And today they have the job of just destroying the currency in general. :mad:
The FBI has a new lead: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/01/fbi.db.cooper/index.html?iref=NS1
Actually, the FBI is claiming they have a new lead. In reading the story, …
So the FBI tells the foreign media about testing they haven’t done yet? Sounds more like the FBI is using the media to go fishing, hoping someone will bite.
I’ve seen it being done, in a tour of a Federal Reserve Bank.
It was entirely automated.
A big sorting machine (reminded me of old punched card sorters) that processed all the bills, sorted & counted them, while automatically dumping ones that were too worn, wrinkled, torn, stained, etc. into a special stack to be destroyed eventually. Meanwhile a scanner in the machine was reading & recording the serial numbers. (I don’t remember if that was for all the bills processed, or only for the ones that went into the discard stack.)
It would be easy enough to have run the file of all those scanned serial numbers against a file of all bills that the FBI wanted to locate. (Probably not in real time – this was in the late-1970’s – but easily in a batch process at night.)
So this wouldn’t be something special set up for DB Cooper, but a regular process, to watch for bills from hijackings (like DB Coopers), kidnappings, bank robberies, drug buys, etc. – any time where criminals demand ransom money. An easy automated process, with very little added cost. Certainly worthwhile, if it ever gives them a lead on any of these crimes.
Possibly. Regardless, Cooper probably didn’t survive his jump, and if he did, he died of exposure in the wilderness shortly thereafter.
Right, all destroyed bills have their Serial Numbers recored and checked. So, altho “Dan” could have spent some of the cash easily without being spotted at first, eventually some woudl have would it down to the Treasury.
The jump has been duplicated a few times for TV documentaries.
The DB Cooper jump is popular with Jump Clubs too.
Did they have an experienced skydiver replicate the jump in better weather, or did they really duplicate everything?
[quote=“Marley23, post:69, topic:442853”]
Did they have an experienced skydiver replicate the jump in better weather, or did they really duplicate everything?[/QUOTE
The program I watched duplicated the jump, including clothes, weather and a night dive at the same time of the year. He also carried a package equal in weight to the money.
Thee diver said it was not easy, but was doable.
It was not easy, but doable for an experienced skydiver? What do you think that projects to for someone who probably wasn’t an experienced skydiver, based on the fact that he didn’t choose the best parachute and didn’t notice one of the other parachutes wouldn’t work?
Before this thread, I’d have thought he bit it, and it was a no-brainer. Looking at some of the sites specializing in Cooper-aphilia, I’m not so sure now. For one, it’s surprising they still don’t have an iron-clad location for where the plane was at the moment he jumped. Sure, you have the flight crew’s impression of the pressure jump and the oscillation of the plane (duplicated in the parachute sled tests), but exactly where the plane was when that happened is not nailed down, better than 90 seconds either way. A lot of it reconciling the flight crew’s notes of the time with the FBI agents’ notes of the time. Further, it’s extremely hard to reconcile the cash discovery at the Tena Bar with him jumping out of the plane and dying in the area of Ariel; they’re different drainages. The Tena Bar is upstream of where the Lewis River runs into the Columbia.
I think it’s entirely possible that he jumped into the somewhat cleared farm terrain north of Vancouver, WA, but south of the Lewis River area that occupied the searchers, landed, ditched the chute, and walked to I-5, where he hitched somewhere else. Or made his way to a cached automobile and retraced his steps, retrieving evidence. Another thought is that his altitude restriction was calculated to induce the pilots into choosing a Victor airway (V-23) for the route. With advance knowledge of the route, he’d have a chance of identifying landmarks en route and figuring out where he was.
Of course, then you have to explain how he disposed of the money without any of it turning up at the Fed Reserve for destruction. That’s a toughie.
So, not probable, but more possible than I’d have guessed before looking at others’ impressions. Interesting story.
The latest claimant says he lost it in the jump.
No, the niece of that claimant says her family told her the claimant told them he lost it in the jump. The guy has supposedly been dead since 1999, although I haven’t found a Social Security Death Index listing for that guy. His name is supposed to have been Lynn D. Cooper.
Still a finite area, and small enough to search, which it was.
Only if you assume he stayed conscious during the jump, survived the landing (and the bears), and escaped. If you assume instead (and reasonably) that he lost consciousness due to the cold and thin air as soon as he left the plane, and the stuff he was carrying went flying at however many thousand feet that was, it could have gone anywhere. If you think he stayed conscious and held on all the way down, but was badly injured in the landing or by a bear, then his body parts and his stuff could have been dragged anywhere.
Other people have made promising suspects before, but didn’t check out. There’s no reason to think this time is any different.
Agreed about the small, finite area. Which, compounded with how fast they searched the area, weighs in favor of their finding a body if one were to be found. A human being is a big corpse, as forest corpses go. I’ve seen vulture towers over dead deer and cattle. I’d expect one too for Cooper’s corpse, even considering the mid-November conditions. It’s true, he could have been rapidly dismembered and scattered, but c’mon, it’s Southern Washington, not the Serengeti. I’d actually be blaming a mountain lion more than I would a black bear, if he were turned into food.
As far as the height and cold, he bailed out at 10,000 feet. He might have had a headache, but hypoxia would not have been an issue. The outside air temp was, IIRC, above 0 F. At ground level it was about 40-45 F. Unpleasant, but not immediately lethal. The wind blast would have been fearsome, but would have stopped being an issue provided he got his chute open. At that altitude, he’d have about 45 seconds to get his shit together and do so. The pilot reports were of haze and cloud during the SEA-PDX leg of the flight; I don’t remember reading accounts of freezing rain or thunderstorm activity.
Again, I think he croaked. If anything, I can see him ending up in the Columbia, a few miles to the west, more than I can imagine him still lurking in the bushes near Ariel. All I was posting was that I was surprised at the small likelihood (as opposed to nonexistent) that he could have actually pulled it off.
“The last claimant to have knowledge of Dan Cooper says he lost it in the jump.”
Happy? 
With the SSDI you may not find anything because someone has to make a claim against the SS number before it would show up there. He might have been a federal employee or something like that who didn’t draw SS.
There is a Lynn Doyle Cooper at Find a Grave who died in 1999.
What’s the vector, Victor?
The story of the claimant (to have knowledge of “D B” Cooper, who was allegedly his niece) that his brother was waiting on the ground with a radio (and presumably blankets, hot coffee, food and transport) to find him is interesting.
Could he get into the baggage area of that plane? Could he toss the parachutes out the back and climb into a crate he had shipped to be on that flight? And accomplice could pick the crate up at the airport. Probably too obvious.