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

Great Debates
61

I have some questions as to just how “wild” his landing area was.

[QUOTE=]
But later calculations placed the jump just west, not east, of I-5, near the village of Woodland, Wash., and the Columbia River. The costly searching near Ariel was wasted, [FBI agent Ralph] Himmelsbach said. Remarkably, he said this revelation occurred to him in 1980 when, on the day of his retirement, [the plane’s pilot] Capt. Scott paid him a courtesy visit. They got to talking, and Scott let drop that the jet was traveling west of where the FBI believed it had been
[/QUOTE]

I’ve driven through Woodlands on I-5. Woodlands is not in heavily wooded back country, it’s about twenty miles from downtown Portland, Oregon. Look at the aerial map. On it Woodlands Washington is marked by “A.”

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Ariel,+Wash&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x549437a633f33a9b:0xb9c4ace2cfaa947e,Ariel,+WA&gl=us&ei=-AnXTrDqN6Ld0QGeic2CDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CDkQ8gEwAA

Note there’s a small airport near Woodlands. Was Cooper familiar with it? Is that why he jumped there?
However Captain Scott’s widow says he told her:

[QUOTE=]
Scott never talked much about the case, said his widow, Frances, but he had a theory. “He felt he jumped into Lake Merwin and got tangled up in dead trees and died,” she told a reporter.
[/QUOTE]

Lake Merwin is EAST of I-5. See map-

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Ariel,+Wash&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x549437a633f33a9b:0xb9c4ace2cfaa947e,Ariel,+WA&gl=us&ei=-AnXTrDqN6Ld0QGeic2CDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CDkQ8gEwAA
But also not desolate wilderness.

Edit-I should’ve mentioned the two snippets of quoted text above are from the TruTV website’s “book” on D.B. Cooper. It was a very enjoyable read I must say. Below is a link-

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams/DB_Cooper/index.html

62

I posted the wrong link for Woodland-

http://maps.google.com/maps?pq=woodland&hl=en&sugexp=ppwc&cp=11&gs_id=k&xhr=t&q=woodland+wa&tok=HHBJLiWJOJITpMZalh1eqQ&client=firefox-a&hs=sSf&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=629&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x549449d28f116fb5:0x831bac76c8535c5d,Woodland,+WA&gl=us&ei=3w7XTpmDDqT10gH7roiBDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQ8gEwAQ

And it’s Woodland (no ‘s’).

63

It doesn’t have to be desolate wilderness. For example, Charles Lindbergh, Jr.'s body was not discovered for months, until a truck driver randomly walked into the desolate wilderness of New Jersey to take a piss.

Maybe Cooper did land where you propose. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been plowed under during the levelling of the woods in the last 40 years.

64

Then the odds go from impossible to just almost impossible. Some would have made it back home, chances are.

65

Okay but earlier in the thread someone posted Cooper bailed out over the Rocky Mountains. :slight_smile:

Was the area heavily wooded in 1971 and then leveled in the past forty years? You know that as a fact or you’re just surmising?

http://maps.google.com/maps?pq=woodland&hl=en&sugexp=ppwc&cp=11&gs_id=k&xhr=t&q=woodland+wa&tok=HHBJLiWJOJITpMZalh1eqQ&client=firefox-a&hs=sSf&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=629&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x549449d28f116fb5:0x831bac76c8535c5d,Woodland,+WA&gl=us&ei=3w7XTpmDDqT10gH7roiBDg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQ8gEwAQ

I look at the aerial map of Woodland Washington (where airline pilot William Scott later told FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach they probably were when Cooper bailed out) and I see a lot of open fields. They look like farm fields. I drove through that area several times in 1974 while visiting friends in Vancouver Washington. I don’t recall the area between I-5 and the Columbia River as being wilderness or anything remotely approaching wilderness.

I also see a small airport. By his actions Cooper seemed fairly familiar with aircraft and parachuting. Was that airport there in 1971? Is that why he jumped where he did? Is there some connection there?

Why did they bother to formally indict John Doe aka Dan Cooper some five years after the highjacking?

Just sayin…

66

In fact, Valteron said, “Rocky Mountains of the Pacific Northwest”. So he got the name of the mountains wrong.

I think it’s a safe surmise that population growth and building patterns make most inhabited places far different on Google maps today than they would have appeared 40 years ago. Woodland may or may not be one of those places.

I’m simply making a point that he did not need to land in the middle of nowhere in order for his remains to disappear forever. All he needed to do was land in a place where people don’t go, and even in an area of farmland, there are going to be plenty of such places.

67

Completely true. It took a year to find Chandra Levy’s body in a park in Washington DC where people knew she went running. It took months for anybody to find Caylee Anthony’s body near her grandparents’ house.

68

Yeah, it doesn’t take much to sprain an ankle, or worse. A freshly plowed field looks like a very tempting landing area, but step on a large clump of dirt or put one foot on solid ground and the other in a hole and you instantly find yourself lying in a heap in severe pain. Add in being unable to see the ground coming up at you in the dark so you’re not prepared for impact but suddenly WHAM! there’s the ground. The potential for injury is high at night even on relatively even terrain. Unless you’re landing on a football field there are obstacles everywhere and you can’t see them coming.

69

He got the name of the mountains wrong? There are no mountains.

It’s safe to surmise? I’m surmising the area looked pretty much the same. Anyway the jump zone is not the desolate wilderness that people are saying it is. That’s my point.

Look I can see there is some HUGE resistance here to the possibility that Cooper survived the jump. That surprises me.

Why DID they bother to indict Cooper years later? Had a bunch of the money turned up? They realized, Holy Crap, this bastard DID make it! :smack:

:slight_smile:

70

Based on the plane’s travel and everything else, he could have landed in a pretty large area. And yes, a hefty chunk of it is wilderness.

It’s very likely that he didn’t, and even less likely that he survived and got away since there’s never been any evidence he made it back to civilization.

And then they kept it secret for no reason! Because, um, yeah.

71

Okay Marley your mind is made up. Mine isn’t. Maybe he made it maybe he didn’t. I don’t know but I’m looking at some of the evidence and it’s not as compelling as the earlier messages led me to believe.

Let’s look at the money. The FBI says they microfilmed all the bills and then compiled a list. They say they published them in a 34-page pamphlet and distributed 100,000 copies to banks all over the west.

Okay but let’s look at that for a moment.

$200,000 in twenty dollar bills is 10,000 bills. How did they manage to microfilm 10,000 bills in the hour or two they had available? If they were able to microfilm one bill per second (with 1971 technology) it would’ve taken 16 hours.

To get it down to the hour they probably had available would require filming sixteen bills per second. Could they do that in 1971?

Even if the technology existed would a high-speed microfilm reader have been available quickly? Because they’re on a deadline.

Here’s the point a buddy of mine – a retired police office – brought up-

By the time the hijacking was made known it was close to 5 PM on Thanksgiving Eve. Who would’ve been on-duty at the FBI field office? All the senior guys were probably home. Would whoever was available have been able to get the bills together AND get them microfilmed? Would’ve they have dared to? They’ve got a guy with a bomb sitting on an airliner with forty people saying if there’s any funny business he’s going to blow everything up. If the guy gets hinky and detonates the bomb, it’s on the agent who decided to delay the process to film the bills.

Back to me.

The money came from the airline. So the airline arranges with their bank or their cash accounts to stuff $200,000 in a duffel bag. Now they have to get it to the FBI and the Bureau has to transport it to where ever a high-speed microfilm machine is and start filming.

So maybe they never made a list of the bills’ serial numbers in the first place. Having lived through the early 1970s I can easily believe that. Hey Watergate hadn’t even happened yet. :slight_smile:

Why would they say they had a list of the bills if they didn’t?

First to discourage copycats from trying the same or similar stunts. Second to screw with Cooper.

The more I delve into this the more doubts I have.

72

Hijackings were somewhat common at the time (and there were copycat incidents). I am not sure the idea of discouraging copycats was as prevalent then as it is now. And I don’t think of the FBI as being particularly kooky and doing stuff just to screw with people. Regardless, fluiddruid discussed on the previous page that keeping something like that a secret would have been difficult and probably not worth it. I don’t know how many people worked on it or how many microfilm machines were available, but the FBI says it did take microfilms of all the bills in about half an hour. I think the simplest explanation is that they did it, and the simplest explanation is generally the preferable one.

73

I think I goofed on the math about how long it would take to microfilm 10,000 bills. It would’ve taken three hours at one bill-per-second.

But even still.

74

So, tommymann, you have doubts that the bills were recorded, and that is based on what? Your assumptions that they couldn’t do it fast enough? Were you in the microfilm industry in 1971, and you can tell us exactly how many bills can be filmed per hour? If you can’t, you are merely advancing an argument from ignorance: "I can’t imagine how it happened, so it didn’t!"

“It would’ve taken three hours at one bill-per-second.” And you are basing that on what?

Besides, I wasn’t aware that the feds “microfilmed” the currency, just recorded the serial numbers. That could be done just by grabbing a pile of serially numbered bills, and if the instructions were “non-sequential numbers” all they have to do is randomly sort from several piles into one. ETA: Marley provided a link that said they filmed, so I stand corrected.

Neverthess, it happens I had a job ca. 1962 which included microfilming checks for a bank, and checks are about the size of greenbacks. I stacked a few thousand checks in a hopper, pressed a button, and out they all came just a few seconds later, all recorded (both sides!) on a spool of microfilm. Whirrrr, zapp! We’re done!

I think it’s likely that the feds had even faster equipment in 1971. So running 10,000 bills thru a similar device is quite doable. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

75

The FBI says it distributed a 34-page list of the bill serial numbers to other law enforcement agencies. I don’t know if the actual list has been published, but that seems like a lot of trouble for everybody to go to for a coverup or to screw with the guy. I do see there’s a website out there that will check your $20 bill serial numbers just in case you happen to have a Dan Cooper bill in your wallet, but I suppose they could be bluffing.

76

Yes I do have doubts about it.

That’s kind of an obnoxious way of putting it, don’t you think? I said right in my message that perhaps the technology did exist. And btw no I wasn’t in the microfilm industry in 1971. I was serving with the US Army in Viet-Nam.

Finally someone older than me! Thanks.

Anyway, I see some problems with the timeline. And it’s been a fun discussion up until now. :frowning:

77

Let’s take one thing at a time. Are you now happy with the strong possibility that the feds really, truly could have, should have, and did have the serial numbers recorded, as well as images of both sides of each bill, based on the contributions of several posters, some of whom have relevant experience that you do not?

If so, we can move on to other things, but let’s take this one at a time.

78

No (as I’m sure you suspect) I’m not “happy,” I still have problems – a lot of problems – with the timeline. Which I would like to pull apart but I’m not going to bother. Why?

This no longer interests me. Why?

You’re making me feel like I’m some obnoxious know-it-all who needs to be straightened out by someone of vastly superior intellect (aka you).

Sorry but when it stops being fun I stop participating.

79

They can’t even find Kyron Horman from a year and a half ago. I doubt with the animals and such they will ever find a body now. And back then? No, too many people go missing and undiscovered every year.

80

Replying to your post again (it was getting late last night).

There’s a reference to oscillations on page 106 of the PDF file: “8:12 PM PST - Getting some oscillations in the cabin, must be doing something with air stairs”.

It’s hard to interpret that as a single upward movement that could be the result of his jumping out, but however it’s characterized, there’s no more mention of sudden movements or oscillations for the rest of the flight, so I’d guess that he did jump at that point.

As you said, the money found in that area also suggests he jumped there. And he boarded the plane in Portland. If that was his home, he’d probably want to jump close to there instead of a state or two away. The romantic in me says those could have been diversionary tactics and that he jumped later, but reality usually isn’t so romantic.

There were three copycat hijackers afterwards who successfully jumped from 727s and survived. I’d love to compare their stories to Cooper’s (did the planes experience the same movements or oscillations?) but I can find hardly any information on them.