New theory, DB Cooper
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https://true.ink/story/d-b-cooper-fbi-files-released/
there is a discussion of two areas behind panels near the aft stairs that might be big enough to hide a man.
However, the conclusion was that the stairs had to be 100% down to access these areas and the wind blast presumably kept the stairs from fully extending in flight.
Gnome de PPRuNe
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Spooky, you are D B Cooper and I claim my reward! 
It's been done several times since, not least for the film "The Pursuit of D B Coooper".
727 crash test
It's been done several times since, not least for the film "The Pursuit of D B Coooper".
727 crash test
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Full disclosure. I was once involved with a corporate 727-200ADV and one of the owners sons was a very accomplished skydiver. We had plans to make a similar drop down in Florida. During our prep time we watched the US Army jump from an ATA 727 down at Marana, Arizona and watched a video of the US Army jumping from the stairs of a Pan Am B727. The Pan Am video was quite well done from both outside and inside the airplane. Very interesting and very doable for the right person. 4 people on the stair and it would stay fairly well extended. With just one person the opening got smaller but not so small you could not get out without killing yourself.
We never did the jumps as there was a scheduling conflict with airplane and the completion center down in Orlando, FL.
We never did the jumps as there was a scheduling conflict with airplane and the completion center down in Orlando, FL.
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In the late 70s or early 80s there were organized 727 skydives at a major jump competition. It was over $100 per person as I recall. Forgot where , may have been called Jump the Jet .
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Cooper's jump
If Cooper walked down to the lower part of the stairs and pulled his ripcord while facing forward he would have had a surprisingly nice opening and would not have to deal with the considerable problem of trying to make a stable freefall with no good visual horizon or azimuth references. Look at how gentle these "squidding" openings are (static line jumps from a SAT 727 flying over Thailand for the CIA) . Site wont let me post URLs until I have ten posts. Go to Google and search CIA 727 jumps. The S/L jumps start at about 2:10 in the Flying Men and their Flying Machines video.
I've made over 1000 jumps and skydived from a DC 9-21 (over the decommissioned Chanute AFB) in 2005. Despite what the FBI said, a ventral exit jet freefall jump isn't particularly difficult. Avoiding a freefall spin at night with clouds obscuring your horizon is difficult. The solution? Pull off the stairs thus emulating the CIA 727 static line jumps proven to work in 1970. If DB Cooper served in SE Asia I'll bet he knew about these 727 jumps. Whispers travel fast among jumpers when a new aircraft is jumped. Skydivers knew about Google's STC for Gulfstream V jet jumps long before it became public.
Mark
I've made over 1000 jumps and skydived from a DC 9-21 (over the decommissioned Chanute AFB) in 2005. Despite what the FBI said, a ventral exit jet freefall jump isn't particularly difficult. Avoiding a freefall spin at night with clouds obscuring your horizon is difficult. The solution? Pull off the stairs thus emulating the CIA 727 static line jumps proven to work in 1970. If DB Cooper served in SE Asia I'll bet he knew about these 727 jumps. Whispers travel fast among jumpers when a new aircraft is jumped. Skydivers knew about Google's STC for Gulfstream V jet jumps long before it became public.
Mark
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FBI agent to receptionist at Southern Air Transport -
"Show us your personnel list"
Reply -
" insert sound of silence here ".
Seriously though if that money had turned up in the wrong place we would never hear about it.
"Show us your personnel list"
Reply -
" insert sound of silence here ".
Seriously though if that money had turned up in the wrong place we would never hear about it.
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An alleged former Army cryptographer claims he has broken the code on D.B. Cooper:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/db-cooper-army-veteran-indiana-says-he-cracked-code-of-infamous-unsolved-crime/
Producer Tom Colbert appears to have done work with CBS as an investigative journalist. Also, he produced a recent History Channel series based on the book he co-authored claiming that Rackstraw was the perp. Most of these TV analyses remind me of a 'Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle' level of evidence.
Here are details on the claimed coded messages in an Indianapolis Star article:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...ers/914270002/
To me this appears to be numerology, not cryptology. This looks more like 'Number Mysteries of Nostradamus' than a legitimate codebreaking exercise.
A nice list of 11 suspects in the Cooper case in this article:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...man/865813002/
CBS News August 9, 2018, 7:03 AM
Army veteran claims he cracked code of infamous D.B. Cooper mystery
CHICAGO – It's one of the most baffling unsolved crimes in FBI history. In 1971, a man, later known as D.B. Cooper, hijacked a Seattle-bound flight, and parachuted out of the airplane with a ransom totaling $200,000. He was never seen again.
Now, as CBS Chicago reports, a retired Indiana construction worker might have cracked the case the FBI never could.
Rick Sherwood served three tours in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, earning two Bronze Stars for his code-breaking work.
"I never in my wildest dreams would have ever thought that I would ever use Morse Code, or any kind of code breaking or anything again," he said.
That changed when Tom Colbert came calling. Colbert, a California-based TV producer, was investigating the D.B. Cooper case, and asked Sherwood to review lines of code in letters sent by D.B. Cooper.
Colbert suspected D.B. Cooper was a California man by the name of Robert Rackstraw. Sherwood and Rackstraw served in the Army together.
CBS Chicago ran Sherwood's findings by Jack Schafer, a retired FBI agent and behavioral analyst.
"I think certainly there's a strong circumstantial case now, especially the link between the decoded messages and Rackstraw," he said.
Observers have said Rackstraw had the training and the motive to pull off the heist. He left the Army months before the hijacking. Edwards reached Rackstraw by phone. He declined to answer questions, telling Edwards he would only speak face-to-face.
"How confident are you that D.B. Cooper is Robert Rackstraw?" Edwards asks Sherwood.
"If I were him, I'd be extremely nervous," Sherwood said.
A FBI spokeswoman said the agency is no longer actively investigating the case, and declined to confirm if Rackstraw was ever a suspect.
"The FBI has received an immense number of tips provided by members of the public, but none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker," she said in a statement. "The tips have conveyed plausible theories, descriptive information about individuals potentially matching the hijacker, and anecdotes — to include accounts of sudden, unexplained wealth. In order to solve a case, the FBI must prove culpability beyond a reasonable doubt, and, unfortunately, none of the well-meaning tips or applications of new investigative technology have yielded the necessary proof."
Now, as CBS Chicago reports, a retired Indiana construction worker might have cracked the case the FBI never could.
Rick Sherwood served three tours in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, earning two Bronze Stars for his code-breaking work.
"I never in my wildest dreams would have ever thought that I would ever use Morse Code, or any kind of code breaking or anything again," he said.
That changed when Tom Colbert came calling. Colbert, a California-based TV producer, was investigating the D.B. Cooper case, and asked Sherwood to review lines of code in letters sent by D.B. Cooper.
Colbert suspected D.B. Cooper was a California man by the name of Robert Rackstraw. Sherwood and Rackstraw served in the Army together.
FBI sketches of D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane in 1971, traded passengers for $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted off the plane never to be seen again.
FBI
Using the code-breaking skills he honed in the military, Sherwood believes he definitively connected D.B. Cooper to Rackstraw, uncovering his name and other details in the letters.FBI
CBS Chicago ran Sherwood's findings by Jack Schafer, a retired FBI agent and behavioral analyst.
"I think certainly there's a strong circumstantial case now, especially the link between the decoded messages and Rackstraw," he said.
Observers have said Rackstraw had the training and the motive to pull off the heist. He left the Army months before the hijacking. Edwards reached Rackstraw by phone. He declined to answer questions, telling Edwards he would only speak face-to-face.
"How confident are you that D.B. Cooper is Robert Rackstraw?" Edwards asks Sherwood.
"If I were him, I'd be extremely nervous," Sherwood said.
A FBI spokeswoman said the agency is no longer actively investigating the case, and declined to confirm if Rackstraw was ever a suspect.
"The FBI has received an immense number of tips provided by members of the public, but none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker," she said in a statement. "The tips have conveyed plausible theories, descriptive information about individuals potentially matching the hijacker, and anecdotes — to include accounts of sudden, unexplained wealth. In order to solve a case, the FBI must prove culpability beyond a reasonable doubt, and, unfortunately, none of the well-meaning tips or applications of new investigative technology have yielded the necessary proof."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/db-cooper-army-veteran-indiana-says-he-cracked-code-of-infamous-unsolved-crime/
Producer Tom Colbert appears to have done work with CBS as an investigative journalist. Also, he produced a recent History Channel series based on the book he co-authored claiming that Rackstraw was the perp. Most of these TV analyses remind me of a 'Mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle' level of evidence.
Here are details on the claimed coded messages in an Indianapolis Star article:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...ers/914270002/
To me this appears to be numerology, not cryptology. This looks more like 'Number Mysteries of Nostradamus' than a legitimate codebreaking exercise.
A nice list of 11 suspects in the Cooper case in this article:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...man/865813002/
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Just in time for the holidays and an upcoming conference, another D.B. Cooper researcher who claims to be 'a U.S. Army officer with a security clearance' comes up with yet another possible suspect for the hijacking:
The rest of the theory about the hijacker jumping near a railroad to catch a freight train back East is in the latest Oregonian article:
https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/news...per-skyja.html
Over the years, the hunt for the Flight 305 perpetrator has surfaced dozens of suspects. And, as it turned out, widespread interest in the case sparked back to life when the FBI officially abandoned the investigation in 2016. In just the past 12 months, various determined sleuths have argued, in turn, that the one true Dan Cooper -- popularly known as D.B. Cooper -- is a slippery Vietnam War veteran named Robert Rackstraw, long-time skydiving daredevil Sheridan Peterson, and late self-proclaimed spy Walter Reca.
The data analyst does not believe any of those men is the notorious skyjacker. Because he's convinced he has figured out who really is -- and it's someone no one else has ever identified as a suspect.
Our researcher is publicly remaining anonymous for now. A U.S. Army officer with a security clearance, he has a solid professional reputation -- and he wants to keep it that way. He's worried that his colleagues and supervisors will think he's gone 'round the bend. He is not one of the so-called "Cooperites," the dismissive name given to the amateur investigators who endlessly devote their free time to the case, and he doesn't want to be identified as such.
Former investigative reporter Bruce Smith, author of the 2015 book "D.B. Cooper and the FBI," thinks the data analyst has nothing to be ashamed of. He spoke with the Army officer at length last spring, shortly after the man had begun his research.
"He's a legitimate guy," says Smith, who, like The Oregonian, knows the man's identity. "He's done substantive work. I told him to go for it."
The data analyst started his research because, simply enough, he had stumbled upon an obscure old book called "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," by the late author Max Gunther. Gunther wrote that he was contacted in 1972 by a man who claimed to be the skyjacker. The man soon cut off communication, and the author moved on. But a decade later, a woman calling herself Clara got in touch and insisted she was the widow of "Dan LeClair," the man who had told Gunther he was D.B. Cooper. Gunther's resulting book is Clara's story about Cooper's getaway and the love affair between Clara and Cooper.
"D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened" was largely dismissed by both critics and Cooper fanatics when it came out in 1985. Schuyler Ingle, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called it a "dumb book that falls somewhere in between nonfiction and speculation, depending on what the reader cares to believe."
Others called it straight-up fiction, and for good reason. A key subplot of the book -- LeClair and Clara's meet-cute experience in a small, unnamed Northwest town the day after the skyjacking -- is obviously untrue. This could be because Clara attempted to keep her real identity hidden from Gunther.
Another interpretation: Gunther just made it all up.
Gunther interviewed retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach for hours while researching "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened." More than 30 years later, Himmelsbach, who led the Cooper investigation for almost a decade, rejects the book.
"I think [Gunther] was highly unprofessional," he told The Oregonian in August. "I would be leery of anything reported by him. I wouldn't count on anything he wrote."
But our researcher, Anonymous, saw something in Gunther's tome. Yes, the author played with the truth, purposely or not, turning a real-life crime mystery into an unreal romance for our times. But the data analyst was convinced that someone did contact Gunther in 1972 claiming to be D.B. Cooper. And he wanted to find out who it was.
Using the name "Dan LeClair" and various details from the book, as well as information from the FBI's D.B. Cooper case files that have become public in recent years, Anonymous tracked the bread crumbs to a very real man named Dan Clair, a World War II Army veteran who died in 1990.
The data analyst does not believe any of those men is the notorious skyjacker. Because he's convinced he has figured out who really is -- and it's someone no one else has ever identified as a suspect.
Our researcher is publicly remaining anonymous for now. A U.S. Army officer with a security clearance, he has a solid professional reputation -- and he wants to keep it that way. He's worried that his colleagues and supervisors will think he's gone 'round the bend. He is not one of the so-called "Cooperites," the dismissive name given to the amateur investigators who endlessly devote their free time to the case, and he doesn't want to be identified as such.
Former investigative reporter Bruce Smith, author of the 2015 book "D.B. Cooper and the FBI," thinks the data analyst has nothing to be ashamed of. He spoke with the Army officer at length last spring, shortly after the man had begun his research.
"He's a legitimate guy," says Smith, who, like The Oregonian, knows the man's identity. "He's done substantive work. I told him to go for it."
The data analyst started his research because, simply enough, he had stumbled upon an obscure old book called "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," by the late author Max Gunther. Gunther wrote that he was contacted in 1972 by a man who claimed to be the skyjacker. The man soon cut off communication, and the author moved on. But a decade later, a woman calling herself Clara got in touch and insisted she was the widow of "Dan LeClair," the man who had told Gunther he was D.B. Cooper. Gunther's resulting book is Clara's story about Cooper's getaway and the love affair between Clara and Cooper.
"D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened" was largely dismissed by both critics and Cooper fanatics when it came out in 1985. Schuyler Ingle, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called it a "dumb book that falls somewhere in between nonfiction and speculation, depending on what the reader cares to believe."
Others called it straight-up fiction, and for good reason. A key subplot of the book -- LeClair and Clara's meet-cute experience in a small, unnamed Northwest town the day after the skyjacking -- is obviously untrue. This could be because Clara attempted to keep her real identity hidden from Gunther.
Another interpretation: Gunther just made it all up.
Gunther interviewed retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach for hours while researching "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened." More than 30 years later, Himmelsbach, who led the Cooper investigation for almost a decade, rejects the book.
"I think [Gunther] was highly unprofessional," he told The Oregonian in August. "I would be leery of anything reported by him. I wouldn't count on anything he wrote."
But our researcher, Anonymous, saw something in Gunther's tome. Yes, the author played with the truth, purposely or not, turning a real-life crime mystery into an unreal romance for our times. But the data analyst was convinced that someone did contact Gunther in 1972 claiming to be D.B. Cooper. And he wanted to find out who it was.
Using the name "Dan LeClair" and various details from the book, as well as information from the FBI's D.B. Cooper case files that have become public in recent years, Anonymous tracked the bread crumbs to a very real man named Dan Clair, a World War II Army veteran who died in 1990.
https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/news...per-skyja.html
But where is the money? Not a single note turned up. That simply means he never spent it so all the theories that he survived with the money are simply not at all likely to be true. If he'd survived and bugged out abroad he'd still have had to spend some of the money to get there and that would very likely have been detected eventually. Had he then lived abroad and spent it (what else would he do with it) some would certaily have turned up eventually. None ever did.
And if he survived with the money why did he drop a bundle into a creek? Possible of course but seems unlikely.
Is it likely he knew enugh about techniques for jumping from 727s to use the "off the stteps" pull? Highly unlikely, and the evidence suggest that doing otherwise would not have had a happy ending.
The balance of probabilities is hugely, vastly in favour of his not surviving the jump.
And if he survived with the money why did he drop a bundle into a creek? Possible of course but seems unlikely.
Is it likely he knew enugh about techniques for jumping from 727s to use the "off the stteps" pull? Highly unlikely, and the evidence suggest that doing otherwise would not have had a happy ending.
The balance of probabilities is hugely, vastly in favour of his not surviving the jump.
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First, there are many countries that use the US dollar as their currency, some of which are a very long way from the USA, and the bills used in those places very seldom find their way back to the USA -- for many reasons. If you have lived or worked in Ecuador or East Timor or Micronesia you will understand why that is.
Second, there are many other countries that accept USD as easily as their own currency (Canada and Mexico are obvious examples). Only if those particular bills showed up IN THE USA, and only if they showed up in the years immediately after the hijacking, would thay have been noticed.
Third, even if he did perish in the cold dark wilds of the Pacific Northwest that night, it would be historically interesting to know who the heck he was.
Second, there are many other countries that accept USD as easily as their own currency (Canada and Mexico are obvious examples). Only if those particular bills showed up IN THE USA, and only if they showed up in the years immediately after the hijacking, would thay have been noticed.
Third, even if he did perish in the cold dark wilds of the Pacific Northwest that night, it would be historically interesting to know who the heck he was.
Gnome de PPRuNe
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Programme about DB Cooper on BBC4 last night - on iplayer but you'll need a UK TV licence and a BBC log in...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...y-of-db-cooper
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...y-of-db-cooper
