably, Cooper could have tied a front chute to the rear harness with rope somehow, but whether he did is unknown.
Further, even Cooper’s choice of words, asking for “front” chutes instead of the proper skydiving term, “reserves,” and similarly calling his mains, “back” chutes, is offered by some to prove Cooper was a whuffo, whereas others say he was just a smart hijacker who knew to use common parlance so that his demands wouldn’t get screwed up in the transfer of messages from flight crew-to-cockpit-to-FBI-to-the sky diving supply house.
However, the exact type of back chutes delivered and their capacities is not known definitively and is a source of enormous controversy.
As of this writing everything about the two back chutes seems to be in question: what kind of parachutes they were, who owned them, and how they arrived at Sea-Tac. In particular, the whole issue has been thrown wide-open by revelations in Gray’s Skyjack
Until the release of Gray’s book in August, 2011, the Common Understanding – long cited by FBI officials, journalists, and arm-chair sleuths – had been that Earl J. Cossey, a Woodinville, Washington skydiving rigger, owned the two main chutes and had them delivered to the FBI via a taxi cab and private car. Cossey, who prefers to be called “Coss,” told me in 2009 that Northwest Orient officials contacted him at home for two back chutes, and he has long claimed that he provided a Navy pilot’s emergency rig known as an NB-8, and a civilian sport chute called a Pioneer.
But Gray states that the two back parachutes were owned by a Kent, Washington businessman named Norman George Hayden, and that Coss only inspected and packed the parachutes for Mr. Hayden.
Gray cites a FBI document that specifically identifies Hayden as the owner of the back parachutes, but states that one was a military Pioneer with a 26-foot conical canopy and the other was a 28-foot military-type chute. Hayden refutes both claims.
Although at quick glance this seems to be only a minor glitch in federal record-keeping, the variance leads to important questions about the nature of the FBI’s investigation, namely, how could they get it wrong for so long. More troubling, Hayden loudly disputes the FBI’s claims about the exact nature of the chutes he provided and offers his “not-used” chute as proof, which was returned to him by the FBI in the 1980s.
Finally, the dispute calls into question the veracity of Cossey and casts doubt on his contributions to the federal investigation. It further casts a pall over the credibility of the FBI for relying on Cossey, especially their use of his analysis of Cooper to shape their perspective on important issues, such as, did Cooper survive?
Specifically, Cossey consulted frequently with FBI officials on Cooper parachute issues, and was placed into the public domain as the Bureau’s spokesperson on parachuting questions, such as the Amboy chute find in 2009, which many thought might be Cooper’s getaway chute. At the very least, Coss’s assessment of DB Cooper’s skills based on his evaluation of the parachute chosen seems to have colored the FBI’s thinking on Cooper’s abilities.
Cooper case agent Larry Carr has long extolled the idea that the skyjacker was woefully inexperienced, got hypothermia or panicked when he jumped, then became tangled in his chute lines and cratered.
Cossey concurs with Carr’s belief – in fact he may be the source of them. Coss claims that Cooper was a whuffo who selected an inferior chute – the NB-8 - that had a difficult ripcord - and thus Cooper was a “no-pull.”
Besides being presented by the FBI as the Norjak parachute expert, Cossey was widely sought for expert advice in the Cooper case by media, film crews, and documentarians – so the allure of Norjak was quite real and one wonders if the truth was trimmed in the pursuit of fame.
At question is whether Coss was truthful when he said he owned the chutes. Then, secondly, his analysis of the chutes and his conclusion that Cooper chose an inferior parachute has to be examined closely.
First, Cossey emphatically claimed that he owned the two back parachutes when I spoke with him in 2009. Further, Coss described the two chutes as being different as indicated in the FBI documents, specifically stating that the chute DB Cooper selected was a military, sage-green nylon, 28-foot round canopy that was placed inside a container known as an NB-8, which is a designation for a 28-foot diameter Navy Backpack pilot’s emergency rig.
Apparently, navy pilots do not wear emergency reserves on their tummy, as “front” chutes are unwieldy to wear while flying an airplane, and as a result pilots relied solely on their main chute if they had to bail out.
Continuing, Cossey said that the second chute - the one not chosen by Cooper - was known as a “Pioneer” because the container was manufactured by a firm named Pioneer, and had been designed to be used by acrobatic pilots. As such, it had padded shoulder and leg straps and also contained a “sleeve” over the canopy that would deploy first and slow the opening of the main chute, thereby lessening the shock when it did fully open.
Coss has referred to the second parachute as a “sports chute,” explaining that he does so because the Pioneer container was one that often housed parachutes that could be steered in a modern fashion, whereas the NB-8 had no steering capacity.
Cossey has changed his descriptions of the second chute a couple times, calling it a “Paradise” when I first spoke with him, but changing it to a “Pioneer” when I called for clarification in 2010. Since then he has repeatedly described it a “sports” chute, which I consider misleading as its exact steering capacities are unknown. This second chute has also been frequently called a “Paracommander” by others, which was a popular sport chute at the time and imminently steerable, but in 2011 Coss told me that the chute he delivered was “definitely not a Paracommander.”
Regardless, Coss gave me the same characterization throughout our conversations: the second, “not-used” chute Pioneer/Paradise was the “Cadillac” and the NB-8 was the “VW Bug.”
Coss also gave me an in-depth analysis of the NB-8.
As a professional parachute rigger, Coss told me that he made modifications to the NB-8 for reasons he did not elaborate upon, simply saying that he made changes to the location of the rip chord. He also installed a pouch to hide the rip-cord so that it would not be snagged and deployed while getting on board a jump plane.
Because of the modification and the nature of a NB-8 sleeveless design, Cossey said the NB-8 had a harder opening and was an inferior parachute to the one “not used.” But this begs the question of why an expert parachute rigger would modify a pilot’s emergency rig to make it harder to open, and thus making it more problematic when a pilot is trying to save their life.
Nevertheless, since DB Cooper chose the NB-8 and not the Pioneer - the so-called superior parachute - Cossey feels that Cooper was not a highly skilled parachutist, an attitude long-embraced by the FBI.
Also, Coss freely voiced his opinions about DB Cooper.
“He didn’t make it,” Cossey told me in 2009. “By not choosing the sports chute, DB Cooper showed his limited knowledge of skydiving.”
Cossey cites Cooper’s inexperience and the hard-pull on the rip chord as leading to Cooper becoming a “no-pull,” which concluded with Cooper cratering in the woods of southwestern Washington.
“I don’t believe he pulled the rip chord,” Cossey said. “He augured into the ground somewhere.”
Cossey’s assessment of these parachutes and Cooper’s skill level is strongly challenged by other skydivers, most notably a jumper named “377” on the DropZone.
377, also known as Mark Metzler, says that the NB-8 may have contained a C-9 canopy, which, as a military parachute is designed for high-speed jet openings and would have been an optimum choice for an exiting from a 727. Metzler calls C-9 canopies the “pit bull” of parachutes.
Metzler gave his analysis of the NB-8 at the skyjacking’s 40th Anniversary Symposium in Portland, Oregon in 2011, and claimed that DB Cooper picked the best chute when he chose the NB-8.
“Cooper made the right choice,” Metzler declared, and explained that Cooper’s 727 was estimated to be flying at slightly over 200 mph when he jumped, and most likely the Pioneer contained a civilian parachute, which was designed to open at speeds no higher than 150 mph. Metzler said the extra speed would put enormous strains on the civilian canopy, which could have torn to shreds if it were deployed at 200 mph.
In addition, Metzler said that some reports claim that Tina Mucklow described Cooper as putting on the parachute with ease, indicating that the skyjacker had significant experience. As proof, Metzler had an audience member put on the NB-8 to demonstrate how difficult it is for the uninitiated to don.
Most telling, though, according to Metzler, was the fact that DB Cooper knew the 727 could be jumped, a fact that few people knew including skydivers.
“In 1971, even I didn’t know a 727 could be jumped,” exclaimed Metzler, “nor did the pilots, the flight engineer or anyone at Northwest Airlines operations center.”
Further, Metzler’s touted Cooper’s skills, as he knew the aforementioned metrics necessary to safely exit from a 727: cabin unpressurized, gear down, wing flaps at 15º, and speeds not over 180 knots (about 205 mph) and at a height not to exceed 10,000 feet. The altitude limit insured that Cooper would not become hypnoxic, or prevent the opening of the doorway to the aft stairs.
At the symposium Metzler also showed a film clip taken during the Vietnam War that showed commandos parachuting from a 727 by crawling halfway down the aft stairs and pulling their rip cord there, letting the chute slowly deploy by “squidding” out into the wind. This technique clearly refutes the many claims by doubters that hold Cooper would have been negatively impacted by the freezing temperatures and fierce slip stream winds he encountered leaving the jet, which might have caused him to spin out of control or be too cold to pull his rip cord.
As for not selecting a steeerable, luxury sport chute and chosing a military rig, Metzler feels that Cooper again made the correct choice.
“The lack of steerablity could actually be an advantage,” declared Metzler, adding that the safest way to enter an unknown area in the dark would be via the straight down descent of a C-9 canopy. Metzler said that the forward speeds of steerable chutes in 1971 reached 10-20 mph.
“Why take a chance on flying into something?” he asked.
Nevertheless, trying to determine what chute Cooper used is difficult.
Cossey has declared that he has never heard of Norman Hayden, apparently not recalling when he signed the rigging card for Norman’s Pioneer chute in May, 1971. However, that transaction may have occurred with no direct contact between the two gentlemen.
When I told Coss that Hayden is claiming ownership of the two back parachutes, Cossey replied, “He’s full of shit.”
Further, when I informed Coss that FBI documents indicated that Mr. Hayden is the owner of the parachutes, the rigger retorted, “Well, Northwest Airlines paid me for the chutes so that should tell ya something!”
My efforts to clarify this with both Coss and Norman have been largely unsuccessful. Coss hung up on me the last time I called, and Norman says he does not want any further involvement in this controversy.
Regardless, the FBI’s parachute document - pages 226-227 of a larger Cooper case file - describe the chutes in the following manner:
Civilian luxury type, tan soft cotton material outside, 26 foot white canopy inside. The parachute inside is a military parachute. The parachute has a foam pad cushion and a fray mark down the rib on the back from rubbing on metal.
A military backpack parachute, standard olive drab green on outside, a 28 foot white canopy on inside. He (Norman Hayden) stated that this parachute also has a foam pad cushion.
He (Hayden) stated that both parachutes bore lead seals which had not been broken and it is possible that he seals bear a confidential number, such as a rigger’s number. He (Hayden) stated that both of his parachutes were assembled for him by Mr. Earl Cossey, who works at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, Washington.
I’ve come to this file via a curious route – I stole them. But I pinched them from the person who stole them himself from the FBI, so I think that absolves me of any moral duplicity.
The files were apparently first nabbed by Geoffrey Gray, who reportedly had wide access to the FBI files and evidence room, and was unsupervised in any direct manner.
Thus, Geoffrey had the opportunity to copy these parachutes files and hide them in cyberspace in a kind of private file of his own. One of the sleuths on the DZ, “Snowmman,” discovered Gray’s secret cache and gave me – and the whole DZ - the access code, which I used and snatched the parachute files for use here.
In my view, this affair casts strong suspicion on the relationship between the FBI and Gray. Did Geoffrey have to accept a quid pro quo to get official access? Did Geoffrey have to promise not to reveal the dirty little secrets of Norjak, such as where all the missing evidence is or why it vanished? Or worse, is Geoffrey now part of a refined Norjak spin job?
I chased after Geoffrey half-way across Portland one night trying to get to the bottom of this, but to no avail, and we’ll explore the Gray-FBI dynamic in more detail in the chapter on the dramas surrounding Norjak suspect, LD Cooper.
As for the parachutes, the FBI’s descriptions in their files are at variance with Hayden’s current recollection. In particular, Norman says the two chutes he provided were identical– both Pioneers with 26-foot conical canopies, with at least one identified specifically as a Steinthal. However, the FBI documents declare the chutes were different, as per Cossey’s statements.
More confounding though, the FBI documents say that both canopies were military parachutes, which conflicts with both Cossey and Hayden perspectives.
Seeking to clarify this issue, I traveled to Kent, Washington to visit Norman. Upon the advice of many in the skydiving world, I invited Bruce Thun to accompany me.
Bruce is the manager of Pierce County Airport in Puyallup and has been around airplanes, pilots and skydivers all of his life. In addition, he is intrigued by the case, confessing to me that he puts himself to sleep at nights by thinking about DB Cooper.
In October 2011, Bruce and I met with Hayden and inspected his “not used by Cooper” civilian parachute, now returned to his possession after a court battle with the FBI. However, in 2013 Hayden gave it to the Washington State Historical Museum, and it was a featured part of their COOPER exhibit.
Mr. Hayden was very gracious when we arrived, and straightaway he showed us the Pioneer parachute that went aboard Flight 305. Without any fanfare Norman put it on a work table and said, “Here it is.”
He also announced that NWO had paid him for the two chutes several years after the skyjacking.
The parachute he showed us was small and very thin. In fact, I didn’t think it was a parachute when I first saw it, and assumed it was a harness system that would receive some kind of parachute bag to be fully operational.
“No, that’s the parachute,” Norman said without a chuckle, which was supplied by Mr. Thun.
The realization that I was looking at a parachute that had actually been a part of the skyjacking hit me when I picked it up. It was very heavy and I said to myself: This is only twenty pounds? It feels heavier.
Putting it down, I tried to take notes and listen to Norman, but the notion that this parachute was once carried aboard Flight 305 by Tina Mucklow and inspected there by DB Cooper was too huge for me to accept.
Wow, was all I could say quietly as Norman described his participation in the events of November 24, 1971.
As for the journey the parachutes made that day, Norman’s account and the FBI documents provided by Geoffrey Gray describe the saga in similar terms: namely, that he had the two chutes at his manufacturing shop in Kent, placed them in a cab, and sent them off to Sea-Tac Airport.
My understanding was solidified by Barry Halstad, who is an associate of Norman and was mentioned in the FBI file as a contact for Northwest Orient Airlines in their search for suitable parachutes.
Barry and Norman are friends and professional colleagues, and Barry called me after my meeting with Norman and helped frame the following scenario:
Arrangements for obtaining the parachutes were conducted by an official from Northwest Orient named George Harrison, who was stationed at Sea-Tac. Harrison apparently knew to call a skydiving outfit called Pacific Aviation at the nearby Boeing Field in Renton, Washington because they sold acrobatic airplanes and also gave acrobatic flying lessons. According to FAA regulations, acrobatic pilots and passengers had to wear parachutes, so Harrison knew that Pacific Aviation had a plethora of chutes.
However, when he called Pacific Aviation and spoke with Barry, a sales manager there, Harrison learned that they had only conical “seat packs’ and not the “back pack parachutes” demanded by Cooper. Hence, Halstad recommended that Harrison contact one of Pacific Aviation’s recent customers –Hayden - who had two back parachutes and was located nearby in Kent.
From that discussion, Norman then received a flurry of phone calls in mid afternoon. The first came from Harrison asking for the chutes, but Norman thought it was a prank call and hung up, so Harrison had to re-dial. Into the mix Barry also rang, and between the three individuals they strategized how to get Norman’s two parachutes to NWO operations at Sea-Tac.
Norman says he was busy at the time with his manufacturing duties, so he placed the parachutes in a taxi, gave the cabbie the address for NWO operations at Sea-Tac, and also handed the driver a receipt book so that Harrison could sign a document acknowledging that NWO was “leasing” Norman’s two parachutes.
Norman says the cabbie returned with the signed receipt, but Norman says he can’t find it presently.
However, the FBI documents say that the parachutes went first to “Boeing Flight Service in Seattle,” but neither Norman nor Barry know where that facility is located.
“I used to work for Boeing and I never heard of that place,” Barry told me.
In addition, Norman says he never spoke directly to the FBI during the parachute delivery or subsequent investigation, yet, the Bureau’s parachute document claims that their detailed parachute information comes from Norman.
However, the language in the FBI’s document sounds like it came from Cossey.
Further, Norman says the return of the parachute was highly contentious, and he had to hire an attorney and sue in court to get it back from the FBI.
“It took years, and it was a court in Washington, DC, too,” Norman told us.
Norman’s difficulties with the FBI didn’t end in the court room and the actual transfer in Seattle was strained.
“The FBI guy who gave it back to me was downright rude,” says Norman. “I asked him if he could write out a little note, you know, giving me something official, proving that it was, you know, part of the skyjacking. Well, he just said, ‘I’m not giving you nothin’,’ and turned away. So, I just called out, ‘Well, if you ever need any more help from me in the future, I’m not gonna give you nothin’,’ either!’”
Norman has never used the parachute, either before the skyjacking or since.
“Why should I leave a perfectly good airplane in flight,” he told me, cracking a smile.
As for the parachute ownership debate, Norman is non-plussed. The most emotion he displayed was when he told me, “Earl Cossey is sometimes full of beans.”
Barry was more dramatic, astonished to learn that there was any controversy about Norman’s ownership of the two back pack parachutes that went aboard Flight 305. Further, he has never heard of Earl Cossey or his claims.
In addition, Barry supports Norman’s position that both back chutes were identical.
Further, Norman was dismayed about the FBI’s inaccuracies when I read aloud the Bureau’s description of the two back pack parachutes and their many differences.
Along those lines, Barry openly wonders if the FBI received four back pack parachutes that day – two from Norman that were identical commercial rigs, and two from Earl Cossey that were a mix of military and civilian.
Supporting the notion of two sets of back pack parachutes getting delivered for a grand total of four main chutes is the possibility that Earl Cossey is telling the truth. Here is Cossey’s version of his role in the procurement of the parachutes.
Coss told me that NWO’s chief of operations at Sea-Tac, Al Lee, contacted him at home asking for the two back and two front chutes. This is corroborated by author Richard Tosaw and the renowned Cooper researcher known as Sluggo. They write that Lee made the calls looking for parachutes and reached Cossey at home. The Common Understanding unfolds from there.
Cossey told Lee that he only had back chutes, and placed two of them in a taxi that he directed inexplicably to Boeing Field in Renton before the parachutes worked their way via a private car to Sea Tac, about ten miles away.
As for why Cossey sent the chutes to Boeing Field and not Sea-Tac, he did not explain when I spoke to him in 2009 and 2011, and he has refused all attempts since to clarify this issue. No other documentation that I have found explains this happenstance, either.
Analysis of the jump:
Besides the parachutes, another contentious issue in the analysis of DB Cooper’s jump is the clothing DB Cooper wore. Was he critically under-dressed for a nighttime sky dive in a November rain storm?
“You bet!” most folks say, as DB Cooper was wearing loafers, a thin business suit and a lightweight overcoat.
Some researchers, such as Jerry Thomas, adamantly claim that Cooper was a whuffo because he wasn’t wearing jump boots.
Yet, some skydivers say that such concerns are overstated. Alan MacArthur, former president of the Boeing Employees Skydiving Club, says that he has jumped successfully in all kinds of weather including snow, and his gear has often been minimal. In fact, he even confessed to jumping in flip-flops during a youthful escapade.
Other skydivers have posted on the DZ saying that they have parachuted naked, which certainly presents extreme levels of exposure.
Further, a founding member of the Boeing skydivers, Sheridan Peterson, reportedly jumped in the 1960s wearing a thin, black business suit – just like DB Cooper did years later - which allegedly placed Petey near the top of the FBI’s suspect list in 1971.
Further, many investigators concede that Cooper may have brought extra gear with him concealed in the briefcase or in his brown paper bag. Perhaps he had a roll of duct tape or ace bandages to bind his ankles, and gloves and goggles for protection. MacArthur confidently told me that such gear would be adequate for the terrain Cooper would face.
Regardless, Cooper’s descent through the 10,000 feet would take about five minutes so his exposure to the cold was minimal. Further, jumping in a rain storm in the Pacific Northwest is not uncommon, and according to Metzler the best place to be during those conditions is under the “umbrella” of a parachute.
Similarly, the conditions of the jump – nighttime rain with temperatures below freezing at his departure point of 10,000 feet and an uncertain landing zone - are used to prove that Cooper was inexperienced or desperate. But during the Vietnam War, HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) commando troops parachuted from 14,000 feet in sub-freezing temperatures - conditions that exist even in the tropics - and they landed in unknown jungles with people waiting for them with guns.
Continuing, Cooper’s decision to cut up his only good reserve chute and not the dummy is often cited as the action of an inexperienced jumper who could not recognize a bogus parachute and foolishly discarded a legitimate back-up chute.
However, Cooper did not have any legitimate means of attaching either reserve to his main chute, which might have diminished his interest in using a reserve rig.
The Amboy chute:
Another bone of contention in the parachute arena is the discovery of a chute in the spring of 2009 in Amboy, Washington, the heart of DB Cooper’s purported jump zone.
According to the FBI, a landowner near Amboy was grading a private road and the blade snagged an edge of the parachute and pulled it from its decades-old hiding place. At that time, the Bureau ruled-out the parachute as being part of the Cooper skyjacking based upon the analysis of their sky diving expert, Earl Cossey.
I spoke with Coss shortly after the announcement and he told me that the parachute found in Amboy was not from Flight 305, as it was too large at 34-feet in diameter and that it was a cargo chute.
Further, he said that the canopy was made with silk and not the nylon which comprised Cooper’s canopy. He also said the Amboy chute was a WWII vintage parachute.
But Coss added to the confusion – purposefully - by telling a reporter from the Oregonian that the Amboy chute was DB Cooper’s rig, and the scoop made the wire service for a few hours. However, Cossey later recanted his statement and claimed his deception was “just an April Fool’s joke.”
More disturbing though, Coss also told me that when he delivered his findings to the FBI the Bureau had asked him to “keep the information quiet for a few days.” Cossey told me that he thought the FBI wanted to “milk” some positive media attention from the discovery.
Coss also characterized the FBI as being “stupid” in its Cooper investigation, a dismissive attitude that Coss often expresses towards others.
However, neither Cossey nor the FBI revealed how a cargo chute arrived in a field in Amboy, Washington, and when I traveled to the area in 2012 to learn the truth of this chute, local residents were also hush-hush. One denizen at a local watering hole told me that the parachute’s owner had some private secrets to maintain.
My contact was a young man named Brian.
“It was found long before 2009 – long before they told the FBI,” he told me.
Brian claimed that he and other kids from the neighborhood cut-off the nylon rope shrouds to use in making weights for their steelhead fishing rigs.
“We’d burn the ends, melt ‘em, and attach weights. They worked great,” he said.
Brian also said that they had tried to pull-up the parachute, but were unable to tug it out.
“It was really buried,” he said,
Brian said the chute was a “dirty white” color, which jives with pictures of the Amboy chute release by the FBI. Brian also said that the chute he knew was not too degraded, but he didn’t remember if it was silk or nylon. He did remember the FBI arriving in two “blue and grey” cars, along with several Sheriff’s Department vehicles.
Analysis of DB Cooper’s skills:
The best piece of evidence for DB Cooper’s skills as a skydiver may be his demeanor – he never broke a sweat. Despite sitting in an airplane for six hours with people that he had threatened to kill, skydiving into a cold Novmeber rain at night and landing in uncertain terain, it all seemed like another day at the office for DB Cooper. He calmly smoked cigaretes, buffered inquiries from Tina Mucklow, and orchestrated a unique major crime – all with aplomb.
What kind of man does that? A whuffo?
More questions:
However, if he did land safely where is his gear? Did he lash everything together and track it with some unknown electronic device? If it was a privatized commando operation, did Cooper have a ground crew monitoring both his location and the LZ of his stuff? Or is it all waiting to be found in some rugged section of Cooper Country?
The Citizen Sleuths have revealed that Cooper had cut a lot of cord from the reserve chute. Tina has confirmed that some of this rope was used to close his bank bag and form a kind of handle and/or cinch it to his waist.
Further, the CS reveals additional inconsistencies from the official FBI documents. Records from the early days reveal that two or three lines were cut from the reserve chute, but currently five separate cords are missing from the chute in the evidence room. This discrepancy is difficult to resolve at this point, but the five lengths of rope would total nearly 80 feet.
But even if the lower number of shroud lines is used, two or three, Cooper still had 30-45 feet of rope to use. That’s a lot of line to secure the bag and affix it to his body. Perhaps these additional lines were used to tie the extra gear into a huge bundle, which got tossed and has simply never been found.
Or was the bundle set on fire with the flares or other incendiary equipment Cooper brought on board? Maybe Cooper’s bomb was not made of dynamite but was actually a faux set of road flares that could ignite the left-over equipment. But, why burn an unneeded and unused dummy reserve?
As bizarre a notion as this may be, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that something like this may have happened.
In 2011 Galen Cook revealed that he had received some intriguing documents from the estate of Richard Tosaw, who died of cancer in 2009, which casts light on the possibility that Cooper incinerated his left-overs.
Galen had been a friend and fellow-researcher with Tosaw, spending time at Tina Bar with him, researching and discussing the case. After Tosaw’s death, some of Richard’s associates contacted Galen and gave him copies of selected field notes. One mentioned a “fiery object” seen over Vancouver, Washington on the night of the skyjacking.
The notes reveal that a woman from Vancouver had contacted Tosaw in the mid-1980s when Tosaw was on Portland TV discussing his Cooper book. The woman, known as “Janet,” sent a note to Tosaw describing what she had seen in the skies over Vancouver, and she later met with him. However, Tosaw had never told anyone about the woman or her claims.
Tosaw recorded that Janet lived in the eastern suburbs of Vancouver in a development near Mill Plain Rd. She and her husband had seen TV coverage of the skyjacking at 6 pm, so they were familiar with what was on-going.
Shortly after 8 pm, they left their house and saw a low-flying plane to the west, heading south. They immediately saw a brightly glowing red object in the sky directly underneath the plane. It was so bright it illuminated the aircraft.
The object then burst into a glowing, fiery object and arced away to the west and then faded out. It was lit for about five or six seconds, eight tops, she told Tosaw.
“That must be DB Cooper’s plane,” the wife shouted at the time.
The next day the couple wrote the FBI and described what they had seen.
Several days later Janet says she was visited by two men. One fellow stayed in the car and the other, who was wearing a suit and dark coat, approached the house. He identified himself as an FBI agent but he never showed his badge or any other identification. He asked for the couple who had written the letter, and the wife confirmed that she had contacted the FBI.
Janet reported to Tosaw that the “FBI” guy then got real nasty and intimidating, and told her to never tell anyone about what she saw – shocking her with the crude outburst: “Keep your fucking mouth shut.”
She did, and never told anyone until Richard Tosaw was on his book tour ten years later. However, Tosaw’s reasons for never revealing her purported testimony are unknown.
Galen says that after he received Tosaw’s notes he was able to contact the wife and husband, who are now divorced but still living in the Vancouver area.
Galen says the story they told him comports exactly to what he read in Tosaw’s account.
Further, Galen says that he has received two more reports of folks witnessing a burning object over Vancouver and he has interviewed the other parties.
All three witnesses were in different sections of Vancouver and intriguingly, Galen says that their placement of the aircraft and the glowing object’s subsequent trajectory position the plane and the object in the same place – the plane was just to the west of the I-5 bridge as it crosses into Portland and the fiery object was seen arcing westward over the Columbia River towards Tina Bar.
Was Cooper burning incriminating evidence?
Another theory on why none of Cooper’s extra stuff was ever recovered comes from Geoffrey’s book, which suggests that Cooper may have had help on the ground, ala a Special Forces extraction scenario.
A fellow named “Jake” contacted Gray as he was writing Skyjack, and told Geoff that he had been a former special ops kind of guy and may have participated in the retrieval of DB Cooper on the night of the skyjacking.
“Jake” says that he was part of a team of “transporters” stationed in the northern reaches of Clark County, in the Amboy area. Jake said the borders of his patrol sector were Cedar Creek Road in Amboy south to the Cowlitz River, and from Amboy east to Yacolt, Washington. Intriguingly, Jake told Geoffrey that his target was an unidentified male, and the expected extraction point was to be along the Buncombe Hollow Road, off of Cedar Creek Road in Amboy. Buncombe Hollow is the main road along the shore of Lake Merwin, on the opposite side of the lake from the Ariel Tavern, and presumably the bright lights atop the Merwin Dam would be beacons to the incoming skyjacker.
Jake also told Geoffrey that prior to his transporter assignment he had been imprisoned in Walla Walla state penitentiary on fraud charges, and his transporter services would earn him his release.
Geoff writes that he has not been able to prove Jake’s pick-up plan, but he does confirm that the individual that he knows as Jake was in Walla Walla on a fraud conviction and had been “furloughed” the day before the skyjacking, November 23, 1971.
As for a ground team, we have a hint of it from the possible role of Richard McCoy in Cooper’s skyjacking, and a similar bit from Cooper confessee, Duane Weber, which we will discuss in an upcoming chapter.
Nevertheless, the money find in February 1980 enforces the notion for many that Cooper crashed in the woods upstream due to incompetence, became separated from his loot and that the money bag floated its way to Tina Bar.
With this scenario DB Cooper went from being a master criminal to an inept fool in less than ten years. Larry Carr held this latter view all through his tenure as case agent, 2007-2009, based upon his videos posted on the FBI’s DB Cooper web site.
But outside the FBI this view is fading as a resurgent investigation brings more information to the surface, such as those pieces questioning Earl Cossey’s veracity.
