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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."
Skyjackings were the result of the general prohibition of ordinary law abiding citizens bringing guns onto planes, although it wasn't as effectively enforced as it is now. Sooo... the bad guy was still the only one on the scene with a gun, and the planes went to Cuba. Repeatedly. Again, its the frickin' rules that did it,
A couple guys with box cutters cannot now get the airplane to crash into a building, but they can still take it out of the sky like they did Flt. 93. If citizens were able to fight back, in other than a suicidal offensive, they wouldn't even be able to do that.
All these gun laws are pointless, as the more of them they make, the WORSE things get, not better. School shootings and mass shootings are all the result of good citizens being rendered helpless when 1 evil gun is present. These laws should all be repealed.
Here's the conspiracy theory - all these laws go in one direction, toward the eventual confiscation of privately owned firearms. A California Democrat politician proposed confiscation just last week, and one of the California Senators, Feinstein or Boxer, not sure, said it sort of under her breath a few years ago - "If it were up to me, I'd say, "Turn 'em all in, Mr. and Mrs. America." " And its not a theory, it is real.
The ultimate thrust is that someone who is trying to disarm you is attempting to do something to you, not something for you. The historic result of confiscations has been genocide and slavery. Its happened twice already in America, just ask the Indians and the blacks under Jim Crow. We "conspiracy theorists" are determined that it is not going to happen again. And if you want a for-real shooting war, just try and take our guns. Molan Labe, motherfucker.
As for who the conspiracy theorists are, some of us are retired DoD who worked on weapons software and own the basements we may choose to live in, or not, and have never had AOL.