Hi! I don’t mean to cast too much doubt on your assessment here, but I think a lot of people feel they have no particular accent. That doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody can tell where they are from.
Not every Canadian has that accent, but yes, it stands out. I’ve spoken to enough Canadians to know that the accent is similar to what you might hear in the Midwest, but not exactly the same.
Actors tend to practice suppressing their accents, so that doesn’t mean anything.
Probably not, but assuming that’s where the description comes from: a flight attendant who traveled around the country might have a fair amount of experience with accents. And she was from Arkansas, so she would probably know what Midwesterners sound like. So who knows. It’s still plausible but I don’t think these are very compelling arguments.
We are getting way off the point here. The original objection was that if Cooper was really a French-Canadian he would have spoken with an accent. And that even if he were a French-Canadian who speaks English without a trace of a FRENCH accent (of which there are thousands including your obd’t. servant) then the flight attendant would have spotted an English-Canadian accent.
I say bull! I have had many, many Americans express surprise that I am not an American when I visit the US. The flight attendant could easily have assumed Cooper was an American when she heard him speak, and so told the FBI he had “no accent.”
In fact, everybody who speaks has SOME accent. When people in America say “no accent” they usually mean “his way of speaking is not much different than mine”. If you are from the midwest, people from Toronto, Canada do not have an accent but your fellow Americans from the US south do!
I don’t agree about Peter Jennings. Or Donald Sutherland. I can hear ‘Canada’ at times in their voices.
Me too. Great mystery to ponder. In fact I realized – with some surprise – I had just gotten home on leave from Viet-Nam the day this happened.
One other thought. He ordered two drinks while on board – bourbon and water I think – paid for them and insisted the flight attendant keep the change.
That’s why to me he sounds vaguely like a '70s style radical. Sounds like he was practicing a little solidarity with the workers. He paid for what he used, maybe the attendant might be responsible for the liquor served? And he tipped her. She was a working person. She wasn’t at fault.
He did hijack a plane and hold people for ransom. It’s not like he died saving a bus full of nuns.
I think the argument - or a more narrow reading of it - is that the description of his speech is not consistent with his being French-Canadian. It doesn’t prove he was not, but it does nothing to indicate that he was.
Funny, I don’t notice anything different aboot their voices. (I’m Canadian)
I hadn’t thought of that, but why not?
The Wikipedia article mentions that “At approximately 8:13 pm the aircraft’s tail section sustained a sudden upward movement, significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight.” I assume that indicates when he jumped out, but would it have that much effect on a big plane? I’m wondering if it’s possible that he jumped later.
Okay, I mistook the 8 pm warning light in the cockpit (13 minutes previously) as when the stair was lowered, but I see now that just indicated the rear stairs apparatus had been activated and the door opened.
But lowering the stairs at 8:13 means he still had a two-hour window before the plane landed in Reno. There’s nothing in the wikipedia article that explains why it was thought he jumped right away.
That’s not really the case, though. There’s no evidence the money was never spent and some was found in the woods. We know he made a poor choice of parachutes (he picked one that would not have opened) and then made a difficult jump in difficult conditions while dressed in a suit and evidently not carrying any other provisions. There’s not much affirmative evidence he died, but I think that’s the likeliest result based on what we do know. There’s also no evidence he survived.
You raise an interesting point- how do we know where & when Cooper jumped? Actually, the wiki article does give a reason for thinking he jumped at approx. 8:13 pm here. It says the flight crew felt movement in the tail section:
And then further down:
A fairly thorough Cooper site is here. Scroll down the left side (Table of Site Contents) to Norjak Timetable. At 20:12 PST it describes some “oscillations in the cabin”.
However, that same site links to the transcript of the flight crew communications under Other Evidence (transcript here-pdf). I find no mention of oscillations or movement, although I haven’t read the entire thing. I did read the part that covered that time frame. It’s more than halfway down the lengthy pdf transcript.
So what is the origin of the reports of movement or oscillations at 8:13 pm? The wiki article lists “Bragg, Lynn E. (2005). Myths and Mysteries of Washington” as its source for the “sudden upward movement” statement. I can’t find much besides that at the moment.
There is one fact that strongly suggests he jumped while still over Washington- the money that turned up in 1980 was found in Washington. I think if the money left the plane, it was accompanied by Cooper. They probably became separated at some point while still in the air, but I believe that Cooper and the money exited the airplane over southwestern Washington and returned to terra firma shortly thereafter. At a high rate of speed.
You know, it occurs to me that whether or not he was French-Canadian is interesting but of little import one way or another.
However, something I wonder about D.B. Cooper is why he was soooo bloody stupid about his exit plan (or lack therof) when the rest of his plan seems to have been well thought out. He knew that plane had a rear stairway. The reason he asked for FOUR parachutes, apparently, would be to make the authorities think he was taking a hostage with him, so they would not give him a parachute that does not open, making themselves potenially liable for the death of that hostage.
He was cool, he was polite to the crew, he let the passengers go as soon as he could, he insisted the flight crew get their meals. So how could he have been so stupid as to jump out over the rockies over one of the most sparesely inhabited paerts of the lower 48 states, on a rainy night in late November, wearing only a business suit, with apparently no tent or survival gear? What did he think, that he was going to land just outside a small town where he could slip in and take the next bus out of town?
Originally, I humourously said anyone that polite had to be Canadian.
Would I be insulting my American friends if I said that anyone that clueless about an exit strategy. . . . . . no, I won’t say it!
I think that city people do not fully realize how wild the wilds can be.
Cooper landed somewhere more than a 1/4 mile from roads, hunting trails, game trails, fishing sites, etc. If his remains are ever discoverd, it will be by chance. Perhaps he will be the next milleniums Otzi.
I had assumed the upward movement in the tail section was caused by the lowering of the stairs, not because he had jumped at that point, but the experiment seems to nix that idea.
I read somewhere that the stairs dropped by gravity alone without mechanical assistance. If that’s the case, I can imagine that wind pressure in mid-flight would keep them from dropping all the way, maybe not much at all, and that’s indicated by several entries in the NORJAK Time Table (great link, BTW).
So, despite the intricate planning that went so well up to that point, it looks like Cooper had a fair amount of trouble getting out of the plane, and from there everything went quickly downhill for him. Very quickly.
I’m inclined to think now that he had a mental disturbance of some kind, something that gave him a false sense of confidence without thinking it all the way through.
I don’t understand why Cooper didn’t carry out his plan earlier in the day. Maybe he wanted the cover of dark to hide his exit and landing points. He could have had some military training, maybe even made a night jump, and thought “I can pull this off! I’ve done it before!”
What he didn’t count on was the rain, and the cold, and the 200 mph wind he stepped into.
Is a possible explanation for the missing money that it was spent (by Cooper or by a money launderer to whom he had traded it) outside of the US? According to Wikipedia, the majority of US bills are circulated outside the US and I expect that a good percentage of them never get back to the US Treasury for disposal, and wouldn’t get checked against the list.
(I’m Canadian)