Crime Weekly - S3 Ep135: D.B. Cooper: Mystery Money (Part 2)

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

It was November 24th, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving and historically the busiest day for travel in the United States. A tall man dressed in a business suit and a thin black tie approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at the Portland International Airport and requested a one way ticket to Seattle. This man gave his name as Dan Cooper and he paid twenty dollars in cash for his ticket on Flight 305, which he boarded with 35 other passengers. Cooper took his seat all the way at the back of the plane, he ordered a bourbon and 7-UP, and then he settled in for the short 30 minute flight which was scheduled to take off from Portland, Oregon on time at 2:50 PM, Pacific Standard Time. None of the other passengers, or the six members of the flight crew, noticed anything suspicious about this nondescript business man, traveling with a briefcase and paper bag, sitting quietly by himself in seat 18-E, but that would change shortly after takeoff, when this quiet and polite man notified flight attendant Florence Schaffner that he had a bomb, and he was hijacking the plane. Cooper wanted 200 thousand dollars and four parachutes, and somewhere between Seattle Washington and Reno Nevada, this man dressed in a suit and loafers leaped from a Boeing 727 into a dark and stormy night and was never seen again. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. Babbel Here's a special, (limited time) deal for our listeners to get you started RIGHT NOW - get 55% off your Babbel subscription - but only for our listeners - at www.Babbel.com/CRIMEWEEKLY.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are continuing and finishing up with the D.B. Cooper case. Honestly, like if if I would have entertained this and gone as deep as so many people who devoted their life to D.B. Cooper have gone, this would be a 20 part series and everybody would be sick of us and hate us by the end of it. And we would be sick of ourselves and hate ourselves by the end of it. I mean, I was going to do an episode of suspects. There's a little first of all, the FBI had something like a thousand suspects initially. And I mean, there's as far as like suspects that are popular and people talk about, there's got to be like 15 to 20 of them. And honestly, I don't think any of them pan out, even though everyone who, like I

said, is obsessed with this case has a suspect that they will die on the hill of, even though there's been plenty of evidence and things that have come out and been like, oh, this isn't the things like that, a couple of suspects. But like I said, none of them pan out. And what I find to be the most interesting, which we're going to focus on today, is like the forensic evidence, the evidence that was left behind and what kind of stuff like forensically, like DNA and particles and stuff was found in that evidence, because I find that to be the most interesting. And I think if this case gets solved, that's what's going to solve it. Not like looking at a bunch of random people and being like, that guy was in the military. That guy knew how to parachute. So like one of these suspects, if you watch the DB Cooper, Where Are You Netflix series, which I couldn't finish, honestly, because there was so much speculation. The specific team of people believe that DB Cooper

is this one guy. And the fact is they cannot place this person in the area at the time that the crime went down. In fact, he was someplace else entirely. And they just completely ignore that fact. And then they made like a whole series on Netflix about it. And I'm over here like, wait, like at the end of it, I'm like, wait, they couldn't even like, he has an alibi. And they're like harassing this guy who's old by now. They're like going to his place of business. And they're like, come on out. Why are you hiding? And it's like, why are you hiding? Because you're harassing him. Imagine being that guy and like, dude, it wasn't me. Yeah, dude.

He's like, he says it wasn't me. I mean, when he was younger, he kind of played it up a little bit and they were like, are you DB Cooper? And he's like, I mean, what kind of question is that? You know, he was kind of like cryptic and stuff about it when he was younger, but now he's an old dude and he's like, leave me the hell alone, man. I'm just trying to run a

business and like live my life in retirement. And these people are like outside his like place of business with cameras and like, come on out, come on out. We know you're in there. And I'm like, holy shit, these people are crazy. So, and this is the one who has an alibi, by the way. So whatever. It's just crazy so we're going to kind of dive into the forensic evidence which i know is your forte and the stuff that you enjoy i love that stuff because for me it's not even it's not only it's not really about who it is like obviously i would love to know who it is but for me it's like let's start let's start simple did he make it that's all i want to know did make it? Did the person who jumped out of that plane survive?

That's what I want to know because that in and of itself is cool. Well, I think you'll be able to give your theory on that after this because there are some things that might suggest one way or the other. I'm all for it. Two quick things. What are you thinking now, by the way? Do you think he made it or not? Like based on last episode, what are you thinking? What are you leaning towards?

I'm curious. You know, you think about the conditions that day and it would have been difficult, but I feel like this person knew what they were doing, really knew what they were doing, and probably had jumped in a similar condition before because they could have aborted and not done it that day because they probably checked the weather. They're prepared for everything else. I'm sure they were preparing for that. I would lean towards he made it. I would lean towards he made it. It's a blemish on the FBI. I know why they're going to say he didn't because it doesn't look good for them if he did and they never caught him. Or maybe it's just, and I said this in the

Patreon, I hope he made it because I think it's just a cool story. Nobody was hurt. I feel for the people that were traumatized on the plane. I'm not trying to make light of a situation because, you know, they thought he had a, thought it was a bomb. So I get that. But.

At least he wasn't a dick about it though, you know? He seemed like he was pretty respectful. Yeah. You know, but. He's like, I don't want to blow you up. I don't even think it was a real bomb

if you ask me. I don't either. That's why I kind of caught myself just now. I'm like, I don't think it was even a real bomb i think he just you know i don't think he ever planned on killing like red cylinders in there and some wires and he's like i'm gonna you know who wants to even have that in their possession knowing that they are two on the plane yeah and they could trip and accidentally go off for real but i i i hope he

made it because now i do think he should be held responsible for what he did obviously but i hope he made it you know i don't think he deserved death for that so i hope he made it because now I do think he should be held responsible for what he did, obviously. But I hope he made it. I don't think he deserved death for that. So I hope he made it and I appreciate all the positive feedback. Don't take it for granted. You guys don't have to tune in and watch us here or there. And like the kind words that were shared in the comments and just everything, like I was sitting there last night, I'm a little bit under the weather. My kids are sick. And I was just like, damn, we're very lucky because there's a lot of people who try to do this for a living and can't. It's not because they're not good at it or they don't have a talent for it, but just you have to have a supporting community that's there to follow your content, follow your work,

and just really appreciate it. So thank you. And again, big thank you to Stephanie for coming on the premiere. I know you get up early, but you were there and you were struggling. Your internet was going down,

but you're like, I'm here. Dude, my internet dropped last night like it often does. And I think, what was it? A couple of weeks ago, it did that while we were recording. Recording often does. And I think, what was it, a couple weeks ago? It did that while we were recording. Recording, yeah. And we had to wait for it to come back up.

I have Spectrum and just randomly throughout the week, late at night, they'll just drop it. Yeah, FU Spectrum. I think they're doing it on purpose. And then today, my power went out for absolutely no reason. Well, I was on the phone with you, actually. Yeah, no. The trials and tribulations that I have with Stephanie about her internet is just, it's been fun.

And oh, one more quick thing. What did you, because you didn't know this was coming and I didn't see it before I sent it to you, but I know a lot of our viewers out there watched it. What did you think of the blooper reel? I thought it was hilarious. It was great. So disturbing what I'm doing with my lips there.

I don't know what I'm doing, but it's so disturbing. You don't realize because we don't see ourselves. I don't watch our episodes a lot other than like I do the audio edit. I don't really go through and watch frame by frame of the video. And this poor Shannon has to see all that. She just did that on her own, which is hilarious. She's probably wanted us to know how annoying we are. Dude, for real. She's like, I got plenty of it of it she said i got plenty of this oh no oh no she could ruin us oh geez

no shout out to shannon thank you for doing that she's amazing and we hope you guys enjoyed that we'll have another one for sure because it's you got to be able to laugh at yourself in this space because we could you could edit that up and doctorate and not put anything that doesn't make you look good or but we're human beings we're not perfect right and we do have these funny things that happen on camera but technically off camera every single week basically so i appreciate shannon saving those to remind us because some of those were back in the day i can always tell about my hairstyles. There's so many hairstyles throughout. I don't know. I feel like I'm going through a midlife crisis or something.

There's a new hairstyle every week. It's weird. Well, I mean, I'm confused by it too because I just always feel guys look the same all the time. I don't know, man. I see it and it just makes it really some self-reflecting going on there. But anyways, all that. You got a backwards baseball cap on today. Really going Marky Mark and the Funky Mark vibes. Well, you know this, I feel like shit. I know.

I'm struggling. I won't even get into the details, but I'm struggling. I got the Gatorade going. And you've had to do this before where we have to get through it. We got to get these episodes recorded so we can get them done on time. So we're here. I'm excited about this. I've loved this case so far. I can see in the comments that i was reading you guys love it too so it's a lighter mystery which is a nice change up and it was a good change of pace for us because we were covering a lot of dark shit with the last case being laurie vallow and having it be about these two young children such a such a dark case that it was a nice change up and and much appreciated because I think we both needed it. Yeah. And I didn't see like I've been scanning through the comments. I was busy. It's Monday.

Podcast day is always like the busiest day ever. I have no time to do anything. But our first video on DB Cooper dropped yesterday on YouTube. So I was looking through the comments just to see if anybody had any answer about the parachutes. And everybody was kind of as confused as me. Like somebody said, oh, I read one article where it said they found two parachutes and everybody was kind of as confused as me. Like somebody said, oh, I read one article where it said they found two parachutes on the plane, but then other articles said they only found one. So yeah, none of this makes sense. So I'm going to keep scanning the comments, but, and I'll let you guys know if I hear something. Cool. No, that was all I had. We can dive into it, but you guys appreciate everything. So we'll keep it rolling. All right. So when Flight 305 landed at the Reno Tahoe International Airport at 11.02 p.m. on November 24th, 1971,

D.B. Cooper was not on it, but he had left behind a few pieces of evidence that the FBI quickly collected when they boarded just 24 minutes later. So Cooper had been wearing a thin black tie that had been purchased from JCPenney's, which I don't know if anybody's familiar. JCPenney's is a department store. A lot of them have closed. Some of them are still active, but they used to be big. Everything's shut down now. Yeah.

They used to be big back in the day. Christmas tree shop. Do you have a Christmas tree shop? Yeah. Well, we did. Now they're closed down. That's a loss. I know. Love the Christmas tree shop growing up. Well, we did. Now they're closed down. That's a loss. I know.

Love the Christmas tree shop growing up. Huge loss. You have to order everything online now. It's crazy. I know. It's so bad because honestly, sometimes I just want to go and walk around and shop and feel things with my hands. You know?

I don't know. Again, it just reminded me of you feeling the furry wall. Do you not? No. Do you not? I need to touch something before I can purchase it. Especially like clothing. Like because I'm so particular.

Like if it's not soft, I'm not going to buy it. I don't care what it is. I'm with you. It's nice to have those where you're not just your kids coming up to you going, hey, can you buy me this off Amazon? Hey, let's go. It's a Sunday. Let's go over to the Christmas tree shop. Let's go.

I mean, right now, the store we go to is Target. Like that's the store. shop. Let's go. I mean, right now the store we go to is Target. That's the store. Yeah, man. Back in the day, the mall used to be the place, man. It was popping, okay? Popping. And you'd go there. Yeah, maybe you were shopping, but you'd be hanging out in the food court, going on the carousel. You're in frozen yogurt. You're seeing people in real life. And now it's like they just want you to order everything off of Amazon. And from what I can tell, these Amazon drivers be overwhelmed and they're over it. I've seen so many TikToks of Amazon drivers just being like, can you people get your asses up and go buy your own stuff? Because I am so sick of having to, which is

point made, but also when they be closing stores down left and right and they're leaving us with no other option. It's just, it sucks. Better hope that UPS strike don't happen. We're close with that. I mean, we won't get off the track, but that could be bad. So we'll see. I think it will happen.

They got all the power. Yeah, but sometimes the man needs to be reminded that they have all the power. Hey, I'm all for it. They deserve more. Those people won't stop. I'm completely all for it. 100% on board. Bezos can get a smaller yacht.

We're good. Oh, I hate him. I freaking hate that dude, man, so much. So anyways, D.B. Cooper, before he jumped, he removed this tie. And then he allegedly leapt off of the Boeing 727. The FBI claims they were able to get a partial DNA sample from this tie in 2001. We're going to come back to that. FBI agents in Reno also found the butts of eight Raleigh filtered cigarettes in the ashtray near seat 18E, which had been Cooper's seat in the very last row of seats on

the plane. The cigarettes had come from a king-size soft pack, and the brand Raleigh was not that popular of a cigarette brand. They were known as coupon smokes, meaning they were cheap to purchase, which I feel like would make them more popular, but whatever. The cigarette butts were sent to FBI headquarters in Quantico for further testing. Besides these very few and very specific items and that one parachute left behind, some more evidence would be found several years later, including the warning placard from the Boeing 727 that had flown off the plane when the aft stairs had been lowered during the flight. And this placard was, you know, ripped off the plane due to the wind. This heavy plastic placard was

discovered by a hunter in 1978 near Tuttle, Washington, which is north of Ariel, and Ariel's kind of the area that they believe he jumped out over. Cowlitz County Sheriff Les Nelson said, quote, there isn't any way that it could have come off a plane without that rear door being opened. We know that two days after Cooper jumped that the placard was missing off the plane. This is the first probable tangible piece of evidence that has surfaced in the D.B. Cooper case. It's inconceivable. It's one in a million that any other plane could have lost it in the area in which D.B. Cooper jumped, end quote. The placard was found in a thickly wooded area about 10 miles south of Woodland. And they say this was about six flying minutes. So it kind of gives you an indication, right? If he opened the aft stairs and then the

placard flew off when the door was open and the stairs were lowered, and then he kind of stood there or waited for another six minutes while in flight before jumping. That kind of lines up with what the flight crew had witnessed. Like they felt that change in pressure when the door was open, and then they felt that weird disturbance when they believed he jumped. And this would have been kind of consistent with that evidence. I think it all lines up. And I think the pilots in most cases, they fly all the time. They're going to know that difference in their plane. Just like you would know something subtle in

your vehicle when something goes wrong. I mean, I wouldn't, but yeah. Most people would feel like, oh, there's a subtle thing that feels a little off today. And just that change in cabin pressure, because obviously the back, the ass end of the plane is open. The pilots are going to feel that. So I feel very confident in their timeframe as far as, hey, this is what we felt differently. This is what we think happened. And again, like you said, it lines up with where the placard was found. So what do we, so yeah, sometimes you just got to let the evidence take you where it goes. And between the evidence and witness testimony from expert witnesses, by the way,

I think that's our window for sure. I don't think there's any question about it. So within, well, actually there is going to be- Actually, hold on. As I'm playing, I'm saying that out loud. I'm thinking to myself, okay, let me play devil's advocate myself. What if he let that happen? I mean, did anybody go back there and check to see if he jumped? Because if they didn't, he might've stood on the back of that plane for another 20 minutes because he knew they would assume that when they felt the change, that's when he jumped. Maybe he threw that placard out. Maybe it came off on its own. Who knows? Sticks on the plane a little bit longer and it throws off where he lands.

Well, I think that the change they felt would only be able to happen if he had done something, right? Let's say he opened the back of the plane. So he did something. That's what they feel. They're not going to feel him jump. that point because it's him and, you know, the money on him, which I forget how much they said it weighed, but something like 25 pounds, this money tied to him. So that's when they felt this weird, like, turbulent sort of disruption. And they said that didn't make any sense. It could only have been that because there was nothing else externally, like no change in flight pattern, no like weird weather outside that would have caused that feeling other than him, you know, exiting the plane at that point. And it would be crazy for him, like, this is a placard, like it's this big, you know, like not that big that he would think somebody would find it. It was found in the wilderness,

like seven years later by a hunter randomly, you know? So I don't think that he had that much forethought where he was like, oh, somebody's definitely going to find this placard. No, you're right there. I'm with you there. I will say I, as someone who's a novice, I find it hard to believe that, let's say the guy weighed 200 pounds just for the sake of argument, right? It was 200 pounds and the bag weighed another 100 pounds. I'm not a pilot, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I am. But I would think, or I wouldn't think that a 300 pound object would cause turbulence if they decided to leap off the plane. It wasn't like turbulence so much as like they felt the plane almost dip at the back.

As a guy jumped off, it dipped. Because he's on the aft stairs at the back of the plane under the tail. So like, yeah, when he jumped, it would be like this almost like downward pressure on the stairs that would cause a slight like tip of the tail. And that's how the pilots explained it. This is a big plane. That's what the pilots had. I don't know what to tell you. Wait on the comments below on that one. And I'm not even disputing you. You're just, you're, you're the messenger here, but this is a big plane. I was looking up the pictures. I actually used it in our, uh, in our thumbnail for episode one, a part one of this. This is a big plane.

And I would think that a 300-pound object of any sort, even if I stood on the back of the stairway and jumped up and down, the pilots themselves aren't going to feel it. I would think more so if that back of the plane was open, maybe because the back of the plane is open, that some tailwind or whatever got caught up in there and caused that disturbance. I wouldn't think a guy standing on the back of the plane would cause the plane to move up and down. No, not him standing, him leaving. No, him jumping off. Him launching himself off caused the plane to dip. Yeah, that's what they said, man.

That's equivalent of me standing in the aisle. I think that they would feel it because it's like a balance thing. First of all, big ass metal things shouldn't be flying in general, right? It's a very delicate balance. We've already established that, yep. It's a very delicate balance. And I think that it would be significant enough to cause the tail to dip a little bit. Enough that the pilots would be like, oh, we felt something.

Ooh. However, you said like, oh, this is like really good evidence of the flight path. And I agree, right? So I agree. Definitely there. Yeah, I agree. Like that window is when he jumped.

Yeah, I agree. But later when the money is found, like off that path, the FBI are going to be like, well, we were wrong. He must have jumped here because that's the only way the money could be here.

And I don't like that because you got no evidence other than that money washing up where it washed up to say that that's where that his flight plan changed and that's where he jumped off and he jumped off in a different location than you've been saying for like nine years. So I think they did that because in my opinion, the money being found suggests he's still alive. The FBI was like, oh, this money being found means he's dead. And I think they wanted to really like find a way to cram that narrative together and sort of like puzzle it together, where to me, it's like it doesn't make sense because we kind of know where

he jumped. Like we can tell from these disturbances, from the door opening, the placard falling off six minutes before that change that the pilots, you know, sensed that that's actual evidence where the FBI are like, well, here's actual evidence. How do we make the story fit around that actual evidence? The only thing I'll say for certain, if you don't believe in the plane dipping when he dives off the back- Calling the pilots liars, man? If you don't believe in that, I would love-

Are you a pilot? No, not even liars, but just misinterpretation maybe. But I would love to know from the time they felt the change in cabin pressure to the time they went back there to confirm that he was no longer on the plane and that the stairs was open jumping because he's a 300 pound man with his sack, right? Then that means he could have said, like, especially if this guy's familiar with flight patterns and that they probably felt the disturbance. Like, I don't know how much this guy planned, but let's say he opens the back stairs, the placard flies off. It falls exactly in an area which would be in line with when they felt the cabin pressure change. But he stood there for 20 or 30 minutes and just kind of watched and kind of wanted to create almost like you would have someone do when they crank up the heat or on a thermostat

at a house to throw off the time of death. He could have stood there on that back stairwell and said, I'm going to sit here and wait because I told them not to come to the back. Now he's rolling the dice that they could see him sitting there. But if they just waited, I don't know how long they waited before checking. Could have been a half hour. They didn't check until they landed. Until they landed. Right. So he could have jumped off at any point. He didn't want them to know where he jumped off. Exactly. So he could have jumped off at any point where you feel that cabin pressure drop. Now he's sitting on that back stairwell and he's going, I'm going to wait because they're going to assume that when they felt that

change is when I jumped. But they felt two changes, dude. The second change, I can't explain it. It could be exactly what they're thinking it is, or it could be just that the back of the ass end of the plane is open, which it's not supposed to be. So a crosswind or something like that. There is no crosswind back there. That's why it's the perfect place to jump. You can stand out there and not get hit by wind, not get knocked off because it's protected by like the, what is that back thing? That back thing, the wing?

The tail. The tail. It's protected. Like that's why they said- How many times have you been on a plane without the back of it open and felt turbulence? Too many times. There you go. So there's so many explanations for it.

Could be a cloud. Could be the weather. Nothing externally was there or present that could have caused this slight dip of the back of the plane. I'm sure we can retest that. They have retested it. And the plane dipped when the guy jumped off the back? They've retested it. And the plane dipped when the guy jumped off the back? Yes. They retested it a bunch of times. And people, they would be standing there, holding something equivalent to the weight

of the money. And they'd be like, oh, it's crazy. I can just stand out here and nothing's happening. The wind's not knocking me off. I'm just standing on the back of a flying airplane. And when they jumped up and down, the whole plane bounced with them? Well, they didn't jump up and down. They dropped something off the plane that was to see where it fell equivalent of the weight

Of cooper plus the money, right? So they thought he was like 180 190 pounds plus the money So they dropped things off the plane that was equivalent to that to see if it would be a noticeable like shift Or if somebody in the plane at in the cockpit would notice and yes, they did. Okay. All right Well, i'm just saying thinking outside the boxes sometimes the reason why these cases aren't solved is because the assumption that most people agree with is wrong. So you're building your house on a shitty foundation. If everyone's in agreeance that this second turbulent feeling that they felt was him jumping off and that's their window that they're going off of, well, what if he didn't? What if he didn't? And you also already hinted that the money was found in a different location. So could there be some truth to it? I'm just throwing out a different scenario. I'm not trying to be crazy. Oh, I can't wait to talk about the money, man, because we're going to get there. It's crazy, like, the different ways it could have ended up there.

I had to do a lot of research. But anyways, within days of the hijacking, Attorney General John Mitchell announced that they had a ransom list of known serial numbered bills that had been given to Cooper. And this ransom list was being distributed by the FBI throughout the country. So the list is 34 pages in length. It was allegedly given to FBI offices and police stations throughout the U.S., as well as certain financial establishments. You can still find and view this list on the FBI website. And for years,

there was no sign of any of that money that D.B. Cooper had made off with. And this supported the FBI's eventual belief that the hijacker had not survived his harrowing jump. And see, this is what they do, too. They're like, we can't find the money. He didn't survive. And then they find the money and they're like, we found the money. This means he didn't survive. Every time something happens, they're like, this just explains it. This solidifies our belief. He didn't survive. So they for years couldn't find anything. None of it turned up and they were like, oh, he's not spending it. Even though it's like, you couldn't possibly track every single place that this dude could spend this money. But anyways, Ben, years later in 1980, a small amount of this ransom money would be found by a child digging on the banks of

the Columbia River north of Portland and over the Washington state line. And we are going to talk more about this money in depth in a minute. But first, we're going to discuss the initial search for D.B. Cooper. But we're going to do that after our first and last and only break of this episode. Yay. So we're back. Something I've always found to be very interesting, and I think I mentioned this in part one, in the early days of the search, all reports coming in were saying that Cooper probably successfully made it to the ground. And everyone who knew anything about jumping out of planes felt that the mysterious hijacker had clearly known what he was doing and he'd planned the heist carefully. Julius Mattson, a special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office,

told the newspapers that they were conducting the search around the area of Amboy, Washington, about 20 miles northeast of Portland. And he said, quote, we tried to put ourselves in his place. It's not a bad spot to land if the guy knew what he was doing, end quote, which is the opposite of what Agent Carr said in last episode. And you know how he's been saying that recently because Agent Carr was the latest FBI agent to be on this case where he was like, oh, it was the worst place ever for him to jump. But this agent, Julius Madsen, he's like, it's not the worst place to jump. And both the airline and the manufacturer of the Boeing 727 admitted that it would not be a problem for a skilled parachutist to drop from the aft stairs off the plane, with John Wheeler, a spokesman for Boeing, stating, quote, it would be a very safe drop.

He'd be away from the flaps and engines and go straight down, end quote. Both the FBI and Northwest Airlines initially told the media that Cooper had known what he was doing and he'd carried out his mission with precision. They said he seemed to know enough about 727s to know that this specific plane was his best bet for a safe drop because the rear exit with the aft stairs was away from the engines. He also seemed to know that

with the plane flying low at only 200 miles per hour with its flaps down and its exit door and steps lowered, he would have no trouble clearing the fuselage on top of seeming to know enough about planes to order that the landing gear be kept down and the flaps be canted to create the drag that would have assured him the proper speed maintained for a jump. Cooper also seemed to know about parachutes and he'd known that the sport parachute, the one law enforcement had gotten from the parachute club after they tried to give him the military one, he could use that to drop several hundred feet away from the plane quickly without detection before pulling the cord to open the chute. And that's why he didn't want the military one, because with the military one, it kind of seemed like it almost sensed when you jumped and it would open automatically and you'd have like,

you know, an emergency lever or such to pull if it didn't open. But with the sport one, you'd have more control of when the parachute would come out. Yeah. I mean, just again, to reiterate, because we said it so much last episode, those things you just mentioned, as far as knowing with the landing gear to create this drag, this is very specific stuff. So to think that someone with all of this knowledge, they didn't get this off the internet, especially at that time. This is firsthand experience. I don't know what they did,

but they've clearly done something like this before and had an extensive knowledge about it. So to think that a person with that much knowledge could make a successful jump in these conditions, I think is very plausible. I know if it's some novice who said one day, I'm going to rob this plane, I'm just going to jump off.

Yeah, they're probably going to die. This is not that guy. This guy knew how to conduct this in a way where he would be successful. So to think that he would know all of these parameters, but not know how to jump out of a plane and land safely when there's no human element to it other than himself, I think is hard to believe. That's just my opinion i agree or else you know if he didn't have hands-on experience he was like a rain man type that could just like read 10 books and you know retain everything that he read and learn everything just by reading and stuff but but that wouldn't explain the grudge would it what's more likely

though also you know it wouldn't explain the grudge he had a grudge with the airline business or at least he was trying to convey that so it's if you really start to put it together this extensive knowledge with the fact that there was obviously a motive behind it he just had a grudge and that's not necessarily the airline he said this particular plane suits my needs as in it was the 727 and he knew he could open the back door and use those after stairs while the plane was in flight. But it could have just been a grudge of some sort. Like maybe he got fired from somewhere and he just needed the money.

This was a bad economic time. So he could have had a grudge with anybody. You don't think he would have left a note or voiced that somehow to say like, hey, the reason I'm doing this is for this? No, I don't think he wants... Because it hurt the airline, I'm sure. Well, first of all...

Having something that happens, it's not a good thing. It, I'm sure. Well, first of all. Having something that happens, not a good thing. It's not good PR. Well, the six letters did go out claiming to be from DB Cooper. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But no, I don't think that any of them were from DB Cooper. And I think that he probably wouldn't, he doesn't want any information. You know, he doesn't want to talk about his personal life. He doesn't want to talk in any kind of specifics that could give anybody an edge in finding him. And like we had talked about last episode, there had been so many plane

hijackings leading up to that 1971 date. And I mean, successful plane hijackings that someone who needed money badly may have thought like, I can do this. I know how to jump out of a plane. That'll be the easy part. The hard part is going to be like getting them to do everything I want. But also now I know by watching these hijackings that these airlines are trained to just cooperate with these people. So they're going to cooperate with me. And then I just got to jump out of the plane and I can do this. And then I'm $100,000 richer, which like I said, is over a million dollars in today's money. So a substantial amount. Yeah. Cooper was described as being relaxed and at ease

through most of the hijacking. And they said he must have known something about the area because he'd routed the plane over flat farmlands where he could jump safely even at night and in bad weather. Now, like I said before, this is what I'm getting from newspapers.com in the days after the hijacking. But then later, they're going to be like, oh, this was the worst place to jump. It's all forest. It's the mountains. But initially, they were like, oh, he routed the plane over flat farmland. So I think they changed the place that they thought he jumped based on their narrative of wanting people to not think he survived. The onboard computer in the plane indicated that the hijacker had probably left the plane over Woodland, Washington due to small shifts in the plane's air

position as it passed over that area. And the FBI and Clark County Sheriff's deputies scoured a 16 square mile area around Woodland for six days, but they found nothing. And they were mainly looking for like the parachute. Maybe he had gotten hung up in the tree somewhere and he's like stuck on this parachute, even though he's got like a knife knife in his pocket we know so he probably just would have cut himself down but they were expecting i guess to just see this guy hanging in the tree with the money on him i mean i could see it too i mean obviously yeah he would have a knife but yeah again to think this guy was this planned out but wouldn't have prepared for something that simple this This doesn't seem like that type of person. He's going to land in a tree and he's going to be like, ah, I give up.

You got me. The tree limb didn't plan for that one. I'm five feet from the ground and I give up. Come and get me, FBI. I'm hanging here. That would have been hilarious. The photos from that would have been great. They would have loved that. They would have been like,

the FBI solves another case thanks to the hard work of the federal government and J. Edgar Hoover, another dangerous criminal is behind bars. They just got a picture of all the agents lined up with their guns and he's like in the tree still. They're all wearing like their gray suits. It's in black and white. They have like those hats on and those like big, thick, dark, like rimmed glasses. And they're all just looking at him like we've got him. And they're circling this tree and he's just hanging there helpless.

We didn't need this kind of reaction. So Harold E. Campbell, who is the special agent in charge of FBI operations in Nevada, told the Seattle Times that they were searching for Cooper along the entire route that the plane had taken. Tom Manning, the special agent in charge of the search, said they were concentrating their efforts on searching for a parachute. Quote, we've determined the hijacker was wearing a sport-type backpack parachute. That means it would be difficult for him to maneuver if he had any kind of bulk on him at all. And we've been told $200,000 weighs over 20 pounds. End quote. So yeah, at least six letters, some typed, some handwritten, some put together using pasted letters from newspapers and magazines, were sent to several papers soon after the hijacking, and they all claimed to be from Cooper.

The first letter, signed D.B. Cooper, had been sent from Oakdale, California to the Reno Evening Gazette. It was received on November 29, 1971, and it had used letters cut out from the Sacramento Bee newspaper. It read, quote, Attention. Thanks for the hospitality. Was in a rut. End quote. The second letter was handwritten. It was signed D.B. Cooper, and it was sent to the Vancouver province in British Columbia with the following message, quote, The composite drawing on page three, as suspected by the FBI, does not represent the truth. I enjoyed the Grey Cup game. I'm leaving Vancouver. Thanks for the hospitality, end quote. Now, there's actually a total of eight D.B. Cooper composite sketches that have been released by the FBI. The first was produced by the Las Vegas field office, and it was put together with the help of Cooper's fellow passenger, Robert Gregory, who was the one who had been the only one to describe Cooper as wearing a russet or red

colored suit. And he also said that Cooper had glossy, wavy black hair and dark horned rimmed glasses. Six days after the hijacking on November 30th, 1971, the FBI released a pair of sketches that would later become known as the Bing Crosby sketches. And that's because they looked like they could have been composites of any dude off the streets in the 70s, and they looked completely different from the initial sketch. These drawings showed a man with a thinner, longer face, a narrow nose, a large forehead. He had like thinner hair, a very receding hairline, whereas that first sketch, he kind of looked like a younger man. He had like a thick, kind of luscious head of hair. A few years later, the FBI modified this pair of sketches, changing the mouth, the

forehead, the hairline, and hairstyle slightly. And they also made them colored instead of black and white. And in these sketches, Cooper's forehead's a bit wider. He has deeper wrinkles, suggesting an older look. These same sketches were revised and released again, once again, with slight changes to the hair and face, one with sunglasses on, one without sunglasses on. And the final sketch shows Cooper as a much older man. He's got gray hair, crow's feet, deeper wrinkles, things like that. But honestly, all of them look pretty generic, which is probably what his intention was. His intention was probably to look like just any other businessman. He kind of looks like, you know, if you're familiar with like conspiracy theories and like gray aliens and stuff, he looks like a man in black, a man in black, you know, like the

government agents who come and they're supposed to like erase your memories of seeing extraterrestrial beings and stuff. He looked like that. He had sunglasses on. He had a very like, you know, professional looking haircut, a suit. I think he just wanted to look pretty generic. And it ends up being that these sketches turned out looking pretty generic. Well, I also think that comes down to witnesses, too. And we've talked about this a ton where not everyone's an expert, not everyone's monitoring or observing every detail of the person next to you. If you think about it, next time you're on a plane when you're sitting there after about 15 minutes in the flight without looking over to your left, tell me what the person in the other row on the opposite side of you, the opposite side of the aisle looks like. Describe them as best as you can. How good of a look did you really get at

them? Now, some of you in some situations may say, yeah, I got a pretty good look. But overall, people are pretty oblivious to what's going on around them, especially during that time when you're not as cognizant of the dangers that come with flying on a plane. So I think most people are not like trained investigators. And even if they are, they're not specifically looking for the details in a person's face. You might not pick up on them. And I think a lot of the times, the reason those sketches are so generic is because the obvious things that people would all see is what they remember. And the specificity, the minor details that might actually help you identify a specific person, they don't catch those things because they weren't looking for

them in the first place. I know you said early on that they paid a lot of attention to this guy because he had so much attention on him from the flight attendants. But again, it's point of view, depending on where you're sitting, how you can turn around and look back there, you still may not get the best look at this person and then obviously he's playing down his looks for a specific reason so he accomplished what he wanted and the in the drawings to me are on par with what we usually receive from witnesses which is the sketch ends up looking like a lot of people all over the map and you gotta figure out a way to like put everybody's you know if you find the guy then you're gonna go oh yeah i can see the resemblance but it's not the image that's it's not the sketch that's ultimately identifying me

even when you look at the uh delphi murders right you look at those you see the sketch yeah it looks like him but it also could not be him. Right. You know what I mean? What was up with a younger guy sketch in Delphi, though? The one I still don't know. But that's a great example. I forgot about that one. The curly haired guy and stuff. So it's like the one who looked like he was in his 30s instead of in his 50s. And then you arrest the guy who they say is responsible.

Looks nothing like that. Nothing like that second sketch. Right. And that's that's even a better point. It's you just the sketches. You got to take them with a grain of salt. But when it's all you have, you put your- I mean, in the 1970s, it's all you have, right? Then you got to go with it.

Because now, something like this, you got people with their phones open, they're taking selfies on the plane, or they're taking a quick video to show people that they're flying somewhere to post it on social media. So you could pull all the passengers, get all the stuff from their cell phones and see if there's any legitimate and literal picture of your suspect. But back then you just had to draw him. Yeah. You don't have the security cameras either. And through the airports and stuff like that, we'd have like the Boston Marathon bombing. They put together hundreds of cameras from around the area and were able to identify the bombers in 12 hours, something like that, 16 hours.

They already had someone that they already had them identified. I'm surprised they don't have security cameras on planes by now, honestly. They have them on school buses and stuff. I mean, they can't even get the Wi-Fi to work half the time. True that. It never works. It never works. It never works. And it's

always like on the shorter flights where you still are trying to like get on and do something. Yep. But they're like, we just didn't feel like turning it on for an hour flight. Yeah. Nope. So the third letter sent by D.B. Cooper was mailed in Northern Oregon on December 1st, 1971, and it was received by the Portland Oregonian. Using letters cut from a Playboy magazine, the letter stated, quote, I am alive and doing well in my hometown. P.O. The system that beats the system. End quote.

No idea what any of these mean, but anyways, a fourth letter was received by the Reno Evening Gazette and this letter had also been mailed on December 1st, but it had been sent from Sacramento, California. Once again, using cutout and pasted letters, the writer who identified themselves as D.B. Cooper said, quote, plan ahead for retirement income, end quote. He's giving financial advice now. The FBI concluded that most of these letters were hoaxes, but they did hold back the contents of two of these letters from the public until the

2000s, which some believe may be an indication that they took these two letters a little bit more seriously. So one of these, a fifth letter, was postmarked December 11th, 1971. It was sent to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Post, and it said, quote, Sirs, I knew from the start that I wouldn't get caught. I didn't rob Northwest Orient because I thought it would be romantic, heroic, or any of the other euphemisms that seem to attach to situations of high risk. I'm no modern-day Robin Hood. Unfortunately, I do have only 14 months to live. My life has been one of hate, turmoil, hunger, and more hate. This seemed to be the fastest and most profitable way

to gain a few fast grains of peace of mind. I don't blame people for hating me for what I've done, nor do I blame anybody for wanting me to be caught and punished, though this can never happen. Here are some, not all, of the things working against the authorities. I'm not a boasting man. I left no fingerprints. I wore a toupee. I wore putty makeup. They could add or subtract from the composite a hundred times and not come up with an accurate description, and we both know it. I've come and gone on several airline flights already and am not holed up in some obscure backwoods town. Neither am I a psychopathic killer. As a matter of fact, I've never even received a speeding ticket. Thank you for your attention, end quote. And I mean, this guy brings up a valid point. If he was wearing

some sort of makeup, because they kept saying he had like a darker skin complexion he could have had makeup on to just make himself look different um in some way so i don't know if he would you know brag he's like i'm not a boasting man yet i am sending this letter telling you why i'll never get caught well if he only had if he only had 14 months to live what does he have to lose i just i mean 14 months he's got to lose 14 months behind bars yeah maybe i'm giving too much credit because i've been saying it over the last two episodes this guy seems very well prepared and so i feel like he would take proper measures to prevent apprehension and minor things like not sending letters to people i think that's part of it though for the a lot of these psychos is not even a psycho

a lot of these a lot of the i mean he jumped out of a plane he's brave yeah he's brave uh i just feel like he seems like he's low in dopamine man he needed that hit you love that word dopamine i feel like he's someone who just just was really a meticulous guy someone who was well thought out as far as what he wanted to do here and i feel like the little things like that like making a disguise would probably be near the top of that list you know like hey number one if i pull this off i don't want to be walking to an airport the next week and get arrested so you would think he would cover those small those small things although i will say sometimes

the reason criminals get caught is they plan out all the big stuff and it's like forgetting to put gas in the getaway car you know and it's like because they were so concerned about the hard things that they forgot the little things which i guess could be true but i don't know why he would write a letter let's be honest unless he said something in one of those letters that was specific, for example, something that the stewardess on the plane said, like there was a conversation that him and I had that only maybe a handful of people would have known. If they would have received a letter where this individual discussed that conversation, guilt knowledge, if you will, then they could take it more serious. But just as vague statement as to why they did it, I don't know. I think, again, he would have said something in there that would have told them definitively that he was the guy. I mean, even saying, like, I have 14 months to live, you're giving the FBI information about yourself they didn't have before,

and now they can maybe look for terminal patients or go through, like, doctors and hospitals. And, you know, like, there's just no reason to do that. Fair. Yeah. The sixth and final letter was mailed on march 28th 1972 from jacksonville florida and it was sent to the portland oregonian and this letter was signed a rich man it said quote this letter is to let you know i am not dead but really alive and just back from the bahamas so your silly troopers up there can stop looking for me

this is just how dumb this government is i like your articles about me up there can stop looking for me. This is just how dumb this government is. I like your articles about me, but you can stop them now. D.B. Cooper is not real. I had to do something with the experience Uncle taught me, so here I am, a very rich man. Uncle gave too much of it to world idiots and no work for me. I had to do it to relieve myself of frustration. I went out of the system and saw a way through good old Unc. Now you know I am going around the world and they will never find me because I'm smarter than the system's lackey

cops and lame duck leaders. Now it's Unc's turn to weep and pay one of its own some cash for a change. And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name. End quote. It's like, yeah, dude, we know that's not your real name. That was one of the first things we figured out, my friend, which you would know if you were reading the newspaper. And D.B. Cooper would not be that rude and like brash. So, no, that's not him. I actually agree with you there. I mean, the way he was on the plane, the way he was described by those witnesses doesn't seem like it fits his profile.

Yeah. It's like somebody who seems like super anti-government, anti-system, which like he could very well have been. But he didn't brag about that on the plane or talk about that on the plane. So why is he going to send a letter once again, giving the cops and the FBI information that they did not have about him previously when he was so careful to not reveal anything personal on the plane? I agree. So six months after the D.B. Cooper hijacking, on April 7, 1972, a 29-year-old man named Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. boarded a flight headed from Denver to Los Angeles. Shortly after takeoff, he handed the flight attendant a note telling her that he was in possession of a bomb and he wanted $500,000 and several parachutes. The plane landed in San Francisco Francisco where McCoy was given his requests and he told the pilot to keep flying towards Mexico. But as the plane flew over Utah,

McCoy jumped out using the aft stairs at the back of the plane. He successfully and safely landed near Springville, at which point he walked into town and ran into 16-year-old Pete Zimmerman outside of a drive-in movie theater. McCoy, dressed in boots and military fatigues, asked Pete for a ride to Provo, where, it turns out, Floyd McCoy lived. So Richard Floyd McCoy was a pilot with the National Guard. He'd become a skilled parachutist and demolition expert while serving in Vietnam, but he was also a normal family man who taught Sunday school at his LDS ward in Provo. He attended criminal justice classes at Brigham Young University.

He was trying to be a cop. And during the search for this new hijacker, McCoy actually flew a helicopter for the National Guard pretending to look for himself, which is awesome. But eventually he was turned in by a family member who claimed that he'd been bragging about getting away with the crime, and he was arrested about six days later. Two months later, McCoy was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to 45 years in Lewisburg Prison. But just two years later, using a fake gun he'd made out of dental paste stolen from the prison's dental office, McCoy and three other prisoners commandeered a garbage truck and escaped. He made it to Florida, but the FBI tracked him down three months later and he was killed during a shootout. At the time, the FBI announced that they did not believe there was a solid link between McCoy and the mysterious D.B. Cooper, even though the two men had executed their crimes in an almost identical way.

So the FBI says that Floyd McCoy had an alibi. He was at home with his family having Thanksgiving dinner at the time of Cooper's flight. But 10 years after McCoy's death, FBI agent Russell Kalami and federal probation officer Bernie Rhodes began working on a book titled D.B. Cooper, The Real McCoy, in which they put forth their theory that Richard McCoy and D.B. Cooper were the same person. These two men claim that the FBI has possession of evidence they've never released, including proof that McCoy had used some of the original Cooper ransom money in Vegas shortly after the first hijacking, where he cleaned some of the money with traceable serial numbers by gambling with a few thousand dollars and then cashing in his chips.

They claim that the FBI had telephone records and credit card receipts with McCoy's name on it that corroborate this Vegas trip. And at that time, McCoy and his family were having serious financial issues. So it would have been a mystery as to where the money had come from his Vegas trip. Like, where did he get money to even gamble with when they're broke? Kalame and Rhodes allege that shortly after returning home from Vegas, McCoy paid off his debts and spent a lot of money. And additionally, there were certain things that McCoy did differently from Cooper, tactics that were changed to better his chance of success, and these tactics would only be known to the person who hijacked the original plane. They also state that they believe Richard McCoy very much resembles the composite sketches of D.B. Cooper, and his job and personality fit the profile for someone who would feel confident enough to attempt a jump from a plane.

Kalame and Rhodes feel that the FBI did not investigate McCoy thoroughly at first, that they simply believed his Thanksgiving dinner alibi, even though it would later be revealed that McCoy's wife Karen had helped her husband execute his crime. In 1992, Karen McCoy admitted that she had purchased her husband's parachute crime. In 1992, Karen McCoy admitted that she had purchased her husband's parachute, helped him prepare his disguise. She had typed the instructions he would read to the airline pilots. And not only that, but she'd driven him to the Salt Lake City airport knowing that he had a gun and a grenade on his person as he boarded the plane. And then the next morning, because he went home, you know, after he jumped out of the plane, Karen drove her husband back to that field in Springville where he left the $500,000 and they collected it.

So basically, they're kind of saying, like, he didn't really have an alibi. If his alibi was his family Thanksgiving dinner, but we know that his wife basically helped in the second hijacking, then how can we really trust that alibi? And I kind of agree. And honestly, if I'm going to look at any of these like potential suspects, McCoy is the best one who would fit the bill because we know that he was able to execute it. Like if he hadn't been turned in by a family member, he would have gotten away with it. He would have gotten away with it. Exactly. Yeah, that's fair. But, you know, would D.B. Cooper brag to a family member? I don't know. Maybe if you'd done it like successfully looking for here, he's got some prior training. And he's not like a plane mechanic.

Because you could know that the plane's landing gear being down would cause a drag, but it still doesn't mean you're going to be able to jump out of said plane. Yeah, like you're not going to have that grit to do it if you haven't done it before. Like that could not have been his first time jumping out of a plane, right? No. Now that on the other side of the coin, you could say that if he didn't pick up on the fact that that was a training parachute, maybe he's not as experienced as we're giving him credit for because he should have picked up on that. I don't know. But it sounds to me like this person knew planes and knew how to jump from them. That could be a pilot of some sort as well. Doesn't necessarily have to be someone who worked on the planes. Could be an actual pilot as well.

Maybe a pilot in the military who had to do some type of parachute school training while training to be a pilot. Could be a lot of things. But I feel like if the person was revealed to us, more than likely they're going to have some type of military background. And I feel like some people, because like honestly, you know, I'm kind of like, oh, I could jump out of a plane, you know, because I kind of want to. But I also know that at the moment, if it's my first time, there's going to be like a lot of hesitation. And I feel like in this kind of situation where you're stealing money and like you're trying to get away, you just don't want there to be hesitation. You know, I've done things like zip lining before where even my first time doing that, I was like scared to take that first jump. And it's, you know, there's trained people around. It's supposedly

completely safe, even though I was zip lining over a Mexican jungle. And is a Mexican jungle ever really safe? Like, have you seen some of the bugs in that place? But like, I still felt like hesitation. And then once I'd done it a couple of times, I was like, oh, this is easy. I can do this. Even though I feel like I want to like skydive or like jump out of a plane or something, I would still be standing there like, I don't know if I can do this. It would probably, and if I was alone without somebody there to like urge me or teach me or tell me what I was doing, and I'd never done it before, I probably wouldn't do it. So there's no way it was his first time jumping out of a plane. There's absolutely no way. That would be stupid. I don't think so. And his familiarity with the

parachute when he was cutting one up for the stewardess, it seemed like he knew his way around that pack. Yeah. Well, let's now go to early February 1980 when eight-year-old Brian Ingram happened upon the first and most concrete clue in the D.B. Cooper mystery. The break in the nine-year-old investigation came Sunday when Dwayne and Patricia Ingram's eight-year-old son overturned some sand while walking the shoreline of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. The public learned in an FBI news conference Tuesday, little Brian Ingram unearthed several packets of deteriorated $20 bills, and the FBI confirmed it.

It was indeed several thousand of the $200,000 that bailed out with D.B. Cooper on the eve of Thanksgiving back in 1971. Well, we were going to make a campfire, and we found it. It was partially on top of the ground. It was just beneath the sand. we found it. It was partially on top of the ground. It was just beneath the sand. Who found it? Well, my son and I found it together. I was getting ready to drop the wood and he cleared out the spot and rolled the money over on top of the sand. FBI agents scoured the area of the Ingram's find. At one point, a geologist was called in to determine whether money might be buried below the surface level in dredge material deposited

on the beach in 1974. On Wednesday, that geologist confirmed the money washed ashore. That meant there could be deposits of money anywhere along a 100-mile stretch of beach. Searching in the sand on a deserted Columbia Beach, finding bits of money along the high water mark. That's what's changed the whole myth of a man named Dan Cooper. People thought he landed on the west side of the range, but his money was found to be on the east side. That's how it drifted downriver. And now that's what's changing the whole search and the whole story of D.B. Cooper. Cooper landed where he thought his money might have gone by the Lewis River, but then it would have had to go against river current to get where it was found.

People who study river flow are checking if tides could have done it. It's doubtful. The more logical route from somewhere upriver. D.B. Cooper bailed out of a Northwest Airlines jet going 200 miles an hour at about 10,000 feet. The best guess is he jumped almost exactly over Lissenter, Washington. In fact, a placard from the jet was found near there. But two things add to the confusion. One, at that speed, seconds mean miles, three a minute. Any delay by Cooper from when they thought he jumped puts him further south. Also, he jumped into a major storm. At that altitude, winds could toss him

and drift him for many miles. The FBI thought it carried him into Lake Merwin. That was the major search area. But now experts feel he might have gone at least over another ridge, perhaps into the drainage of the Washougal. The speculation does lead to excitement. Are we closer to the secret of D.B. Cooper? Is it somewhere up there? The river is a kayaker's joy, but it is shallow.

Could it have carried 21 pounds of $20 bills miles down its length? It did have over eight years to do it and it does flood often. This is also rough backcountry but not as rough as the area around Ariel and Lake Merwin or so the residents tell us. Maybe a man who landed in a parachute could have made it. Longtime residents are talking about that more again now and about the money that may have flowed through their backyards. I didn't even start fishing for it. I don't even fish. I doubt it. I'd say he's in that Columbia River out there.

This is remote country, traveling at 200 miles an hour. Many think Cooper was separated from his money and his chute was ripped to shreds, leaving him at the mercy of the winds, falling. But if he didn't make it, his remains must be up there somewhere waiting to be found it's doubtful there will be a modern day treasure hunt for it with little to no chance of finding money virtually none of finding anything of cooper's but maybe maybe someone in this area may be thinking more about the ex-skyjacker and maybe as lucky as a young vancouver boy was spotting yet another clue in what is now the best guess for Cooper's final resting place, the Washougal Drainage Basin. Did Dan Cooper come tumbling down through these trees in southern Washington or was it somewhere else away from the Washougal River on that Thanksgiving night eight years

ago? Chances are people will continue to look for the legend of D.B. Cooper. Chances though are slim that we'll ever really know the facts, but maybe it's better that way. Crews continue to dig but found very little of Cooper's green treasure today, even though the discovery site is looking like a very scientific archaeological excavation. Shovels gave way to backhoes, the FBI and geologists scooping out a test trench up the beach. What they're trying to tell, how long DB's money been here? They knew certain levels were laid down on the beach in 1974, but they found no money below that point The best guess they have is Cooper's money was washed up by high water and wave action much like these churning river waves And they think it happened within the last few months It'll be fun if someone found some more But the best guess is that just like driftwood,

it happened to wash up in the surface layers and the man was lucky enough to find it. Yeah. Very lucky. The original source was probably upstream from here. Definitely. And the Washougal Basin is the place everyone's going to be running out. Watching for green things in the grass. There still is lots of mystery.

Where did Dan Cooper go down over eight years ago? Where's the rest of the money, and did he make it? Most FBI experts don't think he did, though they admit their old search area is probably not where he landed. That could have been anywhere from the Washougal River to the Columbia, but no one knows. The FBI has set up camp to guard the site for another evening. They'll be starting again Thursday morning to dig up more on the beach here,

hoping to find some more clues and some more money. But unless they find a lot more, while this has been an exciting time and added to speculation, there's just really nowhere else to go in solving the D.B. Cooper caper. On the night beat west of Vancouver, Washington, this is Bill Van Amburg for Channel 2 News. Yesterday, FBI agents made one last serious attempt in their search for the rest of the $200, Washington. This is Bill Van Amburg for Channel 2 News. Yesterday, FBI agents made one last serious attempt in their search for the rest of the $200,000. The FBI finally decided it had neither the money nor the manpower to cover the area. The search was abandoned last night.

Today, snow covers almost all evidence of their presence. Agents were certain they'd be replaced by curiosity seekers, if not treasure hunters. Only two die-hard fishermen came out in the cold. Their interest lay more in catching fish and keeping warm than finding hidden treasure. So while the FBI has packed up and gone home, they call this latest development in the nine-year DB Cooper investigation significant. They say it adds credence to the theory that Dan Cooper is not living high on the hog somewhere and that he did indeed die on that fateful night in 1971. Or did he? Along the Columbia River, west of Vancouver, Washington, this is Robin Anderson

reporting. Channel 2 News. But he found $5,800. And basically it was a lot of money back then. Yeah. But it was all kind of like, you know, something. But still nothing. It wasn't a dollar. No. But the thing is, they were like three stacks of 20s kind of still together. And the place that he found it off of the river was called Tina Barr. And FBI agent Ralph Hemelsbeck announced that the finding of the money reduced Cooper's odds of having survived his jump to less than 50-50.

Agent Tom Nicodemus described the found money as being in small pieces about the size of a nickel, and some pieces of the $20 bills were buried as deep as three feet beneath the surface. He said, quote, It indicates to us there's been a lot of sand shift there and the money has been there for some time. End quote. This discovery also changed the FBI's early theory, as you kind of heard in the video, that Cooper had possibly landed in the Lake Merwin area on the Lewis River. But when the cache was discovered, they brought in geologist Dr. Leonard

Palmer, who you also heard talking in that clip. He was the guy with the glasses and he's like, oh, people are going to be looking for green stuff in the grass. He investigated the site and he came up with what has been called the Washougal washdown theory, which he says claims the money most likely fell into a stream near Ariel during the jump, and over time it washed into the Columbia River upstream of the Tina Bar location where it was eventually found, specifically after August of 1974, when that area of the Columbia River was dredged around Tina Bar where the money was found. So the river in the area where the money was located had been dredged August 19th through the 25th.

Do you know what dredged means? I don't know if this is like a common thing that people understand. Oh, yeah. I watch Gold Rush Discovery all the time. So I'm very familiar with it. I love the dredges. So how would you explain it to somebody who didn't know? Well, it depends.

There's a bunch of different types of dredges, but I would say when you're going through there, the dredge is pulling up water into the machine, into a dredge, and it basically sifts through that water to find smaller deposits. In the case that I'm referring to, gold deposits. So it's separating, it's filtering the water out of it and leaving behind the sediment, which would be the gold, or in this case, the dirt that they're dredging through. Whatever they're doing at that time, I'm assuming they're dredging for gold at that point too, right? I don't know what they were dredging for. It's probably gold. I'm sure there's some other things. I'm not an expert, but basically the machine goes through, can take up large amounts of water, filters it out to leave behind remnants of whatever they're trying to find. And the remnants in this case would be called the dredge material. Yeah.

And the dredge, yeah. So I don't know what they were looking for, but the dredge material. Probably gold. Okay. Come on. Let's just pretend it's gold. Probably gold. Pretty cool. Because also the dredges will leave like piles. So basically as it's going through, right, it's separating the water, but it also separates like the bigger dirt, the bigger rocks from the gold. So you have these dredged tailings behind you and you see like paths, even like now where you can see like where the dredges used to go through. Cause it's just like these, like these, you know, those little games you see where the ball goes through the sand and creates like a little drawing, like a little drawing. You can see like the paths in which the dredges went back and forth, even though there's no

water there anymore, but you can see how the dredges went back and forth, even though there's no water there anymore. But you can see how the dredges went back and forth in the gold rush days to mine for gold. Exactly. And it changes the landscape of the area. Oh, yeah, 100%. It creates land where there was none. Exactly. So the dredge material that they pulled out of the river had been deposited on the banks of what was then the Fazio Brothers Farms, which is right in this area of Tina Bar. And then it was spread kind of like on the land by front loaders. So Dr. Palmer was an expert on sedimentation, and he was working as an associate professor of geology at Portland State University when he was called in to help with the

case. And he examined the area where the money was discovered, and then he had an exploration trench dug from the waterline, which was located east to an area high on the beach near the money. Palmer found that there were several distinct sand layers, as well as a clay layer several feet down, all of which were below the level of money. And he theorized that the clay layer had been deposited by the dredging operation in 1974. So this led to the theory that the clay layer had been deposited by the dredging operation in 1974. So this led to the theory that the money had taken several years to naturally travel down the river to Tina Bar, where it was buried either with or sometime after the dredging had deposited that distinctive clay layer. The officials decided that the only river large enough that was in the general area of Cooper's Jump would have been the Washougal River, which is like an average-sized river with some areas of rapids.

So some of the areas in the river are like rapid-y and like, you know, very violent and rough. Rapid-y. Rapid-y, yeah, very rapid-y. Rapid-y, got it. And then some are like calmer, you know, like a typical kind of average-sized river. Now, reportedly, flooding of this river in the winter increased the water flow quite a bit. In recent years, many different types of scientific experiments conducted by many different people have cast a huge shadow of doubt on Palmer's theory, which the FBI basically began reporting as fact in 1980. Like, as soon as the money was found, the FBI was like, we're wrong about where he jumped.

He must have jumped and landed, you know, near the Washougal River or in the Washougal River, and then he lost the money and it floated up. When the three bundles of $20 bills were uncovered on Tina Bar, the rubber bands were still intact, even though they crumbled when they were touched. Now, they were extremely degraded, but still in their positions on the money when found. And everyone knows that rubber bands will degrade and lose their elasticity over time. So many people felt this would put a time limit on how long it would have taken for the money to be in transit in the water or buried before these rubber bands disintegrated or came off the bills. Now, most of the work on the money, the research work, was performed by the Cooper Research Team, headed by Tom Kay, who is an

amateur scientist, but very, very smart and very skilled. At the request of the FBI, Tom examined the money in 2009, and we're going to talk about what he found. But in March of 2009, he and his team went to the location where the money was found, and they discovered that the beach since 1980 had undergone a severe erosion. The team found that the level of the beach at that time was several feet below its original level, and this was made evident by the exposed roots of multiple small and large trees along the beach, with the largest trees having come loose and washed down the river. One large tree that can be seen in the original 1980 photos was still rooted. It had fallen over, but it was still holding on, and the team used this tree along with the original dirt road running along the beach as a landmark to find the original location of the money.

Kay and his team indicated that the now exposed clay layers were at the same approximate depth as Cooper's money, meaning these were natural clay layers, not man-made from the 1974 dredging operation as Dr. Palmer had initially and incorrectly assumed. The team also performed experiments to see if the Washougal River had the potential to move bundles of money downstream cleanly. In one experiment, a bundle of $100 bills wrapped in a rubber band was attached to the line of a fishing pole, and the money was placed in a fast-flowing part of the river so that its path could be tracked. In this experiment, the bundle of money traveled along the bottom of the river

and eventually entered a quiet part of the river where it sank to the bottom and then did not move. This same experiment was repeated several times with the same results, and the experiment showed that at high flow rates, the river was capable of moving bundles of money, but when the river opened up into deeper, slower-moving shallow areas with many large rocks at the bottom, this stopped the money from going further. The river is also in a heavily forested area where many trees had fallen into it, providing the potential to snag the money from going further. The river is also in a heavily forested area where many trees had fallen into it, providing the potential to snag the money and stop it from continuing in multiple areas. Or it would stop, you know, the body of a man attached to a parachute.

So, for instance, they say, the FBI says, oh, Cooper must have fallen into the Washougal River. Then he lost his money and then he drowned in the river. But, like, where's his body? Where's the parachute? This isn't just like a river that's just open and like flowing, you know, like an animal crossing or something. This is a river that has rapids, big rocks, multiple trees just fallen in there and nothing of him was ever found. So I definitely don't believe in that theory.

You don't? You don't believe it's possible? No, I do. I think something would have been found of him. You would think, because in most cases it would, but he could have gotten caught on something like a tree, a fallen down tree in the river that's below where he's along the bottom. Because, yeah, you would think he would float and you'd see him, but he could have lost buoyancy. But don't you think that if he got caught by something, like that's what would have had him be found? I mean, it's a big river.

I mean, they didn't screen the entire river. There could be a log in the middle of that river that he kind of was going along the bottom. And remember you and I did Robin Pope a long time ago. Why was he on the bottom? Is he dead at that point? Oh, yeah. Why would he be dead by then? Why would falling in a river kill him?

So here's the thing. He jumps out of the plane and he makes it. It goes well for the most part, right? But when he lands in the water, he's still, the parachutes around him as well, and he gets tangled up in that. It's nighttime. He can't see. The water's deep. He's heavy. He's weighed down. He's holding a pack full of money he's got multiple parachutes on he is a great skydiver great pilot or whatever not maybe the best swimmer in the world especially when he's got all that weight on him and again it's completely pitch black out there it's not like he jumped he fell into a river that was heavily lit by the surrounding you know restaurants or whatever

nearby pitch black out there you lose your your point of reference and you lose your bearings. And now you're getting tied up in the rope as you're trying to separate yourself from it. It's probably cold, rainy, all these things going on. So you get tangled up in that rope. It brings you under. Now you're tangled up in the parachute itself and you drowned and you drowned and you go to the bottom.

You don't have that buoyancy in you. The gases don't cause you to rise because now not only do you have the clothing that you're wearing that can get caught on things, you have a parachute, a literal parachute with rope attached to you. So what I was going to say, if you remember Robin Pope, she goes in the water. Now that's a whole different story. We talked about that case where there was a murder or an accident, different story. Go watch that case. It's a great one that we did together. now that's a whole different story we talked about that case whether it was a murder or an accident different story go watch that case it's a great one that we did together and uh that's one where she goes into the water at a dock right near her home and she's not found for like 20 something days but eventually her body is found and by the way they were scanning

that area scanning it didn't find her until her body had showed up under a dock it just like there was a fisherman out there and there she was on the surface but her body was so mangled that everyone believes at this point that even though you're only talking about a football field in length she got caught on something as she was kind of you know floating along the bottom kind of moving along with the current got caught on a rock or a tree branch or a log, got stuck for a while. And it wasn't until she dislodged that we were able to find her. But there's a really good possibility that if she didn't become dislodged from that item, her body would eventually decompose and animals and all those things would have happened.

And we might not have ever found out what happened to her. So could something like that here have happened, had happened? I think so. You don't think it's a possibility at all? So what you're saying is you believe D.B. Cooper's skeleton and parachute and all of the money are just chilling at the bottom of the Washougal River never to come up since 1971. Some of the money. But I will say after seeing that whole thing and just kind of sitting here and I'm team wanting him to survive by the way, but the whole reason for doing this for the most part was for the money. So the one thing he's really not going to want, like, I don't believe

in the theory that he might've dumped a couple bucks to make him think that he was dead. The dude went there for the money. He might've dumped one stack of cash. He's not going to dump six grand, especially during that time. That's a lot of money. And so I do think that the money still being banned up like that is suggestive that something, something went wrong. Something didn't go to plan because the bag that it was put into, it wasn't the bag that he wanted. But if you remember, it was kind of like a sack that was kind of, you know, he had it secured, protected. A bank bag, yeah. A bank bag. So something didn't go the way it was supposed to before or during him hitting that water. And that's what caused that money to get away from him.

And you got to think, I think this is reasonable. They found $5,800, right? I don't think anybody watching or listening to this, including you, believes that's every single dollar that he might have lost there's clearly more money than what was found on that sand they didn't find every single dollar that he planted so there's probably more money out there and you have to ask yourself how much i mean i find it i find it very hard to believe that these bundles of money after traveling in water, traveling down the river for years and ending up buried in sand and going through some like dredge machine would still be intact and together. So what are you suggesting? Well, it's not me suggesting it. I'm

going to talk about it. Okay, let's do it. Nice segue. Yeah. Nice segue. Get us back on. I mean, it's just, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So in a second experiment, three individual bundles of $20 bills were bound together with rubber bands, similar to the bands that banks had used in 1971. And these bundles were released into the river at three different points between five and 10 miles from the Columbia River. So they tagged them, basically. They tagged these to see where they went. One of the tags attached to the money would be found by a member of the public 18 months later, recovered in an area of shallow water close to the mouth of the Columbia River after traveling 5.5 miles. So it

was found that the money and the rubber bands surrounding the money had become separated, which meant the bundle of money had not survived the trip to the mouth of the Columbia River intact, which suggested that the rubber bands had degraded and come loose over the 18 months, which was considerably less than the three to four years that the Washougal washdown theory stated. Tom Kay and his team claimed that for this theory to hold any water, pun intended, the plane Cooper had hijacked would need to have been a considerable distance east of the published flight plan. Cooper would have certainly needed to perish during his jump or have lost his money during the jump. The rubber bands would have needed to avoid

decomposition and several bundles of money would have needed to survive the violence of the 1974 dredging operation. But not only that, several bundles would have also needed to survive and stay together after being plowed approximately 150 yards down the river when the dredging sands were spread out using heavy machinery. On the website citizensleuths.com, Tom Kay and his team surmised, quote, the rubber band survived four years during their trip down the river. That's not supported by the experiment shown here with the recovered tag and in the rubber band analysis. The bills were still in relative alignment when found on Tina Barr, which seems implausible, along with the fact that they stayed together if they went through a dredging and subsequent bulldozing operation. All the data on the flight path from both civilian and military sources does not provide any evidence that the plane was as far east as the Washougal River Basin, end quote.

So basically the published flight plan, that plane never even went in that area. So the whole theory of it washing down to the mouth of the Columbia River and then ending up on Tina Barr, and what he found suggested that the money had not been in the water or buried in sand for nine years, but actually stored in a safe and dry place for months after the hijacking. Three of the $20 bills were hand-delivered to Kay's lab in Arizona for microscopic, elemental, and molecular analysis, and the bills were imaged front and back with a stereomicroscope and a high-magnification electron microscope. Kay wanted to see if he could use the powerful electron microscope to identify diatoms on the money. And diatoms are basically tiny deposits of algae. Kay said, quote,

We wondered if we could use those different species of diatoms that were found on the Cooper Bills to determine when the money got wet and when the money landed on the banks of the Columbia. End quote. The diatoms that Tom Kay found on the money were a spring species, meaning they only bloomed in the spring, and they were not blooming in November when Cooper took his fateful jump. Because the money only had these spring diatoms on them, it showed the money was submerged in water only for a short time, between May and June, which was months after the skydiving. Kay said,

quote, the money was not floating in the water for a year. Otherwise, we would have seen diatoms from the full range of the year. We only see them from the spring. So this puts a very narrow range on when the money got wet and was subsequently buried on Tina Bar, end quote. Eric Allis, a man who is considered to be a leading expert on notable mysteries such as the D.B. Cooper hijacking, he believes that this evidence, along with other evidence he has uncovered, supports his theory that Cooper survived the jump. would have been Vancouver. Eric Ullis feels that the money stayed buried at Tina Bar for several months while Cooper watched the investigation of the FBI and law enforcement, basically trying to lay low, not wanting to draw attention to himself, also not wanting to be in possession of the ransom money should law enforcement come knocking at his door. In June of 1972, Cooper may have learned that the Columbia River was at near record levels, with that month and year being one of only

two high water events between 1971 and 1980. Ullis claims that this was one of only two times the river level actually reached the level where the money was buried, which was 50 feet from the water's edge and at an elevation of seven feet above the normal surface level of the river. Cooper realized he needed to get to the money before the river grabbed it and swept it out to sea. And when he retrieved the money, it actually had already been submerged in a foot or two of water, which is how the algae deposits were placed on these bills. So basically, Tom K. says these spring diatoms must have happened at some point between May and June. Now, if the river was flooding and the bills got submerged and got wet, that would explain

why those tiny microscopic algae particles were on it. And if he went and retrieved the money, maybe he just missed those couple of bundles because maybe he's digging. He remembered where he put it, but he didn't get all of it. And at some point he just couldn't find that last $6,000. And so he just left. I don't know. I just feel like for a guy that I've been touting as a very well prepared guy, obviously outside conditions, he can't plan. I just feel like the money would be the thing that he would have secured all in one area and

make sure that he got it all when he came back i don't know i mean it doesn't make any sense the plane didn't go the plane didn't go by the washougal river the rubber bands were still intact the money was still like in its order how does that happen if it's like being swept up this you know rocky washougal river and then into the columbia river which is huge and then getting pulled up onto tina bar by thisredging operation. How is this money just all like chilling there with the freaking rubber band still on it? I can't explain it, but I do know in life sometimes you have things, prehistoric things that are preserved to this day that you wouldn't expect to be in the condition they're in when they're found. And I don't know if they're, I'm not smart enough to tell you why. Yeah, but there's reasons why they're preserved. It's not like anything's preserved and people are like, why is this preserved? But I wonder if like this, I wonder if the, the bands could have been out of the water for an extended period of time and

then put back in because of the current that night or whatever, where it kind of came up on shore and then due to changes in the landscape. The FBI is saying it took years to wash up from where he went in. They've been wrong about a lot. So I'm not going to go off their theories as far as how it ended up there. So, I mean, I,

I don't know on the, there's a lot of ways, there's so many theories to explain how that money got there. And depending on what you want to believe, you can latch on to any one of them. I don't think any of the theories, well, let me throw it back at you. Do any of these theories to you stand out more than the other? Like, oh, I, that's what happened. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. Like you do have in some cases. Or are you like, yeah, I can kind of see, like the scenario I gave you where he drowns in the water because he got tangled up in the parachute. Is there something in you that's like, nope, not possible for this reason? No, of course that's possible. I almost

felt like maybe he had lost some money, you know, like as he was jumping, maybe, you know, because he didn't have it like tied up correctly. Something goes wrong in the air. Slipped out as he was like jumping, you know. So maybe that that could have happened. But I don't know. Like, I just don't see how it would make it up the Washougal River, then into the Columbia River, then get pulled up onto the beach and buried in sand and just have those rubber bands intact still. Like, I don't get it. I don't see how that is possible. I'll say this. I think it's way more plausible that if he survived, the money that was left behind was a result of him not being able to find it for whatever reason.

He lands, doesn't want to be walking around with it, leaves it in a location so that if he stopped, he doesn't have a duffel bag full of money on him. He knows where he left it. He can go back to it when everything cools down. I wouldn't have left that money. I would have shoved it right down my pants. That's what I'm saying. I don't think he would have either.

I think he would have at that point. I don't know. We can say that because we're not sitting here just hijacking a plane and paranoid to all hell that like they know where we are right you think you you can get away with something but you're dealing with the fbi you know that they're you know already prepared you think he's that prepared for everything else but when he plants the money or hides the money he doesn't secure it properly and he's like the money scattered all over the place because that one step he screws up. I think it would be hard to secure it properly if you don't know exactly where you're going to land. Like you can plan a general area of where you're going to land. But once you once you get there and you're like, OK, I'm on a beach and there's

like a shitload of trees and a bunch of sand. And it's not like he buried the money like right by the water. He buried it 50 feet away from the waterline and kind of like up on a higher elevation. If that's what happened, I mean, I'm saying it like it's really he buried there. It was found there. So if he buried it, if that was buried, it makes sense why you would you would put it there because you're not worried about the river reaching that that area. But then when it floods in June, he's like, shit, I got to go and get this freaking money now. So he might have missed it. Maybe there was people

there and he just watching him and he's like, I'm freaking digging in sand, pulling up money. I don't need to be doing this right now. I'll come back for the rest later. And then he just never was able to, or he was like, I have enough money. I can leave the $6,000. Like I'm not going back there and risking it again. I've already been seen digging in the sand like a fool. I'm not going to go back there. I don't know. Anything's possible. And I don't have anything to say, just, you know, discredit what you're saying.

I just think sometimes the simple answer might be the right one. And it's not as easy to find a body in that large amount of water as it would sound. And it's very possible that there's other bodies in there that they've never found because they do, they get stuck on the bottom in unexplainable ways. There's a lot of stuff in that- And it's cold in that area too. It's like by Canada, man. Cold. And there's a lot of things in the water. You go by even nearby river. I mean, stuff gets thrown in there all the time. Trees fall in the river, they float down, then they get stuck. There's dams. there's all these different things especially on the bottom that you can't

see where who knows what's down there car what about though what about when like his body decomposes it becomes a skeleton obviously it's having nine wouldn't the parachute kind of like drift up and somebody would be like look at this big ass pink parachute so even when his body so let's say that when he gets caught he gets caught on a a big log. That's like 20, you know, 10, 50, I don't know how deep this river gets at certain points. I'm sure pretty deep. Let's say it's 10, 15 feet down, right? I'm sure it's not like something you can see the bottom across the whole thing. So let's say that his body along with the parachute gets tied up on a tree, a tree limb or a log and there's branches coming off of it. So yeah, his body, his body decomposes over time.

It's just the bones that parachute would be more likely to be wrapped around that tree log than even him. It might've been the parachute that, that got caught on the tree log, not his body. So, because the pair, I mean, the parachute will catch on anything, all those ropes and stuff, all the strings attached to it, the parachute itself, one tree branch doesn't take a lot gets caught on that he's he's dead weight he's just hanging out at the bottom and yeah he eventually decomposes he's not allowed to rise to the surface as the gases expand in his body because the parachute is attached to something on the bottom could be anything you know and so by the time those gases expend and escape,

he's still tied down. He's still strapped in. So yeah, his skin eventually goes and the bones are left and they kind of deteriorate into the water and you got fish and all these turtles and all these things down there as well.

There's not much left, but the parachute, we could, if we could drain that river, you might, you could potentially find that parachute still you know wrapped around something at the bottom of the river i guess but how do you explain that the

the plane would not have taken that flight path that would have brought them by this area of the west chico river where they claim he like went in just because they found the money upstream from that and then they're like well he must have i can't i can't explain it yeah i can't explain it meaning is like you have these scientists and everyone coming up with these theories. And then you're also, you're bringing into like the history of it. How do you explain the spring diatoms and no other diatoms? Like if that money was in the water for years, like the FBI says, you'd see like deposits of algae from different seasons, but you don't. You only see it from the spring.

I think that's why when I heard it, I'm like, oh, it makes sense. It definitely makes sense. But I also think it could be an argument that you said where he's has problems as he's coming down. It's not a smooth, you know, flight down and he loses some of the money along the way. That money never hits the water. It hits the land. His body hits the water.

But like the money is just chilling there then on the beach. It could be right on the edge where it sit there for a little bit. But it wasn't on the edge. It was 50 feet away from the shoreline and seven feet up. But that's all those years later after dredges have gone through there. That was in 1980. I mean, in 1971, that's where the money would have been. Yeah.

I can't explain it. Like I said, I can't explain it. I don't know. I don't know. Well, I think a lot of people are with you because Tom Kay's discovery has left more questions than answers. Like, how did the money end up in contact with water months after the hijacking and only for a few months? Why did it end up 18 miles as the crow flies from Cooper's believed landing zone? And how did the money get out of the fast moving river, mostly mostly intact with rubber bands still holding the three separate stacks of money together. The results of case study have been found

to be sound. They've been published in the journal Scientific Reports, making it the first time that any DB Cooper evidence has been peer-reviewed. A further analysis of the rubber bands around the money suggested that the stacks of 20s would have had to have washed up on the shore within a couple of years for the rubber bands to still be intact, otherwise they would have deteriorated and fallen apart. And this does not fit with the evidence given by the FBI, which suggested the money arrived on the bank after the 1974 dredging of the Columbia River. According to FBI agent Larry Carr, Dr. Palmer had concluded that the money could not have been deposited on the banks before the 74 dredge operation, and had Cooper buried the money the night he jumped, it would have been found

several feet below the dredged material. Carr claims that the most likely scenario is that in 1977, when the Washougal River flood started, it pushed the package of money on its journey from where it landed in 1971 towards the Columbia River. And over time, the money bag and the parachute cords that had been holding it together began to come apart, releasing bundles of money. Once out of the bag, the money began to slowly rot as it made its way into the Columbia River sometime around late 1978 and early 1979. Once in the Columbia River, the bundles of money began drifting downstream, and if unobstructed, it would have taken the money 14 hours to make it to Tina Bar. Once on shore, the money was covered by sand, which acted as a natural preservant, and that's where it remained until it was found 4 to 12 months later. But once again, this does not explain why only spring algae would be found on the money

because he's not having the money even getting into the Columbia River until like late 78, early 79. Yeah, I think it's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, a lot of people with different theories. And a lot of people with different narratives that they want to push. Yeah, I mean, so I don't, you know,

it's pick your poison. Which one do you want to choose? Which one you want to believe? You know, I think there's, I want to believe he made it. I do too. I told you at the beginning of this, I want to believe he made it, but I do feel like. So stop talking about his skeleton riding at the bottom of the river, man. I feel like the money being found in those bundles. I can't explain the science behind how it's preserved over those years, you know, the sand and all these things and how it would be affected by the dredges and the rivers and the flooding and all

this different thing. What I can say is he went up in that plane to hijack it and get a lot of money and he did everything right. And to believe that this guy who was able to pull this off at the last moment in the last, like, you know, hour of it, he didn't bury the money properly. And some of it got away because of the flooding. And again, he didn't bury the money properly and some of it got away because of the flooding. And again, I don't think that the money they recovered is all the money that's out there. I think if he survived, there's probably even more. And it just doesn't make sense at that point. It doesn't make sense that it would... It seems more likely that that money somehow got on the shore earlier than his body and he didn't make it.

But listen, we're going to move on from the money, OK? Yeah. Because Tom Kay and his team also examined Cooper's thin black tie that had been left behind on the plane in 1971. And to do this, they used the electron microscope again. And Tom Kay said, quote, what we were looking for was pollen because pollen is everywhere. The tie is the most ideal thing for him to leave on a plane because you don't wash a tie, which is gross. So we knew that the tie had accumulated particles from everywhere it had been. If we could find pollen on his tie, depending on what the pollen was we found, it could tell us what part of the country he's from.

End quote. So the black tie was found on the cushion of seat 18E. It was described as a black clip-on tie with a tie clip that was yellow or golden color with a round white pearl in the center. And it was made by a brand sold at JCPenney's, but that style of tie hadn't been sold by the department store for almost a year by the time 1971 came around. UV imaging of the tie showed it had been in daily use for an extended period of time by someone who smoked quite a bit and used matches to smoke, not a lighter, because stains on the tie showed elemental signatures of particles from safety matches. Microscopic evaluation showed something called lycopodium spores. Further analysis showed that the spores were actually a powder residue made of titanium dioxide, silicates, and lemoni.

And these are materials typically used for pill coatings, which led Kay and his team to theorize that during the working day while Cooper would have been wearing the tie, he was also taking some sort of medication regularly, which might like actually confirm the theory that he only has like 14 months to live. But of all the particles examined on the TIE, titanium particles were the most distinctive. And in 1971, titanium was not commonly used by the public as it is today. In fact, it was only being used in very few sorts of places, like they used it in the military and aircraft and helicopters, and it was just starting to be used by the commercial aircraft industry. However, aircrafts would be built with titanium alloy, and it was just starting to be used by the commercial aircraft industry.

However, aircrafts would be built with titanium alloy, and the material found on the tie was pure titanium, which was super rare. And Tom Kay said, quote, that led us down the road of who uses pure titanium. That could come from one of two places, either the plant that manufactures it, or at the time they were using titanium in chemistry plants, end quote. A second piece of evidence, or two more pieces of evidence, was a chip of aluminum and a piece of stainless steel also on the tie. And this led Kay and his team to believe that the tie had been in a chemical plant because those materials would be used in a chemical plant as well. And this caused them to feel that Cooper had most likely worked as a manager or an engineer in a metalworking plant that processed titanium or as an employee at a chemical plant. Now, remember earlier we were talking about Eric Ellis. He's, you know, an expert on D.B. Cooper. He's the

one who believes that D.B. Cooper walked into Vancouver and buried the money and things like that. In November of 2022, he announced that he believed D.B. Cooper could be a man named Vince Peterson who had worked at Crucible Steel, formerly known as Ramacru Titanium, a chemical plant outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Uless developed this theory after finding out that the 2017 examination of the black tie had revealed a variety of medicals, including the rare titanium that Ulysses claimed was only produced by this one company. He contacted the company and tracked down former employees who worked there in the 60s and 70s, which led him to Vince Peterson,

who had worked in Crucible's titanium research lab and who had died in 2002 at the age of 83. Eric believed that Peterson had a financial motive to hijack a plane for $200,000 because in 1971, the steel industry was hit by economic upheaval with 47,000 steel workers being laid off in western Pennsylvania alone, which would bring up the grudge that D.B. Cooper had. After developing this theory, Eric wanted to examine the tie left behind by the hijacker in 1971 because he believed the FBI could have overlooked an area of the tie where DNA had been left. As stated previously, the FBI had pulled a partial DNA profile from the tie, but they also said the DNA seemed to have come from three different people and it wasn't a full profile,

so they could not use it to find anyone. They could only use it to eliminate certain suspects. Eric Ullis told KOIN.com, quote, The partial DNA profile that the FBI has is from the tie. It's unclear as to where on the tie it came from. Given it was 2001 and we're dealing with 2001 technology, they probably pulled something off of the front of the tie from the fibers, maybe a little bit of saliva that has dried up or something of that nature, end quote. Ullis said that the tie Cooper left behind would have had an adjustable spindle on it made of metal,

and he said, quote, we actually do possess the technology, the ability to pull the smallest amounts of DNA off of metal and these types of things, end quote. And according to the FBI, they were unaware of this metal spindle and they didn't test it. But when Uless asked to test the tie and the spindle under the Freedom of Information Act, he was denied. And then he sued the FBI for access to the tie. Something else that might have, you know, had some decipherable DNA on it were the cigarette butts, the eight cigarette butts. And we know that in 1971, they were sent to Quantico for further testing, but we obviously didn't have DNA technology in 1971. And in 2007, when FBI agent

Larry Carr took over the case, he sent all the physical evidence back to Quantico for retesting, but that didn't include the cigarette butts because he couldn't find them. The FBI believes the cigarette butts are in Las Vegas, where they were sent for safekeeping after their testing, but nobody knows where they are. They seem to have completely vanished. You know, the issue with the cigarette butts, not so much, but even the tie, you think about DNA. Obviously, that's where the FBI is pulling the DNA from. You always get concerned with contamination. We even think about it like in the JonBenet Ramsey case where we had DNA on the underwear.

It could come from a lot of sources. Just because they have DNA on there doesn't automatically mean that it's from the person we're looking to identify. As far as the cigarette butts being in a different place, when you have a federal agency like this and you have multiple labs throughout the country, this can happen.

Chain of custody becomes an issue. And when they have so many cases, things get misplaced. It's not right. Shouldn't happen. Unacceptable. But does it happen? Absolutely. It happens in police departments that only have one lab in their state and only one evidence room. Things go missing over the years, especially like we look at D.B. Cooper and we think about this big case. Think about how many big cases the FBI has been involved with over the years. That was a pretty big case for them at the time. At the time, yeah. But I mean, this is 2007. So think about all the things that have happened since Larry Carr took it over. We're talking what? 19, would you say 1971?

1971 it happened. Larry Carr took over in 2007. But they originally sent it out in 1971, right? 1971, yeah. So we're talking a long time. We're talking over 30 years. How many things have happened in the country at that point that the FBI has looked into, that has been involved in, and how extensive amount of- Well, you just kind of feel like you wouldn't want to keep track of them, you know? Well, that's what I'm saying.

You would. You would want to keep track of them. I'm not saying it's acceptable. I'm just saying that's what happens. They also didn't have electronic like laws everything's paper exactly everything's written down yeah right so so you're saying you don't believe that they were purposefully lost because there are people that believe that the fbi knows who i don't i don't but i'm skewed out yeah no i'm skewed you know i'm former law enforcement i mean i don't think you know unless

this guy was an fbi agent and then if even if'm former law enforcement. I don't think they were purposely lost. I mean, I don't think, you know, unless this guy was an FBI agent. And then even if he was, I don't know what the incentive would be. They would just expose him and say, listen. I mean, not to be embarrassed, I guess. I mean, you have a lot of other things to be embarrassed about. It's not like the FBI agents have never committed a crime. You know, that's right. So, I mean, I don't know.

I think the ego of identifying, even if it's one of their own, would be bigger than pretending like they could never catch this person. I think that's a bigger black eye, personally. Unless it was somebody very high profile. Yeah, I mean, it's like J. Edgar Hoover himself jumping out of the plane. I wouldn't put anything past J. Edgar Hoover. No, like I said, I think human element, I said it earlier, not perfect. People are not perfect. And like you said, it's all paper. There's hundreds of cases that they're working on, thousands of cases they've worked on in that time period. And we're talking about

cigarette butts. Again, chain of custody now with the digital transmission of everything, a lot harder to misplace something like that but when you have labs throughout the country and you're an agency that has a jurisdiction over an entire nation things can get lost hopefully i know that you said this was in 2007 hopefully since then they found the items and it just they didn't make it a big deal and but hopefully they know where they are at this point they don't know where the cigarette butts are so they're gone or they're in a box they're in a box they're in a box somewhere right now mix them with the case you know jfk's case you know or like the black dahlia or something yeah exactly so yeah and not only that they weren't

properly labeled you see a cigarette butt or multiple cigarette butts in a bag maybe you throw them out if the ink is kind of blunt you know it now, it's kind of faded. They can't even really read it. Could make some things difficult. Yeah. Well, either way, I don't think we're ever finding those cigarette butts. No, they're gone. In December of 2007, Agent Carr took to the FBI's website to let us know that although initial reports were stating Cooper may have pulled off his crime and survived. They no longer believed this for multiple reasons.

One, Cooper was no expert skydiver. Two, they did not believe he had an accomplice on the ground waiting to help him. Carr said, quote, to have met an accomplice, Cooper would have needed to coordinate closely with the flight crew so he could jump at exactly the right moment and hit the drop zone. According to the FBI, Cooper simply said fly to Mexico and he had no idea where he was when he jumped. There was also no visibility on the ground due to cloud cover at 5,000 feet, end quote. I think it's a little simplistic to say he had no idea where he was when he jumped. I think he definitely did because he knew they weren't

going to Mexico. He knew they were going to Reno. And he also knew like where they had left from and how long they had been flying. And if he knew enough about flying, he would know roughly where they were. But I get it. Like you'd be jumping with that cloud cover, not knowing where you would land until you had cleared that cloud cover.

Agent Carr also believes that it's highly unlikely Cooper survived the jump, saying, quote, diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open, end quote. Damn, Agent Carr. He's like so mean. He's like, that dude didn't even get his chute open. But I would definitely explain why the money was all over the place. It wasn't all over the place. It wasn't all over the place. It was found in one place.

Some of it. But in 2009, the FBI announced a very interesting twist to this case that I personally don't believe is reported on enough. And I find it super compelling, honestly. So we know that Dan Cooper was not this hijacker's real name, and Agent Carr believes that it's possible the hijacker took his pseudonym from a popular French comic book series called Les Adventures d'Dan Cooper. And basically, in this series of comic books, Dan Cooper was a Canadian military pilot. He was, you know, like a fighter pilot. And in one comic book released very close to the date of the hijacking, Dan Cooper is area, the Pacific Northwest is very close to Canada. And he possibly had been in the military at some point in Canada before making his way to the United States, possibly for work.

Now, no one who interacted with D.B. Cooper on the plane remembered him having an accent, which many used to dispute this theory. But Tom Kay's team has also looked into this, stating, quote, His lack of accent points to French Canada as one of the few places in the world where a French speaker could hail from and not have an accent. Franco-Manitobians, Franco-Albertans, and possibly Franco-Ontarians are most likely to have both a good command of French and no discernible accent when speaking English, since French Canadians live outside of Quebec in predominantly Anglophone environments, end quote. And I can attest to this because I live very close to, well, I mean, Ontario, Canada, and I know people in that area. I actually have family who are French Canadian, but they do live in Quebec, and they have very strong French accents.

But then I know people who live in Ontario who are also French Canadian. And when they speak English, you wouldn't be able to tell that they also speak French. You know, they're just bilingual in that way. So that actually makes sense. Additionally, the fact that D.B. Cooper asked for $200,000 in negotiable American currency suggests he was not originally from the United States. Now, I've also often believed that if D.B. Cooper did survive, he didn't stay in the country. There have been, you know, this published list of serial numbers of his ransom money in the United States,

but like what about other countries? Could he have easily gotten rid of the ransom money and exchanged it for the currency of whichever country he went to or whichever country he settled in, especially if it was a country that wasn't known to cooperate with the United States? Would we have ever heard about it if he'd gone to like Canada or Mexico or like Russia and been like, here, I have $200,000 in American currency and I want, you know, your currency? Would these people have been like, you know, we don't want to do this or notified the American government or would they not have even thought twice about it? Because it's just like an American, you know, trading money in and getting money back, especially if he didn't do it all at once. on any lists? Would different countries have been cooperating with the United States in that way on a regular basis, especially in 1971 when they don't have electronic systems? I think not. Yeah, that's possible. I will say one of the things I was going to say at the end is the fact that another reason I think they more than likely didn't survive is with this list being published.

Even if there was only a couple hundred dollars that they were able to locate that had been circulated within the United States, it gives so much more credence to the idea that he survived because even if it was just an exchange of money at a gas station or something, but this list was out there. And the fact that at this point, we have no documented evidence that other than the money found on the beach, that this money was ever circulated in the United States. So to your point, the only explanation could be, Hey, listen, I'm not going to use that money here.

I'm going to, I'm going to use it in another country because I know if I do it here, I'm probably going to get flagged. But I would think even then if he was going to clean the money, he would still have to do it in a similar fashion that he would do in the United States, strip clubs, casinos, things like that, things where you can circulate the money in smaller amounts and exchanges. So you go into a casino, you get a couple thousand dollars in chips, you play two games, and then you cash back out. And now that when you cash back out, they're giving you clean money. Do you think that's a plausible theory that he could have done that in Vegas? Who am I to say it's not?

But even though I don't think it's plausible that it was done in Vegas. I think the only explanation would be it wasn't in this country. Like Monaco or something like that. Yeah, because if he did it in this country, I would think that the FBI was monitoring that to see if they were, you know, if he was trying to clean out the launder the money, you know, whatever it was, casinos, like I said, strip clubs, anywhere where it could be a cash exchange where he could then cash out and receive different money than what he paid with. And the fact that there's never been any known documentation of, hey, it took years, but we found that this money that was serialized at the time of the ransom had been in circulation for all the years. Then you know that someone had the money, even if it wasn't him. One final thing I want to

bring up before you go to the end of this, that's also a possibility, but then based on everything we just said now, doesn't hold a lot of weight when we talk about the explanation of the money getting to another location. Although this was a remote area, you also got to acknowledge the fact that not everyone's a good Samaritan. And there's a possibility that this money showed up on a shore very soon after in the area where they originally believed that he had fallen in and the most of it was together. And somebody found it and said, I ain't turning this in. But don't you think it would have been found in circulation then?

That's what I'm saying. That's what disputes that. But it would explain that maybe someone else, after he passed away, this money washes up on shore and they move it to a different location because they think it's drug money or they might know what it is based on how publicized it was. They might know that this is the DB Cooper money and may have hidden it exactly the way you described in that other location. So, but if that were the case. So maybe it washed up someplace else. They found all this money and they buried it on toolbar. Right. Essentially, there's a possibility that DB Cooper didn't survive that jump, that that jump. But but the money would have the money's not going to you know, the money's not going to, you know, explode on impact.

I also feel like this whole like list with serial numbers is more of like a scare tactic than anything, because like I said, it's 1971. We don't have an electronic system at that point. And, you know, they delivered it to like FBI offices and police stations and certain financial establishments, they said. But it's not like every store, every casino, every bank had this list and was checking all of their bills. No, no. And it's not going to pop when they use it either. And it's not going to because there's no like computer system at that point. So he could have spent the money in the United States and we just never heard about it. And, you know, if it pops up years later and they figure it out, you know, like when we do have an electronic system in place and we just never heard about it. And, you know, if it pops up years later and they figure it out, you know,

like when we do have an electronic system in place and we do have a way of tracking that, maybe the FBI is going to be like, well, you know, we've kind of been pushing this theory that he died and we don't really need to talk about this. I'm serious because it would look stupid if they've been talking like this. Oh, he didn't make it.

He didn't make it. He sucks. His parachute probably never even opened and then this money pops up. But I still think they would announce that because they would explain it away like, oh, he must have died and someone must have found it on the shore and never turned it in. I mean, they're going to have an explanation. Yeah. Well, in July of 2016, the FBI officially suspended the D.B. Cooper investigation. But to this day, many people still devote their lives to trying to figure out who D.B. Cooper was and what happened to him after he jumped from the plane into that dark and stormy night.

And personally, I know this is controversial, but I kind of hope we never find out because it's better this way. Well, the good news is I don't think you will. Good. I like don't like we always ruin all the coolest mysteries by like solving them. You know what I mean? And I was just thinking like randomly, randomly this weird like video popped up on TikTok and it was about like how the Trump family are time travelers because like Donald Trump's like great, great uncle happened to like arrive first on the scene when Nikola Tesla died and Nikola Tesla had all

of his like, you know, experiments and all his equipment and stuff in the apartment. And now they're saying that like, Baron Trump, Trump's son is like a time traveler and stuff. And I know it's not true. But it's fun. Okay. It's fun to listen to. And I don't want it to necessarily be true, but I also don't want somebody to come in and disprove it because it's like watching a movie or it's like listening to like, you know, a fairy tale and it's kind of like cool and fun. I even watched a video about, like a flat earth video that popped up on my feed for no reason. And I absolutely know that the earth isn't flat, but it was fun to hear these people try to explain why it was, you know, like I just like the whole mystery and like fantasy of things. And when you,

if you figure out the DB Cooper was just some average Joe who needed some money and jumped out of a plane and died, it's not as cool. It's not as cool. So I, overall, I hope he lived. Like I had said at the beginning i thought it'd be cool to understand that this guy pulled this off and survived you think he didn't now though but i don't think he did and and the only reason i don't is because there hasn't been any significant evidence without some level of interpretation and some type of theory behind it to support the idea that he did survive so i'm just being pragmatic about it. I could be completely wrong, but it's like, based on what we have, the most valuable thing in this heist

was the money. He didn't ask for anything else to be met. He wasn't trying to get someone out of prison or whatever. The whole reason behind this was, yeah, maybe he had an ax to grind, but ultimately he wanted the money. And I don't think he was some Joe off the street who just didn't plan for the jump. I just think the jump ended up being a lot harder than he anticipated. He bit off more than he could chew. Yep. And I think although he planned it out pretty good, he unfortunately, as luck would have it, fell in the middle of that river.

And it was too much for him to get to shore. And I think that would explain. I can't explain how the money got to where it was. But the fact that the whole reason for doing this more than likely was the money. And that's the one thing that we have some of suggest that something didn't go according to plan, whether it was the jump itself or after the fact, for some reason, he lost, he lost count of some of that money. And based on how much we found, which is significant, 6,000, I would argue that if something went wrong, it's probably more like 10 or 20,000 that got broken off. And that's

a significant amount of money to lose when you only got 200,000. Lose 10% of it, that's not good. So have you ever seen Mad Men? I've seen a couple episodes. You're talking about the Charlie Sheen version? No, Mad Men. The show? No. The television show? Okay. No.

It's one of my favorite shows. So at the end of several seasons, the main character, Don Draper, he kind of leaves his life as this advertising executive on Madison Avenue, and he escapes and hijacks a plane. And the kind of suggestion is he's D.B. Cooper. And I kind of like to think of him like that. You know, maybe he's he went to like Mexico and opened up a tiki bar and he rolled up his sleeves and took his tie off and he just had a great life. And I kind of want to just remember him like that. I don't want to remember him as like a skeleton rotting on the bottom of the Ushuaia River at all.

So let us know in the comments. Do you think D.B. Cooper survived or do you think that he fell to his death in the icy cold with Shugo River? Let us know in the comments what you think. If you're listening on audio, go over to YouTube just to let us know in the comments what you think. Because I really want to take kind of a poll and see where people are at with this. Derek is, you know, he died. I'm, he lived just because, you know, I'm a dreamer. But until next time, we're starting a new case next week. And I think it's going to be a shorter

case, but one that's very riveting, but probably just one episode and not a multi-part series. But next week we will start that. And Derek, do you have anything to finish off with? No, just everyone stay safe out there. Crime Con's coming up fast. We'll talk about it more as we go, but Crime Con's coming fast. If you want to get your tickets, get them now because I think they're already selling out.

We're super excited about it. A lot of you have been DMing us. Going to be a lot of people for Crime Weekly. So we're really pumped about it. It's coming up fast. Almost the end of September, we'll be there.

And as always, we haven't talked about it in a while, Criminal Coffee. We still have it out there, criminalcoffeeco.com. Go check it out. We got some new summer merch coming soon. Stephanie was showing me the mock-ups today.

They look pretty cool. So you'll be excited to see those. That's really it. Everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you next week. Bye.