I say Cooper was an intelligent man who carefully planned this hijacking.

Rather than get caught in a roadblock trying to drive away from the dropzone, Cooper had a boat waiting in the Lewis River just downstream of the Merwin Dam.  He took this boat down the Lewis River, up the Columbia to Tena Bar, where his pickup truck and boat trailer were waiting.  During the period of transferring money from his boat to the truck, he loses a few bundles.  These bundles are what was found by Brian Ingram over 8 years later.

So the money got to Tena Bar on the night of the hijacking.  Three of the discovered bundles were intact, but deteriorated.  A fourth bundle probably was nearer the surface and its elastic band broke.  This bundle of money decayed and the fragments got spread around in the vicinity.  Some of these bill fragments may have been washed or blown away.  I think Galen Cook mentions some young fisherman, prior to Brian Ingram's find, saw some individual bill sections on the beach up to 100 yards away. 

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Yo, Bill, the money shards were found buried three feet below Brian's bundles. That's the rub. How does one account for two very different money finds? (!)

Yo, Bill, the money shards were found buried three feet below Brian's bundles. That's the rub. How does one account for two very different money finds? (!)

Bruce, I can only conjecture, but it is my belief that there was a fourth bundle (up to 35 more serial numbers have been identified by piecing some of the money fragments together).  The rubber bands on this bundle broke, and the fragments as well as the center of the bills began to decay.  These fragments were free to move individually, as they were no longer retained as a bundle.  With the wind and the water current, some of these fragments may have moved, and then got buried by sediment in the river water (I'm not sure where the seasonal high water mark might be relative to the location of the 3 bundles). 

In any event, I say that the fourth bundle was decayed and its fragments were distributed naturally by the action of the wind and water currents.

And, of course, human interaction can mean that Cooper transported the money on the night in question to Tena Bar as he made his getaway. 

The other significant detail related to Tena Bar is that Cooper leaves from here via a small boat (I say an inflatable like a Zodiac) at noon to reach PDX and then walks to the airport terminal (Zodiac tied up along shoreline of Columbia near PDX).  After the hijacking, and jumping out, he goes to his boat located downstream of Merwin Dam, and tools down the Lewis River and then up river to Tena Bar.  Once he has the money and his aluminum boat secured on the trailer, he drives through Vancouver and across the bridge to Portland.  He drives along NE Marine drive to the Zodiac, deflates it, and loads it into the aluminum boat.

So from this location (Tena Bar), not only does he get 20 miles away from the drop zone elusively and in a short period of time, he also returns to the shoreline near PDX to take away any evidence that he was ever at the airport.

With this in mind, there are no longer any "mysteries" regarding the night of November 24, 1971.  Cooper escaped with the money!

Is there ANY way that the Ingrams could have planted the currency (or been shown where it lay) and led Brian to the spot AND ALSO have the currency shard field documented in the TV news segment that Georger posted?

I don't see it, but Maybe Bruce can do some remote viewing, channeling or just plain imagining out of the box. 

377

... they might have been tipped to money being out there so went looking. 

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Is there ANY way that the Ingrams could have planted the currency (or been shown where it lay) and led Brian to the spot AND ALSO have the currency shard field documented in the TV news segment that Georger posted?

I don't see it, but Maybe Bruce can do some remote viewing, channeling or just plain imagining out of the box. 

377

I'm trying to think what reason Dwayne Ingram would have had for concocting a story about how he found the money.

It seems he realized (pretty early on) that it was likely the Cooper money.  Did he think he couldn't just return it to a bank (it would be identified), so he figured he'd have more public sympathy to a claim if it was an 8 year old that found it?

If that's the case, it seems to me he was right.  I'm not a lawyer, but from my couple of law classes the insurance company would seem to be the rightful owner of all of the money -- or at least its cash equivalent.

It seems he realized (pretty early on) that it was likely the Cooper money?

He didn't. This has all been explained before, in detail (using FBI summaries). Read the thread. 

Bill,

First, let me say welcome to the thread and you certainly seem to be more stable emotionally than Bruce Smith was indicating recently.

Basically, in your statements above you are assuming that Cooper knew his location when he jumped.  Actually, the airliner was above a 5000 foot overcast and several lower cloud layers and it is very, very unlikely that he could estimate his positon to within a radius of 20 miles.  Your statements require pinpoint position information and Cooper simply did not have that and could not make the various segments of the trip in the general time frame you propose.

Several years ago on the DZ thread, if I remember this incorrectly would some of the former DZ posters correct me, Amazon indicated that the Lewis River between the Merwin Dam and the Columbia River had areas that were almost impassable for even small boats.  And trying to do this at night would greatly complicate the matter.  From the Merwin Dam area, it is probably about 30 miles to the Columbia River and then about another 20 miles upstream to the Tina Bar area.  At best, it would probably take at least five hours for that segment of trip.

In the Portland Airport area, I presume that the road adjacent to the Columbia River is the one you are referring to.  I drove over that very road a few weeks back and I spent several hours shopping at a mall that is located between that road and the Portland Airport.  It would be quite a hike for Cooper to walk from the Columbia River to the Portland Airport terminal.  He would have to take a lengthy walk down the I-205 area east of the airport and then approach the terminal area from the southeast.  That would be a lengthy walk and someone would probably have remembered seeing him and mentioned it to the FBI.  Very few people arrive at airport terminals after walking five miles or so.  And he certainly could not have climbed the airport fence in broad daylight without the tower and security people seeing him.

So to make a long story short, may I suggest that your ideas need further work.  Good luck.

Robert99

Robert,

First, regarding Cooper's jump, think about this from the perspective of an engineer and instrument-rated pilot (which I am and I believe Cooper is as well).  Why wouldn't you jump on a clear moonlit night?  Seems much easier, doesn't it?

Surely jumping on a clear night simplifies Cooper's task, but what about the chase planes?  Cooper knows there will be chase planes, so he can't jump on a clear night because they will see him and report his position as he descends on his parachute.  Before he knows it, he will be surrounded by police, FBI, helicopters, etc.  The clear night jump leads to an easy capture and Cooper knows this.  Thus he selects a night with basically zero visibility above 5000', but clear below with 10-15 miles of visibility.

So since aircraft use avionics to determine their position when flying, Cooper configures some avionics device to determine his position.  I believe it is DME (distance measuring equipment).  DME was the latest and the greatest in 1971, but it could have been a standard NAV or ADF (automatic direction finder).  Either way, Cooper knew exactly where he was from the avionics in his briefcase (battery(s) and mass of wires).  I believe Cooper took a half a dozen trips from PDX to SEA in the month prior to the hijacking, testing this equipment.  He had it calibrated to work, you can be assured.  And next look at where he was projected to have landed.  From the FBI Landing Zone Map at Sluggo's website, it is estimated that he jumped at point A and if he pulled his ripcord soon after the jump, he landed at point B.  So Cooper's plan was to drift towards the well-lit Merwin Dam, land in the fields south and west of the dam, and then walk a short distance to the Lewis River.  This isn't an accident!!  If Cooper landed 20 miles north in Pigeon Springs, which looks like an area with logging roads and timber harvests, I would agree that he jumped blindly.  But seeing the precision with which he jumped and drifted, I realize this was his plan (Cooper is a pilot, so he has the same winds aloft data as Northwest, so he calculated his drift distance and jump point earlier in the day).

I believe that the Lewis River is navigable from the dam to the river, if you take the correct route.  At one point the river splits, and one branch has waterfalls, I believe.  One map I saw showed mile 21 at the dam, so it is about 21 miles to the Columbia.  From there it is only about 8 miles to Tena Bar.  But you are correct, this trip will require a few hours in a small craft like a 12' aluminum boat.  The advantage, though, is that he avoids any roadblocks and is miles away from the dropzone in a quiet rural area when he arrives at Tena Bar.  Be assured again that Cooper has made this trip numerous times in the month prior to the hijacking.

I don't know what PDX was like in 1971, but there may not have been a perimeter fence.  Also, where Cooper is a pilot, he may have known of a more direct route to the terminal.  The economy parking lot today is about 1-1/2 miles east of the terminal, but they provide a free shuttle service to the terminal.  Did that parking lot and service exist in 1971?  I'm not sure of this next tidbit, as there are limited aerial views of the airport in 1971, but the I-205 bridge appeared to be under construction at the time.  If you check Google Earth, you will see several marinas along the Columbia in the vicinity of the airport.  One is almost directly across from the terminal. 

According to Google, it is at best a 2.8 mile walk to the terminal from the I-205 bridge, and takes about 1 hour.  And even if people saw him, it wouldn't necessarily lead investigators to a boat!

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Again, Cooper has surveyed PDX and made the trip from Tena Bar to PDX numerous times in the month prior to the hijacking.  He has a plan!

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Is there ANY way that the Ingrams could have planted the currency (or been shown where it lay) and led Brian to the spot AND ALSO have the currency shard field documented in the TV news segment that Georger posted?

I don't see it, but Maybe Bruce can do some remote viewing, channeling or just plain imagining out of the box. 

377

I'm trying to think what reason Dwayne Ingram would have had for concocting a story about how he found the money.

It seems he realized (pretty early on) that it was likely the Cooper money.  Did he think he couldn't just return it to a bank (it would be identified), so he figured he'd have more public sympathy to a claim if it was an 8 year old that found it?

If that's the case, it seems to me he was right.  I'm not a lawyer, but from my couple of law classes the insurance company would seem to be the rightful owner of all of the money -- or at least its cash equivalent.

It seems he realized (pretty early on) that it was likely the Cooper money?

He didn't. This has all been explained before, in detail (using FBI summaries). Read the thread.

I guess it depends on what is meant by "pretty early on".  The money was found on Sunday, February 10.  The FBI was notified, assembled a team and began digging on Tuesday, February 12.  Regardless of what the thread says, it's impossible for the Ingrams not to have realized it was Cooper money within hours -- not days.