Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Imagine what all that cash will be worth now with all that interest over the years.
Last year the fact that the FBI had closed the case made headlines, and now there are 40 people working on it?
The summary isn't clear, but they aren't FBI employees, the "40 member" team is just people who have signed up for this one effort, probably by chipping in some cash.
I thought it was the collective weight of tinfoil hats...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Given that there isn't enough money to investigate every case to the nth degree, someone has to make decisions about what is to be the priority. Who can that be if it is not the FBI itself? The only alternative would appear to be a political appointee - which seems worse.
You could have the investigative agency need to get a court to sign off on closing a case, for example. You could also have priorities allocated by a committee that includes some people (whether voting or non-voting) from outside the FBI. Like maybe a citizen representative, or a victim representatives, or someone from DOJ outside the FBI, or a local law enforcement representative. For any large organization, there's more than one way you could reasonably set priorities, but you need to figure that out in the context of law and of organizational politics that are far beyond whatever will be discussed about them on Slashdot.
Real lawyers write in C++
That wouldn't change a thing, the FBI won't waste time with that (Plus Hillary Clinton has personally murdered over 300 people to hide it) and the House GOP members are still trying to find a way to frame the Clinton's for killing Colonel Mustard since they know Reagan can't rest in peace with his ghost haunting the world.
I prefer that psychos who hijack planes, hold the passengers hostage with a bomb threat, and manage to make off with $200k in ransom money get caught and brought to justice. Isn't that what the law is supposed to do?
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.
Interesting XKCD picture here.
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Seriously not true. I cannot speak for all countries, but I know from experience that the countries I've used airports in, all required ID to get past security screening. These include Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and Italy. You're not getting on a pane without official ID.
I bet you FBI has never heard of this evidence, let alone accepted it. This is a guy selling his book. The sources are The Daily mail and NY Daily, both known for their responsible reporting of the facts.
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.
Good practice, no. There are plenty of cases you can work on today to get good practice. It's not like there's a crime shortage.
Pride is a part of it, so is disincentive. Criminal law is generally about two things: retributionism and consequentialism. Punishing the guy because you are angry with him and he deserves it (retributivism) is very rarely a sensible motive--it's mostly petty revenge because someone offends our notions of right and wrong and to hell with whether it makes sense. There are lawbreakers we may WANT to lock away for decades or to kill, but it's not always helpful. Consequentialism (side-constrained by a requirement that the defendant is also supposed to be guilty) tells us to punish the guy so he doesn't do it again, and to scare the hell out of the next ten guys who think about trying it. This is why it's much harder to plea-bargain a high-profile case; not only does the prosecutor want to look good, but because the hope is that the punishment is enough to discourage others from engaging in the bad act.
Oh, and sometimes the public believes there's rehabilitation. Occasionally there are nods toward it, and certainly there are attempts to reduce recidivism, but generally criminal law theory recognizes that rehabilitation in not really a meaningful component of the modern criminal justice system.
Real lawyers write in C++