Fingerprints, continued:
A couple of things:
1. Snippets. Yup, that's what I've gotten over the years - a little here and a little there. Mostly from books, like Calame and Rhodes, or the DZ and Ckret, etc. And that is what ended up in my book - snippets discussed here and there. Now, I'm endeavoring to gather all the fingerprint information together in one chapter, and come to an understanding of what the FBI has and doesn't have.
Thanks to many of the posters here - including Marty, Nat, Shut, Galen, FJ, 377 - I now know that the FBI has eight fingerprints that they feel confident are DB Cooper's. One of the eight is a palm print, apparently, although it may be a partial palm print. Others are "finger" fingerprints, and include at least one good one from a flight magazine that the FBI apparently collected, although Calame and Rhodes say the Reno team failed to take them.
Hence, this leads to a second question:
2. If the FBI had DBC's prints, how come they weren't used, especially with suspects who had military records, such as Sheridan Peterson and Robert Rackstraw? To my thinking, the FBI could have compared their DBC fingerprints with the military's on Petey and Airborne Bob and determined in-house whether these guys were DBC or not. As a result, what was the REAL reason Nicole Devereaux and Mary Jean Fryar went a'knocking on Petey's door, and why did the FBI intercept Bobby in Paris on his way back from Iran in 1979? Further, why did the FBI say they ruled out Bob because the prints they got, presumably in Paris in '79, didn't match the eight DBC prints on file. Whaddaya think we got here? A lazy FBI agent who wanted to make work for himself, or a spin job to cover up the real reason for the Paris snatch?
Colbert certainly smells a rat, and that means money and Good TV in Hollywood Land. And Eric has a few more kernels to sprinkle atop Mount Pete, too.
BTW, an interesting snippet: Tom Colbert has reportedly spent $250,000 of his own money on his Cooper Quest. Whew...
Lastly, the fingerprint issues make me wonder why the FBI has seemed so fixated on DNA, especially since they don't have Cooper's full profile.
Or do they.... ?
Add this 302 below to your confusion. Partial prints! "Norjak partials currently on file..."
Where do you get the idea prints werent being compared with military prints of suspects? Thats a false accusation. They were when available. Dozens of 302s document that. Until the govt document center at (St Louis ?) burned down - there are 302s about that and what recourse the FBI had for getting military prints after that! You cite two examples and say: Lazy FBI agents .... a spin job ?
I also have received mail. About Peterson's 302 or should I say his 'newspaper article' pasted on a 302 page ? The author says "Peterson's name is even redacted so there is no way to tell who they are talking about. It does not name Peterson." Another writes: "I have also seen Boeing references in the 302s but few names and not Peterson". ... But now is not the time or place.
Has anyone seen anything in the 302's that talks about taking prints from the other passengers to rule them out? I'm imagining a file full of fingerprints that could now be loaded into a criminal or other type database to see what comes up. However, this would still require law enforcement to rule out a lot of people who were on that plane that day, or even in previous days. That is standard crime scene investigation, but I have not heard of it in this case.
I watched a show about the mafia in New York city and the police were trying to match a palm print, and eventually did so. It seemed that a suspect had been good about not leaving fingerprints, but had not focused on his palm print. I've read somewhere in the 302's about palm prints and DB Cooper, possibly about him leaving one on the aft stairs when he descended.
It is still shocking to me that a man would plan this hijacking, and actually leave fingerprints behind.
