D.B. Cooper- FBI Still Searches

[RedGlitter]

FBI heats up search for skyjacker D.B. Cooper


Story Highlights

Man calling himself Dan Cooper commandeered a plane in 1971

He received $200,000 and four parachutes

After demanding to be flown to Mexico, he parachuted out of plane

Cooper vanished and the FBI believes he didn't survivePORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- The FBI is making a new stab at identifying mysterious skyjacker D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of an airliner in 1971 and vanished.

The FBI this week released new details that the agency hopes will jog someone's memory.

The man calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as D.B. Cooper, boarded a Northwest flight in Portland for a flight to Seattle on the night of November 24, 1971, and commandeered the plane, claiming he had dynamite.

In Seattle, he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico. Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out the plane's tail exit with two of the chutes.

On Monday, the FBI released drawings that it said probably are close to what Cooper looked like, along with a map of areas where Cooper might have landed.

"Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? We're providing new information and pictures and asking for your help in solving the case," the FBI said in a statement.

The FBI said that while Cooper was originally thought to have been an experienced jumper, it has since concluded that was wrong and that he almost certainly didn't survive the jump in the dark and rain. He hadn't specified a route for the plane to fly and had no way of knowing where he was when he went out the exit.

"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open," Seattle-based agent Larry Carr said.

He also didn't notice that his reserve chute was intended only for training and had been sewn shut.

Several people have claimed to be Cooper over the years but were dismissed on the basis of physical descriptions, parachuting experience and, later, by DNA evidence recovered in 2001 from the cheap tie the skyjacker left on the plane.

In 1980, a boy walking near the Columbia River found $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills.

"Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream," Carr said. "Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle."







More on D.B. from FBI website: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/dec07/dbcooper123107.html

[Nomad]

Posturing and pride.

[Rapunzel]

Coincidently and oddly enough, this story came up a couple of weeks ago.

I've been watching a new series called 'Journeyman' about a man living in San Francisco who time travels, but always in San Francisco - different times, same place. It's in kind of a 'Quantum Leap' style, whereby he changes the past and puts things right.

Anyhow, the story a couple of weeks ago was about Dan Cooper and the stolen money, which was to help a friend. The Journeyman helped put things to rights and Dan Cooper gave him the money in return, which he then used the following week to help someone else. I think its a good series and would recommend it. I just thought it was interesting that I'd never heard of Dan Cooper before and this is an old case dating back to 1971 (37 years ago!), yet it's come up twice in 2 weeks now. An odd coincidence! :-3

[lovejoy]

I don't understand why the FBI are still faffing about with this, it is clear that Cooper did not survive the 10,000ft parachute drop. Why? because not one bill from his ransom was ever spent.

Add to this the fact that Cooper was wearing a lightweight business suit and loafers when he exited the aircraft which was being battered by ice cold 200MPH winds and the fact that he dropped into an area of near impenetrable forest at night in pitch darkness.

He had as much chance of survival as the proverbial snowflake in hades