D B Cooper

[belinda]

I've only just found out about this

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams/DB_Cooper/index.html

[Errata]

one of my favorites

[belinda]

Who is your favourite suspect?

[Ally]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/01/fbi.db.cooper/index.html

[The Good Michael]

I thought this guy looked promising: http://adventurebooks.newsvine.com/_...cker-db-cooper

[Tom_Wescott]

I saw this thread and it reminded me that there's a DBC book due out this month. I have most or all of the theory books (none of the fiction though). I didn't want to pre-order it cuz I don't know the authors, but I should head back to amazon and grab it.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[jason_c]

The supposed latest suspect, Wiiliam Gossett. Ex paratrooper.

[Errata]

I don't want to know who DB Cooper is... I mean, hijacking planes is emphatically not okay, ransoming hostages is not okay...

But if you're gonna do it, THAT'S the way to do it. And despite my disdain for people treating criminals as some kind of folk hero, DB Cooper is kind of my criminal folk hero. I want him to have ridden off into the sunset and gotten away with it, with people left asking "who was that parachuted man?"

[Archaic]

Those are interesting pictures Jason.

Here's an article about the people that search for DB cooper as their hobby: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/02/db....le+Feedfetcher

Funny; I live in the area where he jumped, the Pacific Northwest, and I don't think I've ever known anybody that was a DB Cooper hunter.

Best regards,
Archaic

[jason_c]

I don't want to know who DB Cooper is... I mean, hijacking planes is emphatically not okay, ransoming hostages is not okay...

But if you're gonna do it, THAT'S the way to do it. And despite my disdain for people treating criminals as some kind of folk hero, DB Cooper is kind of my criminal folk hero. I want him to have ridden off into the sunset and gotten away with it, with people left asking "who was that parachuted man?"

Errata, probably the only post of yours I have ever agreed with. IF it is the latest suspect he at least got away with it.

Archaic, thanks for the link. I cant remember, was the money he received traceable?

[Archaic]

Attempts To Trace the Money

Hi Jason.

Yes, the money was traceable. It was $200,00 in $20 bills. The bills weren't "marked", but the majority of it had serial numbers beginning with letter "L" meaning it came from the same Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, and most were dated with the same year, 1969. The FBI photographed all the serial numbers. Later the numbers were made public and rewards were offered to encourage the public to turn them in.

In 1980 $5,800 of the hijacked money was found along the banks of the Columbia River by a young boy. The money was in three packets, all in poor condition. The FBI was able to verify that the packet of bills came from the hijacking. These are the only bills found in 40 years of searching. No one came forward to claim the rewards, even though they could have gotten $5,000 for a single $20 bill of Cooper's.

Hobbyists still try to conduct experiments by dropping similar packets into local rivers and tracing where they end up, but as a person who likes to hike NW rivers, I can safely say that the path of a NW river is seldom the same 2 years in a row. Increased rainfall and larger snow-packs melting in the mountains means that water levels rise exponentially and enormous trees are uprooted and swept along with the current. Riverbanks erode, sandbars and rockpiles form, tangled piles of downed trees block the water and force it to change route, etc. Sometimes the change in a single season is mind-boggling. The change after 40 years would be very difficult to calculate. The change in the general course of a river over time can be worked out, but not its minute changes.

The money bag was small and fragile and could have ended up anywhere, including stuck in a 300-foot-tall evergreen tree, buried in mud, or hung up underwater on a submerged tree branch being rapidly destroyed by the current. (So could Cooper's body for that matter.) The money found in 1980 was badly disintegrated after only 9 years, so what kind of condition would it be in after 40 years? The Columbia River is one of the largest and most powerful rivers in America. It has countless tributaries pouring into it, making it practically impossible to guess where the money found along its banks 30 years ago first hit the water.

The fact that so little of the money has been recovered after so many years seems to be a pretty good indication that DB Cooper did not survive his jump. From what I've read he also seems to have chosen to jump with a "dummy" parachute that was inoperable! Pretty horrifying to jump out of an airplane in the pitch dark in a rainstorm and find that your chute doesn't even open! I'm not sure if he took a back-up chute; he seems to have used it to wrap up his money bag. (The "dummy" chute wasn't given to Cooper deliberately; it was grabbed in a hurry from a flight school in order to meet the hijacker's demand for 4 parachutes. I believe it was actually sewn shut, so when one pulled on the rip-cord it couldn't open. The fact that the hijacker didn't bother to inspect the chute and passed up more technically advanced parachutes makes the FBI think he was not a paratrooper or well-seasoned parachutist.)

If anyone is interested there are a number of videos on YouTube about the case, the various individuals purported to be DB Cooper, the experiments still being conducted to try to find the rest of the money, etc. Some are local news stories and others are full documentaries. If you're not familiar with the density of our Northwest forests, the large number of rivers and lakes, and the ruggedness of the terrain over which Cooper jumped, a view of the area will help you visual just how reckless his jump was.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Errata]

Errata, probably the only post of yours I have ever agreed with.

Is it? I suppose it's possible. On the other hand, I have an immense respect for people who disagree with me, you know as long as they aren't hypocrites. I never learned a thing about a subject or myself through someone agreeing with me, and I'm at a point in my life where I would rather learn than rest on the laurels of my own incontrovertible rightness. I also recently talked myself out of supporting the death penalty, and I figure if I can do that, there are a lot of assumptions of mine that need to be challenged.

I'm trying to find a picture of when I was DB Cooper for Halloween when I was 10. I was kind of a weird kid.

[jason_c]

Hi Jason.

Yes, the money was traceable. It was $200,00 in $20 bills. The bills weren't "marked", but the majority of it had serial numbers beginning with letter "L" meaning it came from the same Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, and most were dated with the same year, 1969. The FBI photographed all the serial numbers. Later the numbers were made public and rewards were offered to encourage the public to turn them in.

In 1980 $5,800 of the hijacked money was found along the banks of the Columbia River by a young boy. The money was in three packets, all in poor condition. The FBI was able to verify that the packet of bills came from the hijacking. These are the only bills found in 40 years of searching. No one came forward to claim the rewards, even though they could have gotten $5,000 for a single $20 bill of Cooper's.

Hobbyists still try to conduct experiments by dropping similar packets into local rivers and tracing where they end up, but as a person who likes to hike NW rivers, I can safely say that the path of a NW river is seldom the same 2 years in a row. Increased rainfall and larger snow-packs melting in the mountains means that water levels rise exponentially and enormous trees are uprooted and swept along with the current. Riverbanks erode, sandbars and rockpiles form, tangled piles of downed trees block the water and force it to change route, etc. Sometimes the change in a single season is mind-boggling. The change after 40 years would be very difficult to calculate. The change in the general course of a river over time can be worked out, but not its minute changes.

The money bag was small and fragile and could have ended up anywhere, including stuck in a 300-foot-tall evergreen tree, buried in mud, or hung up underwater on a submerged tree branch being rapidly destroyed by the current. (So could Cooper's body for that matter.) The money found in 1980 was badly disintegrated after only 9 years, so what kind of condition would it be in after 40 years? The Columbia River is one of the largest and most powerful rivers in America. It has countless tributaries pouring into it, making it practically impossible to guess where the money found along its banks 30 years ago first hit the water.

The fact that so little of the money has been recovered after so many years seems to be a pretty good indication that DB Cooper did not survive his jump. From what I've read he also seems to have chosen to jump with a "dummy" parachute that was inoperable! Pretty horrifying to jump out of an airplane in the pitch dark in a rainstorm and find that your chute doesn't even open! I'm not sure if he took a back-up chute; he seems to have used it to wrap up his money bag. (The "dummy" chute wasn't given to Cooper deliberately; it was grabbed in a hurry from a flight school in order to meet the hijacker's demand for 4 parachutes. I believe it was actually sewn shut, so when one pulled on the rip-cord it couldn't open. The fact that the hijacker didn't bother to inspect the chute and passed up more technically advanced parachutes makes the FBI think he was not a paratrooper or well-seasoned parachutist.)

If anyone is interested there are a number of videos on YouTube about the case, the various individuals purported to be DB Cooper, the experiments still being conducted to try to find the rest of the money, etc. Some are local news stories and others are full documentaries. If you're not familiar with the density of our Northwest forests, the large number of rivers and lakes, and the ruggedness of the terrain over which Cooper jumped, a view of the area will help you visual just how reckless his jump was.

Best regards,
Archaic

Thanks for the post.

If thats what happened then its an incredible piece of bad luck for him.

[Archaic]

FBI's Page On Cooper

Hi guys.

Here's the official FBI page on the Cooper hijacking: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007...bcooper_123107

Best regards,
Archaic

[Archaic]

The FBI's New "Suspect"?

Just saw this news article & video in which a woman named Marla Cooper claims her uncle L.D. Cooper was the hijacker, and that she gave the FBI their recent tip. Apparently the FBI haven't said her uncle was actually a person of interest, only that they passed some physical material on to the Quantico for testing.

(If I were to plan to hijack a plane, I think I'd be inclined to give an alias last name rather just an alias first name, wouldn't you? )

Article, Photo & Video: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007...bcooper_123107

Best regards,
Archaic