FBI Accepts New Evidence in 46-Year-Old D.B. Cooper Case (dailymail.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes the Daily Mail: The FBI is looking at an 'odd bit of buried foam' as possible evidence in the cold case investigation into criminal mastermind D.B. Cooper, according to private investigators. The potential evidence was handed over to authorities last week by the team of sleuths who believe the foam made up a part of Cooper's parachute backpack, the New York Daily News reports. Cooper, one of the 20th century's most compelling masterminds, hijacked a Boeing 727 at Seattle-Tacoma airport in 1971 and held its crew and passengers hostage with a bomb. Once his demand of $200,000 cash -- the equivalent of $1,213,226 today -- was reached and transferred onto the plane, Cooper had the crew take off before he parachuted out over the dense Pacific Northwest woods and disappeared.

The discovery of the foam comes just weeks after the FBI uncovered what is believed to be part of Cooper's parachute strap, which private investigators claim could lead authorities to his stolen fortune. In addition, the FBI also received three 'unknown' pieces of fabric that were found close to where the alleged parachute strap was located.
The 40-member cold case team is being overseen by a former FBI supervisor. At one point they essentially crowdsourced the investigation by requesting help from the general public, and the team now says they've found a credible source -- providing information substantiated by FBI field notes -- which has led them to this new evidence.

Comments

Your tax dollars at work

[Bruce66423]

Is this really the priority for the FBI? Is there no current crime to pursue? Or is this evidence that the fall in the crime rate in recent years has left the FBI without enough to do?

Re:Criminal mastermind?

[El Cubano]

Conspiracy theories aside, the evidence points to him being killed when he bailed out of the plane. Some mastermind.

I still wonder about this. The amount of money he demanded ($200,000) seems like it was meant to be large enough to seem like a real demand, but small enough that it could be assembled fairly quickly. I cannot imagine that his real plan was to live out the the rest of his life on that sum, at least not anywhere near civilization. Even 45 years ago I don't think anyone could reasonably expect to live a few decades on that amount.

He likely would have been smart enough to know that every serial number of every bill he was handed would have been recorded. I suspect that the $200,000 was intentionally a red herring and that he quickly disposed of it, knowing that considerable effort would be expended looking for those bills. If I had to guess, I would think that he probably had some other loot already (probably much more than $200,000) somewhere else that was intended to be his real nest egg.

Of course, if what you say about him being killed shortly after leaving the plane then it is sort of moot.

Re:What an amazing use of Taxpayer money!

[blindseer]

why continue the case?

Because it's good practice for more recent cases?

I'm no detective or anything but I can imagine that these skills are "use it or lose it" like any other. If they aren't doing anything of a higher priority then why not?

I can also imagine that there is matter of pride. There's someone that got away and finding out who did it, even this far in the past, does prove something, doesn't it?

I vaguely recall an argument, from the UK I believe, on the funds spent by the military picking up lost hikers and skiers. Some politician thought this was a waste of government resources. A high ranking officer explained that if the military was not doing this service they'd have to concoct drills of similar difficulty to keep the people trained. Doing this service effectively cost nothing, kept people safe(r), and was an effective recruiting tool. Sending out civilians in a jeep instead of military in a helicopter would look cheaper at first but it'd also save no money in the end since the helicopters would be flying anyway. If war breaks out those same people would be picking up downed pilots and doing medical evacuations of wounded soldiers.

Let the FBI go dig in the mud looking for rotted bank notes and bits of a parachute. If in the future they need some experienced people to find a suspect in a "hot" case then we know where to find them.

Re: Criminal mastermind?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an implicit assumption that Cooper jumped at 8:13 PM, when the aft stairs of the plane opened. Cooper failed to answer that time, but that doesn't prove he left the plane. The tail of the plane moved upward requiring the pilot to compensate, but that doesn't prove Cooper jumped then, either. Turbulence from the weather could have produced the same effect. The crew didn't open the cockpit door until arriving in Reno. If Cooper had jumped at 8:13 PM, that places the plane over southwest Washington, and bills were later found downstream of Vancouver, WA along Tina Bar. It's assumed that the bills had washed up there after ending up in a tributary of the Columbia River. Even if the bills fell out of the plane at the same time Cooper jumped, it simply shows that it occurred somewhere within the Columbia River basin. It could have been as far south as central Oregon. Nobody knows when Cooper left the plane except that it occurred after 8:13 PM and before landing in Reno. There are also a lot of questions about how the bills got to Tina Bar, when they arrived, why three packs of bills remained together while getting separated from the others, and why a few of the bills were missing.

The weather was bad over southwest Washington but improved to the south. Even Salem, OR was dry a bit earlier in the evening and a little warmer, as per the upper air data. The bills could as easily have been transported by the Willamette River or another tributary or the Columbia River and have landed in Oregon rather than Washington. Had Cooper jumped a bit later than what is generally assumed, which is entirely possible given the evidence, it would have been far easier for him to survive the jump.

Rather than making a hasty jump into bad weather over Washington, it's entirely possible that Cooper waited until the weather cleared before jumping. I propose that Cooper jumped over an area to the south that wasn't cloudy, where he could have more easily seen the ground, avoided rain, and would have faced a much lower risk of death due to exposure.

This relies on the chance that turbulence caused the tail of the plane to suddenly move upward shortly after the aft stairs were lowered. This isn't implausible when considering that the flight was in poor weather over complex terrain. Cooper pretended he wanted to go to Mexico City while obviously planning to jump. He ordered the flight crew into the cockpit, even though the threat of a bomb had ensured their cooperation to that point and the crew had no incentive to take additional risks. It is quite possible that the crew was ordered into the cockpit precisely so they couldn't see when he jumped. There would have been no incentive to make a hasty jump into poor weather when he could have jumped at any point between Seattle and Reno. Admittedly, Cooper made poor choices regarding his choice of parachutes, but every other detail was carefully planned, and that might include misleading the crew as to when and where he left the plane.

I know, it's a bit if a fringe theory, but hopefully way more interesting than the posts whining about tax dollars.

Re:I thought they had closed the case?

[Z00L00K]

The case may be closed from a criminal perspective but it would still be interesting to many from a historical perspective.

I don't think that we will figure out everything that happened in that case, but if we all find enough pieces of the chain then there's a great story to be told.

B.t.w. - modern aircraft has a blocking device called Cooper vane that shall prevent this type of action to be repeated.