Not necessarily. Even the whole bag of money would have been shredded then compacted into a relatively small space very quickly,

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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. 

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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.

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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!

Handheld VOR receivers showed up in the late 80s:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Nothing remotely like this was available in 1971 as far as I can tell. I am told that these hand held VOR receivers don't work that well inside a metal aircraft and need to be connected to  an external antenna.

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"There was no navigational device existing in 1971 that would have been of any particular use to Cooper under the circumstances of his jump. "

Perhaps no electronic device but a mag compass and a stopwatch could have been used to dead reckon. You'd be guessing on ground speed but you could plot a track if you noted every turn and the time between turns. A mag compass works just fine inside an aluminum fuselage.

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