D.B. Cooper's Parachute Possibly Found

[JME2]

From Yahoo

SEATTLE - The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday.

Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors.

The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery — and they urged their dad to call the agency.

"When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we were hoping for."

A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.

Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found.

Carr spoke with the children's father, whom he declined to identify, early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as Cooper's.

And when Carr overlaid the family's address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper's most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains.

Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other remains from the parachute, but the children weren't home, and the father wasn't sure exactly where they found it.

There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether it's the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy, Carr said. He's hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it's the right kind before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.

"We've got to be pretty darn sure we're not wasting time and money here," he said.

If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.

"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole theory is out the window."

[Admiral Valdemar]

Of course, Michael Schofield and T-Bag already recovered the money, so there's no point in looking for it.

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Funny you should say that, because I recall a TV show on one of those educationaql channels about a boyscout finding some of the money, and a ratty backpack. The serial numbers matched.
http://4thefirsttime.blogspot.com/2008/ ... acked.html

He frikking died in a bad landing, or got hurt real bad and died of his wounds. Jumping out the SIDE door a moving plane has a set of perils not there in rear or belly doors. Like hitting the tail! (or turbulence capable of rag doll shaking you into broken bones. The plane's stall speed is too high for safe jumps. ) The locals ate his body. The money is still there, most of it. Most likely burried and or rotted to unspendability.

I personaly hope he survived with bad breaks long enough to hit ground with them! I also hope he died in despair, shivering painfuly with bone breaks, certain of his fate. It is too much to hope that a predator noticed badly wounded prey and ripped him to shreds while he was still awake.

[JediToren]

FYI, he jumped off of the rear airstairs, not the side door. The aircraft was a 727-100 which could fly with the airstairs down at that time. The "Cooper Vane" was invented after the fact to prevent this from happening.

But yeah, he almost certainly died. It was freezing and he had on a light suit as he jumped into the wilderness. He couldn't have anyone on the ground waiting for him since his instructions for his flight to Mexico were so vague that a rendezvous would have been possible.

Still, it would be nice to find out what happened to him.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Coyote food, methinks.

[Mange]

Jumping out the SIDE door a moving plane has a set of perils not there in rear or belly doors

No, he did not jump out the side door. The airstair, at the very rear of the plane, was lowered, he climbed out on it and stepped off.

[HemlockGrey]

I personaly hope he survived with bad breaks long enough to hit ground with them! I also hope he died in despair, shivering painfuly with bone breaks, certain of his fate. It is too much to hope that a predator noticed badly wounded prey and ripped him to shreds while he was still awake.

That's a bit harsh for a guy who didn't actually hurt anyone.

[tim31]

I had never heard of D.B Cooper before, and now I'm reading everything I can. Fascinating.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You know, you're all underestimating the ability of the forests of Washington State to preserve and sustain life. We have a delightfully mild climate, berries every ten feet (and sometimes a lot denser than that), and plenty of other nutritious plants and roots. If you're bone-cold from the plunge and very wet, no matter, a dense canopy of lower and easily pulled down twigs can provide shelter and warmth, and he could have easily had a lighter on him, in which point the thick underbrush would provide sufficient material for a fire. As long as he hit the ground conscious, he survived, with a very slim possibility of it going otherwise. That may be a big if, but it also may not. I personally suspect that he got out, buried the money somewhere to retrieve it later, and went home to wait out the investigation. Spring flooding probably washed some of it away before he could come back for it, explaining the suitcase in the river.

[Isolder74]

The interesting thing about the DB Cooper case is that a few months after the Disappearance of DB Cooper another plane is hijacked by someone using the same MO as cooper. He managed to get tot he ground safely and was later caught. He was incidentally a Mormon man from Provo Utah by the name of Richard McCoy, Jr..

No one is sure of Richard McCoy, Jr.'s crime was a repeat of the same man or just a copycat crime. The similarities are good enough that the chance is very high that he was DB Cooper.

One theory that was put out after the first hijacking was that Cooper lost hold of the money as he jumped out of the plane so he tried it again.

[Adrian Laguna]

No one is sure of Richard McCoy, Jr.'s crime was a repeat of the same man or just a copycat crime. The similarities are good enough that the chance is very high that he was DB Cooper.

So you could say Mr. McCoy might be the real McCoy, eh?

[Isolder74]

No one is sure of Richard McCoy, Jr.'s crime was a repeat of the same man or just a copycat crime. The similarities are good enough that the chance is very high that he was DB Cooper.

So you could say Mr. McCoy might be the real McCoy, eh?

Yep he might but since he died in a shootout with ;police we will never know if he was the real DB Cooper or not. However Cooper was, its been long enough that he would be quite old by now so if he is found his prosecutors will have to deal with the old guy sympathy defense.

[JME2]

Well, we've got an update from the FBI:

SEATTLE - A tangled, torn parachute found buried last month last month is not the one used by plane hijacker D.B. Cooper when he bailed out of a plane over the Pacific Northwest, the FBI said Tuesday. Investigators reached that conclusion after speaking with parachute experts, including Earl Cossey, who packed the chutes provided to Cooper that rainy November night in 1971.

"From the best we could learn from the people we spoke to, it just didn't look like it was the right kind of parachute in any way," said FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs.

Further digging at the site in southwestern Washington turned up no indication that it could have been Cooper's, she added.

A man calling himself Dan Cooper — later mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient passenger jet from Portland, Ore., to Seattle on Nov. 24, 1971.

At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and four parachutes and asked to be flown to Mexico. He jumped out the back of the plane somewhere near the Oregon line.

Some of the cash has been found, but his fate is unknown, and investigators doubt he survived.

Children playing near a recently graded road found the parachute, and they urged their father to call the FBI because they had seen recent news stories about Cooper's case. The parachute was the right color, and the location was in the middle of what could have been Cooper's landing zone.

That got the attention of FBI agent Larry Carr, who drove to the site to see the find for himself.

But Cossey told Carr that Cooper's parachute was made of nylon. The one the children found was made of silk and did not feature a harness container. Cossey sold parachutes at a skydiving operation in Issaquah in the 1970s.

Cossey has been through the drill before; this is the third time the FBI has asked him to examine parachutes to see whether they might have been Cooper's.

One chute found long ago — he couldn't remember when — was just a "pilot chute," used to pull the main chute out of the pack. The other time, in 1988, it was a parachute found by a Columbia River diver seeking clues to Cooper's fate.

"They keep bringing me garbage," Cossey said. "Every time they find squat, they bring it out and open their trunk and say, 'Is that it?' and I say, 'Nope, go away.' Then a few years later they come back."

Cossey, though sounding cantakerous, appeared to relish the spotlight Tuesday. He answered his cell phone with "D.B. Cooper" and said he got a kick out of telling some reporters that the parachute was, in fact, the hijacker's.

One reporter called him back angrily, saying he could be fired for writing a false story, but another said the newsroom enjoyed the April Fool's joke.

"I'm getting mixed reviews," Cossey said. "But I'm having fun with it; what the heck."