Ultra Vires:
Didn’t he steal 200K by threatening the airplane crew with a bomb? How’s that (legally) any different from robbing someone at gunpoint, which is certainly a crime even if no deaths occurred?
Note the phrase “statute of limitation”.
Do any of the Cooper survived the jump theories attempt to explain why one pack of money ended up in the Columbia, and why none of the other money was ever spent?
What if he survived the jump, buried the money, then forgot where he buried it?
ftg:
Note that it is immediately followed by the words “on hijacking.” I imagine that obtaining money by threat of bomb is basically armed robbery.
I thought the money was found upstream of where Cooper is thought to have jumped. That is, it would have had to float downstream in one of the tributaries, and then upstream in the Columbia to where it was discovered.
Upstream??? How does something float upstring?
It doesn’t. Either Cooper didn’t jump where people thought he did, or he survived the jump and carried some of the money out, or someone found some and then dropped it on the banks of the Columbia, or whatever other theory you want to come up with.
Or I’m wrong about where Cooper is thought to have jumped relative to where the money was found. There’s been so much misinformation about this case someone may have gotten this wrong, too.
I doubt Cooper survived, but out of curiosity:
When did serial-number scanners come into general use? Not as early as the 1970’s, I’d have guessed, though I’m often wrong.
And before such scanners were in use, how thoroughly did the Feds check the serial numbers of notes they removed from circulation?
What if he did survive and took his money to Argentina. He lives there and lives off the grid paying American cash. I’m honestly asking, is it for sure the US Treasury would ever see them bills again? How long would it take if so?
Nope, all downstream. The money was found downstream from Vancouver, WA, which is in turn downstream from the Washougal River basin where the “landing” zone is thought to be.
[QUOTE=CarnalK]
What if he did survive and took his money to Argentina. He lives there and lives off the grid paying American cash. I’m honestly asking, is it for sure the US Treasury would ever see them bills again? How long would it take if so?
[/QUOTE]
We’ve been over this again and again in these threads.
1, Bills have a short, finite lifespan.
2. Bills in poor shape get sent to the US Treasury for disposal. (Banks don’t throw money away. They trade the Treasury for new bills.)
3. The Treasury checks serial numbers.
4. None of the Cooper cash turned up this way.
Ergo no significant amount of the money was spent. Probably none at all.
The “but … overseas …” thing is a canard. Banks are banks. People are people. They don’t just toss old bills. They trade for good ones.
How many TV crime shows have used the DB Cooper story as a plot? I remember Quincy had a "ripped from the headlines" version, but how many others?
I hated the Leverage episode “solving” the case. it was almost as bad as the one stealing the Spruce Goose.
So if I pay for my dinner in Argentina with American cash, what’s the approximate time until it reaches the Treasury?
Around 5- 20 years. It’s been nearly 50.
Yes, some bills would never get back. But many would, and not single one has gotten back. Ergo- no significant amount of the money has been spent, not in Argentina, not in Mongolia.
On NewsRadio it was hinted that Jimmy James (owner of the radio station, played by Stephen Root) was D.B. Cooper.
Not quite as simple as you make it sound. According to this page the flight path was several miles west of the Washougal River; and it lays out some of the evidence establishing that path.
The Fed has to account for Federal Reserve notes turned in, because outstanding notes are a liability on the Fed’s balance sheet.
That means the Fed tracks serial numbers of notes that are turned in, because that helps the Fed bean-counters to track the liability: each note turned in is a potential reduction in the Fed’s liability.
See here for notes being a liability for the Fed:
So it’s not just a local thing that happened at the time of the hi-jacking in local banks.
Yep, every bill turned in is checked and rechecked and logged, then shredded.
Obviously the Fed counts the notes that are traded in ( :smack: ), possibly examines them briefly for counterfeiting, and perhaps enumerates them by the A-L symbol showing which Fed Bank issued them. But serial-number tracking is not directly necessary for these tasks.
I realize that scanning serial numbers is trivial with 21st-century technology, but what about in the 1970’s? If they checked $100-notes manually, did they also check $5’s and $1’s? Does your cite have something to say about that?