Not, perhaps, a great debate, but was reading earlier that (possibly) a fragment of Dan Cooper’s parachute was found earlier this week, sort of rekindling the whole ‘He made it and is living on the money’/‘He died like a dog’ debate. I was wondering what the various 'dopers think of it.
I think he COULD have made it…assuming he didn’t die in the landing and knew even the rudiments of surviving in that kind of environment. We will most likely never really know (and FTR I doubt this parachute fragment is from Cooper…it seems to be in the wrong place given the approximately $5k that was found elsewhere)…but it’s interesting to speculate and debate on it.
Nope…wasn’t before my time. And while I agree a parachute would be hard to miss, we are talking about a huge area in pretty dense wilderness.
Definitely a scary drop. I’ve heard speculation that Dan Cooper (an alias) might have had military training though…and so been trained in night drops and survival skills. I suppose if he WAS then he’d have had a better than average chance of surviving…assuming he had luck in where he landed of course.
I think if he got away with it he certainly isn’t still living on that particular money.
While 200K was a tremendous amount of money in 1971, by the end of that decade inflation had eaten a big chunk of it’s value. By today it must be long gone.
You should travel through the area during a nice summer’s day. Dropping down into it at night, in November, it nuts, if not suicidal.
There is no record the money has ever been spent, save the $6k found in 1980 on the river’s edge in Vancouver, WA.
If the found parachute is determined to be the type used in 1971 by Cooper, I expect all sorts of wannabe treasure hunters scouting the area once the weather turns and the snows begin to melt. The locals won’t appreciate it, let alone the Sheriff, nor even the Mexican drug lords growing pot in all sorts of inaccessible places in the Pacific Northwest woods.
I like it how “they” say with certainty that not dollar one has ever been spent- like banks all over the country have a list of the serial numbers of all the DB Cooper bills and review them every time some makes a transaction, and have been doing so for 35 years. :rolleyes:
I do think its likely though that he hid the money and then tried to go back for it and couldn’t find it.
I’m assuming the authorities had recorded numbers from at least some of the bills.
By now that cash would have been found as it came back to the fed, even if he spent it overseas.
But I’ll keep an eye out for some pre-1972 bills next time I get my change at the store.
A parachute was found buried, recently, in the area he jumped into.
I figure, he jumped, lost the bag with the moolah in mid-air, landed safely, then buried the chute, like the Airborne are taught to do.
Thus, he is a True Amurrican Hero™…pulls off an unbelievable stunt, lives to a ripe old age, but doesn’t make a freaking dime.
Don’t you think he would have held onto the money that washed up downstream, if he were alive and conscious to do it? That, and one of the parachutes he was supplied with was a training dummy.
He probably lost consciousness from the cold during the jump, didn’t open a chuts, het a rock between trees, got eaten by animals, etc.
Just ftr, a few years ago a *Learjet * crashed in similar dense wood in New Hampshire, in a much-better-defined location, and still didn’t get found for years later. The failure to find Cooper’s body isn’t surprising at all.
The Crime Library link says the FBI only used bills with serial numbers beginning with “L”, almost all were dated 1969 and photographed all of the bills (to record the serial numbers) before turning the money over to Cooper.
I think the parachute was buried, not by human hands, but thirty years of leaves and detritus. And DB will be found not far from the parachute, and just slightly deeper, due to impact.
If he died in the jump, wouldn’t someone have reported him missing? I mean with the publicity and all surely a friend, family member or neighbor would have put 2 and 2 together.
Maybe they did, but “Dan Cooper” certainly wasn’t the guy’s real name and I don’t know that any pictures of the hijacker were published, so a few weeks after the event, somebody reports that Elmer Schmendrick of Buttfuck, Kansas didn’t come back from vacation and has been missing ever since.
AFAIR all they had was a composite sketch of the guy…no photos. And yeah, Dan Cooper was certainly an alias (it was never D.B. Cooper…that was the press).
It’s certainly plausible that he died in either the landing (always tough in those kinds of conditions) or was injured badly enough that he later died of exposure and the body was never found. In that kind of terrain the body may never be found.
I’m unsure if the safe guards the FBI used would REALLY have prevented the money from ever being used however…especially if he waited a few years. I suppose one of those bills would have turned up in circulation at some point though, no matter how he laundered the money through back channels or whatever.
Too bad really…it was a daring heist, no one was really harmed (except most likely Dan Cooper), and it would be nice to think of him retired on a beach somewhere drawing 20% (assuming he DID invest it all in Microsoft and eBay stock )…instead of squirrel chow rotting under a broken parachute with the money never used rotting along side.
Paper money is regularly replaced. Old bills are destroyed, and replaced with new ones. The serial numbers on the destroyed notes are recorded, and checked…not only to see if Mr. Cooper ever spent the money, but also to detect otherwise perfect counterfeiting. If any significant amount of the money had ever been spent, it would have certainly been detected by now.
Sorry to be a poop, but I have to disagree. I don’t find him to be any kind of hero. I see no romance in this story. What he did was a deplorable felony. Dying slowly of injuries and hunger in those cold woods was probably a fitting end for such a person.
And while I agree a parachute would be hard to miss, we are talking about a huge area in pretty dense wilderness.
)…instead of squirrel chow rotting under a broken parachute with the money never used rotting along side.