Damn.
THIS IS WHAT I COME TO THE STRAIGHT DOPE FOR, PEOPLE!
Ignorance fought. Like a damn boss.
Well, the real Cooper might have planned to take the money and run. He could have quit his job, told his friends he was moving away, etc. He thought he’d have $200,000 to run away and live a life of leisure on Fiji; he didn’t want anyone to report him missing.
Unfortunately, that’s not nearly as uncommon as you would think. I remember Dan Cohen’s comment in his writeup on the case. We often portray the Cooper hijacking as romantic and daring, but it was clearly the action of a desperate man who didn’t have a lot of consideration for his own well-being. A guy who will commandeer a passenger airplane and then jump out of it at night into the Pacific Northwest wilderness had likely burned a lot of social bridges beforehand.
But no one who knew him ever linked the police portrait with the guy who just coincidentally was leaving the country?
The obvious example, minus the “solved” part, is the Zodiac killer. Presumably there are clues in his letters that still haven’t been figured out.
And we don’t know if they were deliberate clues or just random ravings-not really hidden within another missive, Riddler-style.
I’ll start by saying I believe he died as a result of the jump. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think otherwise.
But it’s not a ‘fact’, it’s opinion based on the most plausible and logical outcome of the known facts.
It’s entirely possible that he did survive the jump, and we have no way of knowing how accurate that likeness of him circulated by the police is. Did Ted Kaczynski look anything like the posters of him that circulated?
There are plausible circumstances that would allow him to have survived and reintegrated into society or left the country.
I don’t think any of that is likely, but it’s not out of the question.
I agree. I think it’s very close to a “fact” that he either died or lost the money in the jump given the aforementioned 1980 discovery and the fact that none of the money was ever found in circulation. I just can’t see any way around that - it’s practically impossible that he walked out of that forest with $194,200.
His death in the jump is likely, but not nearly as certain. There are plausible scenarios where he survives but loses the money in the Columbia.
I’ve read about studies where they ask random people to describe, from memory, a certain celebrity (e.g. Tom Hanks) to a police sketch artist, without telling the artist who the celebrity is. Then they pass around copies of the sketch to people on the street and see how many people say “oh yeah! That’s Tom Hanks!”. IIRC, the success rate was always dismal, something like 5%. And that’s in the case where the person being sketched is well-known to both the person giving the description and the people viewing the sketch.
And that is the very reason these documentaries get produced.
If I’m being honest here I’ll have to admit that I plan to watch this one, as I did the last one, knowing full well I’ll be just as disappointed as I was the last time.
I’m fascinated by this story… I’d really really really like to know exactly who he was. Maybe one day.
Most of these seem to imply that their suspect had the money, though, and spent it periodically. At least the ones I’ve seen. THAT, I think, is damn near impossible.
It wasn’t needed. The case was extremely highly publicized, and all it would have taken would be for someone to say “Hey, this guy I work with stopped showing up right about then” or something similar, and that would be it. There were in fact a number of such reports, but nothing panned out.
Unless of course if DB had taken 2 weeks of vacation and everyone at work and all his friends and family were aware of it. Then he doesn’t get reported as he’s not missing. Then he shows back up at work on schedule and no ones the wiser. Especially as he looks nothing like the sketch.
What if he was actually on a business trip and took a detour…
What if he was a long haul truck driver…
What if he was a true loner, estranged from his family and unemployed…
and so on and so on…
I feel the same way. Rackstraw has a long history of doing odd things. He may have wrote a hoax letter and sent to the newspapers.
That doesn’t make him DB Cooper.
Well yeah, but with notable exceptions.
Add the Zodiac killer, the Mad Bomber, the Unabomber…turns out it’s not all that unusual for criminals to play games with the news media (and police, and peripheral figures)*.
*but not very nise.
Yeah, it would satisfy an awful lot of curiosity to find out, someday. If he did die in the jump, how long would any evidence last; either Cooper’s, or any of the items he had with him?
Here we have a latest theory:
Could you give us the Cliff’s Notes version, please?
Some new “investigator” has a theory about a new suspect who is some metalworker who died in 2002.
He tried to sue the FBI to give him access to the tie because he thinks there’s a part of it they didn’t test, but a judge dismissed his case.
The thread was necro’d after being dead 6 years for basically nothing.
One would think that the statute of limitations (5 years for aircraft hijacking) is significantly expired and the case would definitely be closed. However prior to the 5 year expiration of the case in 1976, a John Doe indictment on air piracy and extortion was obtained and supposedly the individual can be prosecuted under that indictment if ever found. So case still open.