olemisscub

The truth is an absolute defense against slander. Is what Blevins said true or not?

That's funny lol

This is what mine looks like.

Chris Cunningham and I did a show last night for anyone interested. Also available on the DB Cooper Sleuth podcast on all apps.

Mac's opinion, since I've began speaking to him regularly, is that Cooper was just a thief, same as he was. A smarter thief than himself, he will admit, but still just a thief. It was just a "clever bank robbery", in other words.

Well, I'm not saying Cooper was completely without the ability to think about things in a clever way. He very obviously had divergent thinking to be able to come up with the heist. Spilling his drink on purpose seems a bit too much for me to believe in. However, I do think the timing of when he passed the note was something he did no purpose. Rataczak said that he received Tina's call literally while Scott was still pulling back on the yoke. They were essentially rolling down the runway as Cooper began the hijacking. I've considered that this was done on purpose because the noise and distraction of takeoff would have covered what he was saying to Flo. Consider that Bill remembers seeing Flo sitting next to Cooper writing something down but couldn't hear what was being said, despite the fact that Flo and Cooper were less than five feet away from him. So perhaps the engine noise during takeoff and climbing were to cover the conversation. Tina did say that Cooper was whispering to her for much of the time they were talking, but Flo didn't indicate that Cooper was whispering when speaking to her.

Jeez, what a glowing review. Who do I make the check out to? lol

I'd argue that you're overthinking it. I try not to ascribe Cooper with the ability to play 4D Chess. What if Flo had change for him right then and there? I don't see the need to create extra scenarios with Flo. It's likely he knew the stews would be sitting in their jump seats directly behind him once the plane began to taxi to the runway. Recall that she was already sitting down in her jump seat when Cooper passed her the note. She said she had been buckled for about 30 seconds when it occurred. So he really never needed to have any superfluous interactions with her. Also, I don't believe Flo was ever aware that he spilled his drink. Seems like something she'd have mentioned in her 302. I believe that Cooper had already downed his drink by the time he spilled it. I speculate that all he spilled was the ice that remained, which of course is pretty easy to clean up yourself. No need to get a stewardess involved.

Show I did with Tom last night.

I've just PM'd you.

Yes, she got into it while dating Jim Hancock. Interestingly, Jim would eventually be the one at NWA who calculated Cooper’s descent for the DZ. She ended up getting a pilot’s license too.

Larry is mistaken. This was before the Citizen Sleuths showed up and measured how much of the shroud lines were missing. It was something close to 100 feet that Cooper had cut. I think he had plenty of line to do what he wanted.

I believe he only ever cut on the one reserve. I think he avoided the dummy chute. It obviously didn't look right and I doubt he wanted it near him, which is why I think he chunked it out the back at some point in between Seattle and Portland. But I have had the same questions you've had about it. When you read through her 302's it does make you wonder whether he also tampered with the dummy chute, but upon further reading it doesn't seem so. As for Alice, she had actually been skydiving before the Cooper hijacking. Would be interesting to know what she actually said to Cooper about the parachutes.

This was fun

That is Cooper's chute, 100%. It has the same packing date as the museum chute, which squares with Hayden getting them from Cossey.

Cossey never supplied the serial numbers. FBI asked him multiple times and he never did. We have an image of the packing card from the “museum chute” i.e. the backpack that he didn’t take. We also have the packing card from the backpack that he took, the “Cooper chute”. That packing card was found on the aircraft. I’ve pasted the info from the Cooper chute onto the photo of the museum chute’s packing card.

Just my personal opinion here, of course, but I suspect we're overplaying the 'grudge' line. Having prosecuted criminals for years and also defending them for years, most of them can try to justify their misdeeds by blaming someone else. So they all could claim they had a grudge if they wanted to. It's a bit of a useless clue because it could be literally anything. Maybe he was pissed at airlines for taking money away from railroads, or maybe he was pissed because the SST project was shut down, or maybe he was a supporter of the American Indian Movement and was pissed about that whole deal, or maybe it was just something simple and personal like that he had a grudge against his ex-wife who took the kids in the divorce. There's no way it can be an informative clue for us, in my opinion. I've also said before that maybe it was just something cool sounding to say in response to "why did you pick Northwest Airlines to hijack?" It sounded cool as opposed to saying "I hijacked your airline because I'm a dirty thief."

Ich schatze das!

Yes, I really, really don't like that narrative for the hijacking. It's especially nonsensical because the government did NOT want to be paying for airline security. The government wanted it to be the responsibility of the individual airlines to pay for additional security measures. So, saying the deep state was involved is silly to me because they had no incentive. This was a clever bank robbery, that's all. That said, I think there is a very, very real possibility that Cooper was CIA adjacent at some point in his life, likely through Air America. He fits the mold very well of their middle aged renegade pilots who flew in Vietnam. As I said in the show, I came across a news article from 1972 where a guy said the average age of Air America pilots was 43 years old. These guys were mercenaries. They risked their lives for profit. So, Cooper would have been used to this sort of dangerous game. The fact that Air America dropped men and material out of 727's with 15 degree flaps and gear down is almost too coincidental to believe.

Skip is a solid suspect.

Latest Vault release might be the very first Vault release where there was literally nothing of value in it.

In case anyone is interested in watching tonight...

Looked into him. He did have an arrest in 1963 for assaulting a couple of Sheriff's deputies, but nothing else stood out. The main hesitation for me to consider anyone who was an actual recreational skydiver is that Cooper would have brought his own chute if he was one of them. I've not spoken to any skydivers on the topic who would have trusted random chutes given to them. We can see it play out with our two copycats who were actual skydivers, McCoy and Heady. Both of them brought their own chutes with them. Cooper may have had a few freefalls (I suspect he did), but I don't think he was into skydiving enough to own personal gear, otherwise he'd have smuggled it on board like McCoy and Heady did.