This whole subject of height caused me to smile. A new neighbor came by about 3 years ago and he introduced himself and I told my wife what a nice fellow he was. She asked me “ What was his name ? “. I had no idea so he became known simply as the Tall Guy. About a year ago I drove over to his house to tell him about a couple of coyotes hanging around. When I told him I forgot his name so we referred to him as the Tall Guy, his wife said “ he’s not that tall as he’s only 6’1. I said to her “ Well I’m only 5’10 so he sure looks tall to me !”. My point is that even though he was only 3 inches taller than me, trust me, He was very noticeable taller. Maybe it’s just me but I wouldn’t waste much time checking out someone who was 5’4 to 5’6 !
Before being told that he was 6'1'', how tall would you have estimated that he was?
Good question ! This neighbor had to hike through a wooded field to get to my property line so perhaps he was wearing hiking boots and I just was wearing sandals. However to be honest I actually thought he was slightly taller like 6’2 or 6’3. My point remains the same as I clearly knew he was quite a bit taller than me.
Certainly. And I guess my point was that your estimation was off by as much as 2 inches. At the end of the day, judging someone's height and weight is tricky. Tina was a flight attendant, not the guy at the state fair that guesses people's heights and weights.
Update: I looked up Turgeon's military records and he's listed there as 5-5 and 133 pounds. So yes, that's awfully short and quite likely outside the reasonable boundary. If Tina says 5-10 and Turgeon is 5-8, I can be on board with that. If Tina says 5-10 and Turgeon is 5-5 .... yes, that's a bit of a stretch. The reason I checked the military records was because I figured that would be a more trustworthy source than the NamUs database that only gave a range (and apparently was created many decades after his disappearance).
As it relates to physical description, I would argue that height, weight and age are the toughest to determine and the ones that I would give the most leeway to. That's because they are the ones that require you to come up with an estimation based on your own evaluation.
Hair color -- Hair is a tough one to screw up because it's right there in front of you and the surface of the head is quite large. Cooper had dark hair. And that's it. There is a 0% chance he had red hair or blonde hair or blue hair. He did not have a hat so his hair was exposed the whole time. There's just no way Tina and the other witnesses whiff so badly on that. The only small amount of leeway there is how dark it was. Jet black? Dark brown? Some people would describe my hair as dirty blonde and others would say light brown. But it isn't black or red. It's within a tight range. Cooper's hair color was also in a very tight range.
Eye color -- Similar to hair color, but not quite as definitive for the simple fact that eyes are much smaller than a head. You can identify someone's hair color from a long ways away but you have to be right up on them to identify their eye color. Only one person saw Cooper's eyes and only for a brief moment before he put his glasses on. How good of a look did she get? Did they ever make eye contact? I think it's safe to say there's a 95% chance that Cooper had dark eyes, just as Tina said. But I wouldn't go 100%.
Age -- Not too difficult to place someone within a ballpark range if you've spent a few hours sitting next to them. Cooper may have been 41. He may have been 53. But it's highly unlikely he was 28 or 78. I'd say Tina's rough description of his age is 99% likely to be correct.
Height -- Again, not as cut and dry as something like hair color. If you're standing next to someone and can use yourself as a comparison you should get reasonably close. But one person's 5-9 is another person's 5-7. And then you add in the fact that Cooper was sitting down for 99% of the time. I would find it hard to accurately determine the height of a sitting person. That being said, 5-5 is more than likely outside the limits of what could be considered the reasonable margin of error.
Weight -- Similar to height. Actually it's probably more similar to age than anything. Not overly difficult to place someone in a range. But getting it within 5 pounds is a crapshoot. 133 pounds is more than likely outside the range of reasonable error. If Tina said 180 and Turgeon was 160, I could buy it. If Tina said 180 and Turgeon was 133, that's a stretch.
Race -- Sometimes it's plain as day and other times not. Olive skin could be Latin, Mediterranean, eastern European. Maybe even someone who is half white and half Middle Eastern. Perhaps even some Native American comes into play. There's likely a range of accepted nationalities that Cooper could be. (Turgeon was only described as "white" in his military records. Still was not able to track down a photo).
When evaluating a physical description, I think there are certain things that have wider boundaries than others. Age has a much wider boundary than hair color. Weight has a wider boundary than height. A sitting person's height has a wider boundary than a standing person's.
At 5-5 and 133 pounds, Turgeon would be a tough fit.
Despite the unlikely chance that he is Cooper, I'm still a bit intrigued by the guy. In addition to tracking down his military records, I also found his social security death record and VA death record. Social security says he died in Oct of 1971 (the same month he reportedly escaped from the hospital and was never seen again). VA records say that he died in Dec. of 1979. I could not find any obituary or record of a grave site or anything else that notes his death. And then he apparently wasn't reported missing for a long time (or at least was not entered into the database for a long time). So while he is likely not our man, there sounds like there is still an interesting story there one way or another.
