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DB Cooper

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6 minutes ago, ParrotheadVol said:

If he lost the money and survived, I doubt his next venture (whatever it was) was on the straight and narrow. So yeah, perhaps.

McNally lost the money in the jump and said he thought he'd just do another hijacking. (before he was caught of course)

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The FBI files describe Cooper's eyes as : "dark eyes, possibly brown"

That doesn't mean possibly Sheridan blue.... IT MEANS DARK, DARK BROWN or BLACK.... 

Ulis keeps pushing the "possibly brown" as "possibly blue" Cooper's eyes were DARK.

 

darkeyes1.jpeg.be201987d68e4708b63f36368d1fd36f.jpeg

 

 

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There was a plastic bag and a piece of fabric found on TBAR and taken as evidence. The fabric was consistent with bedding, twin sized 40 x 96.

Is that quilted mattress material or bed covering fabric like a quilt??

The 2001 date was a re-evaluation of prior evidence,, obviously, we don't know if it is related to the money but the FBI did collect it.

beddingmaterial1.jpeg.5342b9538ad9e36923b884a2b0482cac.jpeg

 

beddingfound2.jpeg.4a4b0c9d0d28c65417541b806875b8ae.jpeg

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17 hours ago, RobertMBlevins said:

One skydiver told me this once, and comments on it are fine because I don't know the truth of this statement...but he said this...

Quote

"If Cooper had been an experienced skydiver who was jumping on a regular, or semi-regular basis back then, he probably wouldn't have asked for front and back chutes. He would have said 'mains' and 'reserves'."

Like I said, I don't know if this is true but it made me wonder.

I dunno. I'm not a hunnert percent sold on this. While at first glance that statement absolutely rings true, I have to allow a bit for the possibility that if Cooper WAS experienced, he may have 'dumbed down' or simplified his request, either for the benefit of the listener, or to NOT sound like a jumper. Shrug.

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9 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

There was a plastic bag and a piece of fabric found on TBAR and taken as evidence. The fabric was consistent with bedding, twin sized 40 x 96.

Is that quilted mattress material or bed covering fabric like a quilt??

So Cooper is old school? Even out in the boonies, he hides his money under the mattress?

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10 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

There was a plastic bag and a piece of fabric found on TBAR and taken as evidence. The fabric was consistent with bedding, twin sized 40 x 96.

Is that quilted mattress material or bed covering fabric like a quilt??

The 2001 date was a re-evaluation of prior evidence,, obviously, we don't know if it is related to the money but the FBI did collect it.

beddingmaterial1.jpeg.5342b9538ad9e36923b884a2b0482cac.jpeg

 

beddingfound2.jpeg.4a4b0c9d0d28c65417541b806875b8ae.jpeg

Shutter noted that these bits are likely from Reed island,, that makes more sense. 

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On 12/12/2020 at 3:40 AM, RobertMBlevins said:

Geoff Gray ... was the one who named the different combination numbers from two of the stews out of the Facial Identification Catalog. Alice Hancock picked KA-3-9. Flo Schaffner picked KK-5-1. 

I have just received a reply to my FOIA request, submitted on 12.14.2020, for the relevant extracts from the Facial Identification Catalog of 1971. The FBI informed me that "potentially responsive records" have been destroyed.

Does anyone on this forum have images of the KA-3-9 and KK-5-1 profiles, as they originally appeared in the catalog?

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(edited)
1 hour ago, DFS346 said:

I have just received a reply to my FOIA request, submitted on 12.14.2020, for the relevant extracts from the Facial Identification Catalog of 1971. The FBI informed me that "potentially responsive records" have been destroyed.

Does anyone on this forum have images of the KA-3-9 and KK-5-1 profiles, as they originally appeared in the catalog?

The FBI facial identification catalog was for law enforcement only so hard to find..

I did find this image on a page with KA3-9.. bottom left...  triangular head page.

 

vintage-fbi-facial-identification_1_b94515dc3f4a50846f12c7fb87a043fd.jpg.c529b36e0da7325a5d3d9dbe144a5753.jpg

Edited by FLYJACK
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3 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

I did find this image on a page with KA3-9.. bottom left...  triangular head page.

Many thanks. Here's an attempt to reconstruct KA3-9 with perspective correction. Hard to see how this identification formed a basis for the FBI sketch.

KA3-9 corrected.jpg

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(edited)
4 hours ago, DFS346 said:

Here's a comparison of the reconstructed KA3-9 with the FBI sketch.

KA3-9 corrected and unsub.jpg

I think your perspective adjustment is too skinny..

Alice picked out the head shape.. for the first sketch which was not good.

 

1stsketch.jpeg.2d0d519948700a3a2ca17449bd0cfd6c.jpeg

 

Edited by FLYJACK

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(edited)
5 hours ago, FLYJACK said:

It was the "bing" sketch not the revised "B" sketch

My second calibration of KA3-9 was too wide in the horizontal axis. Here's a third calibration of KA3-9 based on the assumption that the page from the Facial Identification Catalog was standard US letter size (8.5" x 11" or 216 x 279 mm). If so, the individual photographs were about 39 mm wide by 49 mm high. The "Bing" sketch is shown for comparison, with eyeline and chinline matched.

 

KA3-9 corrected and unsub1.jpg

Edited by DFS346
adjusted KA3-9 head outline

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Oxford shoes has been mentioned before in media reports and by the FBI..

Technically, oxfords are the type of lacing, but may be a generic term for street shoes. The shoes were also described as "non-lace type shoes of ankle length", so that doesn't jive.

Doubtful, the witnesses used the term oxford in the technical sense.

But, they were not LOAFERS...

 

oxfordshoes.jpeg.9d35f5940ff84e75154f6d467ceba61e.jpeg

anklelength.jpg.571a0681fc4912be1fbbc7b8af657f06.jpg

 

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1 hour ago, RobertMBlevins said:

These so-called 'file releases' by the FBI are so heavily redacted as to be nearly useless. Pretty much anything you could use to identify a particular suspect, or a witness, or any relevant facts...has been edited from the documents. 

I have learned three things from reviewing these documents. 

  1. The FBI was heavily focused on the idea for years that Cooper was a regular skydiver who probably had a favorite dropzone. It never occurred to them that because Cooper was dressed so poorly for the jump, that Cooper might not have been a 'regular' in the skydiving world. 
     
  2. Everybody and his brother thought they knew the identity of Cooper, and the FBI was absolutely flooded with tips. Too many, in fact, to properly investigate. One after another, names (redacted, of course) come in, and one after another they are dismissed. They wasted their time chasing one dead end after another, all without result. 
     
  3. Because of all this, even if they had received a tip that turned out to be valid, the FBI probably would have missed it anyway. I think they actually got used to the idea that the tips were mostly a waste of time, and this tainted their approach to suspects. After so many false leads, instead of investigating each one as possibly valid, they would look for the easiest way to eliminate that suspect...and move on to the next twenty tips or so. 

In the end, the FBI missed the most important clue of all. Who would be the kind of person that obviously knew how an NB-8 container worked...but who also came so poorly dressed for the occasion? To me, this points to a guy who had military jump experience, but had not jumped as a civilian, and had not jumped at all for a long time. Yes...that description *could* fit Kenny Christiansen. But it could also fit just about any veteran of a paratrooper company over the last twenty years PRIOR to the hijacking. A middle-aged man, with obvious experience in military jumps, (Mucklow testified that Cooper seemed to know what he was doing when he put on the parachute) who drank, who smoked, and who dressed like he didn't have much money for a decent wardrobe, even to do a most dangerous jump. A guy who said he wanted to go to Mexico, but knew the Pacific Northwest fairly well, and how to get a jet to fly as slow as possible...but got off the ride less than an hour after the takeoff from Seattle. 

CONCLUSIONS:
Cooper was a middle-aged guy who never saw a dropzone other than a military one, had not jumped in quite some time, and was desperate for money. Cooper never had the slightest intention of going to Mexico, or even Reno for that matter. He just said that to throw off any possible search, and probably didn't know that the crew...even if they were made to stay in the cockpit...would be able to figure out approximately when and where he jumped. The FBI had him pegged as a civilian jumper, which means they proceeded from a false assumption right from the start. If he had been a civilian jumper in his mid-40's, he would have at least worn the proper shoes. He would know to do that. This crime almost sounds like a guy who had been pushed to the edge by circumstances, knew how to use a chute but nothing much about crime, and his plan was probably hastily thought out over a period of no more than a few weeks prior to the crime. He was the luckiest guy on the face of the planet, and should have been caught, but wasn't. 

There is a lot of valuable information in these documents, especially in regards to the named suspects like Duane Weber, Rackstraw and McCoy. There is also a lot of information on the "unresolved" suspects like the Egg Harbor Suspect and the Shelton Lead, but you have to read through the documents and the redactions to find it.

To say that less information is better than more information is to confuse the distinction between the signal and the noise. More noise is fine, if one can find the signal contained therein.

#57 had more information on one of those unresolved suspects, and was of great interest.

 

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