G_Jones

I enjoy reading your articles at The Mountain News and am appreciative that persons are willing to continue to investigate the Cooper story. But I must disagree on some of your article - the one that states "That level of sophisticated sleuthing suggests that Al Di is either an FBI agent or connected to the Bureau and its Cooper investigation" - or that the video is "well financed" and has "high production values". I don't know anything about Al Di or what he has communicated other than what I see on his web site, but a quick glance at the black & white version of the letter reveals one of the most recognizable typefaces in branding history. I would think a large portion of non-sleuths would pick out the source right away. I know I instantly did the first time I saw that letter. Certainly I could never forget first stumbling across a stack of these things in the back of a dusty garage at a tender young age. PDF archives of scans of the entire run of this famous publication are locatable online within a few minutes of searching, and it is trivial to extract the images. It would take only a few minutes to pick out the source issues used for the letter, as they would most likely from an issue or issues of the magazine within a couple years or few months preceding the time the letter was sent. It might take a bored young person an hour to re-create the letter in photoshop or freeware photo editing software, and the same for the "video" using freeware desktop video software. It would require merely laying out the graphics and text on a timeline, and adding in the narration voiceover using an inexpensive microphone plugged into a stock soundcard. Total budget required for this project if using freeware editing software, (not counting the cost of one average home PC built in the last ten years) $20 for domain name registration with registration privacy service, and $3 monthly or even free web hosting. (statscrop.com analysis of the site reveals other web customers hosted at that IP address. It's apparently a hosting reseller based account so it probably is literally a $3-$4 hosting company if not free) In my opinion the site and video are something that an average high school student could cook up in an afternoon. Certainly the grammar and abuse of capitalization on the site is atrocious. The html itself is simple and looks as if hand coded in notepad, although the author was at least savvy enough to include index-able keyword entries for search engines.

I believe it's the highest grossing D.B. Cooper related motion picture property of all time, taking almost seventy million dollars internationally. Despite the infamous human feces flinging sequence, critics were generally not kind toward the film, although it does rank as one of the most commercially successful films in the career of Burt Reynolds. BoxOfficeMojo.com lists it as being #16 on the list of all time top films in the "Treasure Hunt" genre, outranking such cinematic gems as Muppet Treasure Island and Gold Diggers: Secret of Bear Mountain.

It appears to be the pet project of the particular director, a long time television producer whose film directorial output has been moderately budgeted semi-raunchy fluff comedies. How the subject of D.B. Cooper would fit into that mold is a little baffling, but there must be some angle on things specific to Gray's book. The director is also attached to four or five other projects in development of light comedy fare, not unusual as only a percentage of optioned material ever makes it past the development and script stage. The phrase "action-comedy" comes direct from the original press release at CBS films. I would guess based on the director's pedigree that if it ever actually mad it into production, the end result would bear as little resemblance to reality as previous Hollywood fare that referenced Cooper such as "The Pursuit of DB Cooper" or "Without a Paddle". As somebody who follows this thread out of sheer fascination on the topic, I thought this sufficiently weird enough to mention here.

CBS Films Acquires ‘Skyjack: The Hunt For D.B. Cooper’ For Will Gluck To Direct By MIKE FLEMING | Wednesday June 13, 2012 @ 1:05pm EDT EXCLUSIVE: Easy A helmer Will Gluck is at the center of a deal that CBS Films is making for the bestselling Geoffrey Gray novel Skyjack: The Hunt For D.B. Cooper, which was published by Crown. Gluck is in talks to direct and produce via his Olive Bridge banner, and Keith Bunin will write the script. Bunin scripted episodes of the HBO series In Treatment, and is writing for Universal and Illumination Entertainment a live-action film about the life of Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) as a vehicle for Johnny Depp to star in and produce. The Skyjack novel is an action-comedy that follows the story of D.B. Cooper, who on November 24, 1971, hijacked a Boeing 727, demanded $200,000 and parachutes, and jumped out over the Pacific Northwest. He was never caught and hailed as a folk hero. The book tracks his story from the perspectives of three different people claiming to be him. Gluck most recently co-wrote, directed and produced Friends With Benefits, the romantic comedy that starred Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. He is in the middle of a Sony Pictures deal for movies and series, and this is a rare project outside that arrangement. Gluck is repped by UTA. Bunin is repped by Kaplan/Perrone and CAA, and CAA reps the author as well. CBS Films execs Maria Faillace and Mark Ross are overseeing the film. For CBS Films, which has made acquisitions a big part of its slate, it becomes another filmmaker-driven homegrown project, much like the upcoming Seven Psychopaths by In Bruges helmer Martin McDonagh. http://www.deadline.com/2012/06/cbs-films-acquires-skyjack-the-hunt-for-d-b-cooper-for-will-gluck-to-direct/

Maybe Blevins should publish Marla's book. A small run. Nobody else is likely to publish it. Perhaps it is fiction but at least she would work tirelessly to promote it.

I doubt it will take much thread-pulling for Marla's story to unravel. This LD person is probably the least convincing suspect ever suggested anywhere in this entire thread or its predecessor thread. Marla's story was amusing at first even though clearly baloney from day one, but it has been a few months now. I would like to see the case actually solved someday, so if this person is going to continue to waste the time of investigators, FBI, witnesses, etc, by pressing on with this then at this point she may actually be hindering the investigation.

The identity of D.B. Cooper remains a mystery, and no new clues have turned up. Evidence is still vague and inconclusive. The FBI has turned up nothing new. The flight path is still in question. The only living witnesses have given no new information. Nobody knows how the money arrived at Tena Bar, or how long it may have been there.

What about a bag full of money that may have been tightly bound, and never even opened? Cooper had to secure the bag somehow before the jump. Maybe no loose stacks of money were ever floating free in the water. The money could have remained in the bag, over time fusing together, until the whole bag was torn open in the dredging process, leaving behind only one chunk of bills. *Speculation disclaimer* Even if this is true, just sitting in the water for an extended length of time could cause the bills to absorb water and spread a bit. The violent action of dredging could also easily mis-align the bills. How did three bundles end up in the same spot with nothing else found? If they were in the bag, where is it? If the bag dropped into the river while Cooper was still falling, they would have drifted with the river for at least a short distance and gotten wet. Again...the water problem and alignment, as Kaye says. If Cooper went into the river as a no-pull, where are the chutes, his body, the briefcase, and the remainder of the money? Going into the Columbia has been argued by many, but then this idea doesn't jive with the most popular point of egress. Rataczak has said he was sure Cooper jumped some flying minutes north of Vancouver. How MANY minutes is also open to debate. Six to eight minutes has been tossed around a lot, which makes it approximately 18-21 miles at least. Don't quote me. Ask Sluggo. The money at Tena Bar is quite a ways from the probable (there is dispute here) jump point. If so, how did the bills travel so far? By water? Kaye has addressed that issue. Maybe he's right. It's so simple, and yet it makes sense. He says it only took a few minutes in the water for the bills to spread when he did his catch-and-release experiment. So why are the bundles at Tena Bar in perfect alignment? It's hard to get around this. I don't know where Cooper jumped or where his chute ended up. I don't know how the money would get to Tena Bar if Cooper didn't survive. I'm not suggesting he landed in the Columbia as that seems unlikely; but that the money may have ended up in the river somehow, still inside the bag. I do know that three bundles turned up in the same place, and it seems very unlikely that the money arrived there by floating as separate loose bundles. Somebody had to place them there together, or they arrived there by some means other than floating loose. If not a person or animal, I don't know what else other than the dredging process could have put them there. It would be nice if that could be ruled out as a possibility. I've seen the video where Tom puts a single bundle of bills on a fishing line. They quickly fan out and sink, not really a huge surprise. But if bundles of bills were wrapped and tied in a bag, they may not be able to fan out. I would think under the circumstances, most or all of the bundles and bills, if tightly packed together, would remain pressed and stuck together until the bag was disrupted by something or disintegrated completely. I don't have any idea as to how much the dredging process would chew things up, but three stacks of bills clumped together isn't a very large object. If stuck together for a long time, rotting clumps of bills might make it through dredging without being misaligned. The rest of the money may have been in tiny pieces, and those pieces and the bag parts may have been left on the riverbank to wash away for a considerable amount of time before the remaining money was found and anyone would be specifically searching.

What about a bag full of money that may have been tightly bound, and never even opened? Cooper had to secure the bag somehow before the jump. Maybe no loose stacks of money were ever floating free in the water. The money could have remained in the bag, over time fusing together, until the whole bag was torn open in the dredging process, leaving behind only one chunk of bills.

Well, lets just wait and see what the 40th Anniversary brings. I just got back from one of Mr. Gray's readings, it was fun and interesting, but no cheesecake. Jo and Duane came up a few times! Now to read the book (which does list cheesecake in the index). My main question for Geoff was wondering if he'd gotten the impression from looking through the FBI files that they might be holding back anything of significance, but he didn't seem to think that was the case.

It was just a hand written recipe on a small spiral note book page tucked inside of one the 2 books that Weber placed on my shelf in 1990. Totally insignificant unless it was written by Tina or one of her family members. It was found in the same book that had Tina's picture in it. Is Gray's book advancing the theory that Tina gave Cooper a cheesecake recipe? Has the FBI tested any cheesecakes to see if they match?

A lot of noise is made about how Cooper wore loafers and that they would have blown off immediately, adding weight to the idea he had no idea he was doing if he wore loafers for a jump. However, the only detailed eyewitness description of footwear available to the public that I know of, Tina's, states "...brown socks, brown ankle length pebble grain shoes, not the tie type..." Maybe I am misinterpreting ankle length as meaning the shoe covers the ankle. I suppose it could mean below the ankle, but why mention "ankle length" at all then? Also, just from Tina's description, it isn't entirely clear that "not the tie type" is in reference to the shoes, and not to to Cooper; as in Cooper himself did not seem to Tina as being "the tie type". The "ankle length shoes" could be basically short dress boots. They may not be beefy jump boots, but certainly they would not appear out of place with a suit and tie and also less likely to blow off in a high speed jet exit than loafers. Cooper is seated a lot of the time when talking with Tina, even with shoes above the ankles his brown socks might still be visible. Perhaps in the questioning of the crew, more detail was revealed about the shoes that specifically identifies them as loafers, or the whole loafers bit could simply be as incorrect as the idea that Cooper asked specifically for twenty dollar bills.

It has taken me several days to read through all the messages in this thread, and the previous DB Cooper thread here. It may have caused me permanant damage. I am completely flabbergasted. This incident was the perfect storm of ambiguity. Every media article or video on the subject seems to contradict the basic facts in the transcripts and available crew interviews. Statements about Cooper from the FBI about what they suspect his experience was don't even match up to the persons that they chose to investigate. Whatever information is being held back, can't be of much value. It seems madness to try and make any sense of any of this. But I am left wondering a few things, and apologies if this information was already presented or discussed here: What happened to the report from Tom Kaye on the test results from Tena Bar? Did I somehow miss it? There's no mention of the investigation at all on his web site. Why else would Cooper take the paper bag into the lavatory with him if it didn't contain essential supplies that he didn't want to be separated from? If a rig is found, is Earl Cossey the only living person who can positively identify it? If he was never sure of what chute was inside the reserve in the first place, how could he verify it anyway? Could the seemingly common name Dan Cooper have been taken from the starring secret agent role in this 1966 Italian film? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377334/ Were any clues found in the orifices of the exhumed dog? Or did I miss that as well.

I suppose one major problem would be, if it wasn't investigated at the time (and maybe it was), it would be probably near impossible to expend the resources on such a potentially broad search many years later. Also, I'm not sure how much even a retired SA could do to to stir things up without some irrefutable piece of evidence.

I agree that it seems to make sense that he would have known the area. Add that with his choice of chutes and a picture is emerging. Seems logical, but what if those assumptions are wrong? What if the part about recognizing Tacoma from the air isn't as clear or as significant as it seems? If Cooper overheard a passenger mention it or guessed from seeing it on a map? The FBI was investigating people based on what might seem to make obvious sense, maybe they were looking for the wrong person due to making the wrong assumptions. Those being that he was a jumper at some point, probably ex-military, some kind of aviation experience, and that he knew the area. He could have been all those things and still off the radar somehow, but there's no actual proof of any of these things, they are just guesses, so they could all be wrong. All he factually needed to know about the plane, somebody could have told him. Jump from a 727, make sure it is flying low and slow, and watch out for air marshals. I do think if Cooper was from or knew the area well, even with fog he'd have an idea where he was jumping, at least from lights from the interstate and the glow from Vancouver and Portland. If Cooper was a pilot then he'd probably have a very good idea where he was. That efficiency and confidence makes it seem like he'd done this kind of thing before, not a hijacking, but some kind of planned crime. Clearly he knew what he was doing up to a certain point, but that may not mean he was a skydiver or spent much time in the air. He sure didn't want to reveal much. Maybe he was also masking a regional accent by saying little.