DB Cooper

[olemisscub 461]

So Tina is two for two in the historical oddity department: She’s the only person who shared a smoke with D.B. Cooper AND she’s also the only human in history who calls rubber bands “bank type bands.”

[Nicholas Broughton 52]

12 hours ago, georger said:

Why dont you call her and ask her!

I would in a second if I could!! I would have called her in ???????????????? 2008 ?  1972?

Part of the problem is she uses other words for the money, packages, bundles .... she has never used the word straps which requires paper bank straps.

BTW I do appreciate people responding to this! I wouldnt waste everyone's time if I didnt think there was an issue here - - -

Come on G, get real… if it were as simple as picking up the phone and asking her, we’d have our answer already. I asked her camp for clarification on this and all I got in response was you’ll have to watch the film. 
 

 

Edited June 4, 2023 by Nicholas Broughton

[olemisscub 461]

10 hours ago, georger said:

 

Simple. He answers that question by saying: 

“When I saw it, it was already (packaged)” "Denominations for twenties are wrapped with money straps." 

"I could tell that they were in what we call straps" ....... because ....... "the money bag was in my lap! And "Denominations for twenties (at a bank) are wrapped with money straps." 

What he says is circular. He never answers the question. He never saw the money being prepared or in the bag. He arrived after the money had been packaged, and microfilmed, and he was presented with a sealed bag.

 

Are you suggesting he could tell they had straps on them because of how the money FELT sitting in his lap??

And when he's talking about how they were already packaged, he's talking about how they were already packeted in the packets of $2000, not that they were already packaged in the bag. 

Also, the bills were PRE-microfilmed. They didn't do it on that day, which is why they had to go back and figure out which of the $250k pre-microfilmed bills were NOT given to Cooper. In this 302 they are describing how the bills were pre-microfilmed at an earlier date. 

 

Edited June 4, 2023 by olemisscub

[georger 194]

4 hours ago, olemisscub said:

So Tina is two for two in the historical oddity department: She’s the only person who shared a smoke with D.B. Cooper AND she’s also the only human in history who calls rubber bands “bank type bands.”

I dont know, is she? Now you are stretching credulity.

Tina and everyone else used multiple words for the money. Had Tina said 'bank type straps' vs 'bank type bands'  then we would know, but she didnt say that.

What is the big deal with asking her what she meant?

I get the feeling you dont want her asked or people to know!  You are now shoving this down our throats!

This is not a morality play about school books - this is research.

[georger 194]

1 hour ago, Nicholas Broughton said:

Come on G, get real… if it were as simple as picking up the phone and asking her, we’d have our answer already. I asked her camp for clarification on this and all I got in response was you’ll have to watch the film. 
 

 

Its unfortunate she wont answer, or someone answer for her.

Maybe we will never know. But if nothing else, the issue does affect the physics of the money behavior. Its a simple question. Its a question that should have been asked in her original interview, for clarification.

Edited June 4, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

15 minutes ago, georger said:

I dont know, is she? Now you are stretching credulity.

Tina and everyone else used multiple words for the money. Had Tina said 'bank type straps' vs 'bank type bands'  then we would know, but she didnt say that.

What is the big deal with asking her what she meant?

I get the feeling you dont want her asked or people to know!  You are now shoving this down our throats!

This is not a morality play about school books - this is research.

Why would I not want her asked? Don’t be daft. I have no reason to care one way or the other about how the money was packaged. I’m just following the evidence and I believe taking her words in that 302 at face value is a solid place to start. Tina says bank type bands. There were rubber bands found on the money. Those two things tell me that the money given to him was a standard bank bundle, which have straps AND rubber bands. The way you’re envisioning it, there were 100 individually rubber banded packets of $2000. That’s a lot of rubber banding those bank people did in such a short amount of time, no?
 

And yeah, I’ll just ask Tina. Be right back, gonna send her a text message… :-)

[georger 194]

1 hour ago, olemisscub said:

Are you suggesting he could tell they had straps on them because of how the money FELT sitting in his lap??

And when he's talking about how they were already packaged, he's talking about how they were already packeted in the packets of $2000, not that they were already packaged in the bag. 

Also, the bills were PRE-microfilmed. They didn't do it on that day, which is why they had to go back and figure out which of the $250k pre-microfilmed bills were NOT given to Cooper. In this 302 they are describing how the bills were pre-microfilmed at an earlier date. 

 

Are you suggesting he could tell they had straps on them because of how the money FELT sitting in his lap??

Its WG's statement not mine. CC is questioning WG trying to get a simple answer - he saw the money or he didn't. WG wont give CC a simple direct answer - yes or no!  

CC asks:

CC: Sure. So you never actually laid eyes on the money itself. 

WG responds: I had it sitting in my lap.

 

CC asks further:

CC: And, do you know if, um, in the organization or the packaging of the money to deliver to him if rubber bands we also used to kind of take 3 or 4 of those $2000 packets and kind of rubber band them together. You don’t have any knowledge of that?

WG: Uh, no, I don’t. 

 

WG NEVER SAW THE MONEY!  OR HE DOESNT REMEMBER.

 

 

Edited June 4, 2023 by georger

[georger 194]

12 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Why would I not want her asked? Don’t be daft. I have no reason to care one way or the other about how the money was packaged. I’m just following the evidence and I believe taking her words in that 302 at face value is a solid place to start. Tina says bank type bands. There were rubber bands found on the money. Those two things tell me that the money given to him was a standard bank bundle, which have straps AND rubber bands. The way you’re envisioning it, there were 100 individually rubber banded packets of $2000. That’s a lot of rubber banding those bank people did in such a short amount of time, no?
 

And yeah, I’ll just ask Tina. Be right back, gonna send her a text message… :-)

 

I am not envisioning anything.

I am wanting to know how the money was packaged.

This has become an example of how things become monstrosities on DB Cooper forums. Even the simplest question starts wars!

Its obvious why Tina wants/needs her privacy.

 

Edited June 4, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

40 minutes ago, georger said:

 

This has become an example of how things become monstrosities on DB Cooper forums. Even the simplest question starts wars!

Unlike many previously contributing members of the DZ, I don't view disagreements as wars. 

None of us know what the money looked like or how precisely it was packaged. We can make inferences though. Tina's statement, coupled with how the Ingram's found the money, leads me to think it looked like a standard bank bundle with multiple paper strapped packets held together by rubber bands in a single bundle. One passenger described the bag as looking like it contained bricks. A five packet bundle would suffice to explain that description. 

I don't think comparing ransoms in other crimes is totally appropriate because Cooper's ransom came from money that had already been set aside in the bank's "ransom pack" with pre-recorded serials. 

[georger 194]

43 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Unlike many previously contributing members of the DZ, I don't view disagreements as wars. 

None of us know what the money looked like or how precisely it was packaged. We can make inferences though. Tina's statement, coupled with how the Ingram's found the money, leads me to think it looked like a standard bank bundle with multiple paper strapped packets held together by rubber bands in a single bundle. One passenger described the bag as looking like it contained bricks. A five packet bundle would suffice to explain that description. 

I don't think comparing ransoms in other crimes is totally appropriate because Cooper's ransom came from money that had already been set aside in the bank's "ransom pack" with pre-recorded serials. 

I was also surprised when agents said they never encountered a ransom prepared by a bank that involved 'paper straps' but only 'rubber bands'. Does this reflect a blanket policy by banks or law enforcement ? I have no idea.

Its extremely frustrating that Tina wasnt asked: what do you mean by 'bank type bands' ?  I admit that could mean paper straps.

One agent commented further saying: 'there are different types of bank straps' - some had threads going through them and were stronger than others'. 

We dont have FBI lab reports on the money!  The forensic lab in the Treasury Dept where they deal with damaged money from countless sources with different histories, was bypassed, evidently. If that lab had been able to examine all of the 'groups' of bills the Ingrams turned in, that might have provided some educated opinions about the money's history ... but the US Treasury Forensic Lab was evidently bypassed in favor of the FBI Lab.

Edited June 4, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

1 hour ago, georger said:

We dont have FBI lab reports on the money!  The forensic lab in the Treasury Dept where they deal with damaged money from countless sources with different histories, was bypassed, evidently. If that lab had been able to examine all of the 'groups' of bills the Ingrams turned in, that might have provided some educated opinions about the money's history ... but the US Treasury Forensic Lab was evidently bypassed in favor of the FBI Lab.

We need to figure out where the hell the 130+ bills that were sent to the insurance company ended up!

[georger 194]

42 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

We need to figure out where the hell the 130+ bills that were sent to the insurance company ended up!

Good luck! They were shipped to a contact at Royal Globe in NYC by the Portland atty. He got a return receipt from someone signing for Royal Globe and never heard anything further. He doesnt have the faintest idea what happened to the money. A numismatic dealer on the east coast contacted many people trying to unravel this - he got nowhere. That was two years ago. Other people have tried and failed to get anywhere. I have the names of these people if you want them ?

Edited June 4, 2023 by georger

[georger 194]

The OleMiss photo of how the money was packaged - is 100% impossible based on the Ingram-FBI description of what was found and its description.

The Ingrams found and picked off rubber bands from each of three 'packets'.

'As he did so, the boy turned up three bundles of money wrapped with rubber bands, which was a short distance below the surface of the sand. ... The money was badly decomposed and was held together with rubber bands which were so old they crumbled away immediately upon handling. They took the money home where they showed it to INGRAMs brother-in-law, who took the rest of the rubber bands off and was going to dry out the money and try to reclaim it....'

Each bundle,or packet as its sometimes called in the FBI documents, was held together by rubber bands. There were three such packets or bundles each with bands and remnants of bands around it.

If each bundle is held together by rubber bands ... where are paper straps applied in this config? The only place left to apply paper straps would be to strap rubber banded bundles together ??

The OleMiss photo cannot be correct based on the FBI and Ingram testimony. Each of the three bundles found had rubber bands around each of them. So if there were paper straps where would they be? Around what ?  The only option would be to have bands and straps around each bundle. The Ingrams were very specific about where bands were and what was picked off (and the time it consumed doing this) on the found money.

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

4 hours ago, georger said:

The OleMiss photo of how the money was packaged - is 100% impossible based on the Ingram-FBI description of what was found and its description.

The Ingrams found and picked off rubber bands from each of three 'packets'.

'As he did so, the boy turned up three bundles of money wrapped with rubber bands, which was a short distance below the surface of the sand. ... The money was badly decomposed and was held together with rubber bands which were so old they crumbled away immediately upon handling. They took the money home where they showed it to INGRAMs brother-in-law, who took the rest of the rubber bands off and was going to dry out the money and try to reclaim it....'

Each bundle,or packet as its sometimes called in the FBI documents, was held together by rubber bands. There were three such packets or bundles each with bands and remnants of bands around it.

If each bundle is held together by rubber bands ... where are paper straps applied in this config? The only place left to apply paper straps would be to strap rubber banded bundles together ??

The OleMiss photo cannot be correct based on the FBI and Ingram testimony. Each of the three bundles found had rubber bands around each of them. So if there were paper straps where would they be? Around what ?  The only option would be to have bands and straps around each bundle. The Ingrams were very specific about where bands were and what was picked off (and the time it consumed doing this) on the found money.

 

FBI agents with recovered ransom money from 1963. Paper strapped and rubber banded, but not bundled. 

Edited June 5, 2023 by olemisscub

[olemisscub 461]

Agents in 74 preparing a ransom payment. In the background looks like bricked bundles from the bank. Then in the middle is the Recordex. Then in the foreground they are packaging the recorded bills into strapped packets. Don't see rubber bands on those.

 

[georger 194]

4 hours ago, olemisscub said:

Agents in 74 preparing a ransom payment. In the background looks like bricked bundles from the bank. Then in the middle is the Recordex. Then in the foreground they are packaging the recorded bills into strapped packets. Don't see rubber bands on those.

 

Ok. agents I spoke with wrong ....

The Ingrams were wrong ...

The size of the bands used on the Cooper bundles or packages is unknown and not recoverable ... what ?  I dont think Tom ever published the actual size? 

Thanks OleMiss for the photo showing how the Cooper money was actually packaged !

Did the Cooper Thingy actually happen ?

All that remains is for OleMiss to tell us who Cooper was if it really happened ?

Edited June 6, 2023 by georger

[georger 194]

NEW GLITCH! 

Nobody knows the actual size of bands used on the Cooper money! Nobody asked the bank!

So people make up whatever you want.   

[JAGdb 68]

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/23768484-d-b-cooper-and-flight-305-crossing-the-columbia

The latest from Dr. Edwards...

He proposes that the hijacker and/or some portion of the money leave the plane at about 8:14pm where he has the plane over the southern bank of the Colombia River as it passed over PIA.

So again, it still doesn't seem as though he is altering the path of the plane so much as he is playing with where the plane was on the flight path during the timeline...and oh yeah moving the pressure bump and jump time to no earlier than 8:14pm.  I need to read it a couple more times to make sure I understand what he is saying...

Edited June 7, 2023 by JAGdb

[georger 194]

Engineer, B.W. at Alliance Rubber has fielded many calls about rubber bands since his company was identified years ago as having supplied rubber bands to SeaFirst Bank, which may have been used to bundle Cooper bills. So he was prepared when I called today and we had a productive discussion.

 Bands supplied to Sea First by Alliance Rubber, presumably used to bundle bills in the Cooper hijacking, were probably Telecrepe Gold® bands (so named for their amber color). These bands come in three sizes: 31/2 ”L x 1/16, 1/8, or 1/4 inch wide. All of these sizes were being supplied to SeaFirst and used in their vault area for bundling bills at the time of the hijacking. These bands have a particular formulation with very high rubber content resulting in an ideal stretch vs strength combination as well as distinctive amber color. These bands are for office use and do not age well outside in nature. 

Alliance engineer B.W. said that Telecrepe Gold® bands enter a gooey stage (melt transition phase) when temperatures exceed 90F or due to UV exposure. They become very sticky (like Amber tree resin), and stick to paper money fibers, or anything else in their surroundings during their gooey stage, prior to crystallizing and drying out.

I read the engineer Pat Ingram’s description of the bands and picking off pieces of bands stuck to some bills with some band fragments actually pulling pieces of bill paper off with them, and the engineer remarked: “This is exactly how Telecrepe Gold Bands would act after having gone through a melt transition phase, then dried adhering to the paper bill. ”

BW added: "If you ever get a sample of those Cooper bands, I would love to analyze them, to confirm if they were our Telecrepe Gold® bands.

Edited June 7, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

14 hours ago, JAGdb said:

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/23768484-d-b-cooper-and-flight-305-crossing-the-columbia

The latest from Dr. Edwards...

He proposes that the hijacker and/or some portion of the money leave the plane at about 8:14pm where he has the plane over the southern bank of the Colombia River as it passed over PIA.

So again, it still doesn't seem as though he is altering the path of the plane so much as he is playing with where the plane was on the flight path during the timeline...and oh yeah moving the pressure bump and jump time to no earlier than 8:14pm.  I need to read it a couple more times to make sure I understand what he is saying...

305 was nowhere near the Columbia at 8:14. They were actually close to Battle Ground around 8:14 

Doc is a good guy and I've communicated with him privately a great deal, but his attempts to move the plane farther south are just completely flawed. 

His claim that 305 was over Battle Ground at 8:11 is based on a single erroneous log entry where an individual, Stuart McClelland, was listening in on the radio comms wrote that they were 23 miles south of BG at 8:18. Everyone else who was taking notes in the SAME room wrote down 8:22 for that particular timestamp. The 8:22 timestamp for 23 miles south of BG also lines up with Soderlind's calculations using the Air Force's data. 

8:18 is an outlier in every sense that something can be an outlier. You cannot (or should not) base the entire premise of a work on an outlier. 

Also, as a practical matter, why in the world would Cooper have jumped right over, or even near, a city of 400k people? Cooper didn't know precisely where he was but if he still been on the aircraft as they passed over Vancouver he'd have known that it was Vancouver/Portland beneath him. 

 

[Robert99 37]

38 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

305 was nowhere near the Columbia at 8:14. They were actually close to Battle Ground around 8:14 

Doc is a good guy and I've communicated with him privately a great deal, but his attempts to move the plane farther south are just completely flawed. 

His claim that 305 was over Battle Ground at 8:11 is based on a single erroneous log entry where an individual, Stuart McClelland, was listening in on the radio comms wrote that they were 23 miles south of BG at 8:18. Everyone else who was taking notes in the SAME room wrote down 8:22 for that particular timestamp. The 8:22 timestamp for 23 miles south of BG also lines up with Soderlind's calculations using the Air Force's data. 

8:18 is an outlier in every sense that something can be an outlier. You cannot (or should not) base the entire premise of a work on an outlier. 

Also, as a practical matter, why in the world would Cooper have jumped right over, or even near, a city of 400k people? Cooper didn't know precisely where he was but if he still been on the aircraft as they passed over Vancouver he'd have known that it was Vancouver/Portland beneath him. 

 

Olemiss, contrary to your claim the 8:18 PM time is the time that the airline crew radioed the ARINC facility that they were 23 DME nautical miles south of the Portland VORTAC (now the Battleground VORTAC). 

Some personnel, but not everyone, at the NWA facility at SEATAC were plugged into a phone patch with the ARINC facility and were talking directly with the flight crew at 8:18 so that time is valid.

Normally, the ARINC facility passed messages from aircraft crews to their airline through a teletype network.  After getting the radio message, the ARINC personnel would have to "format" (their term) the message and type it into the teletype system.  The time that the teletype message was sent was automatically entered at the end of the message when the typist pushed the "send" button.

So the 8:22 time shown on the teletype copy of this exchange is the time it was sent.  But the airliner was at the 23 DME mark at 8:18.

The above has been pointed out numerous times over the last 14 years so it is nothing new.  Just a simple explanation of something some people don't seem to understand.

[olemisscub 461]

30 minutes ago, Robert99 said:

Olemiss, contrary to your claim the 8:18 PM time is the time that the airline crew radioed the ARINC facility that they were 23 DME nautical miles south of the Portland VORTAC (now the Battleground VORTAC). 

Some personnel, but not everyone, at the NWA facility at SEATAC were plugged into a phone patch with the ARINC facility and were talking directly with the flight crew at 8:18 so that time is valid.

Normally, the ARINC facility passed messages from aircraft crews to their airline through a teletype network.  After getting the radio message, the ARINC personnel would have to "format" (their term) the message and type it into the teletype system.  The time that the teletype message was sent was automatically entered at the end of the message when the typist pushed the "send" button.

So the 8:22 time shown on the teletype copy of this exchange is the time it was sent.  But the airliner was at the 23 DME mark at 8:18.

The above has been pointed out numerous times over the last 14 years so it is nothing new.  Just a simple explanation of something some people don't seem to understand.

so why are the timestamps in McClelland's, Griffin's, and Lowenthal's all in sync for all the other important events? They all have 8:05 for attempting to contact hijacker. Timestamps at 8:00 and 8:02 are consistent among all three. They are even back in sync AFTER the discrepancy. McClelland and Lowenthal have 8:30 for Soderlind suggesting that Tina try to communicate with Cooper. 

So what gives?

[georger 194]

2 hours ago, olemisscub said:

305 was nowhere near the Columbia at 8:14. They were actually close to Battle Ground around 8:14 

Doc is a good guy and I've communicated with him privately a great deal, but his attempts to move the plane farther south are just completely flawed. 

His claim that 305 was over Battle Ground at 8:11 is based on a single erroneous log entry where an individual, Stuart McClelland, was listening in on the radio comms wrote that they were 23 miles south of BG at 8:18. Everyone else who was taking notes in the SAME room wrote down 8:22 for that particular timestamp. The 8:22 timestamp for 23 miles south of BG also lines up with Soderlind's calculations using the Air Force's data. 

8:18 is an outlier in every sense that something can be an outlier. You cannot (or should not) base the entire premise of a work on an outlier. 

Also, as a practical matter, why in the world would Cooper have jumped right over, or even near, a city of 400k people? Cooper didn't know precisely where he was but if he still been on the aircraft as they passed over Vancouver he'd have known that it was Vancouver/Portland beneath him. 

 

Also, as a practical matter, why in the world would Cooper have jumped right over, or even near, a city of 400k people? Cooper didn't know precisely where he was but if he still been on the aircraft as they passed over Vancouver he'd have known that it was Vancouver/Portland beneath him.

If he knew the geography of Tacoma-Seattle from the air and relative time-distance, he sure as hell knew where the Columbia River and Portland-Vancouver was with some sense of ground time!

Alliance Rubber points out that the bands on the money are a clock - recover the bands and you recover a clock and potential history of a place and time. It may sound far fetched but, there may be a piece of melt transition Crepe-Gold(R) band with a diatom from a specific place and time attached to it, waiting to be be discovered ? The money and bands got into the Columbia system somehow, at some specific place and time with some relationship to the flight path and time. It must have been a warm day 90+F on some beach, with lots of UV ? The flight path must put all of these ingredients together.  

The Brian Ingram and Globe Ins evidence folders they were given may have rubber band remnants in them just sitting waiting to be examined ? I tried to tell Brian Ingram that years ago but he didnt have the faintest idea what I was talking about...

Edited June 7, 2023 by georger

[olemisscub 461]

55 minutes ago, georger said:

 

If he knew the geography of Tacoma-Seattle from the air and relative time-distance, he sure as hell knew where the Columbia River and Portland-Vancouver was with some sense of ground time!

Yes, this is why I think he jumped where he jumped. He wasn't a complete halfwit so I think just by common sense and dead reckoning he understood that they would have been nearing Vancouver/Portland at the time of his jump. No one in their right mind (even a mad hijacker) would want to jump over a huge city but you also don't want to jump too far into the wilderness. It's my understanding from talking recently on the phone with Jim McClellan (the pilot of the "mysterious light aircraft" from the night of the hijacking) that even on a heavily clouded night in 1971 you could begin to see the glow of V/P from 10k feet starting around the Lewis River area.  So Cooper wants to jump close enough to civilization to have a successful getaway, but not close enough to civilization where he lands on top of a cop car at a four way stop.

This was McNally's thought process. He said he looked down and saw some evidence of civilization but not TOO much. So he felt comfortable jumping in that location. With multiple layers of cloud cover, Cooper was only able to go off the glow of city lights to determine what was beneath him. McClellan said that Battle Ground would have been the first place south of the Lewis River that had enough glow to be visible through multiple layers of cloud cover. 

[georger 194]

34 minutes ago, olemisscub said:

Yes, this is why I think he jumped where he jumped. He wasn't a complete halfwit so I think just by common sense and dead reckoning he understood that they would have been nearing Vancouver/Portland at the time of his jump. No one in their right mind (even a mad hijacker) would want to jump over a huge city but you also don't want to jump too far into the wilderness. It's my understanding from talking recently on the phone with Jim McClellan (the pilot of the "mysterious light aircraft" from the night of the hijacking) that even on a heavily clouded night in 1971 you could begin to see the glow of V/P from 10k feet starting around the Lewis River area.  So Cooper wants to jump close enough to civilization to have a successful getaway, but not close enough to civilization where he lands on top of a cop car at a four way stop.

This was McNally's thought process. He said he looked down and saw some evidence of civilization but not TOO much. So he felt comfortable jumping in that location. With multiple layers of cloud cover, Cooper was only able to go off the glow of city lights to determine what was beneath him. McClellan said that Battle Ground would have been the first place south of the Lewis River that had enough glow to be visible through multiple layers of cloud cover. 

I agree. Cooper preparing early before they have even taken off at SEA almost guarantees that he wants to jump soon, between SEA and PDX, and probably as close to PDX as possible. I think the pilots expected that based on what Cooper was doing. I think this so-called uncertainty over him leaving, is myth. LE and the pilots in particular had lost control of the situation the minute the plane was airborne but they were reluctant to admit that openly. I think the 'uncertainty' is sour grapes! If Cooper landed alive and uninjured he has decisions to make or a plan to execute. But LE did not have the manpower to cover all possible options. It takes until 1980 for any evidence to surface whatever it tells us, which is nothing !     

Edited June 7, 2023 by georger