Message for Bruce Smith... I started this conversation above in the 2019 thread.  I have a possible suspect... ya ya, you've heard it before.  I get it.

In my view, I have a good suspect worth looking into further.  But, I don't want to publicly name somebody if it's an obvious dead end.  So, I ask that you give me 1/2 hour of your time on a private phone call.  If you think there is enough there, then I can post the story for everybody else on this forum.

I promise you that I'm not wasting your time.  I'm a trained skeptic and I get that people push BS stories.  I'm not pushing anything.  I've sat on this for 4 years.  In fact, I didn't even pursue it.  I just ordered a couple legal documents online (5 minutes ago) to confirm a couple parts of my story and it matches up.

All I ask is that if you think it's a dead end, the story stays between us.

We'll talk soon.

I spoke with David today about his suspect. David has some intriguing - but circumstantial - connections between his suspect and DBC, but more needs to be done. I gave David some suggestions on what I think he could do, such as procure a DL and get height, weight, eye color, build, age, etc. Also, Intelius does a full background check for 29 bucks, and that might be worthwhile. Family, too, might be able to provide some basic information.

I hope he stays with this project and reports back to us.

I always love hearing about new suspects, although very seldom do I hear of one that intrigues me to the point that I think they may be Cooper. I'm game for one more....

Nothing? Hmmmmm.... The plot thickens, eh, Watson.....

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Nothing? Hmmmmm.... The plot thickens, eh, Watson.....

If you google his three name in brackets, you only get 10 hits, none that relate to him.  If I do my three names, you get over 27,000 hits.    Ya interesting...

So, now let's use his first and last name and make up a comparable middle name to compare.  At the time of birth, his middle name was a common boy name (top 10). Let's try... John 20,000 hits... James 4,000 hits... William 6,000 hits.... Charles 2,000...  But when you use his real middle name, only 10.  And again, none even close to being related to him.

So that naturally raises the conspiracy question if this name was somehow scrubbed from Google.  Has that ever happened?  Anybody hear of a case where they've done that?  Or is this just a natural variance?  I'd have to play with more names to consider that.  But on the surface, it's noteworthy.

What did your Cooper candidate do with the loot that he presumably got away with?

  While I will pursue this further per Bruce’s thoughts, I also don’t think the DL and physical specifics change my suspect much either way.  I don’t think it rules him in or out if it fits or not.  I think you ultimately need hard evidence to do that.

I wanted to elaborate on this... witness testimony and descriptions of events is known to be poor, especially in traumatic events.  The description of Cooper is that of an average middle aged white male.   If he was physically unique (e.g. very short or tall, obese) or had a more specific characteristic (e.g. large scar on his face), then I'd agree it's more useful evidence.  If he was 5'8" or 6'2", we wouldn't be far off from the description and in that range we capture pretty much everybody. 

As a personal example, a month ago I was driving down a remote road with a couple friends and we came across a crashed car in a deep ditch.  We checked to see if anybody was in it but it was empty and had looked abandoned.  About 15 minutes later down the road, we realized that we should probably call the police to report the car as possibly stolen.  Once we considered that, we asked ourselves, "What did the car look like?"... We all remembered a different colour and weren't sure what the model or approximate year was. 

If you take a roomful of people and ask them to close their eyes and listen to the sounds in the room and after a couple minutes stop the experiment and ask them how long the exercise was, you'll get a huge range of interpretations.  Some would say 30 seconds and others 5 minutes.

It seems like my opinion is out of step with law enforcement and the FBI.  Since they are vastly more experienced than me, I defer to their expertise.  But, I'm also skeptical of that viewpoint nonetheless because it doesn't match my understanding of human observation and behaviour.

While all my evidence is circumstantial, I believe it would outweigh somebody that doesn't quite fit the profile, short of my suspect having a unique or specific characteristic that is widely identifiable. 

Maybe it's a moot point because an investigator should attempt to find all relevant information, but a negative hit on height or hair colour can't negate the other stuff in my view because the collective circumstantial evidence would simply outweigh it.
 

As I told you, David, one - or even two or three - deviations on physical characteristics is not enough to throw out all the compelling evidence, even if circumstantial.

But you have to start somewhere, and I say the DL is a good candidate. Hell - the FBI searched LD Cooper for FIVE years and no one had a definitive idea on his height, as far as I know. Not Marla, and not Arlan Dorney, the Oklahoman homicide detective who assisted her and arranged for the partnership with the FBI. Ol' Marla even got LD's exact age wrong, as Shutter - I believe - proved with a Google map shot of LD's grave stone. Do I have that correct, Shut?

After the DL and obtaining some fundamental physical characteristics, I say go for a time-line on the guy - where did he live, what did he do and - with whom - in the years before the skyjacking and certainly afterwards.

With that, try pinning down where he was in November 1971. Then, when did he buy that property with 1/3 to 1/2 of the moolah? If it was prior to 11. 24. 71, then look for more conspicuous acts of consumption after the fact - like McCoy's 6K scamper to North Carolina in December 1971.

But you may find nothing - from what you have told me your suspect was a careful, meticulous guy. I would suspect that his life was as well-planned as the skyjacking was - at least to me and plenty of other investigators. Please note that there are plenty of guys here who believe DBC was an average Joe who kind of did the caper on the fly.

House prices in Canada (e.g. Vancouver) have appreciated far more than that.

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US currency is more common in Canada than vice versa.  It doesn’t stand out to the same extent foreign currency does in the US.  Exchanging currency back and fourth is very much a common thing here and it’s not something that raises suspicion.  If you’re a careful and meticulous person, I don’t think it’s hard to launder the money into property, especially if you do it slowly.  Also, he could have paid for a lot of materials in cash which is common in construction.  There was a lag time between the house and the hijacking.  So I have a gap of time to look into.

You should see the money laundering and real estate situation in Vancouver right now. Hundreds of millions if not billions in cash flow through into property and nobody gets a police visit.  In a lot of ways, it’s the Wild West out here.  Our law enforcement should be completely ashamed of themselves over incompetence.  While the FBI have gotten a lot of criticism over the years, I’d take them any day over our guys.  I could take $200,000 in Bitcoin right now and make two phone calls and turn that into cash or vice versa.  But don’t get me wrong, the Mounties are good at a lot of things, but financial crime is certainly not one of those things... we’re too naive here.

Sorry I don’t see it your way... it’s not something that would have been suspicious in my view and it would be easy to stay under the radar.  I work in the real estate world (which is how I got tied into this) so I have a good understanding of this.

I wouldn't be too hard on the RCMPs, David. I suspect they're up against a strong political environment that LOVES that Hong Kong money (and others) coming into the BC real estate market.

BTW: Ever been to Lund? I've got an ex-wifey up there. In fact, my divorce degree mentions that Queen Elizabeth sanctions it. Puts a smile on my face.

Yes I have been there, but not for a long time.  When I was a kid we used to have a sailboat and go up to Desolation Sound and you pass through the marina in Lund. There aren't many places in BC that I haven't been to.

The RCMP have a lot of positives for sure, but they don't attract or retain the type of financial experts that the FBI or CIA does.  And that goes for other law enforcement and intelligence that work against money laundering in Canada.  This isn't just recent money getting funnelled into our real estate, we've had all sorts of issues over the decades.  In the 80's, it was penny stocks and shady promoters on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.  By the mid 90's, we had the Bre-X scandal, which was huge at the time.   It's a weird dichotomy here because on one hand, we're an honest bunch and the average person / business person is ethical and nice (the way that most in the US would perceive us), but on the other hand, we have a lot of sketchy financial stuff going on in the background and I've chalked that up to our law enforcement being mostly incompetent. The public's naivetĂ© hasn't caused any real changes to this point, but the real estate situation just might do that.