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malq

Veteran Member
Citizen sleuths seek to solve D.B. Cooper mystery

It's the coldest of cold cases. And one of the most famous.

While a team of citizen sleuths, with the help of the FBI, have turned up some tantalizing new clues, the fate of D.B. Cooper after he jumped out of a hijacked airplane with a parachute and $200,000 in cash nearly 38 years ago may never be known.

Over the years, Cooper has become a folk hero in the Northwest, the subject of movies, songs and Internet chat rooms.

* FBI'S Web site on D.B. Cooper
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/march09/dbcooper031709.html
* FBI documents on D.B. Cooper released under the Freedom of Information Act
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/dbcooper.htm



The informal team of detectives includes a fossil hunter who works with the Burke Museum of Natural History in Seattle, a well-known scientific illustrator, an Egyptologist who speaks 12 languages, a metallurgist and an Arkansas man who discovered $5,800 of the loot in $20 bills while throwing a Frisbee on the banks of the Columbia River when he was 8 years old.

"We are looking down every rabbit hole," said Tom Kaye, a paleontologist who spends part of his time searching for dinosaur bones in Wyoming and the rest staring through an electron microscope at particles lifted from a black JCPenney tie that Cooper left behind on the plane.

The team is scouring a French comic book series that featured a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot named Dan Cooper. The comics were popular in France and French-speaking Canada at the time of the hijacking, leading to speculation that Cooper borrowed the name of the fictional comic book hero. Cooper used the name Dan Cooper when he purchased his ticket for Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. The media, mistakenly, dubbed him D.B.

The team also spent several days along the Columbia River using satellite maps and global positioning systems to try to locate the exact spot where the money was found. Though no one knows for sure, it's thought the money was washed downstream more than 20 miles from where Cooper may have landed in southwestern Washington state. Kaye and his team believe the money reached the Columbia River sandbar where it was found just months after the hijacking. Previously it was thought such a journey would take several years.

"We are looking at everything," said Carol Abraczinskas, a scientific illustrator who teaches at the University of Chicago Midway. She didn't know much about Cooper but became fascinated after hearing Kaye talk about the case during a break at a convention.

THE HIIJACKING

On Nov. 21, 1971 - Thanksgiving eve - a non-descript man wearing a dark suit, white shirt and tie bought a one-way ticket on Flight 305 bound to Seattle from Portland. After boarding the plane and ordering a bourbon and soda, the man handed a note to a flight attendant telling her he had a bomb in his briefcase. He opened the briefcase, which contained bundles of wires and red sticks. He demanded $200,000 and parachutes.

After the flight landed in Seattle, he released the 36 passengers. The plane took off again, headed for Mexico City. The hijacker told the pilot to fly at 200 mph at 10,000 feet and ordered the crew to stay in the cockpit. Twenty minutes or so after takeoff, the man lowered the stairs at the back of the Boeing 727 and jumped.

It may have been the perfect crime. He was never seen again.

The FBI suspected he might have landed in a heavily timbered, rugged area near the small town of Aerial. A search by agents and soldiers from Fort Lewis failed to turn up any sign of Cooper, his parachute or the money. Over the years, the FBI has run down thousands of leads and conducted thousands of interviews, including a handful involving people of special interest. None led anywhere.

Nearly 38 years later, the FBI's Seattle Field Office is tired of talking about Cooper and declined to comment, saying there was nothing new.

The special agent leading the investigation, Larry Carr, has said it is "highly unlikely" Cooper survived the jump.

"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open," Carr said on an FBI Web site.

Whether he survived or not, one fundamental question remains - who was D.B. Cooper?

"Even if he is dead, everyone wants to know who he was," said Abraczinskas.

Carr believes Cooper:

• Served in the Air Force and, at one point, was based in Europe, where he may have read the Dan Cooper comic books.

• May have been a loner with little or no family and few friends who would have reported him missing.

• May have worked as a cargo loader because of his knowledge of airplanes.

• Knew about parachutes, though wasn't an expert because few experts would have jumped out of a plane in the conditions he faced.

• Didn't have help on the ground because that would have required him to communicate closely with the plane's crew to hit a specific drop zone.

Though the investigation has remained open, Carr said it didn't make sense for the FBI to spend a lot of time, money or manpower on it. So the agency asked the public for help and offered access to its voluminous case files.

"It's the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history," said Kaye, the de facto leader of the team. "The FBI doesn't have the money, but they don't want to give up."

CITIZEN DETECTIVES TAKE OVER

Kaye is a paleontologist, a research associate at the Burke Museum, an astronomer, geologist, inventor, pilot and the former owner of a paintball company. He was recommended to Carr by an acquaintance.

The tie was the only piece of evidence left behind by Cooper on the plane. The FBI was able to lift a DNA sample from the tie; DNA testing didn't exist at the time of the hijacking. Carr uses an electron microscope in the basement of his house to try to identify minute particles taken from the tie.

Among the most interesting particles are grains of pollen that Kaye is trying to identify. That could help tell where Cooper was before the hijacking. Carr said he has found no pine pollen, which probably means Cooper hadn't been in the Northwest, which is covered with pine trees.

Abraczinskas has been concentrating on the comic books, which are no longer in print. More than 40 of them were published. She is scanning the comic books into a computer, which translates them from French to English (she doesn't speak French). One of her colleagues at the University of Chicago Midway, the Egyptologist who speaks 12 languages and grew up in French-speaking Montreal, sometimes helps.

They are looking for any clues that might indicate Cooper read the comics, stole the hero's name and borrowed other parts of the stories. One comic published near the time of the hijacking has Maj. Dan Cooper on the cover parachuting.

"He was a real rock star, a real James Bond type," Abraczinskas said of the mythical Dan Cooper.

Kaye, Abraczinskas, Bobby Ingram - who found the $5,800 when still a boy - and others spent several days last month scouring the banks of the Columbia near a place called Tena Bar. They were attempting to reconstruct how the money had gotten to the Columbia.

They took measurements, water and soil samples and used old FBI photographs to try to pinpoint exactly where Ingram found the money. They also placed bundles of money similar to those Cooper was given in the water to see if they floated.

"No one had done that before," said Abraczinskas, adding that the bundles floated for about 10 minutes.

Kaye said it's possible Cooper actually landed in the Columbia River, although the FBI dredged the river off Tena Bar after the money was found in 1980. There also had been speculation that Cooper may have actually buried the money on Tena Bar.

The team also wants to take a close look at the rubber bands that held the bundles of $20 bills together and a length of parachute cord. Authorities gave Cooper four parachutes after he hijacked the plane. He had cut a piece of cord off one of the parachutes left behind on the plane and may have used it to strap the money to his waist before he jumped. One theory is the parachute cord broke or came undone as Cooper fell toward earth, scattering the money over miles.

Kaye believes there is a 50-50 chance Cooper lived.

"I can see it both ways," he said.

Abraczinskas said she is not so sure.

"My instinct tell me he died," she said. "Skydivers say it was a suicide jump. But it's hard to explain how three bundles of money made it to the Columbia River."
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/875464.html

Why am I still so fascinated by this story I had to bring it up to the surface again?
 
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I must say I have read a lot about DB Cooper over the years. Quite an intriguing story. If I put my chips in I would say whoever he was he died during or right after the jump.
 
I must say I have read a lot about DB Cooper over the years. Quite an intriguing story. If I put my chips in I would say whoever he was he died during or right after the jump.

I've been fascinated in this case for as long as I can remember, too. I have to agree that I don't see how he could have survived. I believe the last I read, none of the cash had shown up in circulation.

Kudos to the volunteers for keeping it going.

{S}
 
The FBI has what it calls "our most promising" lead to date for a suspect in the infamous 1971 D.B. Cooper case – the nation's only unsolved commercial airplane hijacking.

The name of a man not previously investigated was given to the FBI, and an item that belongs to him was sent for fingerprint work at the agency's Quantico, Va., forensic lab, agency spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich told seattlepi.com Saturday.

A law enforcement colleague spoke with someone who may have a strong connection to Cooper, and that law enforcement staffer contacted the FBI, Sandalo Dietrich said.

"With any lead our first step is to assess how credible it is," said Sandalo Dietrich, spokeswoman for the FBI's Seattle office, where the Cooper evidence is kept. "Having this come through another law enforcement [agency], having looked it over when we got it – it seems pretty interesting."
[...]

However, agents are not sure if fingerprints can be pulled from the item.

The FBI has not released the suspect's name, age, hometown or possible criminal record. However, the item being sent to the forensic lab appears to be a significant step.

In 2007, agent Larry Carr solicited the public's help, saying that while the agency still viewed it as a criminal case, it was far from a priority. The agency continually gets requests to test DNA to either prove or disprove Cooper's identity, but rarely has done so, Carr said in 2007.

Because it's a partial DNA sample, agents said they can only compare it to other DNA samples and exclude suspects. Some people who have been sure Cooper was a relative have been told he was not.

"People become so focused, they want their details to fit," Carr said in 2007, adding the FBI has investigated nearly 1,000 suspects since November 1971.

The FBI obtained a partial DNA sample from the black JCPenney clip-on tie the man known as Cooper left on the plane. That, along with the parachute he discarded, his boarding pass with "DAN COOPER" written in red ink, and a few deteriorated bills remain at the FBI's Seattle office. Only a fraction of the $200,000 Cooper took that 1971 night was recovered.

In 1980, Brian Ingram found a portion of the money near the Columbia River, and the FBI returned most of those bills to him. Ingram has since auctioned some of them.

Sandalo Dietrich didn't say if agents believe the possible suspect is dead, though Carr and other agents have previously said they believed Cooper died the night he jumped, sinking into the earth with a parachute that didn't open properly. That would explain why he and most the money have never been found, they've said.

Agents have also said they believe Cooper – who gained the initials D.B. after confusion in a United Press International newsroom – wasn't a mastermind. He didn't ask for large bills, so he was given mostly 20s, which made the total bundle heavier and harder to carry.

Cooper also didn't recognize that the "X" on the backup parachute he used meant it was only for classroom demonstrations -- and sewn shut. The main chute Cooper used was packaged as a Navy-issue NB6.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Report-FBI-testing-strong-lead-in-D-B-Cooper-1666409.php
 
Even if DB Cooper were still alive today, he would be anywhere from 60 - 90 years old, who knows, its a mystery people love to speculate about, but regardless of how his parachutes where marked, doesnt mean they worked, all of them could have been dud parachutes and one day years from now they may find some skeleton in a tree with a bunch of rotted 20$ bills... if he lived 200k (opps, I mean 195k) couldnt have went far in giving him a very good life...
 
They're looking at some dead guy.
he FBI is investigating whether a dead man in the Pacific Northwest is D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a passenger jet in 1971 over Washington state and parachuted with $200,000 in ransom.

Cooper has never been found.

FBI agent Fred Gutt said Monday the bureau is following up a "credible" lead in the unsolved case and is focused on a suspect who died more than 10 years ago.

Gutt said the bureau received a tip from a retired law enforcement source about the dead man possibly being Cooper. FBI agents requested personal effects of the possible suspect, who died of natural causes.

The FBI is trying to find fingerprints or DNA on the dead man's effects to compare with items the hijacker left behind. The FBI said three years ago that it found DNA evidence on the clip-on tie Cooper left on the plane before he jumped.

Gutt said the FBI has already tested one item of the dead man's belongings for fingerprints. It was not conclusive. They are now working with surviving family members to gather other items for further testing.

The suspect is someone who has not been previously investigated, and Gutt said initial vetting supported the belief of the tipster. But he cautioned that the new lead may not pan out and that investigators were still pursuing other possibilities.

"Maybe this is just someone else who just happened to look like him and whose life story just kind of paralleled," Gutt said.

Gutt said the new lead is also promising because of the way it came to the FBI. The tipster initially discussed the case with a retired law enforcement officer who then contacted the FBI. Only after the FBI contacted the witness directly did the person discuss the Cooper case with investigators.

"They're not seeking attention," Gutt said. "To the contrary, they're looking to avoid it."
http://www.abcnews4.com/story/15183310/fbi-credible-lead-surfaces-in-db-cooper-case
 
Interesting, I like their approach. Prove it first then celebrate. All too often someone fits the mold closely but is not the actual perpetrator of the crime. Kinds like the zodiac case. Dennis Hoffman made a very convincing argument that his stepfather Jack Torrence was indeed the zodiac. In fact if you read his website you will be convinced too. But the FbI has looked at it and thought otherwise. A spawn of websites occurred over this guys claim. http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/...-s-Identity-Uncovered&highlight=Zodiac+Killer

Regardless, it will be interesting to see if they can finally solve D.B. Cooper. I guess the biggest question is, did he make it to the ground with the cash and what did he do with the money?
 
I watched something on TV where this "team" went in search for him. With all their findings, I found it to be a pretty strong possibility. I wish I could tell you what show it was. It was good. They talked to his good friend. Went to his old house. I don't remember when he died. The friend I think believed he was DB Cooper, but insists he wasn't told that, it was his own strong belief.
 
If we knew who the dead guy was, I'd recognize the name probably.

I think this is the show I watched. If you can watch all the parts, it is good if you are really interested in this

[video=youtube;v66OsQR0Zow]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v66OsQR0Zow[/video]
 
[
The FBI said last week it had a "credible" lead in the D.B. Cooper case, which involved the 1971 hijacking of a passenger jet and the suspect's legendary parachute escape, but a DNA test is inconclusive.

The FBI ran a DNA test after a former Northwest woman reported her long dead uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, was the legendary hijacker.

"It's not a positive match, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's still not our suspect," said FBI Agent Fred Gutt.

Marla Cooper said her uncle arrived at the family home in Oregon, bloodied and bruised, shortly after the hijacking. She said she overheard her uncles talking about having hijacked a plane.

Gutt said the DNA sample taken from the recovered tie isn't a good one.

"It could be a used necktie, it could have been a borrowed neck tie. It just means that the sample to that matches to what was on the necktie," he said.

Unless some substantial new evidence, like some of the $200,000 Cooper got away with or a fingerprint surfaces, the case is likely to remain unsolved.
[...]
http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=11&sid=527298

Marla Wynn Cooper, 48, of Oklahoma City said last week that she recalls her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, arriving bloody and bruised to a family gathering soon after the hijacking.

She also said that conversations she overheard at the time between him and another family member suggest that they had plotted the hijacking.

Marla Wynn Cooper said she believes her uncle died in 1999. She said on Monday that the FBI would like to run more tests, to compare fingerprints lifted in 1971 from the hijacked airliner to any prints her uncle may have left at the last place he lived, a home near Reno, Nevada.

But first, investigators would need to obtain fingerprints from that home, she said.

"There's no way to prove the case unless they do that," Marla Cooper said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/09/us-dbcooper-suspect-idUSTRE77808Z20110809
 
I don't care either way about the DB COOPER case.
When I lived in Minnesota, my favorite place to eat was the squirrel cage bar and grill. The snow cap burger was my favorite burger. It was named that because of him. Why? Because he usefdto own that bar way back when.

It was fun to think DB Cooper was mixing drinks behind that bar as he planned out the crime of the century.

Edit to add
I don't know if all that is true. But I sure loved those snow cap burgers.
 
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I believe D.B. Cooper was a dead man the moment he jumped. It takes more than a parachute to make a successful jump. You have to know the wind direction and wind speed, you have to be experienced in using the leads to "steer" the damn thing.. Unless you know how to tuck and roll, you will absolutely break something...and that "something" is usually your neck.

You also have to be totally insane to jump out of a perfectly good airplane...that's where we get Marines...they're former Jump Jockeys.

Did y'all know that Otis Redding was a Jump Jockey with the 101st airborne? He got really messed up in 'Nam. <----my Marines told me this, and I believe them.
 
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I believe D.B. Cooper was a dead man the moment he jumped. It takes more than a parachute to make a successful jump. You have to know the wind direction and wind speed, you have to be experienced in using the leads to "steer" the damn thing.. Unless you know how to tuck and roll, you will absolutely break something...and that "something" is usually your neck.

You also have to be totally insane to jump out of a perfectly good airplane...that's where we get Marines...they're former Jump Jockeys.

Did y'all know that Otis Redding was a Jump Jockey with the 101st airborne? He got really messed up in 'Nam. <----my Marines told me this, and I believe them.


I love Otis. Especially "Dock of the Bay". <3
 
The FBI had closed the case officially and will not investigate it further unless the money is found or the parachute.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/1...hysical-evidence-uncovered-in-search.amp.html
A crew of volunteer cold-case investigators in the Pacific Northwest, led by a former FBI agent, has uncovered what they believe to be “potential evidence” in the 46-year-old mystery of D.B. Cooper.

Thomas Colbert, a TV and film executive who helped put together the team with his partner and wife Dawna, confirmed to Fox News that his group had uncovered what “appears to be a decades-old parachute strap.”
[....]
Colbert declined to make the precise location of his crew’s dig public, but claimed the potential strap was located “right where a credible source claimed the chute and remaining money are buried.” Colbert added that he planned to pass the possible evidence to the FBI on Friday, while his team would offer the dig site to the Bureau on Monday.

In July 2016, the FBI announced that it was no longer actively investigating the case. Two months later, Colbert filed a federal lawsuit aimed at obtaining the FBI’s entire file on the Cooper case. On Wednesday, Colbert said that archived FBI field reports helped corroborate information from a couple that led to the site of his team’s most recent dig.

Colbert, who maintains a website, DBCooper.com, and has co-written a book about the case with veteran writer Tom Szollosi, believes they have identified Robert Rackstraw, a 73-year-old Army veteran with a prior criminal record, as “Dan Cooper.” However, investigators questioned Rackstraw about the Cooper case in 1978 and eliminated him as a suspect the following year. Rackstraw himself has repeatedly denied any involvement in the caper.

The FBI could not immediately be reached for comment on Colbert’s claims. However, Bill Baker, the Bureau’s former assistant director of criminal investigations, has said the idea that Rackstraw is Dan Cooper needs another look.

"Look…this is more than a theory, and you have a [living suspect] that has all the attributes of someone to do this successfully,” Baker said. “These are issues that have to be examined and weighed [by the FBI]."
 

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