Here’s the rub - this has always been the rub:

Whether the money floated to Tena Bar or was thrown up there by the dredge, the fact remains that the money was in the Columbia until it wasn’t.

With a supposed drop zone somewhere between Ariel and Orchards, how did it get to the Columbia? I’m don’t mean how did it get to Tena Bar. I mean how did it get in the river? If you take the central flight path as a fact and the FBI drop zone as a fact, then how do you get the $5800 into the Columbia River? You can’t believe in the central flight and an 8:13 jump time without explaining how the money got into the Columbia River.

Squaring that circle has been the Gordian Knot of DB Cooper.

Here’s the rub - this has always been the rub:

Whether the money floated to Tena Bar or was thrown up there by the dredge, the fact remains that the money was in the Columbia until it wasn’t.

With a supposed drop zone somewhere between Ariel and Orchards, how did it get to the Columbia? I’m don’t mean how did it get to Tena Bar. I mean how did it get in the river? If you take the central flight path as a fact and the FBI drop zone as a fact, then how do you get the $5800 into the Columbia River? You can’t believe in the central flight and an 8:13 jump time without explaining how the money got into the Columbia River.

Squaring that circle has been the Gordian Knot of DB Cooper.

There are two different things:
"squaring the circle/gordian knot" of all the FBI "explanations/theories"
and
"what actually happened"

If you say they are independent things, it becomes simpler.
You don't have to explain all the FBI theories and why they are possibly wrong. There's lots of ways they can be wrong. So just accept they can be wrong.

You just need a statement on where Cooper jumped that isn't obviously false, using the harder evidence (i.e. remove marginal speculation)

This is a good news article from the recent fbi file 62 just released.
page 200

in line with things Bruce has reported about what other fragments the fbi found when they did their search.

Mentions FBI agent Tom Nicodemus, who I don't remember being identified as being part of that search before?

"Leonard Palmer, an associate professor at PSU, said the trench showed coarse sand varying from about six inches deep at the water's edge to two feet and deeper farther toward shore."


Seems to me, that the money could have been anywhere in that depth of coarse sand, and everything about the bills would have looked the same? (and likelihood of discovery be the same)

So if the bills would have looked the same if they were discovered 2 feet down vs 3 inches down...what does that tell us about how worked up we should get about them being found 3 inches down?

seems to me, that there's a need to "prove" something about the bills' conditions that was related to depth.

otherwise depth is just a random variable. Doesn't matter.                   

There is no model of TBar strata that EVERYONE agrees with! We barely have a skeleton for a model that everyone will agree too. Tom Kaye never gave us a graphic of his model if he has one. 

We need a 3d model people can refer to. The only model so far is the model Palmer left.

I have commented before about the lack of a 3d model for Tena Bar everyone will accept. TK failed to give the world any 3d model for his version of T-Bar. And it appears the situation is about to even get more complicated and confusing . . .

Ulis has encountered stone fill work at Tena Bar - no solid explanation for when and how that was added to the bar except another poster says something about 'working done on the neighboring property sometime around 1975' ? No doubt this discovery, if its real, will work its way into the discussion with people offering further revisions to an already complicated model of T-Bar. There may be no end to this trend, given future discoveries and claims ? 

Tena Bar is mutating! 

a google search for "tom nicodemus fbi agent" shows him mentioned in a number of articles and books..different cases.

he was working in Las Vegas, NV in 1988 it seems

he was quoted in this arrest

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LETTER LEADS TO ARREST OF OREGON FUGITIVE WANTED SINCE 1984
By Deseret News  Dec 15, 1988, 12:00am MST

FBI spokesman Tom Nicodemus said his agency had lost sight of Cox three years ago before finding him again in Boise.

Looking at the distribution of serials found on Tena Bar.
FLYJACK has provided a list of 80 serials that he says are known (photos or other) to have been found on Tena Bar

I added  L58739558B 1963A 189 10 B
to that list (see my thought process on the PCGS mislabelled fragment earlier)

so 81 serials known from Tena Bar

The "serials per page" of the 34 page FBI ransom list is an arbitrary binning.
In any case, it's interesting to see the distribution of known found serials across this sorted list

the numbers here are from fbi file page numbers. they correspond to pages 1 thru 34 of the ransom list. The last page only has 98 serials. the others have 300

interestingly the found serials are fairly evenly distributed across this binning (pages)

I suppose one explanation might be that both the initial money was randomly sorted, and the found packets were a random sample of that
(i.e. a random sample of a random sort, should yield something that looks random still)

I've noted oddities with page 167 before

"evenly distributed" is not the same as "random". But a true test for random is tricky, especially with small samples

EDIT: had to turn off emoticons to print this right.

# each ∎ represents a count of 1
  159 [1]: ∎
  159 [2]: ∎∎
  160 [4]: ∎∎∎∎
  161 [4]: ∎∎∎∎
  162 [2]: ∎∎
  163 [5]: ∎∎∎∎∎
  164 [3]: ∎∎∎
  165 [3]: ∎∎∎
  166 [0]:
  167 [7]: ∎∎∎∎∎∎∎
  168 [3]: ∎∎∎
  169 [1]: ∎
  170 [1]: ∎
  171 [4]: ∎∎∎∎
  172 [1]: ∎
  173 [2]: ∎∎
  174 [2]: ∎∎
  175 [1]: ∎
  176 [1]: ∎
  177 [0]:
  178 [1]: ∎
  179 [2]: ∎∎
  180 [4]: ∎∎∎∎
  181 [3]: ∎∎∎
  182 [1]: ∎
  183 [1]: ∎
  184 [1]: ∎
  185 [5]: ∎∎∎∎∎
  186 [3]: ∎∎∎
  187 [4]: ∎∎∎∎
  188 [1]: ∎
  189 [2]: ∎∎
  190 [5]: ∎∎∎∎∎
  191 [1]: ∎
  192 [0]:



and yeah flyjack is enshrined in my code. see attach

yeah it's odd if cooper "went-in" into the columbia, that no body was found
although there were cases of bodies staying down there for a long time I believe? drownings.

remember the executive (tektronix I think) that disappeared when his plane crashed or landed, and the woman survived. His body was never found.

we told that story back on dropzone. forget the details right now.

losing the money bag in the jump seems almost a sure thing. Cooper could have survived with no money. Or pulled and landed in columbia. But then why no found canopy?