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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.
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.
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.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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.
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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.
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.
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