Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (19 page)

Former Washington state resident Marla Cooper took her suspicions about her uncle to the FBI after he was long dead. According to her, the details she provided were sufficiently credible that the bureau decided to run a DNA comparison.

“The DNA that they were able to extract from my uncle L.D. (Cooper)’s daughter, who was born after the fact, did not match the partial sample of DNA that they have in their files,” Cooper says.

But neither Ms. Cooper nor the FBI considers this outcome definitive one way or the other.

In Seattle, FBI agent Fred Gutt explains the DNA on file comes from a necktie the hijacker left behind when he parachuted from the plane.

Gutt says, “it’s not a very good sample” and might not even belong to the hijacker necessarily. Gutt would not confirm which witnesses have been interviewed.

Marla Cooper claims that she never saw her uncle again after that Thanksgiving incident and that the memory of these events remained suppressed for many years. Lynn Doyle Cooper had passed away in 1999.

Second FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper suspect.

Over the years, some have theorized that Cooper may have been a CIA agent or contractor. They have pointed to the fact that Cooper seemed to have intimate knowledge of the fact that the 727 could be flown with its aft stairs deployed and people could actually parachute from the rear of the plane. In Southeast Asia, the CIA replaced the 727’s aft stairs with a chute and pushed cargo containers out of the rear of the planes when over their drop zones.

Another occurrence that many see as evidence of a CIA tie to the hijacker is the use of the SR-71 Black Bird spy plane to search for the Cooper suspect. The SR-71 was the most technologically sophisticated aircraft on the planet in 1971, and it could fly three times faster than a bullet fired from the barrel of a typical hunting rifle. It seems like a bit of overkill to commit such a use of one of America’s top national security assets for the location of an absconded hijacker who ended up with only $200,000 of a profitable business’ money, and besides that, the loss was insured.

The one thing every Cooper confessor, suspect and person of interest has in common is: they all were alive after November 24, 1971, the day of the skyjacking, while the D.B. Cooper suspect, according to FBI investigators and many experts, was not. It is a common thought that Cooper died at the end of his jump. His chute may have malfunctioned, or maybe he was unable to pull the ripcord for some reason, such as he was rendered unconscious during the jump because of an uncontrolled spin, or maybe he just flat out panicked.

If his chute did open, he very well could have landed in a large body of water like Lake Merwin or the Columbia River, which is nearly a half-mile across at the point where a portion of the ransom money was found in 1980. The sand bar where the money was found is only a few miles downstream from where many believe the flight path of Cooper’s 727 crossed the Columbia River. Water temps in the Columbia River in late November can be in the 40s Fahrenheit. If the water temperature was 45 degrees Fahrenheit, Cooper would have less than half an hour to swim to shore and find warmth, before the debilitating effects of hypothermia set in. On top of that, it would be almost impossible to swim fully clothed and strapped into a parachute harness.

And what about Cooper’s briefcase? The briefcase, which supposedly contained the bomb? What if it detonated upon impact with the ground? Whether Cooper hit the ground with his parachute deployed, or hit the ground at 120 miles per hour with an un-deployed chute, if the briefcase containing a couple sticks of dynamite detonated, then Cooper’s body would have been blown to bits. In a short amount of time, animals would have carried off pieces and parts of the unfortunate hijacker for lunch, and there would be no body for the authorities to find, ever.

Maybe Cooper never planned on surviving the jump. Maybe he was a depressed man, whose loneliness got the better of him with the approaching of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Maybe Cooper was a broken man, who decided to end it all, but wanted to go out with a bang, to go out in a “blaze of glory.” If that is the case and he decided not to pull the ripcord, or panicked and couldn’t pull the ripcord, he quite possibly could have hit the Columbia River with such force, that he would have been killed instantly, the air in his lungs expelled by the force of the impact. The momentum of his fall could have propelled him many feet below the river’s surface also. With the parachutes and the bag of money firmly secured to his body, he may have never surfaced and settled to the bottom of the Columbia River, or whatever body of water he landed in, thus hiding any evidence for all time, unless something washed ashore or was dredged from the river bottom.

Through the years, interest in the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case has remained strong. Over a dozen books have been written about the skyjacker and the skyjacking. Each of these books offers a bevy of information and unique viewpoints of the various authors. Cooper has been featured in a number of movies, such as: “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,” “Up a Creek” and “Flight from Justice, the Real Story of D.B. Cooper.” Newspaper and magazine articles still appear in publications around the U.S., reporting on new theories and new suspects.

Another byproduct of the skyjacking is the emergence of a group of amateur detectives and sleuths who are sometimes called “Cooper Sleuths.” Over the years, a few individuals have come to the forefront of Cooper investing. Don’t let the word “amateur” fool you, each of these individuals offer a diverse skill set and a unique intellectual approach to the case.

Left: During the hijacking, Cooper was wearing this black J.C. Penney tie, which he removed before jumping; it later provided the FBI with a DNA sample. Right: Some of the stolen $20 bills found by Brian Ingram in 1980. Images from FBI website.

Of these Cooper Sleuths, one group really stands out for bringing scientific firepower to the investigation of the case. They call themselves “Citizen Sleuths.” The three main members of the group are: Tom Kaye who considers himself a self-taught scientist with many interests and skills. Tom is an accomplished paleontologist with numerous publishing credits, and has connections with the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. He is also an innovator in early paint ball gun development.

Another member of the team is Carol Abraczinskas, who is a professor and science illustrator at the University of Chicago. She is the leading investigator into the connection between D.B. Cooper and the “Dan Cooper” comics popular in French-speaking Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.

The third member is Alan Stone. Stone works at a private metallurgical research firm in Illinois, and was the lead scientist during the electron spectroscopy experiments that were conducted on the tie and money.

The Citizen Sleuths were allowed access to the actual FBI evidence in the Cooper case and performed extensive scientific analysis of some of the items left behind by the Cooper suspect. The group of scientists share their findings through their incredibly informative website:
www.citizensleuths.com
.

Jerry Thomas’ approach to investigating the Cooper case is the polar opposite of the Citizen Sleuths Team’s hi-tech scientific approach. He explores the forests of Washington State and searches for Cooper on foot. Thomas, a Vietnam War veteran, Army survival trainer and former drill sergeant, has been looking for D.B. Cooper for a quarter century. He claims to have spent hundreds of days in the Washougal and Lewis watersheds, sometimes going weeks at a time searching for clues under the forest’s canopy. Thomas believes Cooper’s chute never opened, that D.B. hit the ground hard.

With the proliferation of the internet into just about every aspect of modern life, finding information about the Cooper hijacking has never been easier. A number of websites dedicated to sharing information about the skyjacking have emerged.

One of the best known and most informative of these websites is “Sluggo’s Northwest 305 Hijacking Research Site.” Its web address is: N467US.com, cleverly using the hijacked 727’s official registration number, “N467US” as the website’s address. The site belongs to Wayne Walker, an extremely knowledgeable historian of the Cooper hijacking. The website boasts one of the most complete collections of FBI documents, transcripts of cockpit conversations, and TV clips from the early days of the investigation.

Another well-known website is:
www.dropzone.com
, which is a very informative website dedicated to skydiver enthusiasts. The D.B. Cooper blog on this website is legendary for infighting, trolling and other raucous behavior. There is quite a bit of good information on this site, you just have to sort through the personal attacks and hostile posts to find it.

Another excellent website with Cooper information is: http://themountainnewswa.net. The site features quite a few interesting articles about the Cooper case and has many useful links, which are great for researching the unsolved skyjacking.

In the last decade, nearly a dozen people have been paraded before us as “D.B. Cooper,” by relatives, friends and authors. The truth is, only one of these dozen or so suspects can actually be Cooper. But more than likely, none of them are. You see, the one common element all these characters share is they all were alive after the skyjacking. This fact alone could possibly exclude any living person from being a suspect in the Cooper skyjacking case.

Even with such an amazing amount of research materials and strong interest in the case, the identity of the enigmatic skyjacker remains a mystery. The Cooper skyjacking case is the only unsolved skyjacking in United States history. Authorities to this day still believe that the Cooper suspect died in the jump attempt, but because of some unknown circumstances the identity of that missing person has flown under the radar of law enforcement, and the general public.

References

Books:

Gray, Geoffrey. 
Skyjack, The Hunt for D.B. Cooper
.  New York.  Crown Publishers, 2011

Himmelsbach, Ralph and Worcester,
Thomas K.  Norjack: The Investigation of D.B. Cooper
. West Linn, Oregon.  Norjack Project, 1986

Tosaw, Richard T.
D.B. Cooper, Dead or Alive?
Tosaw Ceres.  California Publishing Company, 1984

Lusted, Marcia Amidon. 
The D.B. Cooper Hijacking
.  Minneapolis, Minnesota.  ABDO Publishing Company, 2012

Websites:

http://n467us.com/

http://www.citizensleuths.com/db-cooper-what-you-need-to-know.html

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2006/november/dbcooper_112406

http://themountainnewswa.net/db-cooper-links/

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/DB_Cooper/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper

CHAPTER FOUR

The
Andaste

T
he autumn of 1929 was the end of a remarkable decade and the end of an era. It was the end of the “roaring twenties,” not only chronologically, but metaphorically, triggered by the collapse of the stock market, which had seen unprecedented growth over the previous decade.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 began on October 24, referred to by most as Black Thursday, followed by Black Monday on October 28 and culminating with what is known as Black Tuesday on October 29. The losses of stock values were astronomical and many fortunes were lost. One of the most poignant recollections of that event are the memories of businessmen jumping out of their skyscraper office windows and plummeting to their deaths. The stock market collapse signaled the beginning of “The Great Depression,” the biggest economic downturn in United States history, which lasted a decade.

Lost in history, mostly because of being overshadowed by the aforementioned economic collapse, is the unusual shipping losses which occurred on Lake Michigan in the autumn of 1929. Four large ships were lost in separate, unrelated disasters. The
S.S. Milwaukee
,
S.S. Wisconsin
, the
Senator
and the
Andaste
all foundered in different areas of the lake and on different dates.