Does US currency in other countries also always come back to the Fed? Just curious…could he have taken the money to another country and used it there…or would that also alway come back to be checked?
-XT
But wasn’t Hauptman trying to spend gold certificates? which were being removed from circulation. I think that was the bigger red flag that led the cops to his home more than serial number tracing. Regular $20s might have been harder to trace. But some would have shown up by now had he done any spending.
Well the Fed is in charge of destroying old currency – so I would say that almost all currency would typically come back to them eventually. Currency that was lost would be entombed elsewhere of course.
But my googling has not found evidence that the Fed records all serial numbers prior to shredding. It’s possible that they do this. But I feel doubtful.
(The Fed has sampled some serial numbers in order to work out the lifespan of the typical bill. But that’s a different order of magnitude.)
Good point, to which I have no rebuttal.
That was my question upon reading that none of the bills has been found in circulation. My guess would be that bills going into a large bank overseas today would probably be traded back out in currency exchange transactions, and would probably be put back into U.S. circulation eventually. I don’t know what world banking was like in the 70’s. The wife works at the Fed, I’ll see if she knows.
The other question is: Is the cloud of overseas U.S. currency large enough to handle 10,000 extra 20$ bills until they turn to dust? The bundles of currency I have seen in documentaries of drug and weapon markets make me think that the modern world could probably do it easily. Again, the situation could have been very different in the 70’s.
That was my assumption. Cross the border through Mexico and live modestly in Latin America for a few years. (Then, have to get a real job. Or drink yourself to death in some crappy town–that seems more of an apt ending to this story.) No reason why any of the bills would necessarily make their way back to the USA.
Of course, that’s just talking about the money. I have no opinion on whether or not he even survived the jump in the first place.
The program suggested that in the early 70s there was no way to track bills. They could give the serial numbers to every bank in the country . But he took 20s. So they could be spent at any gas station or store in the country easily. The police jurisdictions were not even in connection in those days.
I guess the question is whether or not the Treasury (BEP? whoever destroys money) checked serial numbers in the 1970s when they collected and destroyed bills at the end of their lifetimes. You wouldn’t need the banks, gas stations, etc., to track the numbers. You’d just need the Treasury to check the numbers before they destroyed the bills.
My theory: His goal was to draw attention to the fact that the lack of security at airports could lead to somebody hijacking a plane 
(I think it was my dad who told me that, prior to Cooper, airports didn’t have metal detectors and all that security.)
This had a lot to do with it.
Starting in 1966, the Federal Reserve was given the job of destroying unfit currency.
The New York Fed alone destroys about 5 million unfit notes per day and processes 20 million notes. There are about 11 other Federal Reserve districts as well. The benefits of recording all those serial numbers don’t seem like it would be worth the expense.
I see nothing in the link about recording serial numbers, though there is a reference to recording “Content information”.
One small nitpick - the woods that D Cooper jumped into swallow the occasional small plane (in crashes). It’s not too awful surprising that searchers during the next day looking for his chute could have missed it, even if it was hung up in a tree.
Put me down for a ‘he could have made it but probably didn’t’ vote.
It would be kinda cool if he did make it though.
I wonder if anyone ever ran a cross-check with the stolen serial numbers vs. wheresgeorge.com? Although, given a one dollar bill’s average lifetime of 18 months, it isn’t likely many stayed in circulation long enough for the Internet to appear. Still, if even one turned up, it might mean something.
Certainly, if Cooper survived the jump, it would make no sense if he didn’t ever spend the money. My guess is fortune, not fame, was his goal; he didn’t make it and his body is yet to be found. Maybe he didn’t die right away, but crawled into a cave with fatal injuries and died there.
See the movie Without a Paddle.
Isn’t Mt. Saint Helens near the area where ‘Cooper’ bailed? I haven’t studied any maps. What are the possibilities that he died and his unfound remains are now under a million tons of mud?
A possibility. If he bailed and “landed” in what is now the 1980 blast zone, then yes, his remains (or whatever was left by then) are long since buried. He could have also “landed” in one of the watersheds later inundated by the lahars and mudflows. Again, whatever remained would now be buried, or even washed downstream.
However, the CrimeLibrary link suggests his landing spot may not have been east of Interstate 5, but west of it. If the latter, too many people have been looking in the wrong place for a long time.
Nor did 727’s have Cooper Vanes to prevent the rear doors from being openable in flight.
But the security stuff does originate from hijackings to Cuba, popular well before that time.
Stricter security measures certainly started in 60s as a result of the hijackings, and skymarshalls in 1970, but the FAA didn’t mandate screening of all passengers and carry-on until 1973, same year the Cooper Vanes were adopted. So it was already building, but the media blitz about Cooper (and immediate copycats) surely helped push things along.
That’s probably what my dad was talking about.