Amateur Scientists Find New Clue In D.B. Cooper Case, Crowdsource Their Investigation (kare11.com)

Six months after the FBI closed the only unsolved air piracy in American aviation history -- after a 45-year investigation -- there's a new clue. An anonymous reader quotes Seattle news station KING: A band of amateur scientists selected by the Seattle FBI to look for clues in the world's most infamous skyjacking may have found new evidence in the 45-year-old case. They're asking for the public's help because of new, potential leads that could link DB Cooper to the Puget Sound aerospace industry in the early 1970s. The scientific team has been analyzing particles removed from the clip-on tie left behind by Cooper after he hijacked a Northwest Orient passenger jet in November 1971. A powerful electron microscope located more than 100,000 particles on old the JCPenny tie. The team has identified particles like Cerium, Strontium Sulfide, and pure titanium.

Tom Kaye, lead researcher for the group calling itself Citizen Sleuths, says the group is intrigued by the finding, because the elements identified were rarely used in 1971, during the time of Cooper's daring leap with a parachute from a passenger jet. One place they were being used was for Boeing's high-tech Super Sonic Transport plane...
Interestingly, it was even a Boeing aircraft that Cooper hijacked, and witnesses say he wasn't nervous on the flight, and seemed familiar with the terrain below.

Comments

commuting in a hurry

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude was late for work, is all.

" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure Boeing aircraft weren't exactly rare in 1971.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[mschuyler]

Not the point. He knew how to lower the stairs. He was familiar with THIS aircraft, a 727. The whole thing took place between Portland and Seattle, where the SST manufacturing plant was located, which is a valid and rare source for the material found on the tie. The government had just cancelled the SST program and Boeing laid of thousands of workers in the midst of the Boeing death-spiral recession that was happening at the same time where Boeing went from 130,000 employees to 35,000 in 18 months. That's when the billboard went up: "Will the last one to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?" That points to someone who worked at Boeing or at least had inside information.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[BarbaraHudson]

The whole thing is yet another scam to dupe people out of money. First, titanium is far from rare. Titanium dioxide has been used as a pigment since the 1800s. It's the most used white pigment. It's also in sunscreen, food, cosmetics, rubber, paper, plastics, and ... well, you get the point. It's everywhere, and has been well before the '70s.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

But this was pure titanium that was found on him.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[arglebargle_xiv]

Has anyone examined a random sample of similar ties from the 1970s? Given a single sample, you can always find something novel there, until you realise that it was contamination from the shipping container, or manufacturing, or the environment, or whatever, and a bazillion other samples show the same traces.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Deadstick]

And cerium is used in cigarette lighter "flints", strontium in cathode ray tubes.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[BarbaraHudson]

Bullshit - pure titanium isn't used in SST construction. It's always an alloy. And the far more likely source is catalytic converters or glass manufacturing, same as the cerium that was detected. Titanium is just not rare. You'd be contaminated with both elements if you worked in a muffler shop in 1971.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Aighearach]

It seems to me that this residue could have come from the plane he hijacked. It doesn't make sense that he would have used a tie from work, or that he would have all this residue but also be an employee who wears a tie. It seems reasonable that a Boeing maintenance employee might who had worked at that plant and had residue all over his coveralls might have been transferred to a maintenance division and have been leaving that residue around.

727 was a very common plane at the time. I was still seeing them at airports 15 years ago. A lot were produced. It was the 737 equivalent of its day. It isn't really a big deal to know how to operate the stairs; you could learn that on one flight by chatting up the flight staff, or just buy a used study guide. After all it isn't a secret how the controls work on commercial airplanes.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[siamesevodka]

Titanium dioxide was used to alloy aluminum extrusions in Aircraft. Perhaps he did not work for Boeing,he could have worked for Alcoa in Wenatchee. I'll bet he worked for aerospace and got caught in the downturn. Whether you worked for Alcoa or Boeing the financial downturn was real. I suspect Alcoa as he would be around the raw alloy ingredients to make Aluminum extrusions.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[BarbaraHudson]

Good catch! Thanks.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[gumbi west]

And spiral shaped aluminum chips? http://www.citizensleuths.com/...

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

... if you worked in a muffler shop in 1971.

If you worked in a muffler shop in 1971, you would probably be asking, "Whut's a katlitic converter?"

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

The first production catalytic converter was not until 1973, in part because they wouldn't work while leaded fuels were still common. And titanium white was first produced in the 1910s, not the 1800s like you said above. Your dates seem to be rather off.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[slashrio]

Unfortunately the crime has expired. :)

Re: " it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts, shmacts..

Re: " it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[PoopJuggler]

Probably an early prototype formulation of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Cadillac converter....fixed it for you

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[cob666]

Unfortunately the crime has expired. :)

Nice try but the statute of limitations no longer applies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[BarbaraHudson]

Back in the 70's, converters got blocked up pretty quickly, so the quick fix was - if it was a honeycomb, disconnect one end, jam a rod into it. break up the honeycomb, and pour it into the recycling drum - it it was pellets, dump them into the recycling drum. There was good money in recycling the rare elements in them, and people didn't want to fork out extra money for a replacement converter.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[BarbaraHudson]

You're mistaking use of titanium dioxide with mass production of titanium dioxide as a pigment.

The earliest uses of a synthetic titanium oxide, not of pigmentary quality, were during the late 1800s as opacifiers and additives to increase acid resistance in glazes and vitreous enamels.

A blue porcelain glaze using hydrous titanic oxide was described in 1841. Titanium compounds of all kinds were investigated for use in the late 1800s in the textile industry, including titanium oxide as a mordant for wool, also not the calcined white pigment

And titanium dioxide was discovered in 1821.

Again, there is no "evidence" that titanium was so rare back in the 1970s.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mistaking use of titanium dioxide [mfa.org] with mass production of titanium dioxide as a pigment.

So are you it seems:

Titanium dioxide has been used as a pigment since the 1800s

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[ebvwfbw]

Not the point. He knew how to lower the stairs.

Not impressed. I know how to lower the stairs. It's not hard. After watching someone, you'll know too. It's not that hard.
As for being familiar with a 727, they're a dime a dozen. Very few differences between the one DB Cooper hijacked and the last one I flew, probably back in the 1990s.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

"And cerium is used in cigarette lighter "flints", strontium in cathode ray tubes."
And Yttrium is used to dope "Phosphors" like Strontium Sulfide to make them glow Orange and Titanium is used to make...
This guy's tie looks like it was used to wipe the floor where custom CRTs were made.
Skip Seattle, check out Beaverton, where Tektronix is.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Shane_Optima]

The whole thing is yet another scam to dupe people out of money. First, titanium is far from rare. Titanium dioxide has been used as a pigment since the 1800s. It's the most used white pigment. It's also in sunscreen, food, cosmetics, rubber, paper, plastics, and ... well, you get the point. It's everywhere, and has been well before the '70s.

Nice try, but we're not falling for your psyops. Everyone knows that titanium tioxide is a component of pico-thermite. Which... is why no one ever found the body.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[morethanapapercert]

Except that the citizen sleuths page on the materials found on/in the tie make it clear that:

a) It isn't titanium dioxide, but actual titanium metal, in shapes that indicate the particles are swarf and debris from machining operations.

b) the x-ray spectroscopic data show that the particle tested isn't pure Ti but is pretty darn close to being so. No other elements approach 1% of the total spectra.

c) one fragment was found to have close association with aluminium crystals, which might indicate an alloy. (is there a metallurgist in the house?)

d) yet another particle showed 400 series stainless steel embedded in a fragment of titanium. The shape and texture of the bond between them suggests one tool was used to work both metals. One possible scenario, a drill bit was used to male a hole in SS and then make a hole in Ti, smearing a bit of SS debris onto the Ti swarf during the operation.

e) there were several spiral chips of 500 or 5000 series aluminium, which is an alloy with the principle alloying metal being magnesium. Not particularly strong until and unless heat treated, but with good machinable qualities and corrosion resistance.

The evidence seems pretty clear that the tie was worn in a machine shop environment where, for the time, some unusual materials were being worked with in conjunction with more common fabrication materials. Given the variety of the materials found, it is not unreasonable to suppose the tie was worn in such an area more than once, during different operations or stages where different materials would have been worked on. In addition, the tie had to have been worn by someone who would wear a tie in a machine shop. No machinist, tool and die maker or shop operator would wear a tie, even a clip on like the one D.B. Cooper left behind, while working because of the obvious safety hazards. The sleuths reasonably conclude that D.B. would have been an engineer or shop manager. (the tie being a clip-on, I lean towards the engineer option. back in '71, a clip on tie would have been seen as even more tacky than it is today. It's seems more likely to me that an engineer would wear a clip on in deference to what he sees as a silly dress code than a manager would, who might be a wee bit more style and status conscious than an engineer)

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighters use mischmetal, a mixture of half cerium and half lanthanides. They report finding both particles of mischmetal and particles of much higher purity cerium. Assuming they did things as they said, their method should be quite capable of distinguishing the higher purity cerium from what would be used in lighters.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Also he might have worn the clip-on tie as a safety element - if it did accidentally get caught in machinery it would be more likely to 'break away' and come off than to strangle the wearer. If he was getting close enough to machining processes to get metal dust in his tie, he was probably someone needing safety glasses on a regular basis.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 70's...

Yeah, in the second half of the 70s. That didn't happen in 1971 unless you worked at one of the two companies developing as of yet to be sold converters. And then it wouldn't have been cerium metal based until later (cerium oxide was used pretty early though).

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Anonymous Coward]

Cars in the early 70s ran on leaded gas and didn't have catalytic converters, Einstein.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[slashrio]

Nice try but the statute of limitations no longer applies:

Actually that's a good thing, thanks.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Coren22]

But, did the 727 use titanium heavily in its manufacture? Titanium metals weren't very common back then, and were mostly used in supersonic aircraft, not boring commercial airlines.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Aighearach]

That's not a valid question in response to my comment. Please re-read my comment to find that I already provided the sufficient information for you to determine the relevance of your question.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Coren22]

It seems to me that this residue could have come from the plane he hijacked.

No, it could not.

It doesn't make sense that he would have used a tie from work, or that he would have all this residue but also be an employee who wears a tie.

As TFA says, it would if he was an engineer.

The rest I assume is about the stairs, which I have no comment on as I know nothing of it.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Aighearach]

It seems to me that this residue could have come from the plane he hijacked.

No, it could not.

Yes it could! Notice how that goes in circle? If you want to just say, "Nuh-uh" you should follow it with some reasons.

And yeah, it really could. You can't say it couldn't, because you won't have information that supports that. You won't know. You can't say "no" here, the best you can do is to answer the natural corollary to "could have" which is "could have not." Which I would totally agree with, as proven by my use of the word "could" in the first place.

If you think about how material transfer that ends up on a tie happens, then you should be able to understand that we're talking about indirect transfer in all cases. The tie would not have been a tool that had direct contact with the substances found; they would have been transferred indirectly. And so you can't really reasonably say that indirect transfer couldn't happen in more than one way. Especially when there is a known nexus between the craft and the supposed factory; they're both Boeing, and would have lots of people and equipment that could have touched both.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Coren22]

There was no Titanium metal used in the body of the aircraft. Titanium was an extremely rare metal used in supersonic aircraft, as the 727 was not supersonic, there is no chance that the tie picked up titanium shards from the aircraft. You can make up all kinds of sources that are impossible, it doesn't make them suddenly possible.

Re:" it was even a Boeing aircraft"

[Aighearach]

Right, you simply missed the point and don't understand what indirect transfer means. Try harder, you might eventually understand what you're disagreeing with.

All you're doing is missing the point.

Is the theory that there was only one person who worked for Boeing that could have picked up titanium "shards"[sic]? No, no, that was not the theory they floated. You simply didn't understand it, and didn't understand that it doesn't narrow it down really very far; and that's why they're asking for people who would have more insights to step forwards!

I have never understood

[Trachman]

Why is that a common criminal who swindles federal money, a total of $0.2 million, who, based on the description, was working in aviation industry, perhaps at Boeing or some other related company is so much more important than Boeing wasting billions and billions of dollars, doing it consistently, over a long period of time, and using nice euphemisms as budget overruns or increases in cost. Presidential plane $4 billion project has been called a wastefully excessive (in price) and nobody got interviewed by FBI. Last time I have checked the mugshots in the newspaper, a person has been arrested in my town for $100 shoplifting. Why so much publicity on individual cases of private individuals?

Re:I have never understood

[NFN_NLN]

Why so much publicity on individual cases of private individuals?

It says right in the first sentence: "the only unsolved air piracy in American aviation history"

Re:I have never understood

[Anonymous Coward]

Rich get richer, poor get poorer. It's the law!

Re:I have never understood

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how the world works, grasshopper. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

The clue is to change your perspective. 'News' is not what is significantly important (Boeing wasting billions), it's what the public likes to read. Justice is not determined by the economic effects, it's by the possibility of prosecution. You can convict a shoplifter with ease, almost no one involved in the 2008 crisis was prosecuted at all. The money from everywhere is keeping this system in check, because why kill the goose with the golden eggs if it also does a lot of things wrong?

Re:I have never understood

[murdocj]

That's how the world works, grasshopper. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

The clue is to change your perspective. 'News' is not what is significantly important (Boeing wasting billions), it's what the public likes to read. Justice is not determined by the economic effects, it's by the possibility of prosecution. You can convict a shoplifter with ease, almost no one involved in the 2008 crisis was prosecuted at all. The money from everywhere is keeping this system in check, because why kill the goose with the golden eggs if it also does a lot of things wrong?

and of course the better system is...?

Re:I have never understood

[Anonymous Coward]

Me King

Re:I have never understood

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is America and corporations are not only people but gods. It's not a crime if you don't get caught or you pay politicians to legalize your particular form of scam and theft, right? Just follow the money and it will lead you to the answers. The only way we hold corporations accountable for what they do is by occasionally fining them, usually less than what they profited by breaking the law so they still come out ahead.

Jimmy James

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know that D.B. Cooper was Jimmy James.

Re:Jimmy James

[93 Escort Wagon]

We all know that D.B. Cooper was Jimmy James.

No, he was Jimmy Johns, and he used the money to establish a successful chain of sandwich shops.

Re:Jimmy James

[Anonymous Coward]

He was also Deep Throat.

Re:Jimmy James

[Anonymous Coward]

And Deep Throat.

"Oh, honeybunch, if life were fair there wouldn't be rich people."

J. James

Re:Jimmy James

[Anonymous Coward]

No, pretty sure it was Don Draper.

Re: Jimmy James

[Anonymous Coward]

that would make an excellent sequel

WTF

[Hognoxious]

WTF is a piracy?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

a hijacking, same thing

Re:WTF

[Jamu]

The collective noun for a group of bittorrentors?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a speech disorder where you end every sentence with harrrrr!

Re:WTF

[Brett Buck]

It's and example of an irritating affectation from the computer-geek world, trying to sound more sophisticated or vaguely European. A bunch of idiots go around in Wikipedia changing conventional spelling to British spellings (artefact VS artifact), too.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

They just want to be the centre of attention ...

Re:WTF

[Hognoxious]

It's and example of an irritating affectation

You couldn't make it up.

trying to sound more sophisticated or vaguely European. A bunch of idiots go around in Wikipedia changing conventional spelling to British spellings (artefact VS artifact), too.

What's that got to do with anything?

You seem to have a bit of an inferiority complex, and it might well be justified.

Re:WTF

[cwsumner]

WTF is a piracy?

Hijacking an aircraft comes under the international laws on piracy, that were originally written for piracy of ships. They are in generalized terms, though, so they also apply to other large carriers of cargo and people.

At the time this event was called piracy, but (as they do now) the news media changed it to "dumb it down".

I'm still rooting for him.

[wolf12886]

You don't hear of too many gentleman bandits. I'm rooting for him, personally.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[TWX]

At this point he's probably no longer with us, and he's assuredly a pensioner at this point even if he is still alive. If he really was in his mid-forties in 1971 as some have thought then he'd be ninety now.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[JoeMerchant]

Chillin' in Costa Rica, or dead, probably both.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[Motherfucking Shit]

Plot twist: DB Cooper is actually John McAfee.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[damn_registrars]

and he's assuredly a pensioner

Pensioner in name only. If he was in his 40s in 1971 and lost his job at that time, he likely didn't have enough work history to have accrued much pension. Likelihood of him having taken a job with a pension after this would likely be pretty slim.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[gumbi west]

Why wouldn't he have taken another job? The money never showed up and so he would need money.

Re:I'm still rooting for him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, threatening to blow up a plane with dozens of other people does not seem gentlemanly.

Re: I'm still rooting for him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to take a job when you're splattered on the forest floor.

And he would've gotten away with it, too...

[93 Escort Wagon]

If it weren't for these meddling old people!

Copy cats

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny this should come up, I just read this story about a copy cat, who got caught http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/the-final-flight-of-martin-mcnally/Content?oid=3137418&showFullText=true its quite an entertaining story.

Re:It's obvious

[AmiMoJo]

A GPS watch taken back in time to 1971 wouldn't work because there would be no GPS satellites in orbit.

Re:It's obvious

[aix tom]

So he also transported enough GPS satellites back in time, for his GPS to work? ;-)

WTF case is closed

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI closed the case, so now they're outsourcing it? WTF waste of our tax dollars. Trump should shut that FBI office down as a warning to the other ones to focus on more important issues like stopping heroin and fentanyl dealers, muslims and other terrorists, and bank robberies.

Re:WTF case is closed

[Anonymous Coward]

> so now they're outsourcing it?

Nope.

Re:WTF case is closed

[Lakitu]

The FBI closed the case, so now they're outsourcing it?

No

Trump should shut that FBI office down as a warning to the other ones

The DB Cooper FBI office? Even pretending that there was one specifically dedicated towards finding DB Cooper, it presumably would have been shut down when they closed the case

and bank robberies

What do you think the DB Cooper incident was?

You almost understood any single part of this story. Keep working on it bud. You'll get there one day.

Re:WTF case is closed

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it is just a libertard just trying to stir stuff up and perpetuate the blame on something other than their failed political party.

Re:WTF case is closed

[Anonymous Coward]

faggot

Re:WTF case is closed

[Anonymous Coward]

Butthurt you lost?

Sucks to be you!

song of a legend

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7Ppb2YtaM

No, Jimmy WALES. Wondered why he takes no salary?

[raymorris]

It was Jimmy WALES. Ever wondered why he has no need to accept a salary for running Wikipedia?

No westmoreland

[Joe_Dragon]

And he did a some time at fox river

Re:No, Jimmy WALES. Wondered why he takes no salar

[damn_registrars]

No, he's Jimmy Jam . What better alias could one come up with to evade detection as a famous skyjacker than being a 12-year-old in Minneapolis at the time?

Boeing

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe those elements were found on the tie because boeing used those materials and the tie was left on a boeing aircraft.

Re:Boeing

[PPH]

tie was left on a boeing aircraft

Except Boeing commercial aircraft don't use that much titanium. So the contamination level from that path would be vanishingly small. Titanium (and some of the other rare elements detected) are used primarily in military programs. Which Cooper might have picked up as an engineer visiting a related shop area.

The idea was put forth that Cooper might have been involved with the SST program, which was going to use a significant amount of titanium. But Boeing never got much further than plywood mockups. Given these constraints, there aren't really that many places even at Boeing where employees would encounter such metals, making the search space pretty small. So this is data that could very easily reduce the number of suspects.

Highly unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

I would find it highly unlikely that DB Cooper was a Boeing employee. As soon as any allegations were brought forward, the artist conception would have been run through the employee database using the latest in facial recognition software and all potential hits would have been screened by people. They would have known if there was any potential matches before this ever hit the media.

Re:Highly unlikely

[MichaelSmith]

worst. joke. evar.

Re:Highly unlikely

[F.Ultra]

They didn't have the "enhance" command back then.

Sure, both people who still give a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking both people who still give a fuck for help isn't exactly crowd sourcing.

How He Could Have Done It

[Anonymous Coward]

In the late 70's a couple of Special Forces guys and I were stuck in an airport bar and kicked around how somebody could have pulled this off. Scenario we came up with was a series of strobes on the ground, giving the countdown to the DZ. They figured you could get within hiking distance of a stashed vehicle. No accomplices required.

Re:How He Could Have Done It

[MichaelSmith]

But he jumped blind in bad weather. He should have called it off if he wasn't going to be able to see the strobes.

Re:How He Could Have Done It

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't if there was a contact in the DZ.

Re:It's obvious

[Cmdln Daco]

The GPS device has a knife switch on the back that toggles it to use LORAN navigation.

Re:No, Jimmy WALES. Wondered why he takes no salar

[Cmdln Daco]

You have the Minneapolis connection right, but the name is Jimmy Jingle, a defunct vending machine company.

We had Jimmy Jingle vending machines on campus when I was in tech school. A truly horrible rinky-dink operation. Coffee machines that vended absolutely tiny cups, etc.

Reading is Fundamental

[Tenebrousedge]

Next time could you bother to read the article? Yes, titanium dioxide is common, which is the entire point of mentioning that element, because the elemental form is far less common, and even less common then.

It's not that your comments aren't valuable, it's that you don't know when you have fine caviar in your hand or fetid dogshit -- it's the same to you either way. In this case — so you know — this is dogshit.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[BarbaraHudson]

Next time could you bother to read the article? Yes, titanium dioxide is common, which is the entire point of mentioning that element, because the elemental form is far less common, and even less common then.

It's not that your comments aren't valuable, it's that you don't know when you have fine caviar in your hand or fetid dogshit -- it's the same to you either way. In this case — so you know — this is dogshit.

Pure titanium isn't used in aircraft - it's used as part of an alloy. So if they detected pure titanium (as they claimed) it's most definitely not from aircraft manufacturing, since the alloys arrive at the factory already smelted and cast or rolled, ready for machining or forming, so that pretty much kills the whole thing. They're not going to manufacture the alloys at the plant from elemental titanium.

So it's exactly what I said - a just another crowdsourcing scam targeting people with more money than brains.

Speaking of which, you would have known this if you had taken the time that you wasted typing up your - as you would say - dogshit response - to see if maybe the article was, in fact, bullshit. Or dogshit. Or whatever.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Not that your tastes, are not to be respected, they are. But caviar is as gross as dog shit --so you know.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Khyber]

If you knew shit about Boeing, you'd know they had R&D facilities where they developed alloys and then had other industry partners manufacture them en-masse.

Boeing was heavily involved in titanium alloys and aluminum-lithium alloy development in the 70s and 80s.

Which is a perfect explanation about why pure titanium, cerium, and more was found on the tie.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

"Titanium alloys" include things like grades of titanium that are 99.9% pure with very small amounts of additives, often labeled "commercially pure", while other grades are still 90+% titanium. Calling something pure titanium depends a lot on context.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure titanium isn't used in aircraft

What? Unalloyed titanium (e.g. grade 1-4) is used all over the place in aircraft.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[BarbaraHudson]

And they didn't do that in the manufacturing facility. Duh!

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[BarbaraHudson]

Aviation alloys are not 99.9% titanium. Neither are the titanium frames of your glasses. Nor the titanium used in cosmetics, food, etc.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[BarbaraHudson]

Even grades 1-4 are not "elemental titanium." Even grade 1 contains carbon, iron, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Grades 1-3 are 99+% titanium, this is why they are called commercially pure. Purity is a relative term, not an absolute term. Nowhere does their site say they found 100% pure elemental titanium, only that they found metallic titanium and that their methods are limited to resolving about 97-99% levels of metallic purity. That covers a large amount of titanium alloys and excludes titanium dioxide. They have also not been able to find any of the sand particles typically found in titanium dioxide as an impurity.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Aviation alloys are not 99.9% titanium. Neither are the titanium frames of your glasses. Nor the titanium used in cosmetics, food, etc.

Do you have reading comprehension issues? Let me highlight a word you seem to have missed:

"Titanium alloys" include things like grades of titanium that are 99.9% pure with very small amounts of additives,

Saying that category includes something is distinctly different from saying all things in the category have that property.

And yes, 99.9% pure titanium is used in aircraft. Grade 1 titanium is used a lot in airframes, and when welding titanium you often want to use a more ductile filler as some types of titanium crack easily when welded. Lower impurities makes titanium more ductile, so when welding grade 1, 99.6% titanium minimum, you use a filler like ERTi1 which is 99.9% titanium. This alloy gets used directly for deep draw stamping too because of its ductility.

Re: Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Wah chang. Check the tie for radioactives.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that your tastes, are not to be respected, they are. But caviar is as gross as dog shit --so you know.

But not as gross as snails, or god forbid - fish eggs.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

You would still likely find samples of the material on-site. I work in a steel mill, and we even keep a collection of various slags for front office display.

Re:Reading is Fundamental

[Anonymous Coward]

'Mandak' 'Jamuna', really???? Sounds like your tastes are as gross as dog shit. But by all means, someone from a culture where they eat the testicles of rabbits and the sphincter of jaguar, I will assume your taste leaves much to be desired..

Nothing new (2011 dupe?)

[guruevi]

We've know for quite a long time about the titanium. Here's a story from 2011: http://www.upi.com/Did-DB-Coop...

It hasn't been relevant for a long time, the guy walked off with $200k and may or may not have survived. In the mean time, a small band of cyber criminals has been hacking banks and ATM's for the last decade without ever being caught despite still being active, having been tied to close to $1B in losses worldwide.

Re:Nothing new (2011 dupe?)

[gumbi west]

Right, but you trust our voting machines because they are made by the people who make ATMs, right?

Re:Nothing new (2011 dupe?)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's new; the tests were done in 2016. There were more tests (http://www.citizensleuths.com/mccrone1.html), either of samples that were never analyzed, or of chemicals that were never tested before (I can't tell because I'm having trouble accessing the website and need to run).

So, it's new evidence confirming an older theory. Thus, they're reaching out to people.

It seems appropriate because some of these chemicals seem more specific than "he worked at a Boeing plant," more like "he worked with display panel production at a Boeing plant." But starting with Boeing plant seems about right to me. If someone was like "hey, I had a relative who worked at a Boeing plant and was a paratrooper in WWII and then disappeared at the exact same time as DB Cooper, right after he got laid off," well that would be a good lead.

Into translate please English

[Anonymous Coward]

on old the JCPenny tie

clarification please.

The Bodhi that got away

[Anonymous Coward]

"An anonymous reader quotes Seattle news station.."
So someone at the Seattle news station like many of us watched the Expedition Unknown episode this week and wrote a recap. /s

As for the person ticketed as Dan Cooper (why does the article still use debunked 'DB' ? name), I don't care, props to him for pulling it off and presumably getting away with it and stumping the FBI for decades, let the perp be, he earned it. ;)

Also how in the hell has nobody made a point break related joke yet?

$200,000 is laughably small

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation you say, we all accept it as a fact of life and yet this case shows that the bigger thief Here is inflation not DB Cooper. Maybe goldbug Mike Maloney has a point , the monetary system itself is ripping us off https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0

His reserve chute was a dummy.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

His main chute was ok, but FBI now says, they accidentally sent him a dummy class room demo chute, with inoperable rip cord and the bag sewn shut, inadvertently. So he had only one working chute. Dropped into dark rainy air, without helmet, without oxygen, without camping, hunting, survival gear, with one chute and two money bags strapped to his waist. The wiki is wrong to say he went into -57 deg F air. that is cruise altitude FL300 range. He dropped at FL100, people live at higher altitude than this, in places like Tibet, ski lodges in Alps. So with some thermal underpants, he could drop to 5000 ft in less than a minute.

It is possible for him to have landed safely and secreted the money bags. After that it is very difficult to believe he could have survived long, somehow hitchhiked out of that area, to some bus station or train yard or truck stop traveled without being seen out of that area. With that level of media attention to that part of the country all strangers would have been noticed and reported. I think he died near where the cash was found. The wild animals tore through his body and clothing, most the cash and bones ended up in the river and washed out to the ocean.

Advice to future copy-cats. Practice skydiving and become familiar. Try to take your own familiar parachute. Ask for basic camping survival gear. Dry food rations and some water. After landing safely, secure the cash and note the gps coordinates. Find a water course and follow it down stream. Till you come to a river with decent flowing water. Collect drift wood, form a raft and float down stream. Raft only at nights. From the watershed where you jump, figure out which river you will end up in, pick the city to rejoin civilization, practice it couple of times, do dry runs.

With the proliferation of security cameras, high resolution picture of your face will have been recorded by TSA. So grow mustache, beard, dye them, wear glasses. Doctor your eye-glass frames to be asymmetric, slightly. You need to make the eigen values of the face detection algo matrix go askew. After the fact switch to contacts, go clean shaven and revert to natural hair color. Colored contact lenses before the crime^H^H^H^H^H adventure, a must.

Realize if you can pull this off, you are smart enough to make more money legally.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[Anonymous Coward]

After that it is very difficult to believe he could have survived long, somehow hitchhiked out of that area, to some bus station or train yard or truck stop traveled without being seen out of that area.

1. Surviving out in the northwest forest is not difficult for someone expecting to do so. People do that for fun. They are called backpackers. Others do it for the challenge. That is called bushcraft nowadays.

2. I heard he had quite a bit of money with him when he landed. With money, do you really think it was necessary to hitchike? Unless you searched every car and container, how would you know that the guy with plenty of expendable cash didn't make it "out of that area" unseen.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[Cyberax]

Area on the flight path between Portland and Seattle is hardly a vast expanse of untamed forest. You'll find a human settlement or a road if you walk for about 10 miles straight in any direction. Hardly a feat that requires superhuman abilities. Then you just use a payphone to call in your accomplice to pick you up.

Alternatively, you can make several caches with clean clothes and camping gear beforehand. Then just find the nearest cache and backpack wherever you want.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[AmiMoJo]

Considering how much effort he put into planning the rest of the operation, it isn't unreasonable to assume that he had a plan for when he landed. Perhaps he prepared some supplies and transport before hand. A change of clothes so as not to look suspicious, replacement bags for the money.

It just seems unlikely that after so carefully figuring out how to pull off the hijacking he would neglect to consider how to escape afterwards.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[ebvwfbw]

There is one theory out there that it wasn't a guy in the first place. It was a chick dressed up as a man. Another one I think says that it was a guy, later had SRS to become a woman.

Didn't know about the dummy chute. As Toyota used to say - "oh what a feeling."... if you go to pull a rip cord and nothing happens.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you'd be better off trying to find the $200k strapped to the waist of a corpse somewhere between Portland and Seattle. You're unlikely to succeed, but at least you'd get to do some good bush-walking done.

Re:His reserve chute was a dummy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, for everyone who claims he 'must have' died, this is the problem with their 'must have' thesis.

Cooper gave every indication of knowing what he was doing and being in control. Given this, suggesting that he froze to death on the way down fails. OMG, you mean that parachuting, out of a plane, in flight, means you'll be in the air? At altitude??

Suggesting he died on impact is just wishful thinking or speculation. OMG, you mean that parachuting, means you'll have to land??

The evidence supports him getting away clean, every bit as much a supporting a death trying to make his escape. And if you think he died trying to escape, how come we haven't found traces? Yeah, yeah, I know the excuses. Animals, high precipitation, wild backcountry, whatever. It has been 40 years, I suspect we'd have found at least something by now.

Distraction

[hackwrench]

Because they need to keep people distracted from what's really going on lest they do something to upset this whole farce the world is living.

The better system

[hackwrench]

The better system is to simply ignore everything and do what makes you happy.

Re: The better system

[PoopJuggler]

That's a terrible system because invariably what makes people happy destroys the planet.

Re: The better system

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible system because invariably what makes people happy destroys the planet.

Me masturbating destroys the planet? WTF?

Re: The better system

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking destroys the planet? Oh Noes!

Re: The better system

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible system because invariably what makes people happy destroys the planet.

Like poop juggling. : )

EditorDave?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's JCPenney, motherfucker.

Maybe a yard sale or thrift shop tie?

[TomRombouts]

Since I go to yard sales and thrift shops all the time, an obvious question is how do we know that these rare or trace elements did not end up on D.B. Cooper's tie from a previous owner of the tie? Tom

Washougal River, that could be it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hobby sailor here, building patchy navigation skills as a hobby.

The fellow who pulled this together was not in his first parachute trip, so he had a scheduled mission plan:
  * Mount St Helens is a perfect timing device: once in sighting, you count a given number of seconds and off you go with little to risk
  * Since the plane is moving in a North-South direction, a big geographic feature of East-West orientation is a perfect objective
  * The Washougal River or the ridge/hills right in the south of it is a perfect objective due to clearance from human observers
  * Once landed/rivered, walk into/stay in the river with isothermal socks & gloves and let the stream do its job; it's night, you don't swim, nobody knows
  * Somewhere down the stream there is a sailing boat waiting; easy to get on with minimal preparation of a single rope
  * Wait for next boat passing in the direction you wish to go, then follow it with just a bit of distance - keep an eye on it
  * Somewhere later on there is a car waiting. The rest is history!

Re: It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Also potassium benzoate

It captured the public's imagination

[Kenshin]

It doesn't matter if he's dead, or if the case isn't relevant anymore. Who cares about its legal status. The heist captured the public imagination. The audacity of it, the lingering mystery. People will still be talking about it in 100 years, just like people still talk about wild west stage coach robberies.

I think he won...

[Grog6]

How do you spend money that's that hot?

You owe money to the Mob; So you pays what you owes. :)

They really can't bitch too much.

So WTF You paid with stolen money? ALL of the people who give them money do. :)

I think he walked away proud. :D

splendiforous

[billdale]

I often read such inane drivel in Slashdot--- this post is quite the exception--- after reading the first hundred or so comments, I feel like I just took a class in metallurgy. Thank you Barbara Hudson, et. al. Very enlightening.

Destination Unknown

[Topwiz]

I watched the episode and they tested a theory that he didn't actually jump out of the plane, he just jumped up and down to make it seem like he did. He then waited until the approach into Reno which is flat and covered by scrub brush. He took two of the four chutes so he could have thrown one of the chutes and some money as a diversion. One problem I had with this theory is that he wouldn't have known ahead of time that they would go to Reno. He had requested Mexico but they ran low on fuel due to flying at low altitude.

Re:It's obvious

[ndege]

The GPS device has a knife switch on the back that toggles it to use LORAN navigation.

Mod parent ++

LORAN was awesome!!! Wish they would have left the inland LORAN infrastructure in place. When a large CME or other unexpected astronomical event occurs, it would be nice to have ground-based electronic navigation already in place. Oh well.

DB Cooper Copycat

[Anonymous Coward]

In July 2016 following the FBI announcement they had stopped looking for BD Cooper, true crime podcast Gangland Wire began the release of a free 7-part tell all interview with convicted copycat criminal American Airlines hijacker Martin J. McNall.

Go listen at http://ganglandwire.com/?s=McNally

Thursday, Jan 12th the Saint Louis Riverfront Times published an interview with American Airlines hijacker Martin J. McNally.

Go read at http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/the-final-flight-of-martin-mcnally/Content?oid=3137418&showFullText=true