D.B. Cooper rides again...

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Dummy Pilot
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D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby Dummy Pilot » Wed Mar 26, 2008 5:36 am

A riddle wrapped up in an enigma......
Possible D.B. Cooper chute investigated
By CASEY MCNERTHNEY
P-I REPORTER

The FBI has obtained a parachute found where hijacker D.B. Cooper is believed to have jumped, and the bureau is seeking the public's help in what may be a major break in the world's only unsolved hijacking.

The parachute -- similar to the one Cooper jumped with -- was unearthed earlier this month after a Clark County man plowed part of the rural property he's owned for nearly a decade, said Larry Carr, the lead agent on the Cooper case. The man's children found the parachute when they were playing and Carr, who is based in Seattle, retrieved it from southwest Washington.

"If D.B. Cooper had pulled his chute not long after that jump, he would have landed in that area," Carr said. "Is this D.B. Cooper's parachute? We don't know yet."

On Nov. 24, 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper boarded a commercial Portland-to-Seattle fight and demanded $200,000 and four parachutes.

One of the parachutes was left on the plane; another was cut to secure the ransom money he leapt with about 20 miles north of Portland, going 196 mph, 10,000 feet in the air, according to FBI records.

Carr said Cooper's backup parachute was sewn shut, and the working one he jumped with was a Navy-issue NB6. But Carr can't find identifying markings on the worn parachute or the container in which it was packed. He is hoping someone with expert knowledge of NB6 parachutes can assist in the effort.

"If this canopy can be traced to an NB6 backpack, it will start looking pretty good," Carr said.

The weather was stormy the night Cooper jumped, with a wind chill well below zero at the plane's altitude. Carr and Ralph Himmelsbach, the retired FBI agent who spent eight years on the Cooper case, have said he was likely an inexperienced, overconfident criminal who died the night of the hijacking. The FBI has investigated nearly 1,000 suspects.

None of the $200,000 ever made it into circulation, though $5,800 worth of the frayed bills were found along the Columbia River in 1980. And that creates another complication for FBI investigators.

Carr said that if Cooper landed where the parachute was found, it would be impossible for the ransom money to end up where it did by natural means.

"No matter what you do with this case," Carr said, "the mystery deepens."
Seattle Post Intelligencer story

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J
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...And Again

Postby J » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:48 am

FBI: Credible lead in D.B. Cooper case
Excerpt:
Monday, 01 Aug 2011, 6:28 AM EDT

The recent tip provided to the FBI came from a law enforcement member who directed investigators to a person who might have helpful information on the suspect, FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich told The Seattle Times on Sunday. She called the new information the "most promising lead we have right now," but cautioned that investigators were not on the verge of breaking the case.

"With any lead our first step is to assess how credible it is," Sandalo Dietrich told the Seattle Post Intelligencer on Saturday. "Having this come through another law enforcement (agency), having looked it over when we got it - it seems pretty interesting."

Source: http://www.wishtv.com/dpps/news/strange ... gr_3899407

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3WE
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby 3WE » Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:28 am

:) Boeing 727 :)
Commercial Pilot, Vandelay Industries, Inc., Plant Nutrient Division.

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J
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby J » Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:50 pm

It is time for Verbal to tell what he knew and when he knew it. No more credible source than the Daily News has the goods:

D.B. Cooper’s tie indicates he might have been a Boeing worker

A band of amateur scientists may have found a breakthrough in the infamous D.B. Cooper plane hijacking case — thanks to a clip-on tie.

A tie belonging to the mystery man who took over a Boeing passenger plane in 1971 — then jumped out on a parachute, never to be seen again — may indicate that he worked in the aerospace industry, and maybe even for Boeing.

A team of researchers, known as Citizen Sleuths, analyzed the JC Penney tie with an electron microscope and found particles of cerium, strontium sulfide and pure titanium.

Those elements would have been rarely seen outside of certain environments — such an aerospace plant.

The group said Boeing used those elements in the 1960s and ‘70s while developing its Super Sonic Transport plane in Washington State.

Cooper could have been a Boeing employee or contractor who wore that tie to his job.

“The tie went with him into these manufacturing environments, for sure,” Citizen Sleuths lead researcher Tom Kaye told King5 on Friday.

“He was either an engineer or a manager in one of the plants,” Kaye said.

The FBI closed the Cooper case last year without solving it, and said it found no credible leads. Years before that, though, the bureau gave Citizen Sleuths unprecedented access to analyze evidence from the case.

The team is still investigating the Cooper case, and has posted its forensic analysis of the tie online and asked for the public’s help with information.

The man known as D.B. Cooper boarded a Boeing flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle on Nov. 24, 1971.

After calmly telling a flight attendant he had a bomb in a briefcase, Cooper extorted $200,000 in ransom money from the FBI and parachuted from the plane — and seemingly into thin air.

After 45 years of investigation, the FBI found no trace of Cooper or even an idea of his identity. This remains the only unsolved passenger plane hijacking.

Witnesses on the plane recalled that Cooper seemed familiar with the local terrain as the plane circled the Puget Sound for two hours while the FBI scrambled to fulfill his demands.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2946916

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J
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby J » Thu Feb 01, 2018 9:12 pm

Verbal is off the hook:

New on D.B. Cooper: Private investigators say he was CIA

A private investigative team announced Thursday morning that members now believe D. B. Cooper was a black ops CIA agent possibly even involved with Iran-Contra, and that his identity has been actively hidden by government agents.

https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/a ... 543305.php

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J
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby J » Thu Oct 26, 2023 8:30 pm

The FBI closed the notorious 51-year-old skyjacking case—but one man says he knows exactly how to solve it.

Excerpt:

A former professional blackjack player may be on the cusp of cracking one of the most notorious cold cases in history—one so puzzling, even the FBI couldn’t solve it. But first, the sleuth just needs to get his hands on a discarded black tie.

Eric Ulis of Michigan is so convinced that he’s the man to finally solve the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking of Thanksgiving Eve 1971—the only unsolved commercial airline hijacking in U.S. history—that he’s literally suing the FBI to make it happen.

In 2022, Ulis laid out his theory on how the remnants of an alloy that the FBI reportedly found on Cooper’s tossed tie pinpoint the skyjacker’s workplace to a “Midland, Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of titanium-antimony.” All Ulis needs now, he feels, is the samples off the tie themselves, which is why he’s pursuing litigation to procure them.

[The article goes on to explain the hijacking and discusses why we still care. )

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight ... db-cooper/

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Gabriel
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Re: D.B. Cooper rides again...

Postby Gabriel » Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:50 pm

I thought that Dan had already solved it once and for all.


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