The reason he would use the dummy is because the canopy was completely cut out of the genuine reserve and because he was cannibalizing the genuine reserve at the time he was securing and tying everything with shroud lines to his person.

Half of the canopy panels were removed (cut out). Therefore, the dummy reserve was significantly less bulky and not nearly as tightly packed as the genuine reserve.

Cossey and/or Emerick stated this. Not sure if it's in the 302s or simply in media comments or both.

It doesn't sound right. half the volume missing would be extremely noticeable IMO. especially if handled both at the sametime.

It is correct. That's why they said the dummy reserve was noticeably squishy to the touch relative to the genuine reserve.

Packing it differently will give the same results. if you fold a bunch of shirts in a bag they will be noticeably different from tossing them in a bag. I need to read all the docs again..

One thing to keep in mind is that DBC may have actually tried to put overflow cash into the remnants of the genuine reserve only to abandon the task to use the dummy reserve instead. Utilizing the dummy to stuff the overflow into would have been very easy.

Question for jumpers (dudeman R99) what happens when you pull the ripcord on the ground. will it open up causing the chute to come out, or can you contain it enough to put money into the container and close it backup replacing the ripcord?

Two answers.  For emergency chutes and the 1971 version of surplus backpack military skydiver chutes, you want the pilot chute to jump out as far as possible, meaning at least 5 feet, in order to get it into the airstream and inflated.  Consequently, for emergency parachutes, you want the pilot chute spring to be seated on a very firm surface and that could be done by using a small plastic "kicker plate" between the compressed pilot chute spring and the folded.

For skydivers in a stable spread fall, pilot chute "hestitations" were fairly common in the 1960s.  I saw a fellow have one once and another skydiver who had just jumped before him and opened okay said that the pilot chute was just jumping around on his opened backpack when he went past him.  Several hundred feet after pulling the ripcord, the pilot chute did deploy and the fellow landed with no further problems.  The Army parachute team at that time was reportedly using two pilot chutes per backpack.

In the 1960s era, the chest reserves used by skydivers usually had the pilot chute removed.  In a malfunction where the main canopy was open and doing at least part of its job, the airstream would be quite low and if the reserve had a heavy pilot chute on it then it just might drop straight down rather than inflate.  So removing the pilot chute helped the skydiver inflate the reserve canopy under such circumstances.

In my emergency backpack parachutes, I always had the rigger install a pilot chute with the strongest spring available and also a kicker plate.  To check this, when ready for a repack, I would put my parachute on a bed and pull the ripcord.  And it usually came close to hitting the ceiling.  The reason for this is that I was frequently about 500 feet or less above the terrain or mountain tops and at a relatively very low speed.  I couldn't afford even a split second of a pilot chute hestitation.   

Question for jumpers (dudeman R99) what happens when you pull the ripcord on the ground. will it open up causing the chute to come out, or can you contain it enough to put money into the container and close it backup replacing the ripcord?

If there's a spring loaded pilot chute, it will pop out, but the rest of the canopy won't. (The pilot cute uses the relative wind of freefall to extract the canopy.) Unless you're holding it or it's sitting in a way that it would just fall out by gravity.

The normal reserves pack pretty tightly into the container, there wouldn't be room to put money. If the dummy reserve had half the canopy cut off as described, there might be room, but hard to say how much. I would think that if he was going to use the container to hold money, he would be better off to remove the canopy by cutting the lines or whatever.

I believe those reserves did not have pilot chutes. It's not that they would be removed, they just wouldn't be installed in the first place. In those days, the prevalent emergency procedure for a malfunctioned main did not involve 'cutting away' (releasing) the main. It's not that the pilot chute might heavily drag the reserve downward, it's that that was not how the reserve was to be deployed. The reserve was to be hand deployed, that is you would just grab it out of the container with your hands and throw it out to the side, hopefully clearing the main and deploying beside it.

Daisy chaining is just a way of gathering the lines together. It's the same as what construction type people do to long power cords.