Math of Insects

Nice work, @olemisscub.

I do think "Synchronicity" still holds up.

Just a wild guess, but was it "Mamma"?

Well, here we in are in the future. We know the FBI canvassed hotels. Maybe they talked to this guy, who knows? But clearly they did not find anything he had to say worthy of pursuing. Larry Carr says the FBI does not have the supposed registration card (but they still might, of course, and it's just not filed correctly). The guy himself would have imagined himself in the middle of this very large story, and he somehow never mentioned it again either--even after sending this letter. The only way it's been mentioned in any context is through the person you are saying is unreliable (and is). So one way or another, all roads lead to it being a non-starter.

For what it's worth, here's Jo talking about this in 2008, and hard-confirming that the entire event happened on the night before Thanksgiving. In other words, during the time that the hijacker would have been in the plane. I bolded and asterisked below. It's a non-starter.

Also…the guy’s name is John Collins, and the clerk strikes up a conversation because a drink exists named the “Tom Collins”? And they talked about this for a bit—about how the guy’s name is different from another thing that exists in the world? Did they also talk about Judy Collins and Bud Collins and Fort Collins Colorado? Yeah, nah.

Right, right, the default from the book. Guess what? Not Duane. Random business guy checking in and checking out of a hotel, if anyone at all. This letter can be safely disregarded IMO.

The context of the letter makes pretty clear it was made many years later. Otherwise the writer wouldn't need to say that "check in procedures were much different than they are now." But the whole thing doesn't make sense. He already confirmed in real time that his guy looked like the "sketches" that the FBI showed him. (Were there multiple sketches by the middle of Thanksgiving Day? I thought it was just Bing Crosby at that point.) If his Rodeway Warrior looked like Bing, he did not look like Duane. Plus by the late 90's he would have had almost 30 years of DB Cooper drawings and suspects to compare his memory to. He wouldn't need to see Duane to go, "AHA! That guy! I remember the whole thing now!" Also, come on. As of Thanksgiving, 1971, this guy is 100% convinced he chatted with the guy who went on to be history's most high-profile skyjacker, and he never says anything about it for 30 years? Or ever again after that letter? As far as he knew he would have been central to the story. Yet somehow it took Jo talking about Duane 30 years later to put it all together for him? FBI shows him his guest, he says, "That's the guy!" and never gives any part of it another thought?? He wasn't knocking down the FBI's door for 30 years trying to make sure he was listened to? Meh. This is obviously one of several kinds of bullshit. If some guy who looked like Bing Crosby spent the night there, he was clearly some guy checking into a hotel and checking out the next day, asking completely normal questions about the place. But because bullshit tends to attract more bullshit, I'm inclined to say that even that part is not real. The guy just heard Jo getting some minor notorieity and wanted to hop on the train for a minute, for any of a few different reasons, "innocent" to not-so-much. She "helped" him remember some of the details, and a letter and fake-lead were born.

At least to see if she capitalized and quoted "THANKSGIVING DAY." Anyway, her memory lines up with the letter--the guest was from the previous night--the night before "THANKSGIVING DAY." That wasn't Cooper, then.

Pretty amazing that her "memory" of what he told her, turns out to be the exact and only information in that letter that somehow she was the only one in possession of. I'ma have to call bullshit on this one.

Also, the way that letter is written, it sounds like the FBI somehow knew about this guest. That seems very far-fetched. How would she even have known to tell anyone? It wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary until there was a hijacking to reflect on. Given that the letter uses the same name that Jo mentioned, is there some chance she is the source of it? I sort of think there is.

"Asked me questions about my sign-in guest the night before." It's unambiguous, IMO--the FBI arrived on Thanksgiving day to ask about the guest of the previous night.

"Early evening" and "the night before" "THANKSGIVING DAY" would seem to disqualify this man from being Cooper, yes? Checking in in time to make the flight would be decidedly "afternoon" and she'd never refer to it as "night," and checking in after the hijacking would never be considered "early evening," unless the parachute brought him to the motel parking lot minutes after the jump. Even then, though...8:30pm in the winter is not early evening. And he'd be wet and weathered and would not look like air crew. This feels like someone's wishful thinking, like the Elsinore suspect. Is there any chance Jo wrote it? It's from many years later, it appears.

There are a couple of ways to read the "won't be taken alive" comment, but both of them include the element of Cooper setting out on what he was aware would likely be his last endeavor on earth--and if the bomb was real, one that also involved bringing others down with him. While we're a little desensitized to this these days, that's a very, very desperate and unique mindset. IMO it's always been the strongest argument against some of the most commonly suggested suspects. This was, as far as he knew, likely the day his life ended. If he also knew the bomb was real, then he also knew he was the day he killed many others too...aka, mass murder. This is a crucial element that I think we sometimes gloss over. It's hard to get from that guy to living peacefully on a San Diego boat or playing tennis and writing letters to the editor or really any continued life of unremarkability. Only in the movies is "Wednesday" a terrorist event and "Thursday" and ever after playing Go Fish at the table with the nieces and nephews. The arc of history would not bend toward normalcy for that guy.

Thank you. There is a lot of magical thinking around this aspect. First of all, if he did not survive the freefall (i.e., if his chute did not open), the result is not like in the movies. There's not some intact body just lying there waiting to be found. If you remember when David Letterman used to drop things off a 5-story building, you have a pretty good idea what happens to objects in motion on impact with immovable forces. Cooper fell from far more than 5 stories. Bodies are not tougher than ground. That's all I'll say about that part. Second of all, it's the woods. Go into the woods right now, and toss a shoe somewhere. Then go back in a month and try to find it. Then go back in a year. Then go back in five years. Would you even need to continue the experiment to know what you'd find in FIFTY years?

VP is due an apology. That man should have been allowed to rest in peace and his family should have been allowed to have his memory be whatever it was for them. I hate for them that their father/grandfather etc is now forever internet-associated with something he so comically obviously had not a thing do with. MV can at least have a case built for him if you start with the tie evidence as gospel and the presumptions made from it as sound. I think the water leaks from the case on the tie particles, the presumptions made from them, and getting him on the plane for a suicidal/murderous terrorist mission after which he went back to a life of bored op-ed writing. Those are some pretty big leaks and I've relayed my thoughts about them privately. But if you go with certain assumptions, I can see how they might lead you to MV as a box to check, and the fact that he looks like the pictures certainly doesn't hurt once you get there. He's fun to consider, and if his family doesn't care, there is at least some justification as to why he's being (temporarily) looked at.

Any conclusions that rely on the investigative and analytical skills of Eric Ulis should be considered to be somewhere between Wrong and Comically Wrong.

Some of this could also have been bluster. It might have been him being tough about “no funny stuff,” and also just being wrong in this case.

Dead wrong. He drifted in the wind and landed in Pittsburgh. He hid the money safely away and forgot about it because no one steals money they need, only money it would be fun to die trying to acquire. Then years later it was all over the national news that a little stretch of a local river 3,000 miles away might flood. So he took the money from its safe hiding place and headed off to the exact place he would have landed if the wind hadn’t carried him to PA. No one looks for a criminal at the crime scene! He looked for the perfect section of four-foot-deep water to bury the 1.5 mil under, because that’s the safest and most logical place to bury the fortune you risked your life to acquire and have had safely hidden ever since. Using self-fabricated SCUBA gear and a shovel made out of the dreams of bored rich guys, he dug a hole in the sand of what would eventually, when the flood waters receded, be an easy spot for him to find again, because what better place to hide something than on the one strip of beach you could count on others frequenting. Once the money was safely and reliably hidden under the four feet of water, he turned the SCUBA gear into a winged horse and flew back to Pittsburgh, only three minutes late for the end of his OSHA-mandated 10-minute break. This happened on a Tuesday. It’s all in the files.

Dumb question, Georger, but: if I sit on an airplane seat in a suit, do I definitely leave DNA there? Do I do enough shedding of skin or hair cells that I am absolutely going to be among the samples collected, or could I sit there for a whole flight and never be among the samples found? If I definitely do, is it possible to tell--based on...intensity?? Amount??--who the "most recent" entries might be to a sample that contains multiple contributors? Or could all that DNA potentially be from skin cells shed decades before?

Once "deep state" enters the conversation, all reason leaves. Anything that doesn't line up is because "they" are fooling you and you're a sucker for believing it. It's the same as the "eye-witnesses can be wrong" thing. Once you go there, all bets are off, and all things are possible. Personally, Fly, I wouldn't chase anyone down that rabbit hole. If you corner them they'll just claim they were trying to make you follow them and declare victory. The guy's obviously Froot Loops. Let him get stale all on his own.

I was saying that the parachute packs may have held flares at some point. (Pre-Cooper.)

I have to be honest: I think the plant idea is largely because we live in the future and someone electron-microscoped it and now we're confused. In real time, I would not imagine someone having the foresight to know this day would come, or to guess how to get the right substances to confuse us with. I am of the belief the particles will prove to be more mundane than we give them credit for. Not that belief matters, of course. It's all guesses. Fly's theory that he may have used the tie to wipe off fingerprints is a good one. It would certainly explain particles from many different types of surfaces. The dumpster idea is also good. I've never understood why people seem so opposed to the thrift store idea, either. I've bought 98% of all the ties I've ever owned at one. In fact I've never been to a thrift store that didn't have maybe 100 ties at the end of the suit rack. Old people die and their children pass on their clothes to the thrift store. Old men have lots of ties. I'm not sure how that's even a question for some. I'd still be curious to know what would come of someone swabbing that parachute pack. That's something that would reliably be in contact with lots of airplane-related surfaces of all kinds. It might even have had flares in the mix. It's something we know Cooper was in contact with. If it were me that might even be the first place I'd check, if I had to choose one.

It's true, although it's not really a control, it's checking out a guess. Fly's will be closer. I wish we could swab the seat Cooper was in… I recall someone knowledgable saying the profile basically revealed every substance on earth and that even the outliers could be explained as aspects of other things there, so it wasn't meaningful investigatorily. I don't remember who that was, though. Is this in your realm?

All of that may be true, we don’t know. But on the other hand, if Tom tests your polyester Dacron tie, and the particle profile is exactly the same as the one he got from Cooper’s, that let us know that the particles are not as meaningful as we thought. The rest becomes moot. Anyway, we’ve beat that horse enough. We see this one differently. That’s what makes the world go round…