DB Cooper

[dudeman17 267]

About the weather - Any idea what the moon was that night? That would affect his ability to see the ground. Also, and this is very general - Cooper's on the plane at 10 grand. If the weather is stormy/rainy to any degree, the clouds are probably below him. If it's not, then the clouds could be either above or below him.

6 hours ago, CooperNWO305 said:

something tells me he did not have much time to enjoy the ride.

That would depend on how high he opened the parachute, which would depend on what his jump experience was.

 

I plan to post some thoughts about the parachutes, but that'll have to wait till after the weekend.

[FLYJACK 654]

26 minutes ago, Nicholas Broughton said:

Did the report of the break in come into the fbi at 11:30 or was that the time it happened? How would anybody know unless they caught the intruder in the act or if the owner or neighbor lived on premises or near by and heard something then checked it out? I’m asking because there is another report of cooper possibly on the ground at that same time 11:30 walking on lewis river road in all black. It’s about an hour and a half walk from that store to lewis river road. If he did the break in around 10 then that lines up but if he broke on around 11:30 how do explain both of those occurrences at the same time the same night? 

 

I wondered this as well,,

The 11:30 time may be a guess or an assumption. No idea how accurate it is.

 

[CooperNWO305 146]

1 hour ago, dudeman17 said:

About the weather - Any idea what the moon was that night? That would affect his ability to see the ground. Also, and this is very general - Cooper's on the plane at 10 grand. If the weather is stormy/rainy to any degree, the clouds are probably below him. If it's not, then the clouds could be either above or below him.

That would depend on how high he opened the parachute, which would depend on what his jump experience was.

 

I plan to post some thoughts about the parachutes, but that'll have to wait till after the weekend.

As I remember from looking a while back it was a little less than a half moon. I suspect he would have at least been able to see the lights from Interstate 5 to the west and Portland to the south, this would give him some sense of orientation. 

[Nicholas Broughton 53]

16 minutes ago, CooperNWO305 said:

As I remember from looking a while back it was a little less than a half moon. I suspect he would have at least been able to see the lights from Interstate 5 to the west and Portland to the south, this would give him some sense of orientation. 

Not to mention the lights of merwin dam. 

[FLYJACK 654]

Hahneman was a naturalized US citizen but also had Honduran citizenship,, there was no extradition to US, he could have stayed but voluntarily returned to the US.

Governments returned US citizens but not necessarily their own citizens..

 

Hahneman was clear of US law if he had stayed in Honduras but everyone knew who he was and that he had a pile of money.

Edited January 6, 2020 by FLYJACK

[FLYJACK 654]

1 hour ago, RobertMBlevins said:

Have to wonder why he returned to the US, when he knew he would certainly go to prison. Might have been better to try and wait and sneak his family down there with him, perhaps. 

I have some advice. Somehow, somewhere, you will have to find out if the FBI or Justice ever tried to link him, or at least investigate him for...the Cooper crime. It's a given he did the other hijacking. 

Hahneman was estranged from his family for many years.

I have two reasons why he wanted to return to the US and it wasn't his family.

[CooperNWO305 146]

On 12/30/2019 at 10:49 AM, RobertMBlevins said:

Walking the tracks is quite possible, yes. 

Yes, you can catch a freight coming out of a rail yard. 

I don't know the exact location of the Amboy chute find, but I have a close approximation and I know who their next-door neighbors are. They attended the 2012 Ariel Party and the wife was interviewed by me on a video I did. I know where they live. They are sort of famous down there. The next door neighbor couple, not the people who owned the property where the chute was found. I always meant to make a trip down there and speak to them, see if they could get me 'in' with the people who owned the property but I never got around to it. 

There are some posts at the Cooper Forum on the money bag.  For the posters here-what are your theories on what happened to the rest of the money not found at Tina Bar?  I'm wondering if any of it could possibly still be tracked today (are there enough $20's still in collectors hands that could be checked against the list of serial numbers?)

[FLYJACK 654]

51 minutes ago, CooperNWO305 said:

There are some posts at the Cooper Forum on the money bag.  For the posters here-what are your theories on what happened to the rest of the money not found at Tina Bar?  I'm wondering if any of it could possibly still be tracked today (are there enough $20's still in collectors hands that could be checked against the list of serial numbers?)

Only two options, he lost it or kept it.

Cooper tied the money bag to his body, he may have lost it during the jump.. McNally lost his money during the jump and when he landed he wanted to do it again.

If he kept it, he either spent it or lost control of it.

Every one and a while I go through the period specific $20's on EBAY and run the serial numbers through my ransom $$ spreadsheet.. maybe one will pop up.

If it was Hahneman and he didn't lose it in the jump, he could have taken it to Honduras within weeks. 

If Cooper got it out of the US, it was untraceable.

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by FLYJACK

[CooperNWO305 146]

On 12/30/2019 at 10:49 AM, RobertMBlevins said:

Walking the tracks is quite possible, yes. 

Yes, you can catch a freight coming out of a rail yard. 

I don't know the exact location of the Amboy chute find, but I have a close approximation and I know who their next-door neighbors are. They attended the 2012 Ariel Party and the wife was interviewed by me on a video I did. I know where they live. They are sort of famous down there. The next door neighbor couple, not the people who owned the property where the chute was found. I always meant to make a trip down there and speak to them, see if they could get me 'in' with the people who owned the property but I never got around to it. 

If it was 1971 and I had to bet, I would bet he lost the bag, or it ripped open.  For that to have happened, the likely scenario was someone else found the money and kept it, knowing if they talked, they'd have to give it back. Or, it fell into the woods and is still there.  However, it being 2020, and only 300 of the 10,000 bills have showed up, I would bet that he made it out with most of it. 

So the next logical question is "did he spend it?"  Spending the money was one surefire way to get busted.  Imagine it is now 1972, you haven't been caught, you see a number of composite sketches, you see many suspects, then it becomes later in the 1970's and they don't have you.  What do you do?  Do you start to spend the money?  It's a huge risk.  We know now that the FBI did not look too hard for the 20's, but Cooper would not have known that.

Could he have spent the money? Certainly.  If so, I think he would have had to doctor the bills somehow to avoid detection.  Using them in a foreign country would be as dangerous as using them in the United States, maybe worse because the greenbacks would stand out in another country.

Most likely scenario is he got away with the money, and did not spend much of it.  That's my opinion.  His payment was that he pulled off the heist.  That was winning for him.

Edited January 6, 2020 by CooperNWO305
paragraph

[CooperNWO305 146]

11 hours ago, RobertMBlevins said:

I have read these latest posts about the money. Without speculating who was Cooper and all that...I have a much simpler explanation on what happened to the money...if indeed Cooper got away WITH the money. This situation comes from two confirmed sources. Okay...

In his famous radio interview with Steven Rinehart, FBI agent Larry Carr admitted that most banks who were provided the list of bills gave up the search within no more than THREE months, and virtually ALL of them after six months. You can hear his interview HERE.

While I was working on the Cooper case back in 2009, I had read where Ralph Himmelsbach claimed that the FBI, the Treasury Department, (specifically Bureau of Engraving and Printing) as well as the Federal banks, were all looking for the bills for years.  (By the way, if you are ever IN Washington DC, visit this place because it is really cool and they do tours that will blow your mind.)

So I called up the Bureau of E and P and ASKED them about this claim....
I was able to get a senior Treasury official on the phone, after some arrangements and a second call. He had worked there for more than thirty years. 

He said Himmelsbach's claim was impossible. He said they get literally 'truckloads' of used and damaged currency coming in each week, and if any such search had really been done it would have gone on for no more than a couple of weeks at most, not years, or even months for that matter. 

When I asked him about the Federal banks, he said it was the same deal except that THEIR people would not have tried doing any bill comparison search for as long as the civilian banks did. No more than a month at most, he said...and he was very frank about this. They were Federal bank people, he said. Just because the FBI sent down some order or other, doesn't mean that anyone would try to actually follow such a ridiculous order. Especially if these bills were a very common twenty dollar bill. Hundred dollar bills? he said. Maybe...but not for long because comparing tens of thousands (daily) or more incoming bills against a 34-page printed list would be a headache almost unimaginable. 

This Treasury official was well aware of the Cooper bill search, too. He had not worked there when it was being done, but others before him HAD, he said. It was almost like a joke, that particular request by the FBI, and was mostly ignored. Some people at E and P chuckled about the whole thing, he said. Some were also aware that Himmelsbach was claiming everyone was looking, but the reality is that the order was more or less ignored. In reality, only the civilian banks, mostly in the Northwest, and some casinos were checking against the master list.

The only bills E and P looks at, he said, (both back then and NOW) are the ones where people or businesses mail in damaged currency to get replacements, and in that case they have a staff who examines these bills to determine whether there is enough identification on them to establish their value and whether they are real. In those cases, they mail out a check to the sender for the ones they can confirm...but that is all they do. The mass currency coming in each week is destroyed he said. 

So what does all this mean?

It means within three to six months after the hijacking, that Cooper would be perfectly safe in spending these bills as long as he didn't do it in such a way as to draw attention to himself. He could deposit them to a bank in small amounts after that time. (Because tellers weren't comparing their incoming twenties to the list anymore.) He could spend them, as long as he didn't walk onto a car lot with a thousand of them or something. 

The most likely explanation is that Cooper did just those things. Or if he went overseas, he could exchange them that way here and there and then back to US currency later. We are not talking about millions of dollars here, but 10,000 individual twenty-dollar bills. You could launder those out in a year or two if you were careful. The main reason they 'never turned up in circulation' is because...no one was actually looking for them. In fact, by June of 1972, the entire effort was over and tellers tossed their headache-creating FBI bill list into the trash can. 

(EDIT: There WAS a short term effort by a newspaper in Portland that published the entire list of bills, urging people to look at THEIR twenties. They offered a cash reward if you found one. Nothing ever came of it and the effort was dropped.) 

There were definitely a lot of 1969 and 1963A $20 bills printed.  The numbers I was given are about 607 million 1969 $20's and 821 million 1963A $20's.  There were ways that the government could have isolated a Cooper $20, but that would have required someone who understood probability well enough to do what was needed. I'm guessing they might not have gone down that path.

Regardless of whether the government looked for the $20's, Cooper still would not have known they stopped, therefore if he spent the money, he likely would have thought he was taking a big risk, and therefore may not have spent the money.

[FLYJACK 654]

If Cooper got it out of the US it was gonzo..

More than half of the circulating US currency is outside the US.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/1996/1096lead.pdf

 

It would be very risky spending marked bills in the US and you'd think one might pop up somewhere through circulation.

Has there ever been a large ransom case where bills were spent into US domestic circulation and never found??

[Andrade1812 51]

There are almost certainly no Cooper bills in circulation now, and the bills Cooper was given were circulated and would have no collector value. So checking eBay is a futile endeavor. Even best-case scenario there was less than one Cooper $20 bill for every 142,000 bills in circulation.

As long as Cooper didn't deposit the money in a bank in one large sum, or make one big suspicious purchase, the money was eminently spendable in the US or abroad.

[FLYJACK 654]

2 minutes ago, Andrade1812 said:

There are almost certainly no Cooper bills in circulation now, and the bills Cooper was given were circulated and would have no collector value. So checking eBay is a futile endeavor. Even best-case scenario there was less than one Cooper $20 bill for every 142,000 bills in circulation.

As long as Cooper didn't deposit the money in a bank in one large sum, or make one big suspicious purchase, the money was eminently spendable in the US or abroad.

There are many circulated old bills listed on EBAY, people find stashes of old bills all the time, maybe parents died and they try to sell for premium..

A real long shot for sure.. but if Cooper stashed some and somebody came across them being old bills worth a premium they may flog them on EBAY..

I have found some serial numbers that were very close..

Take a look on EBAY. Lots of Cooper era $20's in circulated condition.

[CooperNWO305 146]

47 minutes ago, FLYJACK said:

There are many circulated old bills listed on EBAY, people find stashes of old bills all the time, maybe parents died and they try to sell for premium..

A real long shot for sure.. but if Cooper stashed some and somebody came across them being old bills worth a premium they may flog them on EBAY..

I have found some serial numbers that were very close..

Take a look on EBAY. Lots of Cooper era $20's in circulated condition.

Close serial numbers could be doctored bills. It’s a long shot, but possible. 
 

Here’s one for you all. Imagine it’s 1972-3 or even later, and the FBI finds a $20 in circulation. What do they do? What does it mean?

[FLYJACK 654]

I just checked EBAY found one bill 2400 sequence numbers (last 4 digits) from a Cooper bill and another 2700 from another Cooper bill,,,  

 

I have found much closer, within 100, but yeah it is a long shot.

[CooperNWO305 146]

9 hours ago, RobertMBlevins said:

CooperNW305 says in part:

This the opposite side of the coin. And it is just as possible as Cooper spending the money, I will admit. 

Like a merry-go-round however, you always come back to the question of the money found at Tina Bar. At some point you either have to come up with your own theory on that, or believe one of two things:

A) That no matter how inconceivable it might appear, Cooper landed in the Columbia River and the money found at Tina Bar is a result of that. No other suitable water-delivery method has been put forward that meets the test of credibility. 

B) That despite all evidence to the contrary, Flight 305 actually DID cross over Tina Bar on the evening of the crime. 

Neither of those scenarios do I support, by the way. But in some ways, I think the question of whether Cooper escaped with the money, lived to spend it, and the money found at Tina Bar are all the same question, and are in some ways interrelated.  

EDIT: Ever wonder what happened to some of those Americans who hijacked planes to Cuba and never came back? The ones alive and still living in Cuba today? In THIS ARTICLE, one of them comes forward and tells his story after 44 years of living in Cuba. Frankly, it's an amazing story and worth a look. He even let them take his picture. I also posted this to the Cooper Space at Quora dot com. 

That was a good article, thanks for the link.

[CooperNWO305 146]

9 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

I just checked EBAY found one bill 2400 sequence numbers (last 4 digits) from a Cooper bill and another 2700 from another Cooper bill,,,  

 

I have found much closer, within 100, but yeah it is a long shot.

This is a rough concept of what I would have done with the bills. 1. The easiest thing to do would be to erase the A in 1963A. Easily done with nail polish remover. 2. Second option would be to change any serial number with a 3 to an 8 with a little bit of green ink. Or erase 8s and make them 3s. I’ve tried all 3 methods and they work. 
 

Early on I thought that DB Cooper could have been a counterfeiter, and there was actually a suspect who had been busted for counterfeiting. Melvin Wilson I think. 
 

Someone with basic skills could have fixed the bills. Someone with printing or art experience could easily have done it. 

An option for the FBI would be to have gathered as many $20's as possible, and focused on the ones from the San Francisco Federal Reserve (Code L).  Over 75% of the bills were from there.  Once they had a good enough sample size (25,000 bills or so), they could have looked for a Cooper $20 undoctored, or look for a $20 that had a serial number close to one of the Cooper bills.  It would be a lot easier today though just using Microsoft Excel.

Edited January 8, 2020 by CooperNWO305

[CooperNWO305 146]

31 minutes ago, RobertMBlevins said:

It's an interesting concept I have not heard before. Let's suppose Cooper took the trouble to alter approximately 20,000 serial numbers as you propose...

Now he's stuck with a bunch of altered bills...which greatly increases the chances of a random teller spotting one and reporting it. Then the bill probably ends up in the hands of the Secret Service, who will verify that indeed...someone tried to pass an altered bill. This possibility now exists by a factor of x 20,000. (two serial numbers per bill)

I think if Cooper tried that one, by the time he got to bill ten or twenty, he would realize what a foolish thing he was doing...converting perfectly legit US currency into a self-made trap...and left the remainder of the bills alone.  

He would only have to alter at most 9,700 bills.  The 10,000 that left the plane minus the 300 on Tina Bar.  Of those 9,700, only the 1963A's could be altered in method 1 (erase the A and make it a 1963 series) and only a certain portion could be altered in method 2, which is those that had a 3 in their serial number.  However, if you combine the 1963A bills with those 1969 bills with 3's and 8's, you have a lot bills.  Remember, a $20 in 1971 is worth about $120 now, so a little bit of time to change the bill is worth it.  He could even have made a stamp to do it quickly, or use a machine. 

Cashiers are not looking for doctored serial numbers, they are looking for counterfeit bills.  Cooper's $20's were not counterfeit.  Trust me, unless they had a microscope, they could not have seen that he doctored the bills.  I used real basic items to test out my theory, and then showed the bills to people and no one could see what I had done.

As a side note, I worked around a lot cash at one point in my life, we looked for major issues like paper feel, paper weight, color, size of paper, thickness.  Some people would try to take a one dollar bill and paste on 5's, 10's, 20's, etc.  Those things stood out.  Changing one serial number that is around Font 10 would never have caught someone's eye.  Erasing a tiny A would definitely not have caught someone's eye.

Side note: William J. Smith had a number of hobbies.  One was model airplanes, another one was printing.  Another one was stamp collecting.  He was a meticulous man when he wanted to be.

[CooperNWO305 146]

3 hours ago, RobertMBlevins said:

Anyone here actually TRIED to alter a serial number on an older US currency bill? Not as easy as you think, especially in the case of older bills and the technology that was available to do this in the early 1970's. 

First, matching the right shade of green is very tough. The BEP used a combination of colors to achieve their special shade of green, and that mixture is (and always has been) a government secret bigger than the secrets the government keeps on UFO's. 

The UFO reference was a joke, of course. But the fact is that matching that ink is going to be nearly impossible, and any decent teller is going to spot one of those bills sooner or later. There is also the concept of ink spreading, because serial numbers are actually stamped INTO the bill, not just 'painted' on top. If you try to alter a number on the heavy cotton/linen of a US bill, the ink you use will spread into the paper, and will be a different shade from the rest of the number. Try it on an old bill and see what I mean. The ink just bleeds into the paper because you are basically applying it on the surface, not pressing it into the bill firmly. 

The result is that any number you try to alter in this way will come out muddy, blurry, too large, and not the right shade of green. Even with today's modern tech, aka flatbed printers and high-end scanners, they would still run into the ink bleeding problem, as well as trying to match the exact shade...although they could get somewhat better results than were available in the 70's. 

It's kind of like this: 
Imagine you have a big piece of construction paper, the kind young schoolchildren use for posters, signs, art, or just cutting up to make shapes or letters...right?

And this paper comes to you with a set of numbers printed (not drawn) across the top. 

YOU try to turn a 'C' in the lettering into a '0,' either by hand-drawing in the rest of the zero, a tiny brush with ink, or whatever method you like.

This is the result:

The ink will spread into the paper. It will not match. It will look blurry and the color will not be the same. What you are left with is an amateurish-looking attempt to change the serial number. It's the same thing with US currency back then, only your results will look just slightly LESS bad than using actual construction paper, which will bleed any ink around a lot worse. It will still attract immediate attention from any decent teller with a sharp eye. 

EDIT: Remember that if even ONE of these altered bills were spotted by a teller...that bill will end up in the hands of the Secret Service and the BEP. And they will put a loupe to that number and easily figure out where the alternation was done...and thereby immediately figure out the CORRECT number on that bill. If they do this even once...and it was discovered...it wouldn't take them long to determine both why it was done...and where that money came from...the hijacking. It makes much more sense NOT to try altering the bills and simply LAUNDER them out ASAP. 

How do you know the ink will run? I just told you I did it with basic supplies. Maybe a 1969 bill was different. But not that different. There are all sorts of inks and pencils he could have used. Besides, he didn’t need ink to doctor the 1963As. You don’t use a Sharpie or a magic marker. Counterfeiters made money all the time and the ink didn’t always run. They would get busted because of the paper or because of the intricate detail that they could not duplicate. Making a 3 into an 8 is not intricate. 
 

Regardless, doctoring the bills is a theory. We know now that he could have spent the money and not got caught. Maybe that’s what he did. Max Gunther’s Dan LeClair says he spent it, and also had some of it boxed up to send back. However, someone with printing experience would certainly have thought about trying to change the serial numbers. They may have decided it was not a good idea though. 

[ParrotheadVol 70]

On 1/7/2020 at 10:45 AM, RobertMBlevins said:

On a morning side note...if KC was the hijacker, we are pretty sure that *if* he put any bills into circulation, it was around April 1972, when he loaned Bernie Geestman's sister Dawn Androsko $5,000. This money was used as a down payment on a house in Buckley, WA to get she and her four kids out of Bernie's house.

Picture below: Androsko at her home on Fox Island, Washington, on the day she was interviewed by yours truly. 

Has anyone ever investigated to see if she did in fact purchase a house in 1972, and if so, how much was paid for that house?

Or is this something that we just take her word for and accept it as fact?

[CooperNWO305 146]

8 hours ago, RobertMBlevins said:

I don't necessarily enjoy double-posting, but I wanted to drop a basic philosophy I have on the case to everyone who reads this thread. 

As Occam once said: "Plurality must never be posited without necessity." 

What Occam basically means is that the more extraneous stuff you add to a theory, the harder it is to justify that theory. Adding in certain ideas and hypothesis to any theory regarding Cooper, when there is no evidence that such a thing was done, falls under the category of an 'ad hoc hypothesis'. This is where you add to a hypothesis this 'thing' or that 'thing' (or possibility to it) in order to keep it from being rejected. 

Occam is known more for his Razor, which comes in slightly different versions, but is basically 'All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the most likely one...' (paraphrased)

Once you go up that slippery slope of adding things to Cooper that have no outside evidence they happened, (like changing serial numbers) or swearing he couldn't have survived the jump, (there is more evidence showing that such a jump was survivable because at least three other guys did it successfully, Robb Heady, Hahneman, and Richard McCoy)...that leads you down a twisted road indeed. 

In other words, once you start going ad hoc and just inventing possibilities regarding Cooper without a shred of evidence showing that 'maybe' this or that was done, you are letting yourself in for both disappointment, and using these ad hocs to justify a hypothesis that doesn't really exist. "Is there any evidence at all to suggest serial numbers on the Cooper money were altered?" Answer: no. 

Simply put, you have to work with the stuff you got, and not invent things to fill in any gaps. 

 

What do you mean by adding/inventing?  This whole case is theory.  Every suspect is really just a theory, including yours.  What real evidence do we have?  A black tie, worn by hundreds of thousands of people in 1971? A drawing of a middle aged man who may have had brown eyes? 300 bills found at Tina Bar that only have added to speculation?  Without speculation and theory none of these suspects would even have a spot on Wikipedia.  Don't confuse evidence with information.

I agree, there is no evidence that he doctored the 20's, but then again, there is no evidence that he didn't.  None of the money showed up in circulation, some theories say no one was looking, but we have not interviewed everyone.  How do we know that there was not some random casino employee obsessed with this case like we are who was looking for 20's.

Average salary in 1971 was around $7,000.  That means Cooper could have gotten away with over 25 years worth of salary.  Even if he took 30 minutes under a microscope fixing a $20 (worth $120) that is an hourly rate of $240.  Not bad.  

The money piece for me is a theory, it got me involved in the case, just like the Tina Bar find keeps people engaged, or the air stairs, or his aviation experience.  Without theories and speculation this case goes cold.  Unless you start talking aliens, then from my perspective most theories can be considered.

I've seen the whole "that is not evidence" or "the evidence does not support this" as a way to discount many possible theories.  I've used it myself, but try to use it sparingly and on glaring issues, or on people who have done zero research on the case.  Georger likes to use the whole scientific evidence piece on people when they start coming up with theories.

[FLYJACK 654]

If Cooper survived with the money it wouldn't be passed at a bank or in the PNW. Passing the bills well outside the PNW wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the bills would get into circulation and none have ever turned up.

The Cooper case is unique, hard facts are few and it is a very old case. The farther you get from the incident the more outside the box thinking is required to budge it. There is very little new evidence to emerge. We get some FBI files but they have had that info and not solved it.

Sticking strictly to the facts is more important closer to the event. At 50 years out that didn't work, as time passes we need to explore increasingly speculative theories.

There is a reason this wasn't solved in 71/72. 

The FBI didn't publicly solve it or prosecute with all the info they have, either they didn't have a case or they did and it was rejected.

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by FLYJACK

[CooperNWO305 146]

31 minutes ago, FLYJACK said:

If Cooper survived with the money it wouldn't be passed at a bank or in the PNW. Passing the bills well outside the PNW wouldn't be an issue. The problem is the bills would get into circulation and none have ever turned up.

The Cooper case is unique, hard facts are few and it is a very old case. The farther you get from the incident the more outside the box thinking is required to budge it. There is very little new evidence to emerge. We get some FBI files but they have had that info and not solved it.

Sticking strictly to the facts is more important closer to the event. At 50 years out that didn't work, as time passes we need to explore increasingly speculative theories.

There is a reason this wasn't solved in 71/72. 

The FBI didn't publicly solve it or prosecute with all the info they have, either they didn't have a case or they did and it was rejected.

 

I and a number of others believe the FBI thought this would be a slam dunk case from the start, hence the lack of urgency even on the day after during the search.  They may have figured Cooper would be caught right away, or someone would turn him in, or he would get caught on another crime, or do something to stand out, like spending all the money.  As the years dragged on, they realized this was not the case.  Their approach would have been drastically different back then had they known what we know now.

I see the FBI as having spread their resources thin by chasing every suspect that was phoned in, versus targeting their efforts.  Granted they did target their efforts on skydivers, military parachutists, etc., but they did not seem to spread their efforts far enough.  Example: They focused on the Pacific Northwest, skydivers, military, those with certain grudges, etc. By flooding every region of the country, more grudges, more types of people, they may have been able to shake something loose.

There were roughly 20 million males in the United States in 1971 within the age range of the hijacker.  There are maybe 20 suspects who make the list these days, so the reality is that of the 20 million people that could have done this it is highly unlikely that any current suspect is DB Cooper (just by the numbers). 

I believe that if the FBI was told in 1971 that they would not solve this for 50 years, that they likely would have taken a different approach.  If they had opened up to some of the current theories, then maybe one enterprising agent would have cracked the case.  I wonder where this case would even be without Larry Carr and what he did.  Maybe it would be nowhere.  Hindsight is always 20-20 though.

Edited January 9, 2020 by CooperNWO305

[FLYJACK 654]

If you look at the UV particle distribution pattern on the tie.. there is a concetration pattern that suggests the tie was rubbed across something in various places. The control tie particle distribution under UV is random with no pattern.

Cooper may have used the tie to wipe his prints..

 

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by FLYJACK

[CooperNWO305 146]

On 1/10/2020 at 12:51 AM, RobertMBlevins said:

Fair question. Yes. She bought a house in Buckley, WA. About a month or two after she got the loan from KC. Paid it back in two years, she said. Other family members testified to the same thing. 

You can't really blame Bernie Geestman for expediting this stuff. She was living with he and his wife in the Bonney Lake area at the time. She and her four kids, that is. Oh, brother. I would have looked for a way out of that one, too. 

Remember something ParrotheadVol:  These allegations, this testimony...was sent to the Seattle FBI in 2015 using REAL names, addresses, and personal contact info when possible. I would not put my name to such a thing (and I did) unless I was sure. The reason being that the Feds really don't like it if you lie to them and try to send them on a wild goose chase. Had they investigated this stuff (I'm not sure if they did) and found out I just made it all up...they would have been beating on my front door and maybe sending me the bill for manpower...or even arresting me for lying to Federal officers about an active investigation. That would be the last thing I needed in my life. 

People forget that sometimes....

(The report, in its entirety, is still available for download at the main AB of Seattle site.)

Flyjack says in part:

Flyjack...I already explained this. Within three to six months after the FBI issued the list, NO banks were comparing their incoming twenties to the master list. Agent Carr has already admitted that most banks gave up the search within three months after they received the list, and virtually ALL of them had given it up after six months. The reason they gave it up was mostly because it was a big headache for tellers who were underpaid as it was anyway. In the end, this 30 something page list simply ended up in the garbage can. And the poor tellers probably said good riddance to it. The average life of a twenty dollar bill in circulation is about eight years. By 1982 at most, they were probably long gone. The master list wasn't out there for the public except the one time in the Portland newspaper when they offered that reward. No internet to post the list on either. Himmelsbach said both the Fed and the local banks looked for years. That is not true. 

As far as 'turning up in circulation,' how would anyone know if no one was actually LOOKING? And once a bill gets torn or worn, it just gets shipped to the BEP in DC for destruction. That's why they never turned up. The BEP said they get truckloads of worn and torn currency each week for disposal. (Well, he said either truckloads 'a day' or 'a week'. The interview I did with the BEP guy was about ten years ago. But it was one or the other.) 

Robert: Family members say a lot of things, just think of Marla, the Reca group, etc.  My opinion is that DB Cooper's family may very well not want anyone to know who he is.  For a minute I thought it would be cool if my grandfather was DB Cooper, but then I realized that there are many ways for the hijacking to come back and bite the family.  As far as I'm concerned, a death bed confession is a strike against someone being DB Cooper.  Just because Kenny's mother got a loan, does not make him DB Cooper.  And when you say "testify" do you mean under oath or in front of a grand jury?  Hundreds of people have claimed to have information on DB Cooper, but none of them are in jail.  Someone is lying or exaggerating.

The FBI does not talk to people much, and when they do it is to acknowledge receipt of material.  If one agent tells someone something, this does not constitute "The FBI said this", all it means is that one agent made a comment.  The Rackstraw and Reca groups both claim to have FBI agents supporting them, or former agents.  Someone is wrong, as it could not be both Reca and Rackstraw.

One of the reasons the FBI is so close mouthed about the case is because any comment they make will be taken out of context and used to build a case for just one suspect.  One thing is for certain, the FBI has officially stated that a number of individuals are not likely to be DB Cooper.  This does not mean though that if they have not said a name that this person is DB Cooper.  We've seen a few Cooper researchers say "The FBI has not ruled out so and so"  Whatever.  They have not ruled out Ted Cruz's father either.