Could D.B. Cooper have been a French-Canadian?

Great Debates
1

(Sorry, I meant to say D.B. Cooper, but I can’t edit the title. Can the moderator help me out?)

First of all, everybody under 50 should probably go to the Wiki article about D.B. Cooper to read up about him, since you may not have a clue who he was. He is in fact one of the greatest enduring mysteries of our time. Here is the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper

It was 40 years ago yesterday, on November 24, 1971, that this oddly polite and probably non-violent man became a legend, a folk hero, and an ongoing subject of debate, by hijacking a Boeing 727 and parachuting out of the plane in flight after extorting $200,000 from the airline. The money and the parachutes were brought to him while the jet stopped to refuel. Cooper claimed to have a bomb in his briefcase.

He remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in American aviation history. Neither he, nor his body nor the money has ever been found. For all I know he may be in his 80s and reading this and laughing right now.

Although he threatened violence, he let all the passengers go when the plane landed to refuel, and then later jumped from the plane in flight leaving the entire flight crew unharmed. So he did not kill anyone or destroy property.

Why do I think he might have been French-Canadian?

Well, first I have to explain that this man never called himself D.B. Cooper. That was a journalist’s mistake in 1971. He called himself DAN COOPER to the airline. We have no idea what his real name was, of course.

So what, you ask? Well, the fact is that “Dan Cooper” is the name of a super-hero aviator in a series of comic book albums published in Belgium. These albums are still sold on the internet. See http://www.bedetheque.com/album-17534-BD-L-Integrale.html Note the parachute?

Now, these comic book albums, written and drawn beginning in 1954 in Europe by someone named Albert Weinberg, have NEVER been published in English.

Furthermore, the fictional Dan Cooper is a CANADIAN pilot in these stories.

So these stories and this fictional hero named Dan Cooper would be virtually unknown to English-speaking Americans, but were certainly sold and available in French-speaking parts of Canada in the 60s and 70s.

Another fact that has been brought up is that the hijacker Cooper said in his ransom demand that he wanted the $200,000 “in negotiable American currency”. Now, why would an American extorting money in the US from a US company feel the need to specify “negotiable American currency”?

Now it is true that nobody who spoke to him noted a French accent, but that to some extent lends credence to the idea that he was a French-Canadian. While many Quebecers speak English with a heavy accent or not at all, there ARE thousands who speak it so fluently that you would not know that English is not their mother tongue.

So we are talking about someone who read (and maybe spoke) French but was able to speak English like a North-American Anglophone. That could describe many French-Canadians.

Finally, there is the FBI sketch of the man. Now, I hate what I am going to say because I cannot stand stereotypes. French-Canadians are not a genetically homogenous group, and include blonds, redheads, brown and black hair, blue eyes, brown eyes, short and tall etc. etc.

But because many men in New France married Indian women in the early days of the colony, the slightly swarthy dark-brown-eyed look is not uncommon among modern Quebecers. Let’s just put it this way: the face on that FBI sketch seems entirely consistent with how a French-Canadian MIGHT look.

Finally, we know that Cooper was polite and friendly during the whole ordeal, and even insisted that the flight crew get their meals. So who but a Canadian would manage to be polite even when he is threatening to blow up your friggin’ plane with a bomb?

2

Done. For what it’s worth, I’ve also seen it proposed that “Cooper” might’ve been a veteran who encountered the comic in France. I think the theories are about equally strong, which is to say there’s not much evidence for either.

3

Yes, but there seems to be an actual influence of the comic book on the man’s thinking, which implies that he read it. And without meaning to insult Americans, are American soldiers that likely to read French?

4

Okay, call it confirmation bias, but the more I look at that FBI sketch, the more I get the feeling that I have seen faces just like that on the streets of Montreal, Québec City, Gatineau, etc. He just LOOKS French-Canadian to me. I know these visual stereotype notions can be very wrong. I know a big-boned blonde French-Canadian woman who is constantly told that she MUST be German. But still and all, I still get that “feeling” about the sketch. . . . . .

5

When I said he encountered it, I meant he read it, not that he just looked at the cover. And yes, considering a significant number of servicemen found themselves in France during and after World War II, I think at least a few would have learned or known some French and perhaps taken up an interest in French culture. Some people have suggested the hijacker might have had some parachuting experience and it’s possible he was old enough to have been in Europe for the war, for example. There’s about as much evidence for that as there is for the idea that he looks French Canadian, for example.

6

meh…he was actually Treat Williams in disguise.

But seriously, that’s an interesting theory. Makes at least as much sense as most of the others floating around out there. My own pet theory FWIW is that his earthly remains hung by his shroud lines from the tallest spruce on the North face of Mt. St. Helens until the morning of May 18th 1980 when they were vaporized along with what was left of the money.
SS

7

This is a strange argument from absence of evidence, but consider this. The FBI sketch was widely circulated in the media in the days following the event. Yet **NOBODY IN AMERICA **came forward with a convincing photo (remember the flight personnel had seen him clearly said the sketch was accurate) and said “I know who that is, it’s my no-good son-in-law or brother-in-law or neighbour or boss or co-worker or whatever who BTW has been missing since the day before the hijacking.”

People normally have other people who know them and would recognize them and turn them in, or at least point out that so-and-so looked like the suspect and disappeared just when the crime occurred. Even if it is just your landlord who rented you a room.

Is it possible that the people who knew this man to recognize him and report his absence could have been non-English-speaking people outside America. I am sure the Quebec media covered the story, but did they give it as much play and DID THEY RUN THE SKETCH in every case?

Or who knows if someone in Quebec might have looked at the sketch and said" Doesn’t that look a lot like Jacques down the street, and didn’t he serve a while in the US military, and we haven’t seen him since the 23. . . . . . Nah, couldn’t be him. Do you have the sports pages?"

Just sayin’. . . . . . . . .

8

The theory that he fought in WWII is unlikely. The witnesses who saw his face clearly in 1971 described a man of about 42, meaning he would have been 10 when WWII started in 1939 and maybe 15 or 16 in 1945. Even if you bumpf his age up to 45, it means he was maybe 19 when the war ended.

Action as a paratrooper in Korea is more possible, but don’t forget that Canadian troops fought in Korea as well.

9

I’ve never seen “about 42.” I’ve read that the witnesses felt the hijacker was in his mid-40s. If he was 45 in 1971, he would have been old enough to have been in the war in 1944 or 1945. I’m not saying this is the only explanation.

10

The French-Canadian theory has been around a few years. See this site.

11

Wait a minute, some of his money has been found along the banks of the Columbia. You can even buy pieces of it.

Every time I fly out of PDX I think about Ol’ DB.

12

Yes, some of the money was found apparently buried by sediment along the banks of the Columbia. A very small proportion of the money.“In February 1980 an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram, vacationing with his family on the Columbia River about 9 miles (15 km) downstream from Vancouver, Washington and 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Ariel, uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, significantly disintegrated but still bundled in rubber bands, as he raked the sandy riverbank to build a campfire.[70] FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom, two packets of 100 bills each and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper.”

The only thing that proves is that some of the money ($5,800 to be precise) that was originally given to Cooper in the plane reached the ground somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

Here are a few things to consider:

  • Cooper might have “sacrificed” some of the $200,000 by throwing it into the river in the hopes that it would be found and cause people to assume he had died in his jump from the plane.

  • If the presence of this money indicates that Cooper’s bag of loot broke open and maybe that he was killed, why was there not more money found elsewhere in the area?

  • Cooper was observed tying something to his waist with a parachute line before he left the plane. His loot? Could a few packets of money have fallen out of this improvised fanny pack either onto the steps of the rear stairs, or as he descended?

13

It would seem that except for the 290 $20 bills found along the Columbia River in 1980, **NONE OF THE OTHER **10,000 $20 bills that Cooper jumped with has ever turned up (as far as we know). The FBI apparently photocopied or recorded the serial numbers of every bill.

The failure of any other bills to turn up would suggest:

  1. A rotting sack containing the other 9,710 bills lies next to his skeleton in a bear’s cave somewhere in the rugged northwest. In other words, his corpse and the money (except for the $5,800 that fell out on descent) is still lying somewhere unfound.

  2. The bills have indeed turned up years later, but have not been detected. Let’s assume Cooper was smart enough not to spend any of them in the immediate area of his landing. He would have brought his own money with him to cover expenses. He may even have waited a couple of years before spending the ransom loot.

  3. The FBI asked merchants to check for the bills, but in the pre-computer era (well, not exactly pre-computer but you know what I mean) does anyone seriously believe merchants all over the US kept a list of 10,000 serial numbers handy and dutifully checked every $20 bill that came their way for weeks and months after the incident?

  4. If US merchants are unlikely to have knocked themselves out to check for the bills every time they received a $20, what about merchants in Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, Latin America and Europe? Or Asia?

  5. I am told that paper money lasts from a few months to a couple of years. Old bills are eventually burnt by the US government. Does anyone know if the FBI check the serial numbers of bills about to be burnt? Somehow I doubt it.

So it seems very possible that if there is no record of any of the 9,710 unfound bills turning up, it could be because Cooper showed restraint in spending his loot, spent it in foreign countries, and because by 1973 or 1974, almost all of the original bills had been burned by the US government in the course of their normal money-printing operations .

Finally, here is one paranoid but possible theory. A few bills DID turn up but the FBI did not announce it because they hoped they were closing in on Cooper and did not want to tip their hand. When none of the bills actually led to the capture of Cooper, the FBI preferred not to publicise their failure.

And finally, a super-paranoid theory. Cooper had taken on folk hero status, a development that the FBI and J. Edgar would not have been pleased with. Since it is important to prove that “crime does not pay” the FBI insists that Cooper could not possibly have survived the parachute jump. The part about a nonfunctioning parachute delivered to him by mistake would be part of this story.

Finally, I reach the heights of paranoia. After eight years of searching and finding nothing in the jump area, after regularly finding one or two of the $20 bills in circulation but being unable to trace them back to capture Cooper, the FBI decides in 1980 or maybe in the late 70s to bury some $20 bills in a bank of the Columbia River and arranges for a kid to find them. The bills would have been specially printed at the request of the FBI to match some of the numbers of the original bills. Top secret, no questions asked.

Why would they do this? The suggest that Cooper must have died and some of his loot washed down the river. God punishes evil. Crime does not pay. Very J. Edgar.

Think about it. The Columbia and its river banks is a mighty big area. The kid in 1980 just happened to dig there? And no other money was found elsewhere along the bank?

14

I suspect if he had survived at some stage he would have come out of hiding, perhaps in a non-extradition country and then reaped the benefits of his celebrity.

15

It’s quite possible to find an American who can read French. Pretty much everyone going through public schools here has to study SOME language (not necessarily to fluency), and French is perennially offered.

It’s also possible he was Cajun or grew up in Louisiana and learned French in childhood.

16

It’s weird to think that if he was, say, forty-two in 1971 he’d be eighty-two today. If he was still alive.

If I met him I’d like to ask, “Was it worth it?” Spend every day looking over your shoulder, afraid to trust people, breaking out in a cold sweat as you suddenly envision what it will be like to be arrested?

He might very well say, “No it wasn’t worth it.” :smack:

17

But would an American who reads French or a Cajun (who is an American, after all) have specified that he wanted the money in “negociable American currency”? When one American offers to buy a used car from another American in the USA, would you expect him to say “I’ll give you $15,000 American Dollars for your car”?

There is something foreign and non-American about his asking for that money in US currency. Why would an American extorting money from US airline in a domestic flight over the US even think of specifying he wanted American currency? He had already said he wanted 200,000 dollars. Then he specifies he wants it in American dollars. This suggests that he is familiar with another country that also calls its currency “dollars”. Canada uses “dollars”. And unlike today, when the Canadian and US dollars are trading about equal, I believe that in the 70s the US Dollar was worth maybe 10-20 cents more than the Canadian.

18

The fact he seems possibly to have been non-American plus the following from the link-

-makes me wonder: could he possibly have been connected to one of the early-1970s revolutionary groups that were then fairly numerous AND active?

Just sayin…

19

No, the FBI doesn’t but the Treasury does, it records the serial number of every bill it destroys. Certainly the Cooper bill serial numbers were checked against the records of bills destroyed, doing so is trivial. Since none have been found, that means no significant number were ever spent. Thus, indeed, either Cooper has them hidden away or they are in that rotting sack containing the other 9,710 bills lies next to his skeleton in a bear’s cave somewhere in the rugged northwest. In other words, his corpse and the money (except for the $5,800 that fell out on descent) is still lying somewhere unfound.

None turned up in the Treasury, where by now they certainly would have if they had been spent- they are hwaaaaaay past their “pull by date”. Certainly a few could have been spent and later been lost or hoarded- not every bill stays in circulation. But most do, and thus if any significant number of bills had been spent, they woudl have turned up by now.

20

No, however, I’m selling my car, not extorting money from an airline with hostages. Perhaps he just felt the situation called for preciseness and clarity.