Small informal group chasing the enigma of D.B. Cooper

**Curt James** · 08-02-2011, 12:27 PM

Small informal group chasing the enigma of D.B. Cooper

By Patrick Oppman, CNN
UPDATED: 12:57 PM EDT 08.02.11

Scotland has the Loch Ness Monster, Roswell its UFOs, and in the Pacific Northwest there's the plane hijacker on the run with a bundle of cash named D.B. Cooper.

Nearly 40 years after Cooper parachuted into the cold night air from a hijacked Northwest Airlines flight with $200,000 in cash strapped to him, the mystery man is still being pursued not only by law enforcement but also by an informal network of hobbyists and armchair sleuths.

Many of the self-deputized investigators have spent years if not decades searching for the man who on November 24, 1971, boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, coolly told a stewardess he was carrying a bomb and wanted money.

When the plane landed in Seattle, he received the money and parachutes, let the passengers go and instructed the pilot to fly to Mexico City at low altitude. It is believed that he jumped somewhere over Washington state.

"It's a chance to be a part of this case, part of history. It's not the JFK assassination but it's up there," said Tom Kaye, who retired from his job running paintball manufacturing businesses to become what he describes as a "gentleman scientist."

His retirement plans, though, shifted from looking for dinosaurs to tracking Cooper's fading tracks.

Kaye is part of a small team of amateur investigators, including a scientific illustrator and metallurgist, that for three years has analyzed elements of the case evidence like the tie found on the hijacked plane that could have belonged to Cooper and some of the cash that he took, which was later recovered.

The team has been granted access to the evidence file since, Kaye said, "We have the time and the resources. The FBI has plenty of other crimes to solve."

A spokesman for the FBI's Seattle Field Office, Fred Gutt, said while the FBI understands there is great public interest in this long-unsolved case, "it's a fairly low-priority case for the FBI" as it pursues new investigations involving cases like missing children that have a current impact on public safety.

During the four decades they have searched for the real Cooper, the FBI has looked at close to 1,000 suspects. Many of them were suggested by people convinced their fathers, brothers or neighbors could have masterminded the only remaining unsolved plane hijacking in U.S. history.

Kaye's team hasn't cracked the case, but he said they believe their long hours have paid off.

"If you believe it's his tie, we have already narrowed the list of suspects," Kaye said. "We look at the particles under powerful microscopes and analyze them. For instance, if there's salt, we can tell the difference between sea salt and salt that came from a shaker. If there's sea salt on his tie that came from the ocean, he didn't pick that up in Illinois."

Kaye said the investigators also traveled to the site where nearly nine years after Cooper's dive from the plane, $5,800 was found on a river bank. The serial numbers on the bills matched some of the cash Cooper took.

Chemical testing of the money was inconclusive, Kaye said. They also floated packets of bills downstream with notes asking for information attached to see how the river might have carried off Cooper's loot.

But for all the packets, only one person contacted the team, he said.

Still, Kaye said investigators are hopeful that analysis of the thousands of particles found on the clip-on JC Penny tie Cooper may have left behind on the plane will lead to a break in the case.

"We don't have too little evidence, we have too much," he said.

For Galen Cook, his lifelong interest in the mysterious skyjacker began on his boyhood newspaper route in Alaska.

"There was a big composite drawing of D.B. Cooper on the front page of the local paper, and I took an interest in the case from Day One," he said.

After graduating law school, Cook began peppering the FBI with Freedom of Information Request requests and chasing any lead, no matter how far-fetched.

"I have done it over the years as a hobby, like people build model airplanes or work restoring cars in a garage," he said. "I probably put in a few thousand hours on it."

Cook believes Cooper survived the jump into the night sky. He is at work on a book about his findings, but he doesn't expect his personal investigation to completely close the door on Cooper's mystery.

"There are people out there that tell stories that are so beyond belief I have to walk away," Cook said. "A lot of people look at D.B. Cooper as a great legend and want to be a part of that."

On the Dropzone skydiving website, bloggers have posted thousands of pieces of Cooper trivia and conspiracy.

"DB is alive and well living on the East Coast," one recent posting claimed. "I met him in 2007 and one night after more tequila then the old man can handle he let me in on his secret. He's a cool dude."

Ralph Himmelsbach doesn't see Cooper as toasting his good health and ill-gotten fortune.

Now retired, Himmelsbach was the lead FBI agent on the Cooper case for eight years. He follows developments and speculation in the Cooper case but disagrees with the amateur investigators who think Cooper parachuted away to a better life.

"My feeling has been for a long time is that he didn't succeed," Himmelsbach said. "He's out there somewhere lying in the woods."

From CNN.com

**maniclion** · 08-02-2011, 10:07 PM

He's a skeleton dangling from a tree, I guarantee it....

**maxpro2** · 08-02-2011, 10:10 PM

I'm so pissed off that tax money is being used to pursue this. Let it go.

**Muscle_Girl** · 08-03-2011, 12:05 AM

The hell? I thought this was just some random story they used in the movie Without a Paddle.. didn't think it was based on a real life occurance, didn't care enough to research about it either. Interesting.

**Curt James** · 08-03-2011, 12:33 AM

The event began mid-afternoon, November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon. A man carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He identified himself as "Dan Cooper" and, using cash, purchased a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a 30-minute trip to Seattle, Washington.

Cooper boarded the aircraft, a Boeing 727–100 (FAA registration N467US), and took seat 18C (18E by some accounts, 15D by another) in the rear of the passenger cabin. He lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda.[8] Onboard eyewitnesses recalled a man in his mid-forties, between 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) and 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) tall. He wore a black lightweight raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white collared shirt, a black necktie, and a mother of pearl tie pin.

Flight 305, approximately one-third full, took off on schedule at 2:50 pm, local time (PST). Cooper passed a note to Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant situated nearest to him in a jumpseat attached to the aft stair door.[2] Schaffner, assuming the note contained a lonely businessman's phone number, dropped it unopened into her purse.[13] Cooper leaned toward her and whispered, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."

The note was printed in neat, all-capital letters with a felt pen. It read, approximately, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."[16] Schaffner did as requested, then quietly asked to see the bomb. Cooper cracked open his briefcase long enough for her to glimpse eight red cylinders[17] ("four on top of four") attached to wires coated with red insulation, and a large cylindrical battery.After closing the case he dictated his demands: "I want $200,000 in unmarked 20-dollar bills.[19] I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I’ll do the job."[20] Cooper then ordered Schaffner to convey his instructions to the cockpit. When she returned, he was wearing dark sunglasses.

Flight 305's pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma Airport air traffic control, which informed local and Federal authorities. The 36 other passengers were informed that their arrival in Seattle would be delayed due to a "minor mechanical difficulty." Northwest Orient's president, Donald Nyrop, authorized payment of the ransom, and ordered all Northwest employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker.[23] The aircraft circled Puget Sound for approximately two hours to allow Seattle police and the FBI time to collect Cooper’s parachutes and ransom money (and mobilize emergency personnel).

Schaffner recalled that Cooper appeared to be familiar with the local terrain; at one point he remarked, “Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also mentioned, correctly, that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Seattle-Tacoma Airport.[24] Schaffner described him as calm, polite, and well-spoken, not at all consistent with the stereotypes (enraged, hardened criminals or "take-me-to-Cuba" political dissidents) popularly associated with air piracy at the time. Tina Mucklow, another flight attendant, agreed. "He wasn't nervous," she told investigators later. "He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time."[24] He ordered a second bourbon and water, paid his drink tab (and insisted Schaffner keep the change),[2] and offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle.

FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle-area banks—10,000 unmarked 20-dollar bills, many with serial numbers beginning with the letter "L" indicating issuance by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, most carrying a "Series 1969-C" designation—and made a microfilm photograph of each of them. Cooper rejected the military-issue parachutes initially offered by authorities, demanding instead civilian parachutes with manually-operated ripcords. Seattle police obtained them from a local skydiving school.

At 4:39 pm Cooper was informed that his demands had been met, and the aircraft landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport at 5:45 pm.Cooper instructed Scott to taxi the jet to an isolated, brightly-lit section of the tarmac and extinguish lights in the cabin to deter police snipers. Northwest's Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, approached the aircraft in street clothes (to avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake his airline uniform for that of a police officer) and delivered the cash-filled knapsack and parachutes to Mucklow via the aft stairs.Once the delivery was completed, Cooper permitted all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane.

During refueling, Cooper outlined his flight plan to the cockpit crew: a southeast course toward Mexico City, at the minimum air speed possible without stalling the aircraft (approximately 100 knots (190 km/h; 120 mph)) at a maximum 10,000 foot (3,000 m) altitude. To ensure a minimum speed, he specified that the landing gear remain down, in the takeoff/landing position, and the wing flaps be lowered 15 degrees.

To ensure a low altitude, he ordered that the cabin remain unpressurized. Copilot William Rataczak informed Cooper that the aircraft's range was limited to approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 km) under the specified flight configuration, which meant they would have to refuel once again before entering Mexico. Cooper and the crew discussed options and agreed on Reno, Nevada as the refueling stop.Finally, Cooper directed that the plane take off with the rear exit door open and its staircase extended. Northwest's home office told the crew that it was unsafe to take off with the aft staircase down. Cooper countered that it was indeed safe, but he would not argue the point; he would lower it himself once they were airborne.

A Federal Aviation Administration official requested a face-to-face meeting with Cooper aboard the aircraft, which was denied.[31] The refueling process was delayed (reportedly due to a vapor lock in the fuel tanker truck's pumping mechanism[32]) and Cooper became suspicious, remarking nervously that "...it shouldn't take this long."[2] However, he allowed a replacement tanker truck to continue the refueling—and a third one after that, when the second ran dry. By the time Cooper finished inspecting the ransom money and parachutes, refueling had been completed.

At approximately 7:40 pm the 727 took off with only Cooper, pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, copilot Rataczak, and flight engineer H.E. Anderson aboard. Two F-106 fighter aircraft scrambled from nearby McChord Air Force Base followed behind the airliner, one above it and one below, out of Cooper's view.[33] A Lockheed T-33 trainer, diverted from an unrelated Air National Guard mission, also shadowed the 727 until it ran low on fuel and turned back near the Oregon-California border.

After takeoff, Cooper told Mucklow to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed.[35] As she complied, Mucklow observed Cooper tying something around his waist. At approximately 8:00 pm a warning light flashed in the cockpit, indicating that the aft airstair apparatus had been activated. The crew's offer of assistance via the aircraft's intercom system was curtly refused. The crew soon noticed a subjective change of air pressure, indicating that the aft door was open.

At approximately 8:13 pm, the aircraft's tail section sustained a sudden upward movement, significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight.[36] At approximately 10:15 pm, Scott and Rataczak landed the 727, with the aft airstair still deployed, at Reno Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Reno police surrounded the jet, as it had not yet been determined with certainty that Cooper was no longer aboard; but an armed search quickly confirmed that he was gone.

More @ D. B. Cooper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Curt James** · 08-03-2011, 12:40 AM

**Curt James** · 08-04-2011, 02:46 PM

**IronAddict** · 08-04-2011, 05:28 PM

^^ You think she's telling the truth? I mean it was the 70's, everybody looked like that!

I guess we'll never quite know the truth.

Although, I know the FBI has a new suspect.....

**Curt James** · 08-04-2011, 05:47 PM

There should be some way to track the money. I'd love for her to be telling the truth, but it seems unlikely.

How did Cooper get separated from the cash? Did his niece ever benefit from the money? Or anyone in Cooper's family, for that matter?

Sounds like her father died not knowing the whereabouts of his brother although she says she remembers the two together after the theft.

I say he got knocked the **** out when he exited the plane somehow -- probably not typical or designed for mid-flight exits -- and went splat on a mountainside.

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