For one thing, we know Blevins thinks he "owns" the DB Cooper story! Woodruff may have similar goals!
I think Georger nailed it. It appears he is Bryan's press representative. From "Unsolved Crimes":
Since there have been many complaints from some members of 'The DB Cooper Forum,' a website on the famous hijacking hosted by Dave Brown, our staff here at AB would like to set the record straight on a number of things for them. We have seen many of the recent posts done by members at Brown's website, and would like to address them. Some were extremely impolite. Recently, we attempted to contact administrator Dave Brown, (username: 'Shutter') about this situation using two different sending addresses, but our emails to him were ignored.
We have seen complaints claiming that one of your members, Bruce A. Smith, was denied a request for an interview regarding our upcoming fundraising effort for the famous Ariel General Store and Tavern, located in Ariel, WA. Supposedly, Smith wanted to write an article about the reopening of the Ariel store, and a fundraiser Adventure Books is coordinating to assist in this project. (The Ariel Store closed late last year when owner Dona Elliot passed away, and has been taken over by her son, Bryan Woodruff.)
ANSWER: This claim by Smith is simply not true. In reality, Smith was offered exclusive access to family pictures from the Elliot family, and an interview in a question-and-answer format. We had two requirements for this. First, that Smith understood that no 'hounding' of Mr. Woodruff would be tolerated. Second, that Adventure Books staff, since they are coordinating the fundraisers, would answer all questions regarding the upgrading and re-opening of the most famous venue on Earth for DB Cooper fans. (The store, until last year when Dona Elliot died, was the site of the world-famous DB Cooper Days Festival, a celebration that had been running for more than 25 years.)
Second, that Adventure Books would have to approve the final article before we would license Smith the use of the pictures. There was a good reason for this request. Bruce Smith called me (Robert Blevins) on the phone several years ago and insinuated that he worked for a local Northwest newspaper. He asked for an interview on Cooper suspect Ken Christiansen. The interview was done. The interview did not appear in any newspaper, and it was discovered later that Bruce Smith had not worked for that newspaper in some time. Instead, he published the interview to the website Dropzone on their now-closed DB Cooper thread.
In addition, Smith has been known to say disparaging things about the people he has interviewed previously in the Cooper case on his 'Mountain News' blog. Not always, but sometimes. In other words, we do have trust issues with him. Our view is that if he wanted exclusive access, he would have to agree to those terms. Instead, he rejected that notion and began calling and emailing Ariel Store owner Bryan Woodruff. Woodruff directed Smith back to us as the people who would answer all his questions, but Smith refused to accept that and continued hounding Mr. Woodruff. During this time, Woodruff began forwarding Smith's emails to AB staff and notifying us of Smith's multiple phone calls.
Mr. Woodruff responded by permanently banning Smith from ever coming onto his property in Ariel. And ever since that time, Smith has conveniently avoided mentioning that he was offered exclusive access to pictures and an interview under our terms. He has made posts about it at the website The DB Cooper Forum dot com. He claims he was shut from the information loop, which is not true.
He simply refuses to accept that AB of Seattle is the responsible party for the fundraising effort, and that all questions on it come to us. And that is not our fault he does that. Smith is just not being honest, and we have the emails between he and Adventure Books to prove it.
It is true we continue to be wary of Smith because of his less-than-honest attitude.
And as a character in the sci-fi film Dark City once said:
'And now you know the truth...'
Questions can be sent to Robert at adventurebooksofseattle at G Mail dot com. 8-)
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