I talked with Brian Ingram directly at the 2011 Symposium about what he found at Tina Bar in 1980. He said that after finding the money he and his family went looking for more money all over the beach and found none.
Brian told me they scoured the tide line and dug all over the place and didn't find a thing.
If my memory serves me, Brian also confirmed that he found the money under an inch or two of sand. It's raining, dark and cold, and I don't feel like digging in my storage area for my Tina Bar/Brian notes.
BTW:Can we please call the money beach Tina Bar? That's what the sign says at the beach gate, and I strongly feel that the use of the term "Tena Bar" is misleading and provocative, obscuring the possible relationship between the find and the fact of Tina Mucklow living about 20 miles away at the time of the money find.
As for FBI agents and what they saw/remember, etc, that is highly problematic.
Mike McPheters told me he was digging on the tide line with other agents and that he found a dozen or so shards at a depth of 1-2 feet.
Dorwin Schroeder told me that they found "thousands of shards" at all depths to three feet in an area radiating twenty yards from Brian's find. Dorwin also told me that they found parts of DB Cooper's briefcase.
Carol Abracadabra told me that she found no evidence of the shards in the evidence box at Seattle when the Citizen Sleuths were doing their thing in 2010-2011. Nor did she find any documentation on the shards, their location, number, and any assessment of the find.
I've asked Ralph Himms by mail how he documented the money find, what it disclosed, and where that documentation is currently. Ralph declined to answer my request. However, Jerry Thomas called me several weeks later to say that Ralph had told him that the shards and documentation was sent to Seattle.
Galen says that Himms didn't do that immediately after the find, but delayed for some time. Galen says that Seattle FO found out about the money find when they read about it in the Seattle Times.
I asked John Detlor, who was on the Norjak team at Seattle FO at the time and he said that they knew of the find in a timely fashion and that in fact agents from the Vancouver, WA satellite office participated in the dig at Tina Bar.
The Norjak case agent at the time of the money find, Ron Nichols, would appear to be a central figure in this discussion and be able to clarify many of these discrepancies. However, Nichols steadfastly declines to talk with me. I did talk with his neighbors in northern Seattle and was able to ascertain that Ron and his wife spend the winters down in southern California, hence explaining why Ron didn't answer the door when I knocked.
As for John Detlor, even though he is the primary author of the history of the FBI, he has declined to discuss this aspect of Norjak with me in any substantive manner.
This what I know of the money find.
Georger, perhaps you could give me the names of the three FBI agents you talked with who said that they found a tangled, soggy ball of money. I would love to follow-up with them.
Nevertheless, the salient evidence that I have at this point is that the three bundles were found and everything else is speculative. I give great weight to Brian's statements in 2011 that there was no other money other than his three bundles to be found at Tina Bar in February 1980.
As a result, it begs the question: is the FBI lying? If not, then where is the documentation of what they found and the shards? Remember, the political pressure on the FBI to obfuscate Norjak may be great.
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