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[dblea88]

Cooper Documentary

There's another one about to air; this time on FOX, as part of FOX NATION. It's part of the Brad Meltzer's "World's Greatest Conspiracies," series. I believe it will broadcast on August 22 in the evening.

Although Meltzer will make everyone groan at the beginning of the show as he doubles-down on Kenny C as DBC and touts RMB's book, the show is actually a delightful compendium of facts and insights delivered by Tom Kaye - who is superb - and your truly.

BTW: According to Meltzer, DB Cooper is #3 on the list of the Top Ten conspiracies.

There is no evidence of Cooper being involved in any conspiracy.  So Meltzer must be introducing conspiracies by other people.

Exactly. The Cooper heist wasn't a conspiracy. It actually happened; Cooper was a real person.

The only way you can call the Cooper heist a conspiracy is if the Tina, Flo, the pilots were all in on it.

[snowmman]

from earlier this year


After a year-long delay amid the coronavirus pandemic, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum will feature its new exhibition, “FBI: From Al Capone to Al Qaeda” beginning July 2.

included, among other things:

The parachute bag and boarding pass believed to belong to enigmatic hijacker D.B. Cooper

This must be the reserve that larry carr liked to show? (and the boarding pass)

Visitors can also check out the “actual, original manifesto that Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber, sent to newspapers” according to Giller, as well as unexploded bombs the FBI found in Kaczynski’s cabin.

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[snowmman]

I'm going to talk some smack here.

I hate people and sites that try to keep information private.

The check six site could have easily provided the means to download his ransom list.
Instead, he has a mechanism for submitting one serial at a time.
He also has ads on that page.

By not providing a list, he doesn't provide a way for people to easily check his data...i.e. his list.
His list does have errors.

He uses, I believe microsoft azure, which has the option of doing some aggressive fighting against bot scraping.

So it's been slow to automate serial number checking. But still, any anti-bot technology will fail. All it can do is slow things down.

Hey, check six, if you're out there:
I've already verified 8660 serials at your site. Will be done in not too much longer.
There's really nothing you can do to stop bot scraping. So why try? Join the open source world and free your mind.

Sure you can shut your site down. That's another option.

But what you got now is unfriendly and like trying to defend something with sticks and stones. (against superior technology).

And your blocking is not about trying to prevent denial-of-service: you're blocking requests at a rate that's solely about keeping bots (at any slow rate) from accessing your data.

EDIT: the benefit to check six, would be that I would tell him where his list is wrong.

I was thinking: if I knew how to do mobile app stuff, how cool it would be for people to be able to snap a photo of a bill (serial number) and have the app instantly tell them if it's a cooper bill..i.e. no manual entry of serial numbers. (Just like when you do check deposit with mobile app, and it scans/ocrs the check amount)

There are already apps like that, that identify the denomination of a bill for blind people ($20/$5/$1 etc)


EDIT: for history buffs, here's a picture of an original 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnap ransom serial list.
the serial list was apparently useful in apprehending Hauptmann (bank tellers found notes passed by Hauptmann)
I was impressed by whoever put the list together manually back then. The Treasury Dept got involved in asking banks to verify notes, especially gold certificates which were supposed to be turned in after they revoked the "redeem for gold" ...not sure why they gave Hauptman gold certificates as part of the ransom...maybe because they would stick out if he used them?

Better printing than what Hoover did for the Cooper serials!
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[dudeman17]

...sites that try to keep information private...

"You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login"


just sayin'...

[snowmman]

...sites that try to keep information private...

"You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login"


just sayin'...

Yes. But: Shutter lets google scrape these forum pages.
So for instance when I search for a currency serial  on Google, I get hits on this forum. The text.

I don't get that as well with dropzone.com. I don't get hits on flyjacks serials on dropzone.com  And their search tool is a bit atrocious.

EDIT: I thought dropzone.com was totally blocked from google, but now I see it isn't for some stuff like if I do a google search "site:dropzone.com snowmman" I see posts from me
Note sure why the currency serials weren't hitting on dropzone.com though...they do here. Have to investigate more.



I suspect shutter might have bandwidth problems if google is constantly searching images? Dunno

in any case, I've noticed it's only a matter of hours (less than one day) between a post saying something here, and being able to find it with Google. That's pretty cool.

So: shutter doesn't have this locked down as much as dropzone.com, in my experience.

EDIT: i suppose letting google search these forums, is a good reminder not to put anything in text you don't want the whole world to easily see.

[snowmman]

pursuing that thought of "Does google search dropzone.com well for cooper stuff"

I looked thru the hits on "site:www.dropzone.com snowmman"

there are some posts of mine, but not all. it's weird, it seems like there are some hits, but it's sort of undetermined what it returns. It's not just age related.

it hits on some recent posts from me, but it also hits on this old post about Ted Braden

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[dudeman17]

Google is one thing, and I suppose that's what you were referring to.

I was thinking of the casual reader.

[snowmman]

it's weird, I just tried

site:thedbcooperforum.com snowmman

and I get a couple hits but not many

When I search for serials, I always get hits on thedbcooperforum.com

maybe because they are very unique sequences. Typically I don't get any hits for a serial

[snowmman]

along the lines of looking at dropzone.com
it seems like old posts no longer have images attached...like they were dropped if before a certain year or something.

too bad if so, there were some fun attachments.

[snowmman]

with respect to open access to shared info

I found an old 2008 post on dropzone where I said pithily:

Someone once told me the story of "stone soup".
I think that's what we're trying to do here. Before you know it, we'll have a pretty good soup..!
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Some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the very hungry travelers. Then the travelers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful and which they would be delighted to share with the villager, although it still needs a little bit of garnish, which they are missing, to improve the flavor.

The villager, who anticipates enjoying a share of the soup, does not mind parting with a few carrots, so these are added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which has not yet reached its full potential. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning, like potatoes, onions, cabbages, peas, celery, tomatoes, corn, meat (like chicken, pork and beef), milk, butter, salt and pepper. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, the stone (being inedible) is removed from the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by travelers and villagers alike. Although the travelers have thus tricked the villagers into sharing their food with them, they have successfully transformed it into a tasty meal which they share with the donors.

[Lynn]

A couple points -

------
One - I'm not saying this to disagree or argue with what has been said, I don't buy Recca as a suspect either, but to one isolated point - A couple of you said that it's ridiculous for a truck driver to pick someone up on a road and remember it 50 years later. Not necessarily. If the driver picks up the guy and helps with that phone call, then in the following days/weeks/months Cooper is all over the news and the driver thinks 'was that him?', that could well imprint on his memory.

-----

Two - I do disagree with the idea that if Cooper was not an experienced jumper, then that indicates that he most likely went in. The following 'copycat' non-experienced jumpers all lived. And again I would refer you to Andrade's research into air crew bailouts, almost all of whom lived. Again, my take is that he almost certainly got under an open parachute. The question is whether he was injured on landing.

Marty's excellent research, more than anything else, convinced me that the chances are far higher that Cooper survived the jump, experienced or not. And I think a completely inexperienced skydiver would have needed instructions for the rig, but Cooper refused them.

He definitely knew the specs of that plane, skydiver or not, everything from where the oxygen was kept to the fact that the stairs could be kept down. Put yourself in his position IF a novice: You're gonna tell the pilots something about the plane that for all you know - i.e. nothing - could cause the plane damage on take-off? You're gonna research parachuting without trying it at least once? (We'll assume DBC wasn't Paul Cini-level out of it.) Also, it wasn't like he could just Google the optimum angle, height, etc. He could go to a library, but I'm not about to scour the entirety of openlibrary for a book he MIGHT have found about the airplane requirements for skydiving, and anyway it would not be the same book containing the 727 specs and a fact the pilots didn't know. He could have asked people who knew planes, skydiving, or both, but could have raised suspicions in so doing (Sailshaw remembered SP asking him about the plane, though the conversation had taken place years before the skyjacking. Whether or not you believe Sail's conclusions, it shows that grilling people would have raised eyebrows no matter who DBC was.)

Sure, he could have been a lucky amateur who researched/asked about planes/skydiving, who also had a great plan for not getting seen by the cockpit crew, not having them escape as they could have (by keeping Tina with him), and not getting nabbed by the FBI in Seattle, to boot, simply by strategic seating, communication via third party, and movement at key times (ex. when the passengers were leaving.) But Occam's razor points to him knowing that airplane, the terrain from the air, and something about skydiving. In technique and demeanour, he resembled no skyjacker before him and pulled off 90% of the plan flawlessly. The last 10% was the jump/getaway, and though we can't know for sure how he did there, the odds appear to have been in his favour.

He could have lost only part or all of the money, though. He didn't get the knapsack he asked for, and the makeshift money-belt could have fallen off whether he lived or died. I don't particularly believe it drifted to Tena Bar as it didn't fan; and I still think it's more likely someone would, as McCoy did, stow the money in a marked area briefly (retrieving it later, possibly missing or leaving behind too-damaged bills - in November it wouldn't have been overrun with campers/sport types) than that the money just happened to turn up on a marked, often used Bar rather than one of the many random other shores/bars in its path. Possible, but the odds are against it. The region is heavily forested but highly traversed. and it's been almost 50 years. Seems strange something as small as a placard gets found but something as large as a man (possibly still with a briefcase, $200K fanny pack, white carry-on "sack", and at least one parachute attached) does not.

However, for people believing he drowned, the only hope of proving it would be having a set-up like this couple. Or hiring this couple. They have made at least one discovery in the Columbia. But it would be a huge process after 50 years.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

[snowmman]

wow. interesting article Lynn. From that article

The Ralstons have helped the US military locate the wreckage of a pair of F18 fighter jets that collided over the Columbia River in Oregon. They have also helped a living person search for their favourite prosthetic leg, although that is still lying at the bottom of Idaho’s Lake Lowell. The oldest body the Ralstons has ever recovered had been lying at the bottom of Idaho’s Priest Lake for as long as 100 years; they had been searching for the body of a local firefighter who had disappeared while sailing. No one witnessed the accident, so the Ralstons had to scan an immense area. The greatest number of bodies they have found in a single day is four, in Idaho’s American Falls Lake, in August 2010. A man had got into trouble while swimming and so someone jumped in the water to help. After the second man began to struggle, a third followed, and when he too ended up in distress, in jumped a fourth. All of them drowned.

[Chaucer]

A couple points -

------
One - I'm not saying this to disagree or argue with what has been said, I don't buy Recca as a suspect either, but to one isolated point - A couple of you said that it's ridiculous for a truck driver to pick someone up on a road and remember it 50 years later. Not necessarily. If the driver picks up the guy and helps with that phone call, then in the following days/weeks/months Cooper is all over the news and the driver thinks 'was that him?', that could well imprint on his memory.

-----

Two - I do disagree with the idea that if Cooper was not an experienced jumper, then that indicates that he most likely went in. The following 'copycat' non-experienced jumpers all lived. And again I would refer you to Andrade's research into air crew bailouts, almost all of whom lived. Again, my take is that he almost certainly got under an open parachute. The question is whether he was injured on landing.

Marty's excellent research, more than anything else, convinced me that the chances are far higher that Cooper survived the jump, experienced or not. And I think a completely inexperienced skydiver would have needed instructions for the rig, but Cooper refused them.

He definitely knew the specs of that plane, skydiver or not, everything from where the oxygen was kept to the fact that the stairs could be kept down. Put yourself in his position IF a novice: You're gonna tell the pilots something about the plane that for all you know - i.e. nothing - could cause the plane damage on take-off? You're gonna research parachuting without trying it at least once? (We'll assume DBC wasn't Paul Cini-level out of it.) Also, it wasn't like he could just Google the optimum angle, height, etc. He could go to a library, but I'm not about to scour the entirety of openlibrary for a book he MIGHT have found about the airplane requirements for skydiving, and anyway it would not be the same book containing the 727 specs and a fact the pilots didn't know. He could have asked people who knew planes, skydiving, or both, but could have raised suspicions in so doing (Sailshaw remembered SP asking him about the plane, though the conversation had taken place years before the skyjacking. Whether or not you believe Sail's conclusions, it shows that grilling people would have raised eyebrows no matter who DBC was.)

Sure, he could have been a lucky amateur who researched/asked about planes/skydiving, who also had a great plan for not getting seen by the cockpit crew, not having them escape as they could have (by keeping Tina with him), and not getting nabbed by the FBI in Seattle, to boot, simply by strategic seating, communication via third party, and movement at key times (ex. when the passengers were leaving.) But Occam's razor points to him knowing that airplane, the terrain from the air, and something about skydiving. In technique and demeanour, he resembled no skyjacker before him and pulled off 90% of the plan flawlessly. The last 10% was the jump/getaway, and though we can't know for sure how he did there, the odds appear to have been in his favour.

He could have lost only part or all of the money, though. He didn't get the knapsack he asked for, and the makeshift money-belt could have fallen off whether he lived or died. I don't particularly believe it drifted to Tena Bar as it didn't fan; and I still think it's more likely someone would, as McCoy did, stow the money in a marked area briefly (retrieving it later, possibly missing or leaving behind too-damaged bills - in November it wouldn't have been overrun with campers/sport types) than that the money just happened to turn up on a marked, often used Bar rather than one of the many random other shores/bars in its path. Possible, but the odds are against it. The region is heavily forested but highly traversed. and it's been almost 50 years. Seems strange something as small as a placard gets found but something as large as a man (possibly still with a briefcase, $200K fanny pack, white carry-on "sack", and at least one parachute attached) does not.

However, for people believing he drowned, the only hope of proving it would be having a set-up like this couple. Or hiring this couple. They have made at least one discovery in the Columbia. But it would be a huge process after 50 years.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

I've said this before, any knowledge he had of the plane doesn't mean he had knowledge of skydiving. Also, Cooper demonstrated no knowledge of skydiving that someone with a handful of jumps wouldn't know.

That said, I agree that Andrade's research is compelling. Still, Cooper was attempting a difficult jump into suboptimal conditions over unknown terrain without the proper equipment. Does that mean he definitely died? Certainly not, but I think some people downplay the difficulty level of the jump or make Cooper into a supersoldier/smoke jumper to satisfy their belief that he got away with it.

[snowmman]

Right.
I just think people should get away from pushing speculative theories based on what they perceive as higher probability (since their perceptions are likely wrong, based on inadequate info)

and instead focus on: what is definitely ruled out? Keep a theory in, unless it's definitely ruled out.

The biggest hole is no one knows how long and how to create money in the form it was discovered on Tena Bar.
Until that's proven, with a time range and physical (biochemical?) set of environment constrants, the amount of speculation is no different than bar talk.

[snowmman]

I have completed this magnum opus as promised. I think it provides something not available to the public for 50 years! (the Lindbergh ransom list was better circulated to the public).

I believe this is the most accurate, most publicly available full list of cooper fbi ransom serials.
In a form that can be manipulated/analyzed/searched/compared. For instance, I used it to search for all 9998 serials using google. I also have automated ebay searches for 1963A/1969 $20 bills, and eyeball those images and compare the serial using this list. I've posted histograms of the serials for understanding "random". Etc. Hopefully others may come up with other purposes.

New findings are typos in the fbi list, and apparent errors at the check six site.
I have included all ancillary information for double checking my work, including the fbi images.
Thanks to check six site for allowing me to cross-check, albeit slowly.
All serials were created by a combination of computer plus human visual work. The only starting point were the fbi file 55 ransom pages (1-34), which I call the Hoover memo.

I attached a README which describes the files and folders you get when you unzip the release.zip that's freely available to all here.
Shutter can copy the file to his site if he wishes.

I included info from FLYJACK as flyjack.csv for a list of serials that are apparently verified to have been found at tena bar. I didn't ask him for permission, but if someone believes they have control over anything posted at any cooper web forum, they should pursue that theory in court. Good luck. I believe there's a long precedent that anything posted at a cooper web forum is equivalent to yelling "Fight!" in a biker bar and has same rights.

Everyone should be able to download the zip at
 
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google will show you the files inside the zip with that link. to download the link go to the top
right of that page, and click on the icon of a arrow going down into a folder

that should download release.zip probably into your browser's download directory.
You may get a popup to extract the files, click extract all.
pay attention to wherever the files got extracted. Go to that folder and you should be able to look around.

.zip files are standard, so you should be able to unzip just by clicking on it (or extract all)
for most any OS. (windows, ios, etc). even your phone

Let me know if you want the info in any other form, or if anything doesn't look correct, and I'll fix it. Hopefully I didn't forget something in release.zip...but I'm kinda tired of it right now.


ps. I included the README.txt attached as README in release.zip . If you are using windows or ios, you may need to tell it to open the file with something like Notepad/Wordpad etc as there is no suffix on the file, so the OS won't know how to read it normally. You can rename it to README.txt to get around that (actually I forget if windows knows to use Notepad/Wordpad for .txt files. It should)