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Showing posts from January, 2025

Dead or Alive: Schrödinger's Cooper

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The biggest debate in the D. B. Cooper world, other than his true identity, is undoubtedly: Did the hijacker live, or die, after his jump from the jet? 🤷‍♂️ Since no confirmed trace has been found of either a living hijacker or his dead body post-skyjacking, either could be true. 📦 Some of us are reminded of the thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. Until we open the box to verify, we don't know whether this cat's dead, or it survived. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who originated the hypothetical feline as an analogy for quantum states, intended to show the absurdity of supposing a cat to exist simultaneously in a state of both dead and aliveness until examined by an observer. 😎 And yet here we are, and here Cooper isn't. D. B. Coopaw? 🏕 Most followers of the case, however, seem to belong firmly to the school of thought that Cooper survived; or else subscribe to the Dead Camp. This second camp - which believes Cooper didn't survive after his crime - is ...

Why Twenties?

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Why Were Twenty Dollar Bills D. B. Cooper's Denomination of Choice? Twenty dollar bills were D. B. Cooper's currency of choice on hijack day. 💵 An interesting point about DB Cooper, is that he had a supply of $20 bills before he even got the ransom money. 🥃 Paid for his one-way airplane ticket with a 20, and broke another 20 for his bourbon and soda that he ordered on the plane. That's like walking round with 100s today, and apparently no smaller change! 🤔 It makes me wonder why, and where he got those 20s? Mercenary pay-out? Bank robbery? International currency exchange coming from overseas? Withdrew his savings as a heist investment? Pawned some stuff... (maybe a distinctive watch, since he wasn't seen wearing any watch or jewellery on the plane)? What do we all think? 🕵‍♂️ I've posed this question to a bunch of smart D. B. Cooper investigators, and brainstorming the topic has proven interesting and educational! The $200,000 of ransom money that D. B. Cooper d...

The Usual Suspects

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Unpopular opinion: Many of the usual popular suspects in the D. B. Cooper case have rather... large... problems. 🤥  And don't even get me started on jumbo-sized noses! 😅 Now, let me say at the outset, I'm not looking to pick on anyone here - if you love McCoy, Weber, Rackstraw, or Reca, be my guest! 🐘 But time to address the elephant in the room: in the excitement of pursuing certain suspects, folks can tend to overlook certain features. For example, witnesses said McCoy looked too young, and his ears and nose were too big for Cooper. 👂Thus, if  I fancy bedroom-eyes Rackstraw, I'm probably looking in the wrong age bracket.  If  we love Reca, we're ignoring that a wide nose is ruled out by eyewitnesses . And if you're eyeing up Wingnut Weber as Cooper, your theory is likely to fall on deaf ears . 😎 So the question is: Just how far can we reasonably stretch the key witness descriptions of Cooper's facial features etc, before we're clearly off into dumbo t...

"Do You Really Want This Mystery Solved?"

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From time to time, someone always asks the question. "Do you really want this case to be solved?" The hijacked Boeing 727, Northwest Flight 305, on the tarmac at Sea-Tac Airport, Washington, November 24, 1971. ❓️ Maybe they're thinking, with no obvious investigative progress in 53 years, we can't realistically expect it to be solved. Everyone has got used to this eternal mystery. If ever the solution to the case, namely Cooper's identity, were suddenly announced, would we all be disappointed? Our favourite mystery hobby would be gone, all our swirling theories wiped out by fact. 💯 My answer is simple. Do I want this mystery solved? 100 percent Yes! 🔎 It's endlessly fascinating to me to learn facts about the case; and more than the facts, I want to learn the truth. 😎 Quite apart from the satisfaction for me as an investigator finally knowing the answer to this mystery, more importantly there are people out there who deserve to know the truth about the crimin...

Who Was D. B. Cooper?

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😎 The Man: Who exactly was D. B. Cooper: the infamous skyjacker in dark glasses, who stole a bag full of cash, and escaped by parachuting out of a passenger jet? FBI artist sketch of D. B. Cooper, created in collaboration with eyewitnesses It was November 24th, 1971, the day before American Thanksgiving.  An era with no modern airport security, when anyone could buy plane tickets for cash under a false name. That afternoon, a man in a dark suit and tie and black overcoat, and carrying a briefcase, gave his name as Dan Cooper. He bought a one-way ticket from PDX Airport, on a Northwest Airlines 727 jet.  Cooper was about to commit his unforgettable crime of the century. ✈️ The Crime: Just before 3 pm, the plane was taxiing for takeoff from Portland, Oregon , en route for Seattle, Washington. That's when Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant. "MISS, I have a bomb in my briefcase and want you to sit by me." Northwest Airlines Flight 305 was hijacked on the afternoon ...