Posted on 01/01/2008 2:59:53 PM PST by DogByte6RER
D.B. COOPER REDUX
Help Us Solve the Enduring Mystery
12/31/07
On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.
Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?
It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.
Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely. And we have reignited the case—thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing.
You can help. We’re providing here, for the first time, a series of pictures and information on the case. Please look it all over carefully to see if it triggers a memory or if you can provide any useful information.
A few things to keep in mind, according to Special Agent Carr:
* Cooper was no expert skydiver. “We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper,” says Special Agent Carr. “We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve chute was only for training and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked.”
* The hijacker had no help on the ground, either. To have utilized an accomplice, Cooper would’ve needed to coordinate closely with the flight crew so he could jump at just the right moment and hit the right drop zone. But Cooper simply said, "Fly to Mexico," and he had no idea where he was when he jumped. There was also no visibility of the ground due to cloud cover at 5,000 feet.
* We have a solid physical description of Cooper. “The two flight attendants who spent the most time with him on the plane were interviewed separately the same night in separate cities and gave nearly identical descriptions,” says Carr. “They both said he was about 5'10" to 6', 170 to 180 pounds, in his mid-40s, with brown eyes. People on the ground who came into contact with him also gave very similar descriptions.”
And what of some of the names pegged as Cooper? None have panned out. Duane Weber, who claimed to be Cooper on his deathbed, was ruled out by DNA testing (we lifted a DNA sample from Cooper’s tie in 2001). Kenneth Christiansen, named in a recent magazine article, didn’t match the physical description and was a skilled paratrooper. Richard McCoy, who died in 1974, also didn’t match the description and was at home the day after the hijacking having Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utah, an unlikely scenario unless he had help.
As many agents before him, Carr thinks it highly unlikely that 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.”
Still, we’d all like to know for sure, and Carr thinks you can help.
“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream. Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.”
If you have any information: please e-mail our Seattle field office at fbise@leo.gov. And for more details on the case, see our story of November 24, 2006.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..Check my home page here and scroll down to the bottom.
You must be thinking of Richard McCoy, Jr.
On April 1972 McCoy highjacked a 727 in the same way as Dan Cooper. He was arrested two days later and at his home They found a jumpsuit and a duffel bag with $499,970.
The story and links at WIKI
Poetry in downward motion. Lol.
That is, this half hour.
DB went to Hollywood! 
Good one! :-)
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981) .... D.B. Cooper
I posted this in the other FReeper thread on this subject...
—
There was an article from a few years ago, in which a woman was claiming that her recently deceased husband was D.B. Cooper, but that she didn’t know about it while he was alive. She only figured it out later and she provided evidence and proof for the fact that he was. She was on TV and there were several articles written.
I was in Portland, OR at the time the plane left Portland, on the way to Seattle, WA. I was at work and it was a stormy night. It was raining “cats and dogs” and was cool. It was around Thanksgiving and we listened to the developments on the radio at work. I can still remember that particular event and what we were doing at work, at the time, because the whole thing was so memorable.
I think the FBI should pay attention to that lady and what evidence that she has. They may solve it that way. I wish I could easily find that article once again. I may try looking for it and posting it here when I find it...
Regards,
Star Traveler
Okay, the following is from the other D.B. Cooper thread...
Thanks, the Wikipedia article has a good explanation of it — under Duane Weber. However, they also said —
“An FBI report released in February 2007 stated that DNA taken from the J.C. Penney tie that Cooper left on the plane was not that of Duane Weber.”
So, that would seem to close the case as far as that particular suspect is concerned. But, I don’t know, though. I would hold out a bit and wait and see what else they come up with. It’s entirely possible that there was other DNA on that tie and the “match” they were trying to get (from the DNA on the tie) may not be the right person that they should have been trying to match.
I’m still holding out for that guy, Weber...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
Regards,
Star Traveler
P.S. — I also remember when they found that cash from D.B. Coopers stash, just recently on the Columbia River. I thought that was *absolutely amazing* that it was found that much time later. That just goes to show you that D.B. Cooper *did* get away....
Unlike Vince Foster or Ron Brown, or perhaps TWA 800, you can’t blame the D. B. Cooper thing on the Clintons!
Then again...who is to say that the Clintons didn’t meet D.B. Cooper at Woodstock?
lol
From Little Rock, Arkansas!
Finder Hopes to Sell ‘71 Hijacking Cash
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Map, News) - In 1980, 8-year-old Brian Ingram found the sole link to the only unsolved airline hijacking in U.S. history buried in the sandy banks of the Columbia River dividing Washington state from Oregon.
Now 36, Ingram hopes to auction the weathered bundle of $20 bills as the FBI launches a new effort to find the unknown hijacker who parachuted into the night after taking over the 1971 Northwest Orient Airlines flight.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1134702~Finder_Hopes_to_Sell__71_Hijacking_Cash.html
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