Posted on 05/20/2018 10:46:44 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A 47-year-old mystery finally may be resolved. Grand Rapids-based publisher Principia Media announced yesterday it has released a book that allegedly reveals the real identity of D.B. Cooper, the infamous skyjacker who in 1971 demanded a $200,000 ransom on board a flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattles Sea-Tac airport, before jumping 10,000 feet to his escape. The book, D.B. Cooper & Me: A Criminal, A Spy, My Best Friend, is by Carl Laurin, an alleged friend of the skyjacker, and details an investigation into Coopers identity. Laurin claims that Cooper was the late "military paratrooper, daredevil and intelligence operative" Walter R. Reca, Principia Media said. Reca, of Oscoda, Michigan, was born in 1933 and died in 2014, said Julie Hurley, a spokesperson for Principia Media. Principia Media said it has a set of supporting "evidence": the flight path and landing zone; "witness" testimony from an individual Laurin claims spoke with Cooper within an hour of his jump; and documentation of how the $200,000 was spent. Laurin also claims to have three hours of audio recording from 2008 between himself and the skyjacker. The publisher hosted a press conference today at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids to discuss the book. The author will be signing copies of the book at 5:30 p.m. today at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, at 2660 28th St. SE.
(Excerpt) Read more at grbj.com ...
I’m offering for sale genuine DB Cooper autographed currency. A must for the discriminating collector.
A friend, now passed, worked in deep cover military intelligence assignments overseas. At home in Florida in the early 1980s, he got a call directly from a high ranking general in his chain of command in the Pentagon. My friend was told to go to Miami to meet with some Mafia figures to find out what they wanted in order to help locate an illegal shipment of military small arms that had gotten on the black market in the Carribean. In the wrong hands, such weapons could precipitate a coup or help inflame discontent into a civil war.
My friend did as he was told and spent several days in Miami drinking, dining, and swapping jokes and stories with Mafia figures as a deal was worked out. The result was that the guns were located and seized and a Mafia accountant who had stolen from the US military was suddenly released from federal prison. The general in the Pentagon was so pleased with how smoothly things went that my friend got more such assignments as a regular backup channel for those kinds of dealings.
The "plausible deniability" aspect is just the lies and dodges that get told in order to keep secrets. The moving parts though are within the bureaucratic chain of command. Thus D.B. Cooper was likely assigned to or recruited for whatever he did for the government and was paid well for it.
The idea that Cooper was blackmailed into doing such jobs is also suspect because it is hard to imagine mission planners trusting blackmail as a motive. People resent being blackmailed and tend to rebel and strike back against it. Cash, country, and chain of command provide better and more trustworthy motives.
That he tried this at all shows how freakin' tough (as well as probably desperate) he was. I don't think it was part of a gang initiation.
Okay, I’ll take five bills, but they’d better be crumbly!!! ;^)
That's what happened to the Zodiac Killer too, Jack the Ripper, and the Black Dahlia killer. Charles Manson, by contrast, started out by pretending to be a hippy-priest, then transitioned into a crime spree.
Of course they are. The money never entered circulation or it would have been detected long ago.
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