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Compelling New Suspect For DB Cooper Skyjacking Found By Army Data Analyst (oregonlive.com)
A U.S. Army officer with a security clearance and a "solid professional reputation" believes he's solved the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking case -- naming two now-dead men in New Jersey who have never before been suspected, "possibly breaking wide open the only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history," according to the Oregonian.
The data analyst started his research because, simply enough, he had stumbled upon an obscure old book called "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," by the late author Max Gunther. Gunther wrote that he was contacted in 1972 by a man who claimed to be the skyjacker... Using the name "Dan LeClair" and various details from the book, as well as information from the FBI's D.B. Cooper case files that have become public in recent years, Anonymous tracked the bread crumbs to a very real man named Dan Clair, a World War II Army veteran who died in 1990... Continuing his research, our anonymous Army officer eventually determined that Clair probably was not D.B. Cooper. More likely the skyjacker was a friend and co-worker of Clair's, a native New Jerseyan by the name of William J. Smith, who died in January of this year at age 89... Clair and Smith worked together at Penn Central Transportation Co. and one of its predecessors. For a while, they were both "yardies" at the Oak Island rail yard in Newark. It appears they bonded in the 1960s as Penn Central struggled to adapt to a changing economy.
The data analyst says the two men's military backgrounds -- Smith served in the Navy -- and long experience in the railroad business would have made it possible for either of them to successfully parachute from a low-flying jetliner, find railroad tracks once they were on the ground, and hop a freight train back to the East Coast. Poring over a 1971 railroad atlas, the hijacked plane's flight path and the skyjacker's likely jump zone, he determined that no matter where D.B. Cooper landed, he would have been no more than 5-to-7 miles from tracks. "I believe he would have been able to see Interstate 5 from the air," he says, adding that one rail line ran parallel to the highway... He believes Smith and Clair may have been in on the skyjacking together. He notes that Clair, who spent his career in relatively low-level jobs, retired in 1973 when he was just 54 years old.
Several incriminating coincidences were noted by an article this week in the Oregonian -- including a scar on Smith's hand, his visit to a skydiving facility in 1971, and Smith's strong resemblance to the police artist's sketches. Even the chemicals found on Cooper's clip-on tie in 2017 would be consistent with his job as the manager of a railyard. "[I]n my professional opinion, there are too many connections to be simply a coincidence," the data analyst told the FBI, while telling the Oregonian he believes the pair were "mad at the corporate establishment" in America and determined to do something about it.
"If I was on that plane, I wouldn't have thought he was a hero," he says. "But after the fact, I might think, 'OK, this took balls,' especially if I knew he was an ordinary guy, a working man worried about his pension going away. That he wasn't some arch-criminal. I would want to talk to that guy.... he is a kind of folk hero."
The data analyst says the two men's military backgrounds -- Smith served in the Navy -- and long experience in the railroad business would have made it possible for either of them to successfully parachute from a low-flying jetliner, find railroad tracks once they were on the ground, and hop a freight train back to the East Coast. Poring over a 1971 railroad atlas, the hijacked plane's flight path and the skyjacker's likely jump zone, he determined that no matter where D.B. Cooper landed, he would have been no more than 5-to-7 miles from tracks. "I believe he would have been able to see Interstate 5 from the air," he says, adding that one rail line ran parallel to the highway... He believes Smith and Clair may have been in on the skyjacking together. He notes that Clair, who spent his career in relatively low-level jobs, retired in 1973 when he was just 54 years old.
Several incriminating coincidences were noted by an article this week in the Oregonian -- including a scar on Smith's hand, his visit to a skydiving facility in 1971, and Smith's strong resemblance to the police artist's sketches. Even the chemicals found on Cooper's clip-on tie in 2017 would be consistent with his job as the manager of a railyard. "[I]n my professional opinion, there are too many connections to be simply a coincidence," the data analyst told the FBI, while telling the Oregonian he believes the pair were "mad at the corporate establishment" in America and determined to do something about it.
"If I was on that plane, I wouldn't have thought he was a hero," he says. "But after the fact, I might think, 'OK, this took balls,' especially if I knew he was an ordinary guy, a working man worried about his pension going away. That he wasn't some arch-criminal. I would want to talk to that guy.... he is a kind of folk hero."
How does a "military background" demonstrate an ability to jump out of an airliner?
My father put 25 years in the Army. I think he may have done Jump School before I was born. Maybe. Probably not, but it's possible.
I was in the Navy. As was my brother. Neither of us ever got farther off the ground than the top of the Sail, except to fly as passengers on a civilian airliner across the Atlantic.
So, while an Air Force background might suggest an ability to skydive (most Air Force types never get in the air, except to be passengers on a civilian airliner across the Atlantic or Pacific), Navy background suggests no such thing (unless you're a Navy Pilot)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Long before the TSA. Too many detours to Cuba. Then we all got metal detectors.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Skyjackers are why we have airline security checks. Before that people just drove to the airport and got on airplanes. Airliners used to get hijacked *all the time* back then. There was a Monty Python bit where a man hijacks a bus and orders it to take him to Cuba, for example. But it's gone down the memory hole today, as you point out. There were also a bunch of left wing terrorist groups that bombed buildings and planted bombs on airliners and there been completely forgotten as well.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
notes that Clair, who spent his career in relatively low-level jobs, retired in 1973 when he was just 54 years old..
Retiring at 54 from a railroad was not unusual back in the 70s -- it is one of the reasons Penn Central and other US freight railroads all went bankrupt!
Railroad employees pay into the Railroad Retirement system (instead of Social Security), which provides really good retirement benefits. At age 54, he could have had 30 years of service if he had started at the railroad in 24 (after having served in the military.) Having been in "relatively low-level jobs" would mean he would have been earning overtime -- getting paid 1.5 times his hourly rate for every hour he "worked" over 40 hours. He was working in a heavily unionized industry, where overtime is handed out based upon seniority, so staying in "low level jobs" often made more financial sense than going into management.
“Skyjacking” came into use during those years as a newspaper headline term. Kids, ask your grandpa what a “newspaper” was.
There was a Monty Python bit where a man hijacks a bus and orders it to take him to Cuba, for example.
... which comes at the end of a sketch (Here) where a man tries to hijack a plane flying to Cuba to divert it to Luton :-
According to https://inflationdata.com/, the CPI was in 207.342 in 2007 and 245.120 in 2017; that's an 18.22% increase over those 10 years, not the 100% you are claiming.
Late 1971 is 40.900 and late 2018 is 252.885, a multiplier of 6.175, making $200,000 then worth $1,235,000 today.