One quick question - just to save my sleepy eyes from trying to sift through every past post - or worse, every Googled article about the case: does anyone know Rackstraw's height offhand?
I only ask because, as Shutter pointed out, people are asking to throw out the composites on the one hand, claiming their suspect was in disguise, while simultaneously pointing out how strongly their suspect undisguised matched the composites. It defies logic. I went to IKEA today, and they had better straws than this to grasp at.
However, if we are to dismiss parts of the witness descriptions of Cooper, shouldn't the parts we keep be those agreed upon by the most witnesses (particularly Tina, Flo, and Mitchell) and those hardest to disguise? I personally think we can go to bat on the approximate age, build, and height. Almost all of the suspects put Cooper as quite tall - 5'10" to 6'1''. House must have seen him standing as she describes him with the briefcase leaving the washroom, and as he did leave his seat, at least Tina must have seen him out of his seat at some point.
But even if NOBODY saw him leave his seat, he is described by witnesses as slouching a lot.
Okay, so let's say your favourite suspect is on the shorter side - 5'8'' or 5' 9''. To be perceived as taller, he'd have to wear lifts in his shoes. So then why slouch? He was either disguising his height or he wasn't. If he wasn't, there's no reason to think he wasn't tall. (The ONE suspect who described a shorter guy was also off the rest of the descriptions by so much, I've started to suspect he's describing some other suit on the plane.)
IMHO, we can discount anyone under 5'10''. I think the likelihood is he was on the taller side of the estimate, in fact, because he was described as taller by people WHO MOSTLY SAW HIM SLOUCHING.
This all occurred to me as I was dropping off to sleep last night. Feel free to shoot it down!