Recently watched two part series D.B.Cooper-Case Closed which gave the impression that the case has at last been solved. Unfortunately that’s not true, just another bunch of theorist airing their views.
Anyway these guys had a living “suspect” which they were convinced is the real D.B.Cooper. Lots of circumstantial evidence but no actual proof.
The “suspect” himself would not confirm or deny being D.B.Cooper so the program ended pretty much where it started with basically nothing much to add to what was already known.
The point I’m getting to is at the beginning of the program when they showed footage and reenactments of the original crime they were busy collecting cigarette butts and fingerprints from the ashtray and arm rest where D.B.Cooper had been sitting on the plane.
DNA had not been discovered in those days so the cigarette butts would not be much use but the fingerprints would still be useful so why didn’t they just get the fingerprints from their “suspect” and compare them with the ones from the plane?
Would have resolved the issue one way or the other.
Apparently the FBI just closed the case. Many people figure he didn’t survive the jump (into the forest, at night, with no gear) and they were tired of resources being moved back to this case.
I’m one of those people. His corpse is up there somewhere, possibly still swinging gently on a tree branch, and someday someone will stumble across it. Or not, whatever.
Ha, you wait! The rest of the loot will start turning up in circulation, proving that ol’ Dan Cooper is living the high life somewhere laughing at the rest of us.
And the real Boston Strangler will be exposed very very soon, mark my words.
Or were playing off the extremely well known book Case Closed, Posner’s bestselling take on the JFK assassination, which in turn plays on a longer history of the term.
I saw the same doc mentioned in the OP. Basically, they said that the FBI had already checked him out, and they never found enough worthwhile info to pursue Rackstraw as credible ‘Cooper.’
I was ready to believe, though, that the Ingram family (discoverers of some of the loot) might have been in on it somehow. But by the end, I decided that they were just a couple of yokels who had made a lucky find. I’m sure the FBI probably also investigated them, and came to the same conclusion.
Yes but Why was the program aired just moments before–although I’m not sure when OP actually watched it…
But the provoking-event-to-SD-query time span is normally very short, they say–and if that’s not the SerenDip part, the timing of OP’s post itself is … uncanny … Or *Is it more than that…? *
Yes, or in one of the tributary rivers like the Washougal, which is one of several rivers in the estimated drop zone that feed into the Columbia. The Tena bar where the young boy found about $5800 of the hijack money in February of 1980 was dredge spoils from river dredging done in 1974. The Columbia has to be dredged regularly to keep the shipping channel open and the spoils are sprayed and deposited wherever they can be.
The rounding of the edges of the bills is consistent with being tumbled in a bag in the river rather than just being buried on the beach. The bag probably disintegrated in the water or the dredge action.
And then a few months after this money was found all hell blew open when Mt St Helens erupted, filling all the local rivers with pumice sand and gravel resulting in many more years of dredging the clear the channels. I mean a very serious shit load of pumice sand had to be removed and still is being cleared to this day. Many of the local beaches were ‘enhanced’ with these dredge spoils.
There is not going to be any future remains of Dan Cooper or the money to be found.
I find that the most amusing part of the whole D.B. Cooper incident is the fact that the hijacker used the name “Dan Cooper” when he bought his ticket. The D.B. Cooper moniker was a creation of media.
*No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Maxwell Scott (from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)*
Only mostly true. The first reporters got “Dan Cooper” from the reports and found a “D.B. Cooper” listed in a Seattle or Tacoma phone book. Wrong one, obviously, but by then the catchy name was off and running.
Kinda like guys who haven’t been called by their middle name since second grade kill some people and are forever known by three names.
