The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dan Cooper: Based on the Real Story of the Relentless Pursuit of the Northwest Orient Flight 305 Hijacker D.B. Cooper by Jude Morrow

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Dan Cooper: Based on the Real Story of the Relentless Pursuit of the Northwest Orient Flight 305 Hijacker D.B. Cooper by Jude Morrow https://amzn.to/47nR2Ts In the chilling haze of a Pacific Northwest evening, on November 24, 1971, a mysterious man calling himself ‘Dan Cooper’ boards Northwest Orient Flight 305. Armed with a briefcase bomb and dark shades to mask his intent, he swiftly extorts $200,000 along with four parachutes and disappears mid-flight, leaping into the unknown from a Boeing 727’s aft staircase. Using real case evidence and eye-witness testimonies, Jude Morrow has crafted an authentic and creative duel narrative of why 'Dan Cooper', or 'D.B. Cooper' as he became popularly known, committed the crime that he did, and the relentless efforts of the FBI to track him down. Beneath the hijacker's enigmatic facade lies a past intertwined with rural Canada, service in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and daring aid-drops in war-torn Vietnam. As the world grapples with his audacious crime, relentless FBI agent Clifford Harding finds himself consumed by the chase for 'D.B Cooper'. Young, sharp, yet teetering on the edge of obsession, Harding’s pursuit blurs the line between justice and vendetta. With shadows from ‘Dan’s’ past looming and Harding’s intentions growing murkier, one is left to wonder: Who is the real villain in the hijacking? Will Harding unravel the mystery, or become its next casualty? Show Notes About The Guest(s): Jude Morrow is an author and speaker who has written books about his experiences as an autistic child in the mainstream school system. He has also worked as a social worker and in business. Jude's latest book, "Dan Cooper," is a historical fiction based on the real story of the DB Cooper hijacking. Eric Ulis is a former professional card counter and blackjack player. He has a deep interest in the DB Cooper mystery and has been involved in various TV shows and events related to the case. Eric is the organizer and founder of CooperCon, an annual event dedicated to all things DB Cooper. Summary: Jude Morrow and Eric Ulis join Chris Voss to discuss the DB Cooper mystery and Jude's latest book, "Dan Cooper." They delve into the details of the hijacking, including Cooper's demands and the subsequent investigation. Jude explains how he crafted a believable character based on the limited information available about Cooper. Eric shares insights from his research and involvement in the DB Cooper community. They also discuss CooperCon, an annual event that brings together enthusiasts and experts to discuss the case. Key Takeaways: DB Cooper was an unknown man who hijacked a plane in 1971, demanded a ransom, and then jumped out of the plane with the money and parachutes. Cooper's identity and fate remain a mystery, as he was never found or heard from again. Cooper's calm and collected demeanor, lack of profanity, and knowledge of aviation suggest he may have had some experience in the field. The DB Cooper case continues to captivate people's imaginations, and events like CooperCon provide a platform for discussion and exploration of the mystery. Quotes: "Guy gets on plane. Guy gets money and parachutes. Guy disappears, never to be found or heard from again." - Chris Voss "He's a guy that looks like everybody and sounds like nobody." - Jude Morrow "Cooper was a boring old fart, and that's how he got away with it." - Jude Morrow "DB Cooper is a mystery wrapped in an enigma." - Chris Voss About the author Born on the 7th of August 1990 in Derry, Jude Morrow is an autistic best-selling author, TEDx Speaker, and the founder of Neurodiversity Training International. Jude's debut memoir, Why Does Daddy Always Look So Sad?, won the gold medal at the Living Now Book Awards in 2021. Jude is a touring motivational speaker, demonstrating how autistic people can grow to live happy and successful lives.

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That's what I'm saying. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. He's joining us for, I believe, his fourth tour of duty, if you will. Jude Morrow is with us today and uh he joins us with someone who's going to be talking about his newest book uh it's called dan cooper based on the real story of the relentless pursuit of the northwest uh orient flight 305 hijacker d, D.B. Cooper. Welcome to the show, Jude, and special guest that we have with us today, Eric Ulis. So guys, give me your bios, give me your rundown for each of you on the show. I'll go first. My name's Jude Morrow, and I write books for a living.

I suppose made my name and living out of speaking and writing about my experiences of being an autistic child in the mainstream school system and that of being a social worker and in business. And what I've done now is channel the autistic creativity and kind of hyper focus on topics into writing books. And unfortunately for Eric and the DB Cooper vortex, I focused this latest one on the enigma and the complete mind melt that is DB Cooper. So that is me in a nutshell. And my domain is JudeMorrow.com. Come and chat. And by the way, a word of warning, if you do want to chat, you'll probably find it very hard to go away from the conversation because I will keep talking and talking and talking.

I interact too much. That's such a bad thing. There you go. And Eric, give us a rundown on you, please. Absolutely. Eric Uless is the name. I'm a guy who's got an interesting background. For many years, I worked as a professional card counter,

professional blackjack player. If you're familiar with the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey, the MIT guys, that kind of thing. Did that for a number of years. Ended up leaving after I pretty much got barred every place in Nevada and started pursuing some other interests, business, things of that nature. One of the things that I've always been interested in or long been interested in is the mystery of D.B. Cooper. I believe I first heard about it in the late 1970s. About 15 years ago, I picked it up again. I thought, you know what, it's still a mystery.

They haven't figured out who this guy is. Let me see if I can figure out who this guy is. And it started out as a guilty pleasure, and over time, it just morphed into something much bigger. I headlined a History Channel show on it in 2020. I was on Expedition Unknown with Josh Gates in 2021. There was a Netflix show last year called DB Cooper, Where Are You? I was featured in that show. And I'm also the organizer and founder of an annual event that takes place in Seattle, actually coming up here, just the end of August, or rather November, called CooperCon. It's all things DB Cooper. But that in a nutshell is really kind of who I am and how I kind of accidentally

fell into this DB Cooper vortex. There you go, man man so we're getting into the db cooper universe uh so give us a 30 000 overview of the book jude what's inside of it uh is this is this have you fictionalized this at all or is this an accurate accounting well i've kind of tried to combine a mixture of both obviously i wanted to create a historical fiction narrative of it because with DB Cooper the I mean you can describe the story in a few sentences guy gets on plane guy gets money in parachutes guy disappears never to be found or heard from again man it's really annoying it's like who the hell was this guy like who just swaggered up to that counter, bought a plane ticket, got money, parachutes,

was reasonably polite to people, put the stairs down and left, and was never found? That's the most infuriating thing ever. That's Fridays around here on this show. I know. And by the way, what's even more fascinating is that whenever I decided I'm going to write about

D.B. Cooper, who do you go to? You go to Her Gullis. And we've been talking pretty much nearly every day and did for over a year. And now I'm hearing that you're a professional blackjack player and card counter. Like, how am I only finding this out now? I mean, Chris, you have my complete permission. By the way, DB Cooper, there's a lot of stuff out there. If you want to do the card counting interview, that's fine, I'll sit here, I'll get popcorn

I want to hear this laughter this is more interesting to me, so I'll go back to the question, so yeah, this infuriating story and I suppose for my own selfish reasons, I thought, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going

to look at the case evidence and talk to people who know stuff about this, and I'm going to craft a character that I believe is believable and that meets my desire to have a beginning, a hijacking, and an afterward. And hopefully it resonates with people.

There you go. So let's assume people don't know who D.B. Cooper is. You know, a lot of these Gen Z folks, they're not up to hip what was going on in the 70s maybe they are i don't know uh but uh tell us who uh db cooper was in this experience i'll let you guys uh banner that question back and forth i'll go ahead i'll go ahead and take the question and i want to start off by saying this is real this isn't fake this is real. This isn't fake. This is real. Basically, there's a guy, an unknown guy in his mid to late 40s, presumably shows up at Portland International Airport on Thanksgiving Eve 1971

and buys a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines to Seattle, typically a 36-minute flight from Portland, Oregon. Within the hour, he's on the jet, and just as it's taxiing to the runway, he hands one of the flight attendants a note which says he has a bomb, and additionally, he would like the flight attendant to come sit next to him. So she does come sit next to him, and he opens up his attache case and shows what appears to be a bomb. And this is just as the jet is rolling down the runway, taking off again, heading for Seattle. At this point, he asks her to write down his demands, which in effect amount to $200,000 in cash,

two front parachutes and two back parachutes. He wants all of this stuff to be stationed, situated at the Seattle airport before he'll let the jet land, and he wants it in place by 5 p.m. And that starts a whole series of events. Eventually everything does make its way to SeaTac Airport about 40 minutes late. The jet lands. The first thing to come on board the jet is the 200,000 bucks in cash. At that point DB Cooper lets the passengers go. There are 35 passengers he let go in addition to a couple of the flight attendants. The parachutes then make their way on board the jet and the jet gets

refueled. At that point, he says, I want to fly to Mexico. I don't want you landing anywhere in the United States. And in addition, this is how I want the jet to fly. I want the landing gear to remain down. I want the jet to remain unpressurized. I don't want the jet to fly over 10,000 feet. I want the flaps at a very specific 15 degree setting and very importantly he wants the air stairs deployed and hanging open upon takeoff and while the jet's flying. This is a Boeing 727, which is unique because it has an air stairs apparatus that deploys from the back bottom of the fuselage. So he literally wants this thing hanging open as the jet takes off. This starts a whole series of combination with the pilots. They simply say flying dirty like that.

There's no way they could make it to Mexico nonstop. They ultimately agree to land in Reno, ostensibly to refuel to continue the journey south. About 36 minutes after takeoff from Seattle, as the jet is approaching the Vancouver, Washington, Portland, Oregon area. The pilots experience what they call a pressure bump. So they surmise that he has jumped from the plane, but they're not sure. The jet lumbers along all the way to Reno. And once it's landed in Reno, the authorities board the jet and indeed determine that D.B. Cooper jumped.

So he jumped with basically everything except one item, a skinny black clip-on tie and two of the parachutes. But he jumped to never be seen or heard from again. So at this point, officially, we don't know how he got to the airport in Portland. We don't know where he came from. We don't know what his real name is. We don't know whether he lived. We don't know whether he died. And one critical thing that I forgot to mention early on is that the name that he gave when he checked in at the ticket counter in Portland was Dan Cooper.

This is 1971. You're not rolling in with identification. You just give them a name. So he gave the name Dan Cooper. Now, that was erroneously reported as D.B. Cooper by the media. And very quickly thereafter, however, many people in the media and the authorities realized no no no the name wasn't db cooper was dan cooper but the name db cooper stuck because db cooper is a pretty badass name and here we are 52 years later the mystery persists there you go he's never been found uh i think a lot of people have been pulling whodunits and stuff. Any thoughts on that, Jude? You know, the reason why I called it Dan Cooper is because that's what the guy called himself.

Yeah. That's what he called himself. So it's like, that's why I'm going to call it that. He didn't give the name as that. You know what you said, you know, with the Gen Zs and the Millennials and stuff like that. Whenever I said in my social medias and stuff, I'm writing a book about D.B. Cooper,

everybody was like, who? You know, who the hell is that and it's like oh dear where i think with the db cooper story it's going somewhere similar to where titanic went where you know in the maybe in the 30s and the 40s there were some revived untressed with walter lord's novel and then the night to remember movie and And then James Cameron decided to come along and make a full set replica of the Titanic to kind of revive and trust in it. And I think to keep a story alive, historical fiction needs to come in somewhere. But I tried to stick as close to the actual case facts and evidence as much as I possibly could. I did stick with the 95-5 rule where there's some things that stray outside

of it to give a wider view of events because the way I've written it is Cooper telling his own story of why he did this and where he went afterward. Ah, so where do you begin his story when you're writing the historical fiction for this? Where do you start it? Do you start it as, well, he was growing up in a nice little neighborhood? How did that work? Yeah. I went down the Canadian angle. The Dan Cooper name, it's closely aligned to a Canadian comic.

Now, do I think in real life that that is the actual connection? Probably not. He probably extracted the name from an orifice because why would you give yourself a name that could easily be linked back to you like if somebody uh matching the fbi sketches in 1971 it's like ah that looks like this guy down the street and that's the weird guy that likes this weird dan cooper comic i'm gonna call the cops you know it's going to be so easily linked back i say he probably just pulled it out of the phone book that morning. And, you know, it's kind of fun, you know, people get like a romantic view of it. And I like

empowering that romantic view of it, like the creativity, you know, and the discussion of it. But here's the thing. Whenever you look at case evidence, when you look at 302s, right, and you want to know what did he look like?

And do you know what word comes back, Chris? Everybody. He looked like freaking everybody. Mr. Everybody. Right, so okay, so he's a guy that looks like everybody. Right, okay, question two, well what did he sound like? You know, you have the physical aesthetic, you know, what was his audio? What did he sound like?

He sounded like no one. A non-discernible accent. So you have to create a main character that looks like everybody and that sounds like nobody and i was like challenge accepted challenge accepted there you go there you go like how do you do that that's like the everest of a character there you go so uh as eric alluded um it seemed like he had a lot of requests i mean is it possible with this you the 15-degree flap and some of the other elements you described, is it possible he could have been a pilot or a military? He seemed to know a lot about how to have this be able to jump out of a plane.

Yeah, there are indications that he was familiar with aerospace and aviation in general, and also the Boeing 727 specifically. And indeed, the authorities started immediately looking at Boeing. And I think that's a safe bet. Again, it's important to remember for people who are listening here, you know, this is 1971. This isn't 2023 where you fire up the internet or ask Siri and you get all the answers to every question you had desire within a matter of seconds. So I think that's a fair assumption that he probably was knowledgeable about aerospace, quite knowledgeable about aerospace, just given his age, which I believe was probably around 50 years of age in 1971, that ties him to have either served in the latter end of World War

II or perhaps in Korea. And so, of course, that could be factored into it as well. And there's a lot that perhaps we'll get into a little bit further down the road here today, but that with respect to that clip-on tie that I mentioned that he left on the jet that was recovered in Reno, Nevada, the skinny black clip-on tie that had been purchased at JCPenney years earlier. 1971, it didn't provide much in terms of evidence but in later years especially more recently it's actually served as a treasure trove and i don't think it's a mere coincidence that uh in recent years as we've uncovered you know particles and things of that nature that came from the tie that

they indeed appear to point to the aerospace sector so So I think that's a fair bet. Does, I mean, has DNA been possible in this, or is it just not, there's no DNA that they can tell? Well, they did attempt to pull a DNA profile in 2000 or 2001. And again, this was right before September 11th. So a lot of stuff got sort of backburnered after September 11th came along. And they came up with what they believe is a partial profile for DB Cooper, partial DNA profile. I don't know how to measure the veracity of that because they haven't really said much about it uh and they have looked at some

suspects and so forth more recently however i'm actually involved with a lawsuit in a lawsuit against the fbi the department of justice trying to get access to db cooper's tie because there is a specific part to the tie that i believe may well possess a complete DB Cooper DNA profile that is not contaminated. So it's actually been eight months since the lawsuit's been filed. It's slowly working its way through the federal courts in Washington, D.C. But the exciting thing about that is that, you know, this is 2023 dna testing technology today is light years ahead of what it was 10 15 years ago and this actually has the potential to be the silver bullet it has the potential to actually solve the case and there was no fingerprints left behind

either huh or were there there were there were several fingerprints in the 60s of fingerprints, different fingerprints that they recovered from different parts to the jet. But honestly, they don't know whose they are. I think it's a safe bet to assume that D.B. Cooper probably wiped most of the areas that he would have touched and probably didn't leave any fingerprints behind, or at least not much to speak of in that area. Yeah, I mean, to have that opening on the plane where you're going to jump, you know, hanging out the back and stuff, you kind of have to know some things about planes or military or how to jump probably too. I don't know. And I guess there's certain parts of the area that they think he jumped in, right? Well, the flight path.

Yeah, the flight path. They have a general idea of where he was. It's been a matter of quite a bit of controversy as to specifically where the jet was and where the jump took place. But generally speaking, we know it was in the Vancouver, Washington area. And indeed, I should mention that in 1980, so at this point some eight years after the skyjacking, there was actually a portion of D.B. Cooper's ransom that was found buried on a beach along the Columbia River called Tina Bar, spelled T-E-N-A, Tina Bar. And that is in Vancouver, Washington as well. So that's sort of a mystery within a mystery how $6,000 of D.B. Cooper's money ended up sitting by itself three packets just below the surface of the sand in in a very rotted state so the money had clearly been there for an extended period of time but i think that does lend a hell

of a lot of uh credence to the notion that indeed he did jump in in the vancouver washington area wow didn't wasn't there a thing or rumor or something I saw where somebody thought they'd found his parachute? I don't know. Well, sure. Yeah, there was a parachute that was found in Amboy, Washington several years ago, but the authorities determined that it was not D.B. Cooper's parachute. I'm comfortable. I'm comfortable with that assessment. However, that is also a matter of some controversy. There are others that are saying, yo, slow down there, Turbo. Don't be so

quick. Maybe that is D.B. Cooper's parachute, but I tend to think it wasn't. Ah, there you go. See, I knew I'd heard something about that. So Jude, tell us more about the character you built, how you put him together and how did you flush him out? Well, what I did, and this kind of ties into a bit of a bonus point from Eric's point about aviation,

is that what I wanted to do first of all was find out what Cooper actually said that's not really disputed by anybody. You know, things like, now there's some lines that are attributed to D.B. Cooper that there's no reference for, like the sort of upsettingly famous one,

it can be done, do it. There's no reference for that anywhere that I could ever find. I don't know, maybe Eric, I'm open to correction there, but I didn't find a reference for that but one thing that he did say where i wanted to have some sort of aviation background with him you know especially with vietnam it was of that era where certain occupations seem to know their own and pilots are one of those and whenever the fuel trucks were refueling that was taking a while you know cooper was saying you know what the hell is taking so long?

You know, this shouldn't take this long. And the pilots had said back to him through the intercom and through the stewardess through the intercom, we're waiting on IFR clearance, you know, instrument flight rules clearance. And Cooper said back to them, we can pick that up in the air. We don't have to wait for that. And that's a very pilot-y aviation thing to say because, I mean, for this, like, I mean, I've been skydiving myself for this. And pilots do have their own language. They do. Like, they speak in acronyms.

It's almost, I don't want to say cult-y, but they are a group of people, a small group of people that have their own language, and Cooper seemed to speak it. And another interesting thing as well, the guy didn't swear. He didn't use profanity. So you get a cool, calm, and collected person. I mean,

he didn't do that, I kill any mother fucker. There was none of that. There was no crazy terrorist. There was no waving a bomb. There was no, you know, gun sideways in someone's face. So you can use a lot of those little things to craft a character. Now, he didn't just become this cool, calm, collected avionic in the airport reading the paper.

So it's kind of like working backwards from that to kind of get to the point where how he would know all this knowledge why he behaved in the way that he did and ultimately how he would maintain that afterward to not be caught because the guy's quite unremarkable when you really look at him like as far as a character this guy is beige wallpaper this guy's vanilla ice cream where he's not overly remarkable so much so that if he jumped out of the plane and tried to throw up on the parachute and the thing burst and he fell on the river or became barefoot nobody missed him yeah or the second thing was you know this guy

was so stuck on the wall this beige wallpaper man that nobody thought that's the guy because most of the people suspected of being db cooper were very colorful characters i mean there's about 10 suspects i can think of off the top of my head could have hollywood left right and center their own books everything and some of them do but i just think cooper was a boring old fart and that's how he got away with it and how how he got so undiscovered up to now. But that's a fascinating thing. He was too, so boring that he's fascinating. It's like a paradox.

It's like chilies. Some of them are so hot that they're addictive. That they're amazing. It's like wow, this is great but there's no fun in it. Do you know what I mean? I don't know if that's a good analogy but it's as good as I can give. It's almost like I mean he sounds like a very as good as i can give it's almost like uh i mean he sounds like a very cerebral guy like you say he's not like a terrorist running around screaming

uh but he's also uh he's he's trying not to create a profile maybe maybe he maybe he was ex-fbi too or cia i mean he knew that how not to create a profile. But yeah, it's really interesting. So in the historical fiction, do you write, do you flesh out what he does for the rest of his life? I do. I do. Because with Cooper, this was a guy that needed money. And this is a guy that needed money very quickly.

I think it's generally accepted that this man was not a career criminal. Nobody in their 302s said that they noticed a guy in PDX chewing a toothpick and flipping a coin. Nobody thought this guy is the mob or the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. He wasn't wearing a leather cut underneath his black suit or his trench coat. Where this was a guy that just fell on hard times. This guy needs money very, very quickly. Quite Walter Whitey, if that makes sense.

A bit Breaking Bad. And that was a big influence on my story. And as kind of an interesting side note, for any Breaking Bad fans, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, was very heavily influenced by D.B. Cooper for the character of Gus Spring. You know, non-descript you know polite not swearing you know where it's it made

that character very very menacing and untrusting you know he wasn't screamy or shouty or anything like that but I mean obviously because I have Cooper tell him the story of why he did this obviously in the book he makes it but you know kind of a was it worth it kind of angle did it all go very well um because a lot of people you know you know the whole sticking it to the man thing you know he lands on the ground like mary poppins uh you know and he goes away and there's all the hookers and cocaine that he can ever have thrown at him with all this big bag of money but did it really work like that was it a hollow thing who knows because he didn't gloat i mean like there there was nobody that said after oodles

of champagne and caviar well i was db cooper and here's one of my notes with a serial number on it that the fbi kept track of this guy didn't do that this guy just just went back, beige wallpaper, and remained beige wallpaper until his dying day. And that's remarkable. It is. Because most criminals will give themselves away. They have to brag about it. There's only two types

of secret. One that nobody tells, and it's kept. And one person that tells one person and then the whole world knows. If you one person and then the whole world knows. If you tell one person, the whole world knows. And sometimes they can't keep their mouth shut. Like you see the Tupac murder,

one of the guys who was involved in the murder of Tupac, he finally started to run his mouth off and wrote a book and he couldn't help but brag about it and now he's 20 years later, whatever it is, he's been charged. So tell us about this CooperCon thing. This sounds really interesting.

I didn't even know there was an event, conventions for this. It's like Star Trek, only for, about D.B. Cooper, huh? That's right. Yeah, it started, 2018 was the first year. So this is the fifth year of CooperCon. If you're doing the math, if you're doing the math, you would realize, well, it should be the sixth year so this is the fifth year of cooper con if you're doing the math if you're doing the math you would realize well it should be the sixth year but let's not forget the pandemic we did not do it in 2020 because of the pandemic so this is the fifth year again taking place in seattle

november 17th through 19th so it's a three-day event and it it's just an awful lot of fun. We have a lot of firsthand witnesses there. For example, we have a guy named Bill Mitchell, who's the guy who sat directly across the aisle from D.B. Cooper in the back of a jet. Bill was a then 20-year-old college sophomore, and he was eyeballing Cooper quite extensively because of the fact that Bill was attracted to the young, then 22-year-old flight attendant who was spending an inordinate amount of time speaking with the Skyjacker. Now, Bill didn't realize that they were being Skyjacked at the time, but Bill Mitchell will be on stage. Also, Larry Carr, who is a former FBI special agent, he actually headed up the FBI's investigation. Norjack is the official name in the later years. And he was single handedly

responsible for actually bringing a lot of new information out to the world, which I think really kind of reinvigorated the case. One of the other people we're going to have there is a copycat skyjacker, a guy named Mark McNally, who several months after Cooper thought, you know, I can do the same thing and get away with it. And he actually did, except he got caught because he ended up talking about it later on, which is the way these things go. But McNally had no skydivingiving experiences as far as I understand. But in addition to that, we have some presentations related to some of the science,

some of the newer things that we've learned scientifically. We'll have several panel discussions. But one of the things that really sets cooper con apart i think from a lot of other events really makes this fun is i uh have made it a goal of mine and all the cooper cons to invite audience participation so it's not just a matter of let's watch you know a couple people talk about db cooper for 50 minutes we actually the last 10 to 15 minutes is usually dedicated to me literally jumping out in the audience with a wireless mic and and having people uh ask questions of those of us who are on stage so that's a lot of fun it gives people

an opportunity to ask questions and voice theories and opinions of their own and that kind of thing so it's a really really cool cool event as far as that goes. Is it okay if I mention the web address for the – Please do. Please, yeah, plug away. Sure, yeah. It's – anybody who is interested in checking any of that out, if they just go to cooperconevents.com, cooperconevents.com,

you can pull up everything related to CooperCon and everything else So but it's a lot of fun. It really is. It's very enjoyable. And, and everybody's laid back. I mean, you know, you know, everybody's laid back. It's not a pretentious group. It's not a pretentious crowd. You know, there's all kinds of, you know, selfies being taken and things of that nature. traffic controller who managed the flight or the, you know, the then teenage daughter of the late Captain Scott or Bill Mitchell, the passenger on the jet, you know, these people aren't going to be around forever, needless to say. And while these people are still around, you know, 52 years out, I think it's invaluable to get them on the record unfiltered, not through somebody else's words. They speak directly to the audience and so forth. So I think that there's

a real historical value in that. I'm confident that if in 48 years from now, the 100th anniversary of the D.B. Cooper mystery and all of us are dead and gone, except maybe Judah will still be around. Uh,

you know, uh, I'm confident that there'll be, that researchers will be going back and looking at Cooper con and a lot of what was talked about there and using that as, as a really reference material, um, uh,

to, to proceed with the investigation. There you go. I see a picture of a pilot and a stewardess on the website here. Are those the originals from the… No, no. I think you're talking about a couple that showed up a couple of years ago. Oh, they showed up dressed up.

Yeah, they were period dressed as a pilot and so forth. Good-looking couple, I might add. But, yes, we actually, you know, it's not uncommon, actually, to have people show up dressed as D.B. Cooper or as one of the… I was going to say, that's who I'd show up as. Yeah, or one of the flight attendants or what have you. You could pull it off there, Jude. Show up as D.B. Cooper. You know what?

I'd love to come as D.B. Cooper, but I'm unfortunately not a boring old fart. This guy was maybe 50 plus. I have 17 years to go, but do you know what I got? I got a Northwest Orient man purse. Now, it's not, it wasn't marketed I got a Northwest Orient man purse. Now, it wasn't marketed at the time as a man purse.

I think it was marketed as a shaving bag. But I'm absolutely used to it as a man purse. So I will be landing into SeaTac Airport for CooperCon. I'll be there for all three days. I'm already hungover thinking about it. And I will have my Northwest Orient man purse. And Eric and me are going to Tina Bar where Cooper's money was buried. And it's going to be like, I'm going to lie in the sand,

just like this, like a big starfish. And it's private property. And the owners are probably like, who the hell's this guy doing a starfish on our beach? And that'll be me. And I'll not regret it. And there's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of beers.

And I'm really excited because you know what? Like this book was finished several months ago. It was finished. It's been finished for quite a while. It's been out to the press. It's been out to review. It's come to your desk. And I'll even forgive you for not reading it, Chris.

Just go. Just turn up. Just get a flight to Seattle and let's have the beer that we've been threatening to have the last six years. Well, that's an idea. I mean, why not? I mean, when else are you going to get an opportunity like this? I mean, this is gold. I mean, I'm really selling this, but I'm stuck in the vortex now.

That's it. I'm involved now. You're sucked in. You are committed, my friend. Is this what got you into, I know we're friends on Facebook and stuff, and I've been seeing you do parachute jumping and kicking ass at it, taking names. Is this what got you into parachute jumping was the curiosity over D.B. Cooper? Yeah, it was because I think with Cooper, he wasn't an experienced parachutist.

And, I mean, how are you going to talk to an experienced parachutist? So I learned by doing. Like for the last book, like I had to learn first aid for the last book how are you going to talk to an experienced parachutist so i i learned by doing like for the last book like i had to learn first aid for the last book with old 1960s first aid supplies that i bought um because modern first aid stuff wasn't going to do any good so i thought for this you know what i'm going to throw myself out of a plane or a helicopter or a hot air balloon uh or whatever and and i've kept that up too i didn't stop where with cooper i think in reality he maybe did three or four jumps to pull this off uh he probably he could have done it with one

other popping guys did it with one but i thought i will be an inexperienced parachutist and kind of like documented like when i get to the ground and like what it was like to try and get the authenticity of the scenes of course i didn't have a briefcase bomb attached to me or $200,000 because that would be quite frowned upon at most drop zones. So I actually knew that to replicate it completely. It would be cool if they finally solved the mystery. People love this thing. Whodunits, the conspiracy things.

So give us your final pitch on the book as we go out, Jude, and we'll round up the show. Dan Cooper is my latest book about the hijacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305. You can get it in all major online bookstores, bookstores near you, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, wherever else

you get your books, and come to CooperCon as well. I'll pass over to Eric for the final plug for CooperCon. That's the main thing of this. There you go. Eric? Well, yeah, I mean, I would definitely encourage people, if they can do it, if they're in the Seattle area, to come to CooperCon.

Again, it's November 17th through 19th. But aside from that, if anybody's interested in me and some of the stuff that I've looked into in some of my research related to the D.B. Cooper case, feel free to jump over to my personal site, ericulis.com E-R-I-C-U-L-I-S dot com. And I've got quite a bit of material there, quite a bit related to the mystery. I've written extensively about it, a number of different

aspects. So for somebody who wants to just get a, you know, sort of a quick overview of the case and some of what has transpired over the last several months or rather several years, investigatively, primarily with stuff that I've done, that's a good place to start and learn about the case and go from there. And don't be surprised if you find yourself at some point getting sucked into the Cooper vortex and contributing in some manner. There you go. Get sucked into the vortex as you jump out the back of the plane.

Maybe you guys should do a thing where you guys go up in a plane, everyone jumps out and tries to see if they can land wherever, I't db cooper is and uh i don't land jumped or something like that it's it's a wild story man and so uh i i think it will be just always a mystery wrapped in enigma i suppose they like to say thank you thank you very much gentlemen for coming the show it's good to see you again jude thank you eric we certainly appreciate it as well. It was a pleasure to meet you. My pleasure. Thank you very much. There you go. And did we get everyone's dot coms? I think we

got everything out there. Alright, sounds good. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. We certainly appreciate it. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1 on the tickety-tockety, and chrisfossfacebook.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. dot com. Fortunately, that's Chris Foss. Chris Foss 1 on the tickety-tockety and Chris Foss Facebook dot com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.